Here a novice question:
When scanning B&W what is the best way: To scan in grey scale or to scan in color mode and desaturate.

Does the difference in information make a difference in tones?
I cant make up my mind on this.

In this question i disregard the issue of having a small colour bias in the colour scan of B&W negatives. I just wonder about the difference in information in colors making a difference in greyscales.

I always scan B&W neg's in grayscale. The tonal range seems right that way.

Personally, I would scan in color, because there's a lot more information than B&W in the image.
There are many ways to convert it in a perfect B&W... one of best is with the "NiK Silver Pro" PS plug-in.

Because sometimes BW films have strange "base" ... for example a tenue pink in kodak tri-x or blue in rollei/foma i allways scan it in grey tones. Don´t need any post process at all.

Why would you scan a B&W neg in color mode??? I don't understand?? I'm pretty sure Birger was asking about scanning B&W negatives.

Yeah well i think you both got it right, i was asking what is the best way of scanning B&W negatives: scan in grey scale mode or scan in color mode and desaturate the file.
I got another interesting reply on the hasselblad forum. There one guy suggested that scanning in color gives you the most control and that grey scale scanning looses a lot of info and takes away the sting from the image. this is because the grey scale converters in the scanning software are actually set in a fixed way which you cant control.
Theres something about the different colors being graded differently, greens most and blue least with reds in between.
I will check my files to try to make up my mind.

Thanks for the tip about the PS plug in will try to get it and test it.

Hi
i finally found an article on this issue that goes really deep. Unfortunately on norwegian.
here it is



You might want to run it through google translate, but just looking at the pictures should give you some idea. The main concept is to work in raw format for as long as possible and develop the B&W images in the raw format. This gives much more ways of tweeking when working on the different colour channels.
I guess for scanning this means to scan in color and to work in a similar way on the RGB channels?

Ups something went a bit wrong with the url click the lower text or see it here

http://www.foto.no/cgi-bin/articles/articleView.cgi?articleId=42512