First B&W Scans

I'm not sure where to post this. This is my first attempt at developing B&W and scanning negatives. This is Tri-x 400 developed with D-76 full strength. I followed Kodak's instructions of agitating for 5 seconds and resting for 30 seconds for the duration of the 6:45 minutes. My scanner arrived today a Plustek 7400.

One thing I've learned is don't use white cotton gloves when handling negatives. LOL

These are real embarrassing photos but I want to get some advice. I'm not sure where to post this because there are two subjects going on here, the developing and scanning. In general the photos are kind of flat, generally gray, with not much contrast. Where do I go from here to improve?

https://plus.google.com/photos/1166...s/5751105696491621681?authkey=COLN843zxuTNjAE

Thanks,

My guess is your negatives are underexposed. In the scan you can see you have a lot of pixels the are pure black spread around the image in areas I wouldn't expect to be max black. Hold the negatives to a light and check the light areas for detail. My guess is you need to give the film a bit more exposure (for example rate it a half to full stop slower).

From a scan it's hard to tell if you need to change your development times. I would guess they are fine, but I always work those out for printing in a darkroom. That also gives me easily scanned negatives. But first get your exposure down.

The contrast can be worked on in Photoshop or the like. A simple S shaped curve bringing the shadows down and the highlights up will add snap to the photo. But again it's going to give hard results based on the exposure. What package are you using for edits?

I forgot to say, welcome to DPUG, given that this seems to be your first post.

L Gebhardt said:

My guess is your negatives are underexposed. In the scan you can see you have a lot of pixels the are pure black spread around the image in areas I wouldn't expect to be max black. Hold the negatives to a light and check the light areas for detail. My guess is you need to give the film a bit more exposure (for example rate it a half to full stop slower).

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You are correct. It was my first time using auto (aperture priority) with B&W on this camera. I had shot previously with some cheap color film in a similar situation and the camera appeared to expose correctly then, but it was also about 9:00AM and the dynamic range wasn't as high. Also the film was developed and scanned by my local camera shop, which does a better job than I do. Next time I will open up a stop.

From a scan it's hard to tell if you need to change your development times. I would guess they are fine, but I always work those out for printing in a darkroom. That also gives me easily scanned negatives. But first get your exposure down.

Click to expand...

I think you're right. My next roll I'll switch to manual mode and take a variety of pictures in different lighting and contrast.

The contrast can be worked on in Photoshop or the like. A simple S shaped curve bringing the shadows down and the highlights up will add snap to the photo. But again it's going to give hard results based on the exposure. What package are you using for edits?

Click to expand...

I worked on those photos in Lightroom 4. That's the best that I could do. There wasn't really much wiggle room during the scanning to change black/white points. During post processing I'd often have blacks butted up to the left on the histogram and whites to the right, with just a small addition of contrast. When I get B&W scans back from my local camera shop, there's almost always a good amount of cushion on either side of the blacks and whites on the histogram. This allows more leeway during post processing. I'm not sure how they get the scan to bunch up in the middle like that. I tried scanning one of the negatives they had previously scanned. My end product after post processing was close, but the histogram from the scanned negatives were much different. Their's had much more room to tweak the photo in post. I have a lot to learn.

Thanks for the helpful comments.

L Gebhardt said:

I forgot to say, welcome to DPUG, given that this seems to be your first post.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

Part of it may be your scanning software too - I've seen this often where scanning a negative yields a much flatter image than printing it would yield. The good news is that it's always easier to add contrast than take it away.

Awesome Work

Welcome to DPUG. Great stuff for a first go. I don't dare show some of my first tries. At least you have something to look at. That gives you somewhere to start.

Keep notes. Look at your results and try to decide what steps to try next. Do some research and ask questions on these forums, but don't try too many things at once because you won't have the foggiest idea what made the changes you will see. I have certainly had that happen.

Anyway, welcome to the zoo. Don't get discouraged if things don't work out right away. Some of the guys on these forums have had years to learn how to get it right and even they screw it up once in a while. I think that persistence and practice are probably the most important things. And having fun of course.

What's wrong with any of these? On each of them, you have real black and real white. Except for the first one, I see textures in extremes of tonal ranges (which is good). I'd say you did well for your first time.

It's really hard to tell from small scans like this but I would imagine the first one was under exposed - because the ladies jeans has no details what-so-ever. It is understandable as your camera probably metered those white tents or the street - which were very bright. The other two seems to be fine.... Are your negs extremely thin or dark or are they in the ballpark?

One thing to keep in mind... you were in very bright light when you took this. Because of that, your tonal ranges are really wide and thus images end up very contrasty overall. You think it's flat probably because of faces not having well illuminated so that they are a bit gray. That happened at shooting time. You could correct it to a degree by lightening it in post processing but there is a limit to how far you can correct this.

It is my experience that when I scan the direct scan always comes out flat. I have to bump up the contrast a bit before it looks right. You might try this. Up your contrast a bit, adjust the density (light) to compensate. You might get a bit more separation between faces and what's around them.

