The Scanning Project-4: Editing Black & White

With color slides you can make a fairly quick assessment of quality and edit out hopeless causes (or dupes, etc.). This is not always the case with black and white. True, you do not have issues of color to deal with, and this in some ways makes it easier to separate the good from the bad and the plain ugly. You do, however, have to understand and work with density, the "thickness" or "thinness" of the negative. Those who have done darkroom work will have the advantage here in recognizing a "good" negative, but even if you don't you will quickly gain an understanding of this issue.

Here's an example of a "thin" negative. There is very little shadow detail and the contrast required to bring detail up will be excessive. If you definitely need to scan such a negative do not attempt to fix the contrast in the scan, but do so later in an image editing program. 

You also should consider quality issues such as the possible deterioration of the film base onto which the emulsion is laid (cracking, splitting, severe curvature due to roll-up storage). Other possible destructive forces can be poor processing (failure to clear hypo properly, thus staining and even loss of original converted silver) and the use of destructive storage materials or containers. 

This is a "thick" or overly dense negative that resulted from overexposure and/or overdevelopment. My suggestion is to batch these and work on them as a group as you will be using certain tools to hopefully cut through that density, although larger and unpleasing grain and contrast problems will be present.  Not all dense negatives are lost causes, but they will be challenging.

 As one of my mentors, Bob Schwalberg, used to say, “density defends density,” which means that old negatives which have been processed and exposed properly and have a rich range of tones will always do better in the long run. Well, there isn’t much you can do about that at this point, but it is self-evident that rich negatives will always yield a better scan than “thin” negatives, since the thin get thinner as time goes on. There is a another caveat: if the material was grossly overexposed and/or over-developed (thus making for a “thick” negative), many scanners may have trouble penetrating the silver (density) and harsh and possibly useless scans may result. There are ways around this (multi-scanning is one), which will be covered in the step-by-step scanning posts, but opaque negatives will always be bothersome.

Here's an example of an excellent negative that has been properly exposed and developed and shows no deterioration. This will yield a very good full tonal print and poses little challenge to get right. Shot on Tri-X 400, the scan was made using that film's "profile", a topic that will be covered in the step-by-step scanning sections in later postings. Photo copyright George Schaub.

If you have made satisfying prints from some of your negatives in the past you might think that scanning the “positive” print will deliver a better result. The problem is that darkroom printing always and necessarily compresses the full tonal values available in the negative. If the negative is truly poor or if you have only prints remaining this is the obvious way to go, but in my experience a decent negative scan will usually allow you much more creative leeway (and yield a better result) than a scanned print from that negative.

Of course, if only the print has survived and you don't have access to a negative you will be doing flatbed scanning to make a digital copy. Post scan processing can often do wonders with original prints, but in all cases you will get better results should you have access to the original negative, given that it is in good shape. This photo of "doughboys" from World War I was found in an old postcard album purchased in a flea market.

Depending on the film used or the way it was processed, you may run into grain issues. This is something you have to live with, although there are certainly ways to reduce unwanted grain when scanning and later. However, keep in mind that all grain reduction methods (called “noise” these days) entail a certain amount of image softening. Check your negatives with an 8X loupe to see if that grain will be ruinous. (It can of course be “charming” as well.) Keep in mind that scanning etches grain unlike anything you might have seen in your silver printing days, especially if you printed via a cold light head. Scanning, like a magnifying mirror, can be cruel.

Another issue to consider when editing is dirt and scratches embedded or etched into the emulsion surface. Unfortunately, many dirt reduction procedures and software programs do not work on black and white (although they do work on color film, except for Kodachromes). Retouching this stuff can be tedious, but it can be done, and in some cases you might be able to remove the objectionable material from the film itself by rewashing or using a kind of fluid as a kind of diffusion mask on the frame when scanning, a technique we’ll cover later. You might consider using a chamois cloth to clean surface dirt off the negative, and while this can help you should be very careful so as not to scratch the film in the process.

Every film type has a certain characteristic curve, and identifying the type of film you have is very helpful when making scans. Using this "profile" when scanning can eliminate a number of steps in the process, particularly with contrast selection. This is a Kodak Tech Pan negative of ice flows on the Long Island Sound. The film yielded very low grain and high sharpness. However, it tended to develop out with higher contrast than other panchromatic films, so setting its profile when scanning can eliminate guesswork later. Photo copyright George Schaub.

 Like all film, each type of black and white film has a “characteristic curve” and gamma, which means a certain contrast, density and relationship between tonal values. For example, Panatomic-X and Ilford HP5 have a distinctly different character. When editing, it is wise to batch all similar film types together. Even though there may be variations in different stocks (dates of manufacture) this allows you to set up various responses to maximize the film’s character when scanning and certainly helps in the time spent in setting up each frame. Many times a film type is not shown on the frame edge. There are web sites that track these numbers (http://www.taphilo.com/Photo/kodakfilmnumxref.shtml is one of them) although you may still have to make an educated guess in some instances. I’ll go over the importance of ID’ing film types in the step-by-step posts later.

There are other types of black and white film you may have in your collection, including black and white positive film, chromogenic film, IR film, high-speed (at the time) surveillance film, Polaroid “Instant” B&W, etc. While some of these can be challenging they can be managed, so do not disregard them in your selection process. However, they don’t usually respond in the way a “regular” panchromatic film does to scanning, and require some special setups, so batch these as well in your edits.

There are many tools you can use when scanning black and white, as well as those you can apply when processing the image in image-editing software later, so do not be discouraged if you have some marginal negatives or prints. I encourage you to work with those negatives you think are lost causes and see just how far you can take them. However, understand that they may require considerably more effort and work. Start your work with "rich" negatives and then move on to those that are more challenging.

Next posting: Color Negative Film Edits