30 May
2014
30 May
'14
10:28 p.m.
On May 30, 2014, at 10:58 PM, Jim MacKenzie wrote:
I still do all of my black-and-white work on film -
mostly because I find the workflow to be more fun and I trust film to be more archival
(less intervention is needed; see the recent article about century-old negatives found in
Antarctica that are still printable), but also because black-and-white film seems to
really suffer from scanning. The sharp edges of black-and-white film grain really seem to
have aliasing issues when scanned digitally.
I have noticed this too on what I have scanned. In a lot of respects I think that it's
less problematic and flddly printing in a darkroom vs scanning film. One thing that is
kind of aggravating when scanning black and white film is that the digital ICE on my
scanner doesn't work at all with it, only color negative and transparency film.
Probably due to the B&W film substrate filtering out IR I'm guessing (since the
ICE uses an IR channel to locate dust). Granted if you want best results you'll want
the negs completely clean, but sometimes I just want a quick scan.
Still, it's not all about quality; it's about
fun. I like computers a lot - but I don't always want my other hobbies to involve
computers. A night in the darkroom is a great escape from a day at a desktop.
I actually prefer grainy and contrasty black and white myself. It's all about what
you're after.