How do I determine the shutter speed to use for a roll?

[Digitizer]

Just try a series of the same negative and bracket from proposed exposure upwards, until the histogram gets close to the right edge of the histogram area… doing this might help.

Best setting for camera - where to compromise?

With a sturdy setup (tripod, copy stand, remote release etc.) longer exposure times are no problem. As for exposure, set aperture to f/8, ISO to its lowest value and expose up to one or two stops longer than your exposure meter suggests. You can also bracket a series of shots and see what NLP delivers based on each exposure. I found that NLP is fairly tolerant to exposure (see below), nevertheless, it’s a good idea to keep the histogram close to the right edge, but not too close. Here’s an exa…