Epson v550 and dense negatives

logan2z

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I recently scanned a frame from a roll of film that contains a fairly bright sky with wires from a utility pole intersecting it. The sky portion of the image is relatively dense and the scan has failed to capture the fine detail of the wires as they cross the sky - the wires seem to disappear as they cross the densest portions of the negative. If I were making a wet print of this negative I would burn in the sky and reveal all of the detail I want to show in it. Is there a way to have the scanner essentially do the same thing, and spend more time processing the dense areas of the image in order to reveal detail that is currently being obscured? The scanner in question is the Epson v550 and I'm using the standard Epson Scan software.
 

Doug Fisher

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The images density range may be too much for the scanner's sensor capabilities, but have you tried going into manual mode with the scanning software to see if you can bring out the detail in the sky for one scan and then create a normally adjusted scan for the rest of the image before merging the two in Photoshop?

Doug
 

runswithsizzers

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VueScan, in combination with a scanner that supports it, can do a second scan at a higher exposure - and then combine that with a normal scan. This is moderately effective when scanning dense b&w film with my old Minolta Dimage Scan Elite F2900, but less so with dense color slides. I suspect the light source in my scanner is simply not bright enough to penetrate the dense areas (which do have some detail when seem via my slide projector). I am hoping that photographingmy slides with a digital camera and a brighter light source will allow me to combine two exposures, HDR-style.
 

My scanner

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hi have any idea how I can obtain the software download for a Minolta f2900. Can’t get mine to work
 

jgboothe

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I'm not sure about the V550, but on the V700 I have found that scanning in positive mode can increase the scanner's dynamic range. It does of course mean that you have to manually invert the scan and do some work to get good tonality and colour (if it's a colour neg). You also should use 16 bit TIFF mode. Dense areas are captured with better tone and less noise.

On the V700, equivalent scans take much longer when in positive mode rather than negative mode, which would mean that exposure is longer for each sample, meaning more light is gathered. This would make sense, given that the maximum density of positive film frames is generally much higher than that of negative film frames. If the V550 takes longer to make equivalent scans in positive mode, then I'd say you're likely to get a benefit.

I would recommend manually altering the black/white points in the colour histograms to ensure you capture the full dynamic range.
 

gone

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What Alan said. It's a rare negative that looks great just as it is, w/o at least a levels adjustment and contrast/brightness tweak. I once came into a coffee house after shooting outside, and forgot to reset the exposure on a 'blad. The negative looked almost clear because of the severe underexposure, but in photoshop I was able to pull out enough detail to make an inkjet print.

If you think you might want to wet print one day, take good care of your negatives. I scanned my negs and inkjet printed them for a long time. When I went to wet printing, there was no photoshop to adjust or clone out any issues. The negs get treated a lot better now.
 
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