For BW project, shoot color or BW?

[kevs]

I'm going to venture into a BW project soon on 4x5. Question: in old time film days obviously I'd buy BW. But today, everyone is getting scans, is there any reason still to go BW film over color film?

Now I'm not the most adept BW conversion guy in Photoshop. I just add the BW adjustment layer. But I could get more sophisticated, and buy Nik products etc. so hence, reason for this question. thanks

[langier]

If you will be doing any kind of digital printing, you can usually have your color negatives scanned more easily than b&w, IMO. In my experience, b&w film is fickle since it's silver and the highlights (densest) can block for some scanners. If you are still printing to create your master images, b&w is fine, just digitize your print in post.

One nice thing is that the color negatives are self-masking to retain more detail in your highlight areas, however, the conversion in scanning will take some practice to make it good.

For me, after last printing b&w in the lab years ago, I'm once again enjoying the control and process, though in realtime in the lights, when I work in b&w. I alway convert from a raw capture and either use the b&w adjustment layer or SilverFX, depending upon the original image. Sometimes SilverFX makes the image look too processed for my taste and simply doing an adjustment layer and then local targeting the image. It's like having a box full of Wratten gels built into the image!

In any case, my final layer on my b&w conversions is always the b&w adjustment layer so that I can tone my images consistently. Recently, I've tried the gradient map for some toning and for some images it works quite well.

Why not try a box of b&w film and a similar speed color neg. Put one sheet of each on different sides of your holders and give it a try. Scan them in and print comparison images and see what works best for your project?

[Alan Goldhammer]

The B/W conversion tool that is in Photoshop and Lightroom does a very good job of getting you started.  Unless you have a compelling reason to shoot on B/W film, you can shoot color and then convert.  Andrew Rodney originally noted that George Jardine has a very good survey of all the various techniques for converting to B/W found here.  It's a really good introduction into what works and what doesn't and the price is right, free!  I know that some folks like the Nik plugins.  I tried them and didn't find that they added much to my workflow but you may find that they do some things worthwhile.  I start with the B/W conversion tool in LR and from from there.  I find that almost all that I need to do can be done in LR with some work in Photoshop as needed.

Alan

[kevs]

Thanks guys, just taking notes here. Actually, my first project was in color for the 4x5 and I shot on Chrome. So no one sees a benefit is buying BW film?

[datro]

So no one sees a benefit is buying BW film?

Well, I like B&W 4x5 film because I can develop it in my own darkroom to optimize for scanning.  Can't do that with color film since I'm not setup to develop color film....would have to send it out which means more cost.

Dave

[kevs]

I'm not developing the film, and I'm probably scanning it on my Epson for web/ proofs and farming out the scanning for super large scans later.

But still, is there some benefits in shooting on real BW film? Some argue you get a look you cannot get from going color and then converting to BW... thanks.

Other than that, then there is zero point in shooting on true BW film?

[Roscolo]

I shoot a lot of my work on B&W 4x5, and I also thought, "Why not just shoot chromes?" So, I tried it. I did it because I liked the idea of adjusting shades of grey in the image via the color file. My advice is definitely shoot B&W film. My scans of chromes are not as sharp as the scans from B&W film. I'm talking the exact same shots done on B&W produce sharper output in the scan than the exact same shot coming from chrome. Chromes produce a just slightly softer scan. Considering that many of my prints are being enlarged to 4x5 feet, that loss of sharpness was a deal killer. You can test it yourself, just shoot a sheet of chrome and a sheet of B&W, scan it or have it scanned, and see what you think.

I also like that with the B&W film, I can just process the film myself here and know that it gets done right, and I don't have to find a lab or pay a lab.

[JeanMichel]

Hi,
I haven't touched my 4x5 in some years now and no longer have a darkroom, but I cannot see letting anyone processing my b&w sheets. Commercial b&w processing is, I gather,  more miss than hit these days. Colour processing is far simpler since it is highly standardized. I also assume that scanning technicians are more familiar with colour film (negs or transparencies) than with b&w. So if you are going the route of getting high quality scans done later, using colour film may give you better results. If I were you I would shoot some film in b&w, colour neg and colour transparencies, get them processed, scanned, and see which method gives the better result. I do scan some of my older 35mm b&w negs with a Nikon Coolscan 5000 and VueScan and do get decent results with it, but of course I must disable the Digital ICE feature since silver grains equal dust to be eliminated according to ICE.

The b&w controls in Lightroom are quite amazing, and I see no reason for me to go to any plug-in to convert my raw or dng files into b&w.

