Do Autofocus Scanners Have Trouble Focusing on B&W Film?

[koraks]

I'd disagree that what you're describing explains what you're seeing in post #7.

I dunno. #7 downscaled to mimic a 3200dpi scan would look like this:

That's not stellar, but what kind of film are we looking at and what kind of detail is in the actual negative? If this is e.g. something like FP4+ and it happens to be shot at a very tiny aperture, or we're looking at an area that's just not perfectly in focus, this is fairly normal.

 

[albireo]

I'm not home at the moment, so won't be able to upload a 3200dpi sample for a comparison. Based on what I see on my phone that looks suboptimal.

 

[koraks]

Suboptimal, yes, but not outrageously bad. The question is where the most improvement is to be gained - in the negative or the scan.

Btw, I also use a Minolta 3200 dpi scanner, so I'm familiar with that kind of output. I'll try to dig something up, maybe.

Edit: OK, here's some junk I pulled from my hard drive, scanned with an old Minolta Scan Dual IV. Ignore the dust.


Full frame 35mm:

100% crop:

(Kodak Vision3 250D, so let's say 'moderately fine grain')

Had to dig a little deeper for B&W...full frame 35mm:

100% crop:

Fomapan 100 in Moersch Finol; I think I shot this with a Tamron 17-35, which isn't exactly the sharpest pencil in the box at all times (this was on one of its better days).

Subjectively I'd say these are a little better than the example in #7, BUT: subject matter, film choice, taking lens and shooting conditions make a lot of difference. I heartily admit that I find it difficult to point out which part of the difference is exactly due to which factor. Which would put us back at boring test charts again!

 

[Steven Lee]

Not sure if this is helpful, but here's my contribution of comparing color vs B&W grain appearance of two ISO 200 films: Fuji C-200 and Fomapan 200. I will use PNG in my attempt to avoid JPEG artifacts.

Color

B&W

These scans are both 5000 pixels on the wide side. I never measured the true DPI of my setup. The 100% crops are in the following post below.

 

[Steven Lee]

Color

B&W

 

[koraks]

These scans are both 5000 pixels on the wide side.

That would make this about 3500dpi, although true resolution might be different. But your scans are resolution-wise comparable to the 3200dpi scans I posted, and indeed, they seem quite similar in terms of how the grain renders, especially the color scans. On the B&W scan, my result looks a little cleaner, but that's mostly because Fomapan 100 in Finol (which is much like Pyrocat) is pretty smooth. If I scan Foma 200 in a non-staining developer, I get results very much like the scan you posted.

 

[Steven Lee]

@koraks agreed! Our scans show very similar grain appearance, and the choice of a developer played a bigger role than the scanning technique. Which reminds me to devise a better system to tag my scans with the developer. I never tried staining developers, but I've been developing Delta 100 and Fomapan 100 in Ilfosol 3 and loved the results: grain gets sharper and better defined, but finer. I can't share it here since I cannot recall which scans were done with Ilfosol vs my regular Xtol. I need to look into my film logs to find that info. Which proves how little these minutiae technicalities actually matter

 

[Radost]

No they don’t!

 

[Radost]

Question for scanning masters. I have Pacific Image XAs which I've used for a couple of years now, and know my way around pretty well, using the copy of Silverfast which came with the scanner. But something I've noticed upon scanning some more color C41 negatives, as opposed to the B&W film I develop and scan more regularly: C41 film seems to resolve better on the scanner, such that I see the grain structure much more clearly than with B&W. The latter often seems a bit murky when I look at the scans closely. I scan at 5000dpi and I display at a considerably smaller size so I haven't ever worried about this, but I was surprised at how comparatively good the C41 scans look at or near 100%.

This got me thinking as to whether it's something inherent in the emulsion for B&W versus C41, or if maybe the scanner is actually having more trouble focusing clearly, to a grain level, on B&W negatives. Anyone have insight into this? I'm considering fooling around with the manual focus on the XAs to try for a better B&W scan just to prove/disprove this theory, but since I haven't played around with that at all, it's probably going to take some time before I know what I am doing.

Check your UNsharp masking. The secret sauce of SilverFast.

 

[Les Sarile]

More like $600 of those units, which makes it slightly less miraculous, but I get your point. I don't have unrealistic expectations from my gear (and I understand all the claimed versus real resolution stuff), I just wanted to make sure I was getting the best out of my equipment.

If you think you're not getting the detail out of your film with your scanner, you might consider getting something like this cheap 40X microscope. Bought it many years ago now but it might be under a different name or brand. I find that if I can see the detail on the film then my 4000dpi Coolscans will be able to resolve that same detail. Came in handy a couple of times when film owners would blame my scanner for providing out of focus scans. With this, they can see with their own eyes the image on their film is out of focus! Maybe one of these days, Adobe AI tools will be able to refocus shots taken from the past.

Film scanning tool by Les DMess, on Flickr

 

[snusmumriken]

Check your UNsharp masking. The secret sauce of SilverFast.

Do you mean check that it's 'off'; or check that it is 'on', and set to particular values? (In which case, what?)

Currently, until you or someone persuades me otherwise, I do all sharpening post-scanning. I find that the radius and amount of sharpening required vary depending on the size of the image, so for files that are going to be viewed on-screen I opt to size them first, then sharpen by eye on-screen at full size.

I have noticed that some sharpening tools are better than others. Are you saying that the Silverfast one is particularly good?

