Scanning - Improving shadow areas

Hi,

Im using a Plustek for 35mm film and scanning 16 bit. I have been doing more night photography but getting very noisy grain fill black areas like the attached. Can this be solved at all or is it to do with underexposed film in general?

Many thanks

Which scanner software are you using?
With some software, you can do multiple scanning passes on the negative which may reduce scanner noise, but won't reduce grain. You can also try noise reduction settings (although I have never been happy with the results from SilverFast or VueScan in this category).
It has been my experience with a Plustek that the scanner struggles with underexposed images. I am hoping I can learn something from this thread also.

Are you simply seeing the inherent grain of the film? That said, though, in general typical consumer scanners usually have a difficult time reaching down into the shadows. This is why software such as Silverfast has a multi-exposure mode whereby different exposures are made, then combined to help improve dynamic range and mitigate noise in the shadow areas. I've never used a Plustek scanner, but I'm betting the maximum dynamic range it can capture in a single scan isn't that great. When I have a portfolio level image, I have it drum scanned.

I've used Plusteks since 2009 - 7600i which I still have and 8200 which 'passed away' within a year of its purchase and I've not bothered to replace it. This year I returned to mass scanning (30,000+ negatives and slides to be checked and the best scanned before a determined and disciplined cull to downsize my film archives by 50%) I took the time to reread the detailed instructions provided by the manufacturer and finally worked out how best to do multiple scans.

I have to say I'm reasonably satisfied with my results from the multiples - it has worked limited wonders of those negatives of mine that border on underexposed but I've found that if there aren't any details in the shadows to start with, multiple scanning won't create anything that isn't there to start with.

As #3 posted drum scanning will certainly give the finest results but as I live in Australia and I don't have the proceeds from a gold mine to invest in this, I will have to make do with my Plusteks.

Reducing the contrast by repositioning to the mid grey also helps. Many of my scans made before 2015 were too contrasty as basically I was trying to produce scans that would minimise the post processing work I had to do later. I now scan to more grey and find more detail has been coming out of those seemingly empty areas in my negatives.

The learning curve in scanning can be steep and quite to my initial dismay I also found that in the five years I had neglected my Plusteks, I had somehow forgotten more about the process than I remembered. The data is all there in the instructions but as with all such things German it can sometimes be rather an effort to find it.

I've done about 10,000 images in all and the older 7600i continues to work well. Given my experience with the 8200 I doubt I will be investing in another Plustek scanner in my lifetime, but I have to say all this scanning has certainly kept me busy at home during the Covid lockdown...

Ben wright said:

Hi,

Im using a Plustek for 35mm film and scanning 16 bit. I have been doing more night photography but getting very noisy grain fill black areas like the attached. Can this be solved at all or is it to do with underexposed film in general?

Many thanks

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This will be solved by a much longer exposure, to capture detail in the shadow areas, followed by a shorter development time, to maintain detail in the pumpkin.

The brand/model of scanner (the Plustek is an excellent 35mm dedicated film scanner by the way) has little or nothing to do with this. Even a Nikon Coolscan or a drum scanner would have issues retrieving detail from a basically transparent portion of a negative, returning essentially patterns of thermal transistor noise.

Is that a raw scan or after tweaking & sharpening is it the full neg or just a crop?

Many thanks for everyones replies on this - apologies my original message was a little thin on information. This is a crop of a SilverFast Ai scan which was done as a 48bit HDR positive (rgb) then converted to a negative using a third party plugin. It has had some minor sharpening and contrast adjusts. I also used multi exposure as well for this scan. Scanner: Plustek 8100.

I spent quite a lot of time earlier this summer testing all sorts of scanning variables to see what was possible quality wise with the Plustek and concluded then that the 48bit HDR converted positive was yielding fractionally better results than a straight up 16 bit greyscale for bw. It has been a while since I did those tests so I did some more last night and found the maybe I had been wrong. In the picture below the image on the right is a crop of a 48bit HDR positive converted using a well known third party plugin. The image on the left is a crop of a 16bit greyscale negative scan straight from SilverFast. Aware slight differences between these two images (sharpening + contrast) but the left hand image has much more acceptable results for me in the shadow /dark areas. I feel this has gone some way to solve the scanning technique side of my original question in a reduction of noise in shadow areas where there is no information. Thanks reply #3 - good advice to hit the manual again! I too seem to have suffered from an absence of scanning and forgetting some of nuances!

As a few of you have pointed out this is probably an exposure issue as well - I used a small flash at sync speed (1/50) and there was no ambient light so very little shadow detail to deal with - it was more an issue of the areas that would typically be pure black on a darkroom print being noisy on scans and how to mitigate this without heavy burning in photoshop. Possibly using the 16bit greyscale scan / longer exposure and slightly finer grain film might help to improve such a shot.

I do think the plustek scans are good for home scanning. Ive never tried sending a negative off to get a flextight or drumscan but think might at some point to get an idea of what is possible with scanning as a baseline.

Many thanks again for insightful replies

*
Thanks reply #4 - good advice to hit the manual again! I too seem to have suffered from an absence of scanning and forgetting some of nuances!

Ben wright said:

Hi,

Im using a Plustek for 35mm film and scanning 16 bit. I have been doing more night photography but getting very noisy grain fill black areas like the attached. Can this be solved at all or is it to do with underexposed film in general?

