Film Scanning (Part III)
30th March 2022
So far I've looked at scanning colour film. In the third and final part of this mini series I'll look at black and white.
There is a huge quantity of black and white film images out there in addition to to colour that contain important family, local, national and international interest. If not from your own collection then maybe from a collection you've inherited. I must admit to having very few mono images of my own, and unfortunately some appear to have been mislaid. Nevertheless I have some inherited negatives from my father, whose birthday it would have been yesterday. Those are medium format so they'll require the use of my flatbed scanner which ill be for a future blog.
It's not possible to use the dust and scratch removal utility because this uses an infrared scan which doesn't work with silver halide emulsions, only dye based ones. Trying to fool the scanner into using an infrared scan by using a colour film option has no effect apart from taking a little extra time for no gain.
Old images can bring back memories of school days
You can't use the colour channels to adjust tonal relationships as you would with a colour original so you can only adjust overall contrast (though you can make local adjustments if you feel the need just as you would with conventional darkroom dodging and burning techniques).
Then there are chromogenic C41 process black and white films. These are based on colour film technology and consist of a dye based image, not silver halide, so the infrared scan for dust removal does work. These films were typified by Ilford's XP1 and XP2 films. They could be processed in standard colour processing chemicals by any minilab so it was easy for more people to enjoy mono photography. The downsode was that prints made on colour paper weren't always pure mono and had a slight colour cast. Nevertheless, if you made your own prints or had true mono prints made then there was no issue. I scan them as a colour negative and convert to pure mono. These films were designed to capture plenty of detail with good tonality and had good exposure latitude so you could effectively shoot at a higher ISO than the nominal rating and still get a decent image if necessary.
Shot on Ilford XP1
There is yet another class of black and white film exemplified by Agfa DiaDirect (it had an ISO of 12, yes, twelve) and Agfa Scala (its successor with a more useful ISO of 200 and available until the early years of thw 21st century). They were black and white transparency films, something of a niche product, allowing fans of transparency film to shoot monochrome images. I have my scanner output set to colour and the results are warm in tone, very close to the original look that's part of the film's character. I can always make a pure black and white copy if I wish.
Shot on Agfa Scala at the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway
Once you've scanned your images make sure you write an as informative caption as you can to preserve those memories.
All text and images © Keith Rowley 2022
There is a huge quantity of black and white film images out there in addition to to colour that contain important family, local, national and international interest. If not from your own collection then maybe from a collection you've inherited. I must admit to having very few mono images of my own, and unfortunately some appear to have been mislaid. Nevertheless I have some inherited negatives from my father, whose birthday it would have been yesterday. Those are medium format so they'll require the use of my flatbed scanner which ill be for a future blog.
It's not possible to use the dust and scratch removal utility because this uses an infrared scan which doesn't work with silver halide emulsions, only dye based ones. Trying to fool the scanner into using an infrared scan by using a colour film option has no effect apart from taking a little extra time for no gain.
Old images can bring back memories of school days
You can't use the colour channels to adjust tonal relationships as you would with a colour original so you can only adjust overall contrast (though you can make local adjustments if you feel the need just as you would with conventional darkroom dodging and burning techniques).
Then there are chromogenic C41 process black and white films. These are based on colour film technology and consist of a dye based image, not silver halide, so the infrared scan for dust removal does work. These films were typified by Ilford's XP1 and XP2 films. They could be processed in standard colour processing chemicals by any minilab so it was easy for more people to enjoy mono photography. The downsode was that prints made on colour paper weren't always pure mono and had a slight colour cast. Nevertheless, if you made your own prints or had true mono prints made then there was no issue. I scan them as a colour negative and convert to pure mono. These films were designed to capture plenty of detail with good tonality and had good exposure latitude so you could effectively shoot at a higher ISO than the nominal rating and still get a decent image if necessary.
Shot on Ilford XP1
There is yet another class of black and white film exemplified by Agfa DiaDirect (it had an ISO of 12, yes, twelve) and Agfa Scala (its successor with a more useful ISO of 200 and available until the early years of thw 21st century). They were black and white transparency films, something of a niche product, allowing fans of transparency film to shoot monochrome images. I have my scanner output set to colour and the results are warm in tone, very close to the original look that's part of the film's character. I can always make a pure black and white copy if I wish.
Shot on Agfa Scala at the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway
Once you've scanned your images make sure you write an as informative caption as you can to preserve those memories.
All text and images © Keith Rowley 2022