The method digital Ice confuses silver grain in traditional film and dust with the expected awful results. Some scanners are better able to scan B&W than others. My relatively cheep Acer 2720s works rather well in my opinion.
See: http://www.mindspring.com/~palling/photography/gallery8/photographs/Madison_by_the_Sea.jpg
and
http://www.mindspring.com/~palling/photography/gallery7/photographs/Mainstreet_by_Night.jpg
I won't make any claims for the composition but the full size scans look fine on a computer
monitor. It's printing B&W on most inexpensive photo printers that gives really terrible
results.
At 12:22 PM 1/17/04, you wrote:
The other day I saw how Digital Ice can remove imperfections when scanning. What wasn't clear to me is whether using DI in any way "softens" the image. As it was explained to me, it shouldn't, but the fellow doing the explaining was new to the technique himself, so I thought I'd ask here.
Also, I've heard the DI does not work well with conventional B&W negatives. Is that the case? And, while on the subject of B&W negatives, is it true that B&W does not scan well? Last year I scanned quite a few B&W negatives and they looked fine to my uneducated eye.
The scanner used in both situations was the Nikon Coolscan IV ED super duper high end model, 4000dpi (sorry, I can't keep track of all the model numbers).
shel photographe au ch�mage
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-- George Jean Nathan
