Rating Chomogenics

[gilpen123]

Recently I have been using more chromogenics trying out XP2 super and BW400CN. I've got good results using both rating at it's ISO 400 on bright sunny days but tend to lose details of the sky when I rate at 250/320. I am not sure of the real rating the manufacturers has on these films. In terms of scannned negs, the XP2 super tends to scan better. I plan on buying either the Nikon Coolscan V or the Epson V500/700 in the near future. At the moment, I have my negs scanned supposedly hi-res by a Noritsu machine which does not do justice to the images. I will tend to do some PP adjusting levels to get the results I wanted. I still use though Tri-X and HP5 but I do not process anymore and I am not good at it so I find the convenience of the chromogenics an advantage. Of course on critical shoots I still use traditional films and have it processed by my favorite lab under my guidance. My question is what rating is best for these negs?

 

[gilpen123]

Here's one sample no PP except resizing.

 

[gilpen123]

Btw, I used a medium yellow filter and XP2 super.

 

[rover]

My experience is the opposite. I find XP2 too contrasty and hard to scan. BW400CN to me is sharp, with smooth tones and easy to scan. I think both films have a lot of fans, so my experience, I would think, of one clearly being better than the other is not common.

 

[wjlapier]

Just curious, does anyone using C41 B+W notice a slight purple cast on the negs? I've shot a few rolls and have the negs only developed, scan with a Coolscan V and the images look purplish--slightly.

 

[mfogiel]

Rate them both at 200 ISO, this way you will get the sharpness intact, the shadows will have some detail, and the highlights will still be printable, especially if you burn in a bit. On a very sunny day, go down to 100 ISO.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Lower speed = finer grain, reduced sharpness.

The optimum speed FOR YOU depends too much on your subjects, metering technique and equipment. With a spot meter and XP2 I use 400; with a selenium in-camera meter on a sunny day, 200.

XP2 is about 1/3 stop faster than T400CN, or was when I plotted comparison curves. I find highlight detail much more convincing with XP2.

Why 'of course for critical shoots...' do you use non-chromogenics? Just curious as they usually scan much worse.

Cheers,

R.

 

[rover]

Just curious, does anyone using C41 B+W notice a slight purple cast on the negs? I've shot a few rolls and have the negs only developed, scan with a Coolscan V and the images look purplish--slightly.

My experience is that XP2 has a purple cast when scanned and BW400CN has the sepia cast of a color film. After scanning you have to desaturate both to get to the B&W image.

 

[hlockwood]

Lower speed = finer grain, reduced sharpness.

The optimum speed FOR YOU depends too much on your subjects, metering technique and equipment. With a spot meter and XP2 I use 400; with a selenium in-camera meter on a sunny day, 200.

SNIP

Cheers,

R.

Roger,

Not sure how to interpret this note. I would expect the spot meter to be accurate. So, are you saying that the Se meter is not accurate, and you're compensating for that?

I shoot XP2 at ISO 320 and expose with the in-camera meter of the M7 and get quite good results.

Harry

 

[Roger Hicks]

Dear Harry,

What I'm saying is that a lot depends on how you meter. With a spot meter, you are reading the shadows directly and can therefore guarantee that they will get adequate exposure (assuming you're using the spot meter correctly). With a broad-area meter -- and Se meters in cameras are VERY broad-area -- you are making certain assumptions about the scene brightness range (or rather, the meter is). On an overcast day there are unlikely to be deep shadows and the full ISO should work fine. On a bright sunny day with deep shadows, you may need 200 to get shadow detail.

With a through-lens meter (as in your M7 or my MP), I would go for 320 too except on a sunny day when I want a reasonable amount of detail in deep shadows.

EDIT: there are two separate points here -- sorry! If you rate the film lower, for a given meter reading, you'll get finer grain and lower sharpness.

Hope this clarifies matters,

Cheers,

R.

 

[hlockwood]

Just curious, does anyone using C41 B+W notice a slight purple cast on the negs? I've shot a few rolls and have the negs only developed, scan with a Coolscan V and the images look purplish--slightly.

Both XP2 and BW400CN negatives have a color cast. More details on your scanning settings would be useful.

In my case, I scan (Nikon 4000ED) in RGB mode, convert (in PS) to Lab mode, then discard the a and b channels. Finally, the image is converted from Multichannel to Grayscale. Then, on to Curves for adjustments, as necessary.

Harry

 

[hlockwood]

Dear Harry,

What I'm saying is that a lot depends on how you meter. With a spot meter, you are reading the shadows directly and can therefore guarantee that they will get adequate exposure (assuming you're using the spot meter correctly). With a broad-area meter -- and Se meters in cameras are VERY broad-area -- you are making certain assumptions about the scene brightness range (or rather, the meter is). On an overcast day there are unlikely to be deep shadows and the full ISO should work fine. On a bright sunny day with deep shadows, you may need 200 to get shadow detail.

With a through-lens meter (as in your M7 or my MP), I would go for 320 too except on a sunny day when I want a reasonable amount of detail in deep shadows.

EDIT: there are two separate points here -- sorry! If you rate the film lower, for a given meter reading, you'll get finer grain and lower sharpness.

Hope this clarifies matters,

Cheers,

R.

Thanks for the clarification, Roger. I'll put that to the test next time out.

Harry

 

[Florian1234]

My experience with XP2 so far is that it gives very nice contrast, but can be a little bit too harsh when shot in bright sunlight.
However, it is really good to scan.

I did not try BW400CN so far, because it has that orange mask which is said to be harder to scan.

 

[hlockwood]

My experience with XP2 so far is that it gives very nice contrast, but can be a little bit too harsh when shot in bright sunlight.
However, it is really good to scan.

I did not try BW400CN so far, because it has that orange mask which is said to be harder to scan.

I just picked up a developed roll of BW400CN for comparison with XP2, my usual film.

I cannot say that one is better than the other because my testing is very limited. They scan about the same. And I can't comment on exposure latitude, which is excellent for XP2.

So far they appear quite comparable. But I think I'll stick with XP2.

See the attached image, the first that I scanned. The only pp was to move Level 17 in the histogram (below which there was nothing) to Level 0 and to add slight (50/1/0) sharpening. The slightly softer right hand side is a DOF effect.

Harry

 

[hlockwood]

I just picked up a developed roll of BW400CN for comparison with XP2, my usual film.

I cannot say that one is better than the other because my testing is very limited. They scan about the same. And I can't comment on exposure latitude, which is excellent for XP2.

So far they appear quite comparable. But I think I'll stick with XP2.

See the attached image, the first that I scanned. The only pp was to move Level 17 in the histogram (below which there was nothing) to Level 0 and to add slight (50/1/0) sharpening. The slightly softer right hand side is a DOF effect.

Harry

Here's the same scan with a small Curves adjustment. I just pulled down the high end of the histogram a bit. Looks better.

Harry

Edit: I forgot to sharpen this one. :bang:

 

[gilpen123]

Lower speed = finer grain, reduced sharpness.

The optimum speed FOR YOU depends too much on your subjects, metering technique and equipment. With a spot meter and XP2 I use 400; with a selenium in-camera meter on a sunny day, 200.

XP2 is about 1/3 stop faster than T400CN, or was when I plotted comparison curves. I find highlight detail much more convincing with XP2.

Why 'of course for critical shoots...' do you use non-chromogenics? Just curious as they usually scan much worse.

Cheers,

R.

Hi Roger, reason is I have them wet printed. I don't print images thru inkjet printers.