Hi there! I am a student and I have been asked by my friends to do the photographic work for our yearmagazine. I will be mainly shooting group pictures of classes. Which film/developer and which printing size/paper would most suitable for scanning and the magazine printing? For my private work I am using XP2 Plus quite a lot but I am thinking about Delta 100 because developing a larger amount of films (15 - 20, maybe some of will just laugh about that!)would be cheaper and the quality better anyways. Has anybody made experience with that and could tell me wether to hand in original prints or scanned images to the publisher to obtain best results? Thanks in advance!

-- Tim Meyer (timmeyerfff@hotmail.com), August 25, 2001

Answers

Unless you already have some experience developing and printing Delta 100 I think you should continue using XP-2. Never use unfamiliar materials on a job.

-- John Hicks (jbh@magicnet.net), August 25, 2001.

Tim, I think you are mistaken by thinking that you would get better quality prints from Delta 100 than XP-2. Some people might, but they probably are not beginners. I totally agree with John's advice.

chris

-- Christian Harkness (chris.harkness@eudoramail.com), August 26, 2001.

Tim, Stick with the XP2. When you are shooting group pictures of classes, unless you have excellent lighting, you will have some shadows. XP2 Super will allow you to get the photos, and still have an image suitable for scanning. You may want to rate the film at something closer to 200, rather than 400, so that you get good detail in the shadows. Don't worry about the highlights, as XP2 Super can handle them. If you shot the same scene with the Delta 100, you run the risk of the highlights getting too light, making it difficult to scan.

As for giving the printer prints or scans, ask the printer. Unless you are really good at scanning, and have good equipment, chances are that the publisher can get better results from a print than you will.

Regards, David Carper ILFORD Technical Service

-- David Carper (david.carper@ilford.com), August 27, 2001.

I can confirm that XP2+ scans really well, and has the added advantage that digital ICE can be used with it. Conventional silver image film blocks infrared, and this makes ASF's ICE image cleaning feature, that some scanners have, unuseable.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), August 28, 2001.

Thanks very much for your help! I will continue with XP2 then. But can I be sure that the lab pull-processes the film if I rate it at 200 and something or isn't that necessary with C41 B&W films?

-- Tim Meyer (timmeyerfff@hotmail.com), August 30, 2001.

Just have the lab develop the film normally.

A useful property of chromgenic films is that if you give them more exposure, not only do you get lower printing contrast and more shadow detail, you get finer grain, and you have lots of "overexposure latitude" to work with.

While you could pull-process the film, it would most likely decrease contrast too much and, assuming you're having a commercial lab develop the film, be unjustifiably expensive.

A process change would be justified if you're trying to get to a higher speed, say, EI 1600; in that case the increased contrast obtained by pushing the film can relieve some printing headaches.

-- John Hicks (jbh@magicnet.net), August 30, 2001.