Digital ICE with b&w

White Rose · Aug 25, 2011

Are there any b&w films (e.g. XP2) which are compatible with Digital ICE on a scanner?

Cheers

donbga · Aug 25, 2011

White Rose said:
Are there any b&w films (e.g. XP2) which are compatible with Digital ICE on a scanner?

Cheers

Just the chromogenic films like XP2 you suggested. Kodak CN B&W, though as I recall that film has the color mask for printing to color paper.

White Rose · Aug 26, 2011

Thanks. I had a feeling that would be the case but was hoping that perhaps some of the newer T grain films would be compatible. I'll steer clear of XP2 because I don't want to try C41 developing at home.

Cheers

donbga · Aug 26, 2011

White Rose said:
Thanks. I had a feeling that would be the case but was hoping that perhaps some of the newer T grain films would be compatible. I'll steer clear of XP2 because I don't want to try C41 developing at home.

Cheers

Ilford XP2 is actually a very nice film. Have it processed at your favorite finisher.

Rudeofus · Sep 21, 2011

White Rose said:
Thanks. I had a feeling that would be the case but was hoping that perhaps some of the newer T grain films would be compatible.

The principle of ICE is that film dyes are somewhat transparent to IR light while dust and/or scratches are less so. Since silver grain is not transparent to IR light at all, ICE will never work with regular type b&w film stock, regardless of what grain technology it uses.

nolanr66 · Nov 25, 2011

I second that on the XP-2. It's a very nice film.

OzJohn · Nov 27, 2011

For some reason that I've never heard explained ICE does not work very well with Kodachrome either - not only does it not remove the dust it can sometimes distort the colours and/or blur the image - particularly bad on Nikon film scanners. OzJohn

Les Sarile · Jan 17, 2012

From the small sampling that I have done, ICE used by Nikon Coolscan 9000 + Nikonscan on Kodachrome is perfect, Coolscan 5000 + Nikonscan shows small amounts of artifacting and Epson V500 shows prominent artifacting. See scan below of Kodachrome 64.

Full res link -> K64 ICE compare

In all fairness, I have only scanned a few hundred frames of Kodachrome K64, K25 and some mounted ones from the 60's - 70's. I understand there have been a few variations of Kodachrome over the years and I can't say I have had a good sampling. As shown in the sample image above, I found the worst case results come from areas where bright and dark areas meet.

I would be curious to know how others do such as Canon FS4000 FARE and Minolta 5400 I & II ICE. I am not sure if there are any others.

Other than this artifacting, I have not encountered any other scanning anomalies using Coolscan+Nikonscan on Kodachrome.

Tim Gray · Jan 18, 2012

As I understand it, the relief effect on Kodachrome interferes with ICE from working properly.

I created a Photoshop action set that takes the IR channel from my Nikon Coolscan V and uses that to create a mask of dust and scratches. You can then use that mask to limit a Dust & Scratches filter or as a mask to limit the healing brush (what I normally do). It removes the need for a lot of the precision while spotting dust in Photoshop.

Digital ICE with b&w

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