Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/05/25

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Dante Week 22 now up
From: "dante@umich.edu" <dante@umich.edu>
Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 09:30:09 -0400

William:

The dust and scratches thing is driving me a little nuts.

I just printed that picture yesterday on Ilford MG IV.  It took 15 minutes
to figure out the right exposure.  At grade 3 you get 7 seconds, and detail
in the hair - so a point.  And no dust or scratches (I use an enlarger with
AN glass, which probably helps).

On Luminos Charcoal R you do lose the lower hair and clothing detail, but
you can see still the hair very clearly at the top of her head.  I like the
Luminos paper better for its old-school texture and tones.  Took 10 minutes
to recompute the exposure and determine the paper development time.  Had I
read  the Neutol NE bottle, and had I not started with some edge-fogged
paper, I probably wouldn't have even taken that long (Neutol is a 90 sec
developer).  Again, no dust at 10x.

BUT... on a negative scanner, I was poking around for a lot longer (like an
hour), didn't get quote the exposure I wanted, and managed to pick up a lot
of negative flaws (like horizontal scratches).  Apparently, the Kodak
scanner has a tiny bit too much DOF, even when focused, and picks up
everything (it also has a very cold light source that seems to accentuate
this).  This is a bit irritating, since the scanner will pick up these flaws
at a lot smaller enlargement and through the magic of resampling, preserve
them even when the onscreen picture is snapped down to 500 pixels high.
Unfortunately, it seems that the only choices are Digital ICE (which
degrades in much the same way that "Dust and Scratches" does and infrared
correction, which won't work with b/w film.

These horizontal scratches dog me with new film, reloaded film, home
processing, commercial processing, Leica, Nikon and Konica.  The only film
that seems to be resistant is Supra, which is not very useful for b/w.

So maybe just printing them is easier....

Regards
Dante

> I agree with the graphic quality. Great shot - the imaginative way you
> posed Ciara takes what would have been a standard portrait a step higher.
> 
> But dust and scratches - ugh !
> 
> Regards
> 
> William
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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- ------------
Dante Stella
http://www.dantestella.com

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