One reason to shoot in b&w would be if you needed to ensure very long term preservation of the original. B&W silver film properly processed will outlast all current digital storage methods, by far. And you can always see the image, no viewing device needed.

Jean-Michel

[Kirk Gittings]

It would be real useful to know what you are shooting. I shoot both b&w (develop in Pyro-great for scanning) and color negs in 4x5 for final b&w prints. B&W I can totally control and it is far cheaper to shoot and dev. (myself). I also do my own high end scanning on a Kodak Creo IQsmart 3. When do I use the color negs? When I'm not sure about the contrast filters to use to get the effect I want (or the filter I need doesn't exist) in which case I can get a better effect in post in PS. I never shoot chromes for conversion-too limited a dynamic range. Sometimes I shoot color negs when I am grabing a shot if rapidly changing or dying light-that way filtration can be done in post and it doesn't slow down my setup. All in all I prefer to shoot a b&w neg, but circumstances sometimes call for a color neg-maybe one out of twenty times.

[bill t.]

I had some very high quality drum scans made from just a few 4x5 negs.  My impression was that the files from the b&w Plus-X and Tri-X negs were sharper and more tonally satisfying than the ones from color negs.  All the files were printed monochrome.  This could have to do with the scanning technique (about 6 years ago) but it also agrees with my recollections from long ago.

The defining thing about b&w negs is the artful ways they could be optimized for particular types of images with specific developers and development times.  IMHO if large format negative film has any advantage, that's it.  And if I may say, you need somebody like Kirk to make that work, it takes years to learn the ropes.  There are developers like Diafine that can handle a lot of situations almost automatically, but the results will usually have the compressed highlights you get from color neg.  I'm not sure that simply settling for generic commercial development would give you anything special beyond what you could get with top notch digital cameras.

[Kirk Gittings]

Bill, many drum scan operators don't know what to do with color negatives. They use chrome settings. Color negs require a different aperture setting than chromes to get proper resolution (or at least that's how I understand it from Lenny Eiger-the best fine art drum scan operator I know).

[pfigen]

"many drum scan operators don't know what to do with color negatives. They use chrome settings. Color negs require a different aperture setting than chromes to get proper resolution"

Yeah, it's true that many drum scanner operators can't scan a color neg to save their ass, but others can. I've been matching aperture to film grain - and trust me - it's not just with color negs that this applies, it's also black and white and color transparencies as well. The basic premise is that you manually override the auto resolution/aperture setting where the scanning software automatically sets the aperture that matches that resolution - for example 4000 ppi = 6.35 micron aperture - and manually set an aperture that closely matches the film grain. The optimum aperture will depend on the film, the processing, the image, etc. and the scanners have the ability to to a small size "Detail" scan that can be viewed immediately in the scanning software and compared to another "Detail" scan to determine the best settings.

To give an idea of real world settings, a typical optimal aperture for Portra 160 is between 13 and 19 microns, while still scanning at 4000 ppi. If you use the Auto setting, you'll get the 6.35 micron aperture and also get super accentuated grain but with no increase in detail over a scan with the optimum aperture. Not all drum scanners have the same number and range of available apertures, so some models are more suited than others for fine tuning.

I recently scanned some 35mm Ektar 25 for a friend, and after looking at the Detail scans, it was apparent that that color neg film could easily take the 6.35 micron aperture native to the 4000 ppi res scan, so in that case, using the "chrome" settings were just fine. Just as important is the software's ability to invert the color neg orange mask and set the right end points for proper white and black values. Manual control of those values is crucial to a great color neg scan.

What a lot of people don't know is that on a drum scanner, the hardware optical resolutions are bunched at the lower end of the resolution ladder and spread out as the res goes up. For instance, on my Howtek 8000, the maximum res is 8000, but the next lower resolution is half of that at 4000, and then down to 2666. These numbers are directly related to the available aperture diameter behind the lens on the scanner. 3.17 microns = 8000 ppi, 6.35 microns = 4000 ppi, etc. There's nothing in between those two settings, so there are no hardware resolutions available no matter what someone claims. A 5000 ppi scan HAS to be made at 8000 and then sampled down. It's much faster these days to scan at the higher resolution and then sample it as needed in Ps. There's also no difference in scanning time for either 8 bit or 16 bit files for the same scan, so there's no reason not to always scan 16 bit. Anyone who charges you strictly by the megabyte for a scan is, well, it's probably not polite to say it here.