Hello,
I've posted a few times in the analogue workflow forums but am new in this section. I shoot 35mm B&W which I process myself into slides using the reversal process. I like to be able to have digital copies and until now have been using a Panasonic Lumix bridge camera to do this, with, as you'd expect, OK but pretty mediocre results. I've recently acquired a Plustek OpticFilm 8200i and am trying to optimise my workflow with it. I really didn't like the interface of the Silverfast software that was bundled with it, so decided to get VueScan (pro edition). I'm quite happy with the results, but I know they can be improved and some aspects of the way it (and the scanner) render my slides are confusing me. Since B&W slides are pretty niche, as you'd expect there's not a great deal of information about doing this. (Despite this, VueScan does actually have a setting for 'REVERSAL B&W' although I'm not sure what the specifics of this are). Of course some of the principles of the process are the same as for colour slides, or at least more similar to this than to scanning negatives.
Although I'm pleased with the detail captured by the scanner, I'd been finding that almost all my slides were being rendered too dark, with not nearly as much shadow detail as there should be. I came across this page http://www.kennethleegallery.com/html/scanning/index.php which says that for a flat scan in VueScan one should adjust various of the 'Color' settings (not all of which are to do with colour!) from their default settings. One of the things it suggests doing is changing the default 'Curve low' and 'Curve high' settings from 0.25 and 0.75 respectively to 0.001 each, and also slightly raising the brightness from 1 to 1.06. Doing this resulted in scans that I was much happier with and seemed much closer to how the slides look projected or in a slide viewer.
However, because I like to know how and why I'm doing things, beyond just 'if it looks right then it is right' (valid though that is), I've been investigating further and have found that in fact the 0.25 and 0.75 settings for the curve is 'straight', and that adjusting them to their minimum values as that page suggests in fact expands the shadows and compresses the highlights. See here:
and here
However, as I say, with the curve points set to 0.25 and 0.75, I am seeing scans that are darker and are more contrasty than they should be. Is it at all possible that the supposedly straight curve in VueScan is actually applying a certain amount of contrast, as might well be necessary for a satisfactory scan of a negative, or that the scanner is doing this?
I am using the Lock Exposure and Multiple Exposure settings, by the way. I should also add that I have mainly been scanning Rollei Retro 80S and 400S, which are both contrasty films, especially the 400S – perhaps this is part of the issue?
Sorry for all this wordiness but I hope what I've written makes sense. Any tips from anyone who's managed to nail the process of scanning slides (especially B&W ones) with a Plustek scanner and/or VueScan software would be hugely appreciated. At the moment I'm keeping raw copies of the scans so that I don't have to go back and re-scan everything if I find some revolutionary change of settings that gives better results!
Thanks in advance.
I've posted a few times in the analogue workflow forums but am new in this section. I shoot 35mm B&W which I process myself into slides using the reversal process. I like to be able to have digital copies and until now have been using a Panasonic Lumix bridge camera to do this, with, as you'd expect, OK but pretty mediocre results. I've recently acquired a Plustek OpticFilm 8200i and am trying to optimise my workflow with it. I really didn't like the interface of the Silverfast software that was bundled with it, so decided to get VueScan (pro edition). I'm quite happy with the results, but I know they can be improved and some aspects of the way it (and the scanner) render my slides are confusing me. Since B&W slides are pretty niche, as you'd expect there's not a great deal of information about doing this. (Despite this, VueScan does actually have a setting for 'REVERSAL B&W' although I'm not sure what the specifics of this are). Of course some of the principles of the process are the same as for colour slides, or at least more similar to this than to scanning negatives.
Although I'm pleased with the detail captured by the scanner, I'd been finding that almost all my slides were being rendered too dark, with not nearly as much shadow detail as there should be. I came across this page http://www.kennethleegallery.com/html/scanning/index.php which says that for a flat scan in VueScan one should adjust various of the 'Color' settings (not all of which are to do with colour!) from their default settings. One of the things it suggests doing is changing the default 'Curve low' and 'Curve high' settings from 0.25 and 0.75 respectively to 0.001 each, and also slightly raising the brightness from 1 to 1.06. Doing this resulted in scans that I was much happier with and seemed much closer to how the slides look projected or in a slide viewer.
However, because I like to know how and why I'm doing things, beyond just 'if it looks right then it is right' (valid though that is), I've been investigating further and have found that in fact the 0.25 and 0.75 settings for the curve is 'straight', and that adjusting them to their minimum values as that page suggests in fact expands the shadows and compresses the highlights. See here:
and here
However, as I say, with the curve points set to 0.25 and 0.75, I am seeing scans that are darker and are more contrasty than they should be. Is it at all possible that the supposedly straight curve in VueScan is actually applying a certain amount of contrast, as might well be necessary for a satisfactory scan of a negative, or that the scanner is doing this?
I am using the Lock Exposure and Multiple Exposure settings, by the way. I should also add that I have mainly been scanning Rollei Retro 80S and 400S, which are both contrasty films, especially the 400S – perhaps this is part of the issue?
Sorry for all this wordiness but I hope what I've written makes sense. Any tips from anyone who's managed to nail the process of scanning slides (especially B&W ones) with a Plustek scanner and/or VueScan software would be hugely appreciated. At the moment I'm keeping raw copies of the scans so that I don't have to go back and re-scan everything if I find some revolutionary change of settings that gives better results!
Thanks in advance.
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