Many thanks

Click to expand...

If you're getting grainier results then you go towards overexposing more as that will help grain generally speaking. With most all color and b&w film having an excess of overexposure latitude, err on the side of overexposure by practically as much as you want specially in night time shots.

I guess that the 2nd image is just being ripped apart by trying too hard maybe that software/method and the first is looking quite good just needs a touch of tuning for sharpness (usm).
I played with the very first post image & saw one could in PS reduce the noise a bit

Les Sarile said:

If you're getting grainier results then you go towards overexposing more as that will help grain generally speaking. With most all color and b&w film having an excess of overexposure latitude, err on the side of overexposure by practically as much as you want specially in night time shots.

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Thanks - hadn't thought of this in the context of night shots with flash but makes a lot of sense. Will give it a try.

ced said:

I guess that the 2nd image is just being ripped apart by trying too hard maybe that software/method and the first is looking quite good just needs a touch of tuning for sharpness (usm).
I played with the very first post image & saw one could in PS reduce the noise a bit

Click to expand...

I think you might be right - maybe too many steps to extract (perceived) maximum quality are having the opposite effect. It was a bit of a pain having to go from Silverfast to Lightroom to Plugin to Photoshop. I think despite seeing possibly fractionally better results with 48bit positive scans when I did first test I quite liked the idea of having fairly flat DNGs to work from. Think will have to get the 16bit greyscale tiffs as fairly 'neutral' in SilverFast so still have flexibility to do a final edit in PS.

Thanks for looking at that image - that has definitely made an improvement. Did you just use PS noise reduction to achieve that? I haven't really explored that options yet but sounds interesting. Thanks

Ben wright said:

Thanks - hadn't thought of this in the context of night shots with flash but makes a lot of sense. Will give it a try.

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Since it will meter the important area as neutral gray then for sure you have to add more exposure.

You can't get blood from a turnip.

Les Sarile said:

Since it will meter the important area as neutral gray then for sure you have to add more exposure.

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Thanks - yes this was a situation where there was zero ambient light so the flash did the heavy lifting

Alan Edward Klein said:

You can't get blood from a turnip.

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Indeed! This was less why do I not have any / poor shadow detail and more why are my shadows not fully black and noisy when film base is clear. A turnip it is though - just experimenting at this stage

Ben wright said:

Indeed! This was less why do I not have any / poor shadow detail and more why are my shadows not fully black and noisy when film base is clear. A turnip it is though - just experimenting at this stage

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I've also noticed that when I try to lighten shadows that really don't have much data, they just amplify the noise. Better off keeping them black. There's nothing to see there anyway. Work on the lighter areas where people are looking. It's there that it's important. Additionally, black shadows can create interest. Blacks add contrast and delight the eye. Use it advantageously.

I think what's happened is that because technology has allowed us to "rescue" shadow areas, we think we have to do it. After all, why did Adobe give it to us in Photoshop if not to use? But that doesn't mean it's aesthetically of interest. Just because we can do something, doesn't mean it's best to do it. Leaving things alone is often a better path.

Ben wright said:

Indeed! This was less why do I not have any / poor shadow detail and more why are my shadows not fully black and noisy when film base is clear. A turnip it is though - just experimenting at this stage

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Exactly what you need to do so that in future shots you have an idea of what you can expect to get from a system perspective.

Perhaps you just want to tame an otherwise too contrasty Kodak Ektar 100 taken in bad light . . .



Or maybe you want to reach shadow and blown highlights in Kodak Portra 400 . . .



If you ever get blown out highlights from today's ultrawide latitude films, you know something's not right or perhaps you were in the midst of a supernova . . .

Due to limitations of display media - screen or print, you may need to use post to show what you want seen.

These are good examples Les, especially the first one for when a little lightening works wonders. But as soon as it starts getting noisy or grainy, you have to back off. Of course, with film like I shoot, Velvia, it's often hard to get the shadow lightening to work, although I'm often surprised how much is really there after the scan. You often can recover more than you think.

Alan Edward Klein said:

These are good examples Les, especially the first one for when a little lightening works wonders. But as soon as it starts getting noisy or grainy, you have to back off. Of course, with film like I shoot, Velvia, it's often hard to get the shadow lightening to work, although I'm often surprised how much is really there after the scan. You often can recover more than you think.

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If you haven't, scanning the same frame a stop or two over and under gives some more options. This one shows Fuji Velvia 100 scanned that way and used HDR compared to SHADOWS tool.



Like you said, you never know till you try!

The right one looks the best. What do you mean Analog gain 0 Shadows too?

Alan Edward Klein said:

The right one looks the best. What do you mean Analog gain 0 Shadows too?

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Using Nikonscan with the Coolscan, it's a way to adjust exposure time during the scan.

Won't raising it to capture the shadows likely clip the whites?

Alan Edward Klein said:

Won't raising it to capture the shadows likely clip the whites?

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Of course. It's the scanners method of exposing a frame over and under.

Les Sarile said:

Of course. It's the scanners method of exposing a frame over and under.

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So then it's being combined afterward? Doesn't it capture the whole range in one scan so you can adjust the shadow slider afterwards and obtain the same results?