Digital B&W

[Harry Lime]

If you're shooting digital, expose for the highlights and:

http://www.grubbasoft.com/

 

[AndrewNYC]

Flat negs

Flat negs

Dear Keith,

No. At least, not in my experience. I find that minimal exposure and minimal development scans best: it's much easier to turn contrast UP than to turn it DOWN, and many scanners can't handle high Dmax. Minimal exposure also equates to more sharpness and finer grain. The latter can be especially important when scanning 35mm.

Cheers,

R.

This doesn't appear to be any different than the darkoom. It's much easier to expand than contract a scene. If I could, I'd soup in Microdol X 1:3 all the time and get flat negs and punch them up in Photoshop. Unfortunately, nobody here does Microdol anymore without wanting a kidney in return, and self development isn't currently an option.

 

[dazedgonebye]

I can second this method...and add that tone can be controlled to a certain extent by paper selection.
Epson Ultra premium presentation paper is pretty neutral.

I print B&W with Paul Roark's "3-MK" workflow. I use a refurbished Epson R1800, with pure carbon MIS "Eboni" ink in the two black cartridges and also in the GLOP (gloss optimizer) cartridge. Basically you prepare a black and white file however you like, then apply a curve to it, then print with the shareware QuadTone RIP program ($50 to register). There are profiles for many common papers. The workflow only works with matte paper, not glossy. I'm fine with that.

I'm very happy with the results. The printer's dither pattern produces a very slight grain effect (similar to that of slow B&W film). This actually makes things look better with ultra-smooth digital files at low ISO. You can see it with a magnifying glass, but it's at the very edge of perception at 8x10 and larger. The upside is that you get the full white of the paper between the dots, which gives prints that look more luminous than mixed color ink methods. It's also dirt cheap compared to OEM inks.

The prints are not identical to silver prints, but they are as beautiful in their own way. They are slightly warm-toned, which I like. Paul has methods for adding a bit of blue pigment ink to the workflow to tone them cooler if you want that.

One can get into a bottomless pit of paper, software and ink alchemy with some of the "roll-your-own" B&W methods. I found that the 3MK method was simple, cheap and worked well, so I've adopted it and stuck with it.

If you're interested in this workflow, start here:
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/

Lots of information, and a bottomless pit of techie alchemy here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/...=1&t=search&ch=web&pub=groups&sec=group&slk=1

--Peter

 

[Bill Pierce]

If I could, I'd soup in Microdol X 1:3 all the time and get flat negs and punch them up in Photoshop. Unfortunately, nobody here does Microdol anymore without wanting a kidney in return, and self development isn't currently an option.

Andrew, Microdol X 1:3 was a lovely soup. It even made it into my world of photojournalism where most folks presume we use hot rotgut and push everything 3 stops. As commercial and personal darkrooms have diminished, a number of folks have (very quietly) switched over to the black and white CN films. The labs that process these film vary widely in quality, and you'll have to find a good one. But they do produce a negative that scans well. I've found the Ilford XP2 also prints well on silver.

Bill

 

[shadowfox]

Bill, what a timely question.

After struggling with two printers, countless hours (and ink cartridges) later, I finally was able to get a *neutral* black and white print.

"Neutral" as in having the exact same number for CMYK on an Xrite Densitometer. Can't get much more neutral than that

It all falls onto the ink choice, and understanding how to utilize curves (RIP software curve, not Photoshop's). The latter one is useful to control the contrast of the print, much like tweaking Magenta and Yellow filter on a color enlarger

Pure carbon ink is the way to go for me because I can control the tone of the image solely using the paper base.

In fact, if you'd like to see a sample, send me one of your favorite B&W image (jpg, png, tif, doesn't matter) and I'll print it and send it back to you, see if you like the result.

As for size reference, a 4MB jpg file can comfortably be printed up to 8x10 maybe bigger.