There's a real art in scanning negs correctly. Your results are absolutely fine for your first attempt.

tkamiya said:

What's wrong with any of these? On each of them, you have real black and real white. Except for the first one, I see textures in extremes of tonal ranges (which is good). I'd say you did well for your first time.

It's really hard to tell from small scans like this but I would imagine the first one was under exposed - because the ladies jeans has no details what-so-ever. It is understandable as your camera probably metered those white tents or the street - which were very bright. The other two seems to be fine.... Are your negs extremely thin or dark or are they in the ballpark?

Click to expand...

I don't have enough experience to really tell if the negatives are thin or not. I suspect they are. Most of the people in the negatives are clear. I'll have to examine the negatives a little more closely.

One thing to keep in mind... you were in very bright light when you took this. Because of that, your tonal ranges are really wide and thus images end up very contrasty overall. You think it's flat probably because of faces not having well illuminated so that they are a bit gray. That happened at shooting time. You could correct it to a degree by lightening it in post processing but there is a limit to how far you can correct this.

Click to expand...

I think you're right. I was on aperture priority because I knew the light would be changing drastically and I was trying to shoot incognito. What I needed to do is use the exposure compensation dial and open up a stop when I was in the brightest areas. In fact opening up a stop would have probably been OK when I was shooting into a tent, or from within the tent and out.

It is my experience that when I scan the direct scan always comes out flat. I have to bump up the contrast a bit before it looks right. You might try this. Up your contrast a bit, adjust the density (light) to compensate. You might get a bit more separation between faces and what's around them.

Click to expand...

I tried upping the contrast in post, but there was already so much contrast that the darks and whites would fall off the histogram in either direction. But I guess given the dynamic range somethings got to fall off, either at exposure time or in post. I'll go back and play with the scans a bit.

There's a real art in scanning negs correctly. Your results are absolutely fine for your first attempt.

Click to expand...

That's what I'm finding. Thanks, I've been doing some reading and I've found some adjustment that I think will make improvements during my next scanning attempt.

Pioneer said:

Welcome to DPUG. Great stuff for a first go. I don't dare show some of my first tries. At least you have something to look at. That gives you somewhere to start.

Keep notes. Look at your results and try to decide what steps to try next. Do some research and ask questions on these forums, but don't try too many things at once because you won't have the foggiest idea what made the changes you will see. I have certainly had that happen.

Anyway, welcome to the zoo. Don't get discouraged if things don't work out right away. Some of the guys on these forums have had years to learn how to get it right and even they screw it up once in a while. I think that persistence and practice are probably the most important things. And having fun of course.

Click to expand...

Thanks Pioneer!

TheFlyingCamera said:

Part of it may be your scanning software too - I've seen this often where scanning a negative yields a much flatter image than printing it would yield. The good news is that it's always easier to add contrast than take it away.

Click to expand...

At some point I plan on trying to print. But one step at a time. I'm going to give VueScan a try but thought I'd get my feet wet with the provided software.

I'm thinking what really happens is that when you scan a frame of negative, the software tries to capture the entire range of tones from the darkest to the brightest. Sort of using a #00 filter if you are familiar with the darkroom printing. Because of it, you end up with low contrast and flat image.

From here, it's a skill of the photographer to dodge, burn, and otherwise manipulate the image to fit all that tone into a fairly narrow range that a paper can show. Inevitably, all that tone has to be compressed, clipped, moved, and translated and in this process, the contrast get adjusted to more realistic value that better represent the scene.

At least that's my understanding.

There's nothing automatic about this process. Some software do provide automatic features but I have never liked what these things do and the images they produce.

What works for me is to use the scanner software to capture all the tones in the image first because if it's not in this file, it's not there and no amount of manipulation in Photoshop, etc, will bring it out. Then get busy on editting the image.

kbrede said:

At some point I plan on trying to print. But one step at a time. I'm going to give VueScan a try but thought I'd get my feet wet with the provided software.

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When speaking of printing, I was specifically referring to wet darkroom printing. But that's a different kettle of fish. A lot of my scans until recently have been from wet darkroom prints, but that's my background - I think and see my images in terms of a finished chemical print - used to be silver gelatin, nowadays a platinum/palladium print.

I know others out there will disagree, perhaps vehemently, with me on this, but I am NOT a fan of Vuescan. I heard all these wondrous reviews of the software, and so I downloaded the trial copy. I felt the interface was a long way from intuitive, and perhaps because it was a dumbed-down trial copy, I could not get a good quality scan from it. Regardless of the overall image quality, the watermarking added to the demo copy was so intrusive that I could not tell if I was getting what I wanted from the software. So I refused to give them money for something I could not adequately test. I got a copy of SilverFast with my Epson 2450, and an upgrade when I got my V750. I have since purchased the current version (SilverFast AI Studio 8). While it is not exactly intuitive either, it has a far better interface, and I feel like I am getting much more value for money with it. It isn't cheap, but it is worth it.

tkamiya said:

What's wrong with any of these? On each of them, you have real black and real white. Except for the first one, I see textures in extremes of tonal ranges (which is good). I'd say you did well for your first time.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I agree. Histogram looks fine.