Exposure? Scanning? Film? issue - Please help me.

Dear all,

I have been in analogue for so far 3 months, I took all my film develop in pro lab, and I scan it myself using Epson V500.

Things (I thought) were going well not until yesterday I decided to 'scan' it with my Fujifilm S5 Pro, shooting in RAW, then invert it to positive in Photoshop CS3. Something pretty awful happened. I 'scan' it using the white backlight of my laptop, then crop them to show you all.

I did not accept this (photo attached) happen. On the left, the lighting was from indoor itself (consider the right color for me), where on right, it was a cloudy weather. That day, I was using Fujifilm 400H Pro, rated at 200 and shot.

My question is, the one on left was definitely correct color, but why the color on right such blueish? Is it because overexpose, or something else? Why the color has such a huge offset? (The rest of the outdoor shots were like that when I 'scan' with my camera)

Any idea?

Thanks,
uchan

uchan said:

I have been in analogue for so far 3 months, I took all my film develop in pro lab, and I scan it myself using Epson V500.

Things (I thought) were going well not until yesterday I decided to 'scan' it with my Fujifilm S5 Pro, shooting in RAW, then invert it to positive in Photoshop CS3. Something pretty awful happened. I 'scan' it using the white backlight of my laptop, then crop them to show you all.

I did not accept this (photo attached) happen. On the left, the lighting was from indoor itself (consider the right color for me), where on right, it was a cloudy weather. That day, I was using Fujifilm 400H Pro, rated at 200 and shot.

My question is, the one on left was definitely correct color, but why the color on right such blueish?

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Looks like you need to White Balance in post for each frame. That should be easy to do if you are using ACR.

Don

Don Bryant said:

Looks like you need to White Balance in post for each frame. That should be easy to do if you are using ACR.

Don

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Dear Don,

Since that I shoot in RAW, had a few rounds of tweaking (after inverting the tone curve, and adjusting the white balance)in ACR, I still can't get the correct color..

Another question to raise here if anyone is reading:

Is there a possible way to scan a negative to achieve the concept of "bright but still retain the details"? If you know what am I saying? Sorry for my bad english.

One thing that is definitely going to give you a problem is all the colour noise you will pick up. That screen that looks white from a normal distance is a bunch of little Red Green and Blue LED dots. When you magnify the image to the extent you need to magnify the film you will have lots and lots of extra colour noise.

Is the scanner broken? It should give a much better result even though it is a "low end" model.

I tried "scanning" with my DSLR using my lightbox as a backlight. I didn't get a good result until I had masked out all the area except where the actual film frame was with black tape and then made a black foam "tunnel" between my lens and the film (to keep stray light from getting in the sides). Otherwise the stray light and flare was giving me all sorts of funny colour casts. These weren't obvious until the images were inverted. When you invert negs you have to increase the contrast a lot and that is when any flare or stray light will also be magnified.

Uchan

so you're scanning negative?

inspect the colour channels again and I'm suspicious you'll see that the digicam scan has issues of balance. This is because each of the colour channels in negative are not equal in density as they respond to light.

If you want I can dig out more on this topic, but I would appreciate more information on your process and your scans.

short answer however is scan film with your epson rather than your dslr

glhs116 said:

One thing that is definitely going to give you a problem is all the colour noise you will pick up. That screen that looks white from a normal distance is a bunch of little Red Green and Blue LED dots. When you magnify the image to the extent you need to magnify the film you will have lots and lots of extra colour noise.

Is the scanner broken? It should give a much better result even though it is a "low end" model.

I tried "scanning" with my DSLR using my lightbox as a backlight. I didn't get a good result until I had masked out all the area except where the actual film frame was with black tape and then made a black foam "tunnel" between my lens and the film (to keep stray light from getting in the sides). Otherwise the stray light and flare was giving me all sorts of funny colour casts. These weren't obvious until the images were inverted. When you invert negs you have to increase the contrast a lot and that is when any flare or stray light will also be magnified.

