Henrik: Having used both methods, I agree with Tom's asessment.
However, there is one drawback to film scanning if you use fast film,
especially fast black-and-white film. It's called "grain aliasing." The
sliver grains are big enough that there is an interference pattern between
the grain and the pixels. So you can end up with a picture that looks
grainier than a silver print of the same size. If you zoom in on the
original scanned image, you will see that small groups of pixels are
alternating light and dark, making digital "grain" that is bigger than the
silver grains were.
In that case, you might get a better scan with a silver print, provided
that it was a good quality print made with a good enlarging lens, and the
silver print was about the same size or larger than your target digital print.
Another solution is chromagenic B&W film, such as the to-be-discontinued
Kodak T400CN and its successor, Portra 400 B&W. It uses dye clouds like
color film, not silver grains, and scans much more smoothly.
All this said, there are grain filters in some scanning and image editing
programs that can minimize this effect, often with little degradation of
the image. Here are some examples of Tri-X negatives I took in the 70s,
when Tri-X was probably a bit grainier than it is now. I recently scanned
these with a Nikon LS-2000 (2700 dpi) and Viewscan, with Viewscan's grain
reduction on "light," the lowest setting.
http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/oldpics/framer.htm
http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/oldpics/greasept3.htm
http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/oldpics/homeless72.htm
http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/oldpics/sorcerers.htm
Compare these to Portra 400 B&W pictures, with grain reduction turned off:
http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/currentpics/mischa_emphatic.htm
http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/currentpics/yulia_skeptical.htm
Aside from the grain aliasing issue, I agree with Tom: Film scanning is
much better.
--Peter Klein
Seattle, WA
Tom Scales sez:
The difference is HUGE.
The 4000dpi filmescanners, in 16-bit mode, generate a 120MB Tiff file, at
approximately 5500x3500 pixels. The flatbed might generate files that big,
but the results are limited by the print -- to a much lower quality.
More discussion is beyond this list, but to reinforce and summarize.
The film scanner is better. Much better.
Tom
> Do you who have the experience notice a HUGE difference between
> scanned prints and scanned negatives? Or is the difference
> "neglectable"?
>
> Henrik Dahl
>
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