Tri-X or HP5 Plus?

[Nachkebia]

I hope you all guys are talking about chemicals and films from enlarging experience and not scanning! scanning through lab or personal scanner can be so so so so so so so misleading in tonality, exposure and sharpness, no? 🙂

 

[Magus]

Post deleted by posters request

 

[Nachkebia]

Indeed, but now days prints are from scanned files almost in 99.9% labs or pro labs, enlarged printed scan is what we should look and discuss, it is me who has never enlarged any picture 😀

 

[wintoid]

I hope you all guys are talking about chemicals and films from enlarging experience and not scanning! scanning through lab or personal scanner can be so so so so so so so misleading in tonality, exposure and sharpness, no? 🙂

For the sake of clarity, my comments refer exclusively to scanning with my Minolta dImage Scan Elite II (not 5400). I would imagine the millions of different ways you can print will make it even harder to assess what's going on with a film/dev combination.

 

[Nachkebia]

Well negative scanned with any scanner can not be judged for tonality, exposure and sharpness because it can depend heavily on scanner hardware, software, color calibration, color profile and million things, developing chemical can make very little difference at the end...

 

[wintoid]

Right, but if I scan it twice on the same scanner with the same settings, on two different days, I will get the same result. If you print on the same enlarger and try to approximate the same settings on two different days, you will get different results, however hard you try.

Edit - this is partly a question, I know nothing about printing

 

[Nachkebia]

Yes you will get same result from scan of something that hardware and software came up. which has very less to do with chemicals and film structure 🙂

 

[Hilmersen]

I really like Tri-x exposed at 400 asa and developed in Ultrafin Plus (t-max style developer). Before trying this combo I did not really care for Tri-x.

 

[varjag]

One can clearly see difference between films in scans.

 

[wintoid]

Yes you will get same result from scan of something that hardware and software came up. which has very less to do with chemicals and film structure 🙂

Can you provide a logical explanation for that?

 

[Nachkebia]

Well, to start from very basic, grain structure changes, correct? grain is totally reproduced, which already fundamentally changes everything, starting from texture to sharpness, of course you can see difference between neopan 1600 grain and delta 100 grain, but not they way they are in reality!

 

[wintoid]

Thanks for that, I need to go away and think about it. Very interesting, and sorry if this was a small sidetrack to this thread.

 

[telenous]

It seems to me the only way you see the image as it was captured through the camera lens is in a positive film (and then only when you look directly at the mounted slide). Both scanning and printing through the enlarger lens are bound to affect somewhat the original film. Is there a degree on which one affects the whole process more than the other? I do not know - and more importantly, I think, there is no way to know, because all we ever see are images through scans and printing! At the end of the day. whether one prefers to scan or print is a matter of taste, but I can't see how printing is somehow meant to be an unadulterated way of interpreting the film.

 

[keensb]

i usually scan my negs with a nikon coolscan IV ED. i guess that explains why my photos are terrible. i have done very little printing, but will do so soon.

what is the correct/best ways to scan negatives?

i am only familiar with d76, accufine, xtol, and tmax developer, and have pretty much decided to use xtol for everything. maybe i should try some others.

 

[Nachkebia]

I never said enlarging does no altering, anyhow enlarging experts should come in now, magus!

 

[Trius]

It seems to me the only way you see the image as it was captured through the camera lens is in a positive film (and then only when you look directly at the mounted slide). Both scanning and printing through the enlarger lens are bound to affect somewhat the original film. Is there a degree on which one affects the whole process more than the other? I do not know - and more importantly, I think, there is no way to know, because all we ever see are images through scans and printing! At the end of the day. whether one prefers to scan or print is a matter of taste, but I can't see how printing is somehow meant to be an unadulterated way of interpreting the film.

First, for a good example of Rodinal with a slower film, look at this APX 100/Rodinal 1:50 shot. Scanned well, of course, but I would expect a good optical print to be even better.

I agree that a b&w, first generation positive (i.e. a b&w reversal original), would be the "best" example to evaluate, but that has its problems, too. There could be as many b&w reversal chemistries as one could imagine (well, almost), so you would have to standarize on one as a reference. But then you would undoubtedly find that films looked different in different chemistries. E.g., HP5+ might look better in DR5, Tri-X would look better in some other formula.

So in practical terms for me, I look at negatives under a loupe as a first step, but an optical enlargement under controlled conditions as my final reference/evaluation point. To be truly "controlled", there needs to be voltage control and control of lamp aging. One would also have to either select a particular light source type (point source, condensor, tungsten (or halogen)/diffusion, cold light, LED, etc.), or make multiple testings using a variety of lamp sources.

Of course there are dozens of other variables that one might wish to control, so it could become a formidable effort.

For practicality for most amateur effort, of course, one standardizes on the major variables ... enlarger, lens, paper, developer/processing, etc. In the end it is about an individual's workflow. IMO, the optimum in b&w is still to have everything in the analog domain unless we are talking top-level professional (drum scans, etc.) digital processing which, for most of us, is not practical for our daily hobby/amateur work.

My b&w reference standard settled on Zone VI Brilliant or Ilford Galerie paper developed in Amidol. (Today I could not use Brilliant, of course.) I even did 4x5 and 35mm contact proofs on those papers, at least for the most part. That kept things consistent in my mind. The emotional impact of a 4x5 contact proof on a good FB paper is quite different than a "quick and dirty" proof on an RC paper. Since the final print can be largely about emotion, that's an important factor for me, as it provides continuity. YMMV.

 

[Roma]

I'm no printing expert, but I've printed enough to know that my scanned negatives don't show me much compared to the prints. I can't even tell anything about the grain from a scanned negative. I just see some grain, but don't know what it really looks like.
I've also found out that the more I monkey with 10 different films and how they all respond to 10 different developers, the worse my results are because I don't take enough time to work with 1film+1developer combo to really make the results look like I want.
I'm going back to just working with 1 or 2 films and the same for the developers and hopefully spend more time printing with good results.
Once you work with either Tri-x or HP5 and stick to 1 or 2 developers, the results will be great with either film on a print.
Scanned negatives don't show crap (well, maybe just a little crap)!

 

[Trius]

Roma: Agreed. Getting to the choice of a couple of films (I think I will settle on three rather than two) and one or two developers is a journey. My strategy is to select one film, work with two developers at most, then select the developer that is my standard.

Next go to the next film, do the same.

Once I've got my standards down, I can go back and play with another developer for the first film, but only one developer.

Rinse and repeat as necessary, but always keep the goal of simplicity and repeatability in mind.

My only real rule for developing is that less is more: The least agitation necessary, and the least wet time (given a selected dilution) to do the job. IMO that applies to any film/developer combination.

For prints it is different. My standard paper developer, Amidol, is slow-working and can be used at higher dilutions. Aside from the depth of blacks I get, the longer working time and dilution flexibility offers some control of scale/contrast.

 

[Magus]

Post deleted by posters request

 

[Trius]

Yes, printing is about interpretation. So is scanning/post-processing.