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pellicle said:

Uchan

so you're scanning negative?

inspect the colour channels again and I'm suspicious you'll see that the digicam scan has issues of balance. This is because each of the colour channels in negative are not equal in density as they respond to light.

If you want I can dig out more on this topic, but I would appreciate more information on your process and your scans.

short answer however is scan film with your epson rather than your dslr

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Thanks for the reply glhs116 and pellicle!

You guys are awesome, I never know the channel will affect so much on the scanning.

My workflow for that attached image was - I switch my Laptop's screen into FULL BLOWN white, then I put my film attached on the screen, set my WB on my "scanner (DSLR - S5Pro)" on Auto, Aperture set to f/4, 1.5" shutter speed at RAW. Then I experiment the white balance on Photoshop.

Guys, recently I am looking for articles or books which has the knowledge of Tone Curve. Because I want to know is it possible to change my film which is blueish to normal or warmth in color when scanning using Epson V500 software not post-process after scanned. Is it possible?

There is some room for philosophy when discussing what to adjust where. Here's mine.

Your scanning workflow should begin with trying to achieve as neutral and full range a representation of the film as possible. I would not worry if the scan looked low contrast or a little off in colour balance as long as the histogram was fairly full and no channels were clipped. I would then do my colour balancing and contrast and sharpening on the finished scan.

It's not the only way of doing things but it will help you organize yourself. At scan you want the best possible capture of the information on the film into a digital file. In post you mould this file to fit your artistic vision for the photograph.

My two cents.

By the way, if you look at pellicle's blog you can see some lucid explanations of how the three colour channels work in negative film. He has some good examples and a workflow using Epson scanners. Myself, I often use a nice plugin by CF Systems called ColorPerfect. It takes the process of inverting the channels through a process not unlike a traditional colour printing process using color filters. It contains some very good film profiles including new films like Kodak Ektar. It is still worth using pellicle's technique to get the maximum information into all three channels by manipulating the exposure for each primary colour.

Hi

uchan said:

I never know the channel will affect so much on the scanning.

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definately.

For example look at the way that the density is different for each of the colour channels in C-41 negative



take the line (for example) the film exposure of -2.0 (on the x axis) and trace up to the points for R G and B. The seem to be a bout 0.4 , 1 and 1.4 respectively. This will result in the image looking funny if you just invert it.

If you read this blog post of mine you can see (with the scanner set to capture as positive and getting each R G and B level as evenly as possible) that the levels of R G and B are not even in a colour negative




Of course when you put you scanner into "color negative" mode it is programmed to compensate for this.

Personally I do not like one size fits all approach so I tweak these level from my capture.

For instance read this article.

You can see here


that I set my scanner clipping points to allow for this and the result is a neg scan which is more like the right stuff to start processing with.



this is of course done in the scanner software as (most of?) the CCD scanners can't adjust channels individually in their analog gain. Drum Scanner operators can adjust their scanner hardware to get their analog signal best positioned for digitisation at scan time.

Guys, recently I am looking for articles or books which has the knowledge of Tone Curve.

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not sure what you mean here ... but perhaps the above two blog post are in that direction.

Because I want to know is it possible to change my film which is blueish to normal or warmth in color when scanning using Epson V500 software not post-process after scanned. Is it possible?

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well post processing is what happens even with the adjustment in the scanner driver. I've struggled with this notion for some decade or so (part time of course) and my understanding is that unless you can tweak the analog gain of the PMT pre digitisation then you are processing a digital value one way or another.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_scanner#Drum

Drum

Drum scanners capture image information with photomultiplier tubes (PMT), rather than the charge-coupled device (CCD) arrays found in flatbed scanners and inexpensive film scanners. Reflective and transmissive originals are mounted on an acrylic cylinder, the scanner drum, which rotates at high speed while it passes the object being scanned in front of precision optics that deliver image information to the PMTs. Most modern color drum scanners use three matched PMTs, which read red, blue, and green light, respectively. Light from the original artwork is split into separate red, blue, and green beams in the optical bench of the scanner.

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