[filmscanners] RE: B & W - Tips required...

["Austin Franklin" <austin@darkroom.com>]

> Bob Geoghegan had a good reason for scanning in B & W... i've
> always scanned
> in RGB...

Shunith,

Just as a note, your film scanner ALWAYS (unless it's a Leafscan ;-) scans
in RGB no matter whether the data returned to you is converted to grayscale
or left as RGB.

I take it you are referring to film "profiles".  I don't believe all
scanners offer them.  These profiles are only tonal curves.  Nothing wrong
with that, but certainly something you can do your self in PS to an RGB
scan.

These "profiles" will only get you ballpark, if even.  The actual tonality
and grain of the film can change drastically with variances in exposure and
development.  Especially B&W, as different
developers/temperature/development times can give vastly different tonal
response.

People have been scanning film for quite some time without "film profiles",
with optimum results.  In fact, I don't believe the high end scanners have
these, or at least didn't...and no one (that I heard) complained.  It seems
more a "feature" of the new crop of mid-range desktop scanners (first one I
saw them on was the SprintScan 4k).  I thought they were a good idea at
first, but found they were more problematic than useful.

Regards,

Austin


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