Scanning MF negatives with V500, Vuescan, and Colorperfect

[RobM]

Hi all:

I'm struggling to get good consistent scans from MF negatives... here's a recent attempt that's especially disappointing:



This is on Ektar 100 shot with an old Rolleicord TLR, scanned with an Epson V500 using Vuescan and Colorperfect, following the procedure described here. The results are awful: murky foreground, streaky magenta sky, weird overall color cast. Gives the pictures a nice distressed, dystopian feel -- if only that was I was going for!

Every now and then one of my pictures will turn out great, but most of them look more like this. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong? There are so many variables that it's hard to know where to start.

-- Rob

 

[Alan Klein]

Why don't you try Epson scan that came with the V500? I use the Epson scan program on my Epson V600. I've scanned a lot of different negative and positive 35mm and 6x7 MF 120 films that you can see on my flickr site -click below.


As an aside, I prefer chromes like Velvia 50 over color negatives like Ektar 100. I find I get the blues too with Ektar 100. But you can adjust the Hue slider to get that out in post. In general I prefer chromes. These can be adjusted easier and I like seeing which is the best picture just looking at the film. You can't do that with negatives although I often get a contact sheet when I have it developed.

As an aside, Kodak Portra negative film scans pretty good. But the colors are too neutral for my preference.

 

[Doug Fisher]

Is the calibration gap at the top of the holder always unobstructed/uncovered and is the glass bed area under the calibration gap absolutely spotless and clear of any dust/haze/etc.? Poor start-up calibration can sometimes cause streaking. The fact that colors are also off would make me start troubleshooting by looking at calibration issues. It could be a number of things though.

As Alan suggested, what happens when you use EpsonScan software? That is a good diagnostic step.

Doug

 

[RobM]

Great images, Alan! That's the kind of stuff that keeps my trying at this! And I should have mentioned, I'm using Doug's negative holder with ANR glass.

So here's one from another roll, scanned with the Epson software and not adjusted at all (the only post-processing was shrinking and jpeg-ing it in photoshop).



Same ugly vertical stripes,general murky appearance.

The outer surface of the glass is spotless, but I notice that there seems to be an uneven spotty haze on the inside of the glass. I think I'll explore cleaning that...

 

[RobM]

Woohoo! I cleaned the glass following the instructions here, and that seems to have cured the problem:



No more stripes!

 

[Alan Klein]

That's a great shot. Colors, focus, sharpness, contrast all look great. Glad you fixed the problem.