How's My Scanning? - Call 1800...

Greetings all,

After having my V700 sitting like a white elephant in my office for the last few months, I finally summoned up the courage to use it again. I have to admit, scanning film and getting it right kind of scares me a little.

At the moment, I have decided to try and learn how to use Vuescan, using the following tutorial - Dead Link Removed (written by a friend of mine). I am currently scanning 35mm Portra 400, shot outside, with the web display in mind.

Using this tut, my results were way off. Reading another blog post, I tried setting the white point and results were much better, but they are still lacking IMHO:

Black Corvette 2 by Ashley The Hoff, on Flickr

Black Corvette 3 by Ashley The Hoff, on Flickr

Basically, these are TIFF's, straight out of Vuescan, sent to Photoshop CS4, resized, USM, converted to 8bit and saved as JPEG's. I have not profiled anything (walk => run....) and have been working in sRGB. In Vuescan, I have set and locked exposure and base colour. I have also locked image colour based on the white point (using the white of the sidewall on the first image show), with a slight tweak on the image brightness.

I'll also add, the grass at this event was extremely dusty...that being said, it does look a bit held back.

I don't want to go over the top in Photoshop - I want to try and maintain the subtleties of the films that I am dealing with (yes, I know - Portra is not the best film for hotrod shows...but it was what was in the camera at the time!). I also understand that the scanner height may be slightly off - it's not quite as sharp as I was hoping.

Where should I be going from here?

Cheers

Well they look pretty good to me. Hard to tell from internet jpg's imho. Where do you see the scans short comings? If you tell me that I might have some ideas for you.

Thanks for your response Eric,

I am wondering whether there is a colour cast, towards the blue spectrum. I did try and play with the sliders, but it did make all the colours a bit wrong in general.

Cheers

I see exactly the sort of blue tint in the shadows that I would expect to see on such a cloudless day with the shadows being mostly lit by a very blue sky. Your scans look very good to me from here!

They look just a touch cyan on my monitor but that could just be slight discrepancies between monitor calibrations. I think minor color casts are about careful post-processing, not scanning.

Thanks Philip and glhs.

Yes, you are right - if I looked at these images straight out of the scanner, they are very much blue, so yes, we are looking more so at post processing. I suppose I am trying to find a streamlined approach in scanning and minor post processing that would match as closely as possible printing in the darkroom, where you start with a filter pack and make minor adjustments. I have to admit, that the multitude of options that are available in any processing software package is clouding what I really want to achieve. The funny thing is, when I shoot digital, I don't have much of an issue with options, as I ignore many of them and I have found it easier to set the colour temp in that scenario.

Is it too much to say that picking a white point would be the equivilent of setting up a filter pack for a particular film?

Cheers

Hoffy

looks pretty good to me ... also looks like a Qld rego label on the windscreen too...

Hoffy

looks pretty good to me ... also looks like a Qld rego label on the windscreen too...

hoffy said:

I'll also add, the grass at this event was extremely dusty...that being said, it does look a bit held back.

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didn't seem to get stuck on the film ... ;-)

I also understand that the scanner height may be slightly off - it's not quite as sharp as I was hoping.

Click to expand...

did you see my stack of coins tuning tip? (sorry they were NZ coins too). Aside from that I've found that the Epsons are by nature "soft" compared to (say) my Nikon LS-4000. Having said that the Epson responds to some sharpening (radius about 1.6 pixels) and gets it to very close to my Nikon. While this only adds grain to the Nikon.... I suspect its something like "condenser vs diffuser" enlarger heads sort of different looks to the scans.

all in all considering you were scanning neg I'd say you did a good job on the colour balance.

Where should I be going from here?

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perhpas down the path of colour profiles for the monitor if you aren't already there ... looks good this end, but then this monitor is just "out of the box"

hoffy said:

I did try and play with the sliders, but it did make all the colours a bit wrong in general.

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the HUE sliders?

pellicle said:

Hoffy

looks pretty good to me ... also looks like a Qld rego label on the windscreen too...


didn't seem to get stuck on the film ... ;-)


did you see my stack of coins tuning tip? (sorry they were NZ coins too). Aside from that I've found that the Epsons are by nature "soft" compared to (say) my Nikon LS-4000. Having said that the Epson responds to some sharpening (radius about 1.6 pixels) and gets it to very close to my Nikon. While this only adds grain to the Nikon.... I suspect its something like "condenser vs diffuser" enlarger heads sort of different looks to the scans.

Click to expand...

Yes, I saw your stack of coin trick – I did try playing with the 3 heights on the standard holders and found that “+” was marginally better than “0”. At this point, I am going to stick with the standard holders, but may investigate the 3rd party options in the future if and when I get more into it.

perhpas down the path of colour profiles for the monitor if you aren't already there ... looks good this end, but then this monitor is just "out of the box"

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While my monitor is not an overly good one, I do calibrate it every so often (using a Spyder Pro).

the HUE sliders? .

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In Vuescan, I have been playing with the individual Red, Green and blue white and black points, as found in the B/W levels graph (CTRL 2 after locking the image colour).

Cheers!

hoffy said:

In Vuescan, I have been playing with the individual Red, Green and blue white and black points, as found in the B/W levels graph (CTRL 2 after locking the image colour).

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quite a blunt instrument ... Hue adjustment in Photoshop is far more subtle. Give it a go

Thanks - I have been trying and playing a bit more tonight, including very minor touchups in PS (excluding some clean up of some spots...thats been a bit more on the major side!). I have to admit that there is quite a temptation to boost saturation to what I would consider 'DSLR Post Processing' levels. I have just mainly been playing with hue @ the master level, so hopefully I haven't pushed it over the reality edge.

Cheers

PS - I am quite happy, no, actually ecstatic, with the end result on this one:

Black Corvette 4 by Ashley The Hoff, on Flickr

I think I would really like to give this one a try in the dark room.

Hue on each of the sections is also powerful. Depending on your neg (each film brand different) you may find adjustment of yellow helps foil age and cyan often helps pull skies better

Thanks for all your help. I'll keep that in mind ( I must admit that it took a while to work out what foil age was....).

Cheers

hoffy said:

Thanks for all your help. I'll keep that in mind ( I must admit that it took a while to work out what foil age was....).

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Arhh ... bloody auto correct