I got some interesting results from scanning Arista.EDU Ultra negs.

Hi everybody,

I've been scanning some old negatives that I shot on Arista.EDU ULTRA film and noticed that
when I inverted them in Photoshop for post processing, all the pictures came out with a nice
warm image tone that I've never gotten with any other B&W film, straight out of the scanner.
The examples I'm posting here received minimal post processing, only curve, levels, exposure
adjustments and image sizing. I made no color adjustments at all for the final images.

I used an old Epson flatbed scanner with the stock 35mm film holder, Vuescan for my scanning
software and Adobe Photoshop for post processing

In Vuescan, I set the input controls to the following;

Options:"Profesional"
Task: "Scan To File"
Source: "Perfection 4490"
Mode: "Transparency"
Media: "Image"
Preview Resolution: "300 dpi"
Scan dpi: "450" for these pictures
Number of passes: "1"
I then did a preview scan, cropped the image and checked the "Lock exposure" box.

I did not select the infrared clean, restore colors, restore fading, grain reduction or sharpening
options. I almost never use any of these options while scanning.

In the output control section, I set the default folder for where I wanted to keep the files,
then I check the "Raw file" option, then I chose "Raw DNG format", set Printed size to
"Scan size" and the Magnification (%) to "100" and finally scanned a few negs. I then opened
the scans in Photoshop and processed them as described in the first paragraph. Here
are a few examples of my results.


1967 VW Bus, Carmel, California.
Minolta XE7, MC Rokkor-X 50mm ƒ1.4



The Robert Dollar Co. Engine No. 3, Niles Canyon Railway, Sunol, California, with my daughter in the foreground.
Pentax-MX, SMC Pentax-M 50mm F1.7



My daughter on the Niles Canyon Railway train, Sunol California
Pentax-MX, SMC Pentax-M 50mm F1.7



1967 VW Bus, rear view, Carmel, California.
Minolta XE7, MC Rokkor-X 50mm ƒ1.4

I really like the warm tones I'm getting from scans from this film without any
effort on my part. All the other B&W films I've scanned so far have been much
more neutral in color and required a lot of adjustment to get an mage color that
I liked. Has anyone else experienced this?

Zathras said:

I've been scanning some old negatives that I shot on Arista.EDU ULTRA film and noticed that
when I inverted them in Photoshop for post processing, all the pictures came out with a nice
warm image tone that I've never gotten with any other B&W film, straight out of the scanner.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Click to expand...

Can you show us the negatives?

Maybe the film base has a slight bluish cast? The Fuji x-ray film I use for pinhole work has a very noticeable bluish cast and if I scan in color and invert I get almost a sepia tone.

Anyway -- I like the tone, particularly the VW bus.

I've scanned a lot of Fomapan 100 (reportedly the same as Arista.EDU) in LF sheets with both Silverfast Ai Studio and Vuescan, and I've never seen this warm tone. That said, I REALLY like it!

Your photographs look great so you must be doing something wrong.

Which speed Arista.edu?

grat said:

Which speed Arista.edu?

Click to expand...

Arista.EDU 100

When you say, "warm", are you referring to the slight red-brown color, or the smoothness of the tones (the image have both).

Whatever you're seeing on the monitor (the VW shots are really nice w/ warm tonality) disappears in a darkroom print. I've shot a lot of that film, and the only time I got a warm print was when the Dektol was almost exhausted.

Modern Foma has a gray base. Some of the older film has a bluish base which would appear warm when reversed.

I expect you are scanning them as colour, not black and white.

MattKing said:

I expect you are scanning them as colour, not black and white.

Click to expand...

Hi Matt,

You're right. By default, I scan everything to a 48 bit RGB file. I forgot to mention that in my workflow description.

grat said:

Which speed Arista.edu?

Click to expand...

Arista.edu 100. It's from 2008 or before.

Wallendo said:

Modern Foma has a gray base. Some of the older film has a bluish base which would appear warm when reversed.

Click to expand...

I believe that this is what happened here, except the negatives did not seem that blue to me.

George Collier said:

When you say, "warm", are you referring to the slight red-brown color, or the smoothness of the tones (the image have both).

Click to expand...

Hi George,

I was referring to the color of the image, although the smoothness of the tones is really nice too.

Sirius Glass said:

Your photographs look great so you must be doing something wrong.

Click to expand...

I tend to think this as a "Happy Little Accident"

DWThomas said:

Maybe the film base has a slight bluish cast? The Fuji x-ray film I use for pinhole work has a very noticeable bluish cast and if I scan in color and invert I get almost a sepia tone.

Anyway -- I like the tone, particularly the VW bus.

Click to expand...

Hi Dave,

The base didn't seem to be too bluish to me, but my scanner must have thought differently.
In any case, I really like these results. I like the ones of the VW bus too. I sure wish it was mine.

momus said:

Whatever you're seeing on the monitor (the VW shots are really nice w/ warm tonality) disappears in a darkroom print. I've shot a lot of that film, and the only time I got a warm print was when the Dektol was almost exhausted.

Click to expand...

Well of course it will if you print it on black and white paper, which you normally would. And even if you printed it on color paper you'd have to filter out the orange mask and you could make it whatever color cast you wanted (I actually experimented with this years ago, printing black and white negs on RA4 color paper filtered to give whatever color image I wanted.)

momus said:

Whatever you're seeing on the monitor (the VW shots are really nice w/ warm tonality) disappears in a darkroom print. I've shot a lot of that film, and the only time I got a warm print was when the Dektol was almost exhausted.

Click to expand...

I know. However, I'm thinking of trying to print these negs on some Fomatone 131 paper I
unearthed in my darkroom. I will probably use a developer like Ansco 130 or Edwal 106,
since these developers contain glycin, which seems tob warm the tone up a bit, in my experience.
I also l have a small stash of Fortezo that I might try.

Roger Cole said:

Well of course it will if you print it on black and white paper, which you normally would. And even if you printed it on color paper you'd have to filter out the orange mask and you could make it whatever color cast you wanted (I actually experimented with this years ago, printing black and white negs on RA4 color paper filtered to give whatever color image I wanted.)

Click to expand...

There is no need to filter out the orange mask to print on color paper, the process takes care of that. You are over thinking and over doing the color print process.

Sirius Glass said:

There is no need to filter out the orange mask to print on color paper, the process takes care of that. You are over thinking and over doing the color print process.

Click to expand...

Just saying you will need to adjust filtration for the color cast you want - or don’t want. I did say I did it back in the day.