Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/01/14

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Subject: RE: [Leica] B&W with no darkroom
From: "Steve Unsworth" <steve.unsworth@Bigfoot.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 17:04:54 -0000

I had the same thoughts about a year and a half ago. What I now do is
process the black and white film at home then scan it using a Nikon Coolscan
III. I use Ed Hamricks Vuescan software ( www.hamrick.com ) to speed up the
scanning process. I then burn the pictures to CD - a 36 exposure film fits
onto a single CD when saved as compressed Tiffs.

I am very pleased with this approach and have used it for the photographs on
my web site ( www.aaru50.ukgateway.net ). There's quite a kick from exposing
a film and then burning the pictures to CD the same day.

So far I've found that the T-grain films (Ilford Delta, Kodak T-Max) scan
the best in terms of image quality.

Steve

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Adam Bridge
Sent: 13 January 2001 23:15
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: [Leica] B&W with no darkroom


I'd like to explore B&W with my Leica but I have no dark room and, I have to
admit, really no interest in having one.

What's the alternative? I guess I could process my own film, that doesn't
really take a darkroom does it and then scan the negatives into photoshop.

Can I reliably send out B&W to a lab?

What sort of film scanner should I be looking for given that I'm a novice. I
have a Mac G4/450/MP that is my video editing system so I have tons of
horsepower and about 200 GB of disk along with lots of archival storage, the
least of which is CD-RW. So storing and managing images isn't an issue.

I'd love recommendations about how to procede. I'd like to become good
enough to make a quality B&W image.

I plan on doing most of my color work with a digital camera at this point.

Thank you,

Adam Bridge