Lenses for Scanning (film digitizing)

[isaac7]

I had always heard that the Pentax macros did a good job. The m42 mounts are pretty cheap. I would imagine the bellows only models would be even cheaper.

 

[originalwinslow]

I think that is largely an artifact of NLP. The saturation is not unnatural - it is just being interpreted in that NLP philosophy.

Yes I'm sure that it's an issue with NLP interpreting the signal from the RGB light. Supposedly they are integrating enhanced support for different light sources. Glad to hear you are getting better results from C1. Would you be able to share a comparison? I also heard the smart convert software gave a more natural look with the RGB.

 

[silvergelatin]

Yes I'm sure that it's an issue with NLP interpreting the signal from the RGB light. Supposedly they are integrating enhanced support for different light sources. Glad to hear you are getting better results from C1. Would you be able to share a comparison? I also heard the smart convert software gave a more natural look with the RGB.

I don't have anything prepared as a comparison - it's just my conclusion after using both across many rolls. C1 really shines with the RGB light - you can get the same results as you could wth a good manual conversion in PS, but way more efficiently and in batches. It takes me more time to re-convert old white light scans, but the RGB scans really snap into place pretty easily. They have a free trial, so if you decide to give it a shot, watch the recent livestream recording on Youtube where they go over the new negative conversion mode. Also, a critical trick for batch neg conversion is to set a "border buffer" shortcut like NLP has. In C1, you can save a crop as a style and assign it to a keyboard shortcut. You then uncrop after conversion by hitting the shortcut again. The other not-secret weapon is the Pick Neutralize dropper in Curves. Works like the midtone dropper in PS, but feels more accurate. If you never move your camera or change aperture, you can also save your flat field correction (LCC) as a style and apply it automatically.

So yeah, I like Capture One. I have only been using it a few weeks now, but I don't think I would go back to Adobe as a main scanning environment. I have old LR/PS pricing locked in, so I will still renew my subscription so I can keep the option open. Plus I have a lot of old converted rolls in LR that I don't feel like redoing just yet, so I still will refer back to it sometimes. The only downside of C1 is the rather high price.