 

[snusmumriken]

In case further examples help the OP, I have dug out three that are as good as I have ever got with cheap scanners and 35mm film at hand-held camera speeds. I used a Plustek 8300i for the first two, the third was scanned on an older Epson 5400. (EDIT: No sharpening applied.) My conventional prints of the b/w ones have appreciably more detail and sharpness than these scans, and the same is true for a lab print of the colour one. Films were TMX 5052, grainier Double-X 5222, and Kodak Gold 200. (Incidentally, the first and third were taken with a Rollei35 .)

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Sharpening occurs after the scan even by the scan programs. So there's no reason to apply them for the scan unless the scan program provides some exceptional sharpening. The other issue is that once you apply sharpening for the scan, you have to rescan if you want to change it. The same with other edits done during the scan. That's why I prefer to scan "flat" and apply most edits to the post scan editing program. The only setting I might apply for the scan is levels (white and black points).

 

[Radost]

Do you mean check that it's 'off'; or check that it is 'on', and set to particular values? (In which case, what?)

Currently, until you or someone persuades me otherwise, I do all sharpening post-scanning. I find that the radius and amount of sharpening required vary depending on the size of the image, so for files that are going to be viewed on-screen I opt to size them first, then sharpen by eye on-screen at full size.

I have noticed that some sharpening tools are better than others. Are you saying that the Silverfast one is particularly good?

I scan RAW.After I use SIlverFast HDR for post. It sets unsharp masking to Auto. I use that most of the time. Sometimes I boost it to a level sharper.
Silver fast is a lot better from other scanning softwares exactly because of its unsharp masking.

 

[Radost]

By the way I have rescanned Noritsu and frontier scanned negatives with PIXAS and the PIXAS gives me better results.
I feel labs have an auto settings that reduce grain. I can get a lot more defined grain with my scanning.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I scan RAW.After I use SIlverFast HDR for post. It sets unsharp masking to Auto. I use that most of the time. Sometimes I boost it to a level sharper.
Silver fast is a lot better from other scanning softwares exactly because of its unsharp masking.

Most editing programs like Lightroom, PS, etc have Unsharp Masking. So you can apply it to the raw scan selecting the sharpening settings and changing them without having to rescan. If you set it with the scan software, your scanned image is stuck with the resultant setting.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

By the way I have rescanned Noritsu and frontier scanned negatives with PIXAS and the PIXAS gives me better results.
I feel labs have an auto settings that reduce grain. I can get a lot more defined grain with my scanning.

The sharpening setting applied by the scan program does not change the properties of the scan. That's defined by the scanner's hardware itself. The sharpening by the scan software if used is applied after the scan. This can more effectively be done by your post scan editing software.

 

[Radost]

Most editing programs like Lightroom, PS, etc have Unsharp Masking. So you can apply it to the raw scan selecting the sharpening settings and changing them without having to rescan. If you set it with the scan software, your scanned image is stuck with the resultant setting.

As I said I scan raw with iSRD . I just like post editing the raw scan with SilverLeaf HDR post processing archival software. It is specialized for analog pictures. And gives me a lot of options.
I am not paying for Lightroom.

 

[albireo]

Sharpening occurs after the scan even by the scan programs.

All automatic software post-processing performed by the scanning program can, and should, be deactivated to produce a raw image.

 

[Radost]

HDRi RAW - SilverFast's safe and flexible 64bit / 48bit raw data format

SilverFast HDRi RAW is the ideal archive format with complete safety for a non-destructive workflow, including infrared data and color management.

www.silverfast.com

 

[agentlossing]

Does consensus seem to be that Silverfast unsharp masking is better/easier for film than other software sharpening processes? I've been scanning without it (or greatly reduced) but I'm not super satisfied with the sharpening methods in Lightroom or DXO as they apply to film scans. Maybe I need to utilize Silverfast unsharp masking more often, at higher strengths.

 

[Radost]

Does consensus seem to be that Silverfast unsharp masking is better/easier for film than other software sharpening processes? I've been scanning without it (or greatly reduced) but I'm not super satisfied with the sharpening methods in Lightroom or DXO as they apply to film scans. Maybe I need to utilize Silverfast unsharp masking more often, at higher strengths.

To me the SIlverFast unsharp masking look a lot better and do not make the pictures look digital.
I am happy with the auto sharpening 99% of the time. I think it does a great job.
Not scientific. But also maybe the fact that I had to start paying for Lightroom all the time Made me imagine it.
But seriously I like silver fast HDR for post. Makes it easy. A little different white balancing color film but when you get a hang of it it is easier.

 

[agentlossing]

iHDR is an upgrade which costs extra, correct? My version is what came with the scanner. Their upgrades are pretty pricey for me.

 

[koraks]

Does consensus seem to be that Silverfast unsharp masking is better/easier for film than other software sharpening processes?

Depends on whose consensus you ask for. I wouldn't be part of that particular consensus, I suppose.

Sharpening as part of the scanning workflow makes no sense to me, because in my mind, sharpening is part of the optimization process for a certain output. Scanning is an input activity; it should in my mind yield the most neutral image data that can then be used for whatever purpose intended.

By the time the image is then made up for that specific purposes sharpening can be part of the process and is typically one of the very lasts steps in the chain.

Btw, entire tomes have been written on sharpening and the many ways it can be approached. If you do a Google search in this, I'm sure there's plenty to keep you happy for a week of intensive reading and experimentation.

 

[agentlossing]

I usually treat sharpening as one of the last steps as well, but in my mind, sharpening of a film scan is a little different. Sharpening the effect of the grain (grain clumps, more technically, but you get what I mean) by itself seems like a resolution thing to me, as in, I am obtaining a file with sharper native characteristics. The other kind of sharpening would be somewhere between grain sharpening and contrast enhancement, in other words something that sharpens the larger elements in the image, the things that were actually in the scene and not part of the inherent medium of film. If that makes any sense.