ICE and "new" b&w films

nephilim

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Hi,

when scanning b&w film, I follow the general rule not to switch on ICE scratch & dust removal. But what about the "new" b&w films such as Spur DSX or Adox CMS 20? I'm wondering whether the grain of these films is small enough, not to be mistaken as dust :)

Cheers,
Torsten
 
The problem is that traditional B&W film contains silver. The infrared light reflects off of the silver particles in the film rendering the process useless. It's similar to the problem with Kodachrome where cyan layer absorbs infrared light.
 
Should work with chromogenics (XP2, etc.). Otherwise, no. This is however from (quite well informed) theory, as I print B+W as God intended, viz. wet, rather than by scanning.

Cheers,

R
 
Dust removal (ICE) works extremely well with C41 films but not so much with traditional emulations. One of the best B&W films for scanning is Kodak BW400CN. It's currently my favorite B&W film for digital output.
 
Spur and CMS are not "new" - they are the latest attempt at the techniques developed by Willy Beutler in the late fifties to tame the contrast of thin layer technical films.

That is, they are silver based, so no, ICE does not work with them.

ICE uses a extra infrared scan pass to create a mask for the dust filter - the dyes of colour film being entirely infrared transparent so that only dust and scratches show up in the mask. As silver is as intransparent for infrared as for visible light, that mask would contain the entire image if you use that approach with silver based film - the result of masking the image with itself usually looks somewhat like Sabbatier effect images, but YMMV depending on the dust filter used.

In short, ICE can only be used with chromogenic films - colour, and the few odd black and white ones (XP2, BW400CN and a few less common ones also processed in C41).
 
Where i can get BW400CN in 120 medium format?
Ilford makes XP-2 as well and it comes in 120 and 35mm (I'm not sure about other sizes). This is very much like BW400CN and can be scanned successfully using digital ice.

Thes films, BW400CN and XP-2 are very well suited to scanning. I expose XP-2 at ASA 200.
 
Ilford makes XP-2 as well and it comes in 120 and 35mm (I'm not sure about other sizes). This is very much like BW400CN and can be scanned successfully using digital ice.

Thes films, BW400CN and XP-2 are very well suited to scanning. I expose XP-2 at ASA 200.

So i should forget about other B&W films and stuck with XP2 film? I have a friend who tested BW400CN and told me that he didn't like this film, it gave him flat less tonality results, he told me it is like shooting in color then convert to B&W with desaturation option which give flat B&W.
I would like to see samples/results of XP2 120 film.
 
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