Scanning Slides and Negatives, am I expecting too much

[Paul-H]

Hi all

Just wondering if I am expecting too much from my efforts to digitise my Slide and Negative collections

In the past I have used some quite capable scanner to scan 35mm and 120 slides and negatives Minolta 5400 & minolta Multi Scan Pro so where able to produce 5400dpi scan off of 35mm and 4000dpi from 120 but the resultant scans where really only just good enough for printing to A4 with large amounts of Grain or it could be noise visible and never quite pin sharp at anything larger and often not even good enough for A4, but prints produced from the same slides and negatives through an enlarger and using the standard chemical process for the prints where sharp and grain free.

Am I expecting too much from the digitisation process or should I be able to match (or get close) to the wet process method.

If you are getting results as god as you got in the darkroom, what's your chosen method.

Thanks for any help with this

Paul

 

[jeffreyg]

I'm not familiar with your scanner or software but I have routinely scanned 120 and 4x5 negatives on my 12 year old Epson flatbed at 1200 or 2400 with SilverFast software and enlarged to the limit of my equally ancient Epson 2200 printer with excellent sharp/crisp prints to 13x19 and had a couple printed to 40x30. I am mainly a darkroom printer but also scan and print digital. I recently scanned some Fujichrome slides but haven't printed them.

Could it be that you are using too high a resolution for your needs or perhaps the scanner is out of whack. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me will be of more help but in the meantime, I suggest scanning at lower resolution and if possible with a different scanner possibly having one that didn't work scanned and printed at a camera shop. For the 40x30 prints I enlarged the file on my computer and copied a portion of the image and printed it with my printed to see if was worth having it done.

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[Doug Fisher]

Are you sure you had your scanning software set up correctly, especially in regard to the resolution settings? Were you scanning to original size at the true native resolution of the scanner? Both of those scanner models should be able to produce excellent files which when properly post-processed should be able to equal your darkroom prints without the issues you stated.

Doug

 

[lenny]

There are two types of "resolution", one is the ability to separate line pairs, which is optical resolution, and the other which is how many pixels a device can generate (not really any kind of resolution at all). Don't get these two confused. The Minolta can do about 2000 ppi of optical resolution, similar to others in its class. Maybe a little more or less... depending on the device. It will not do 5400, no matter what you do. (An Epson won't do 6400, either.)

That said, if you have sharp grains, you may be focusing down to the grain level... and then you come into the area of film development. If you over develop film you get a more grainy effect and there isn't much you can do.

Best way to go about figuring this out os to go to a place with a drum scanner and get them to look at it for you, and do a scan for you as an example. Then you will know what a "high resolution" scan will look like. You will have a good comparison...
Lenny

 

[Paul-H]

Thanks for the replies,

With The two Minolta scanners I used to have the makers claimed there Optical resolution was 5400 for the 5400, and 4000 for the Multi Pro, anyone know what I should have been setting them to for the best scan quality if the makers claims where incorrect.

Unfortunately I no longer own either scanner so cannot rescan at any other resolution to test if a lower setting gives a better result or not.

All I have to use now is a Plustek 8200i which the makers claim is a true 7200dpi, although interestingly the supplied Silverfast 8 software suggests 2400dpi for optimum quality and an old Epson 4490 which I use for 120 films which the makers claim has a 4800dpi resolution.

Software I have to use is as listed below

Plustek 8200i-Silverfast 8 or Vuescan Pro
Epson 4490-Epson Scan or Silverfast 6 or Vuescan Pro

I prefer to use Vuescan with both scanners to make it easer and I also have an iT8 target so can profile both scanners for accurate colours. The version of Silverfast that came with the Plustek does not support profiling, although the one I have for the Epson does. I also find that scanning with Vuescan is four times faster on the Plustek.

When I say I get grainy images I am sure it's not actually the film grain as some of my old negs are shot on Ilfords Pan F which produces very large grain less wet print, so I am sure it's produced in the scanning process so maybe some form of digital noise.

Any suggestions on how to improve the quality of my scans with what I have now in the way equipment is greatly appreciated.

By the way, prints made from digital files from my DSLRS are grainless and sharp so I know it's not my printer and these files are a fraction the size of my scanned images. The 48bit 4800dpi 120'scans are about 400mb each the digital files from my 18m camera are under 10mb.

 

[Alan Klein]

What film are you using? Do you use ICE or other spot removal software during the scan? ICE won't work on B/W and Kodachrome. You might consider scanning "flat" with no adjustments during the scan. No sharpening, no color, no lighting, no adjustment of anything!. Adjust everything in post including sharpening and noise reduction? If you look at flat scans, they are very unsharp. I guess that's the nature of flat bed scanners like the 4490 which is similar to my V600. I'm not familiar with the Plustek so I can't comment on it's results.

 

[Paul-H]

I am scanning E6 slide films Monochrome both Silver based and chromogenic and colour negative

I do use ICE but obviously not on the Silver based films, for neg scanning I do generally scan as a RAW file and then convert using ColorPerfect, for slide scanning I use an iT8 calibrated work flow.

Over the holidays I will try a few of the suggestions given above to see if I can get any improvements.

Thanks again

Paul

 

[Paul-H]

Hi all

Just done some testing and got some interesting results

I scanned a 120 Kodak GPF Colour negative on my Epson 4490 and scanned at three different resolutions of 1200, 2400 and 4800Dpi

I made three scans from each of the three bits of scanning software that I have for this Scanner, Epson Scan, Vuescan and Silverfast

All scans where made without adjustment, sharpening or Dust removal.

Comparing the results was quite surprising as from a colour and exposure point one of them was miles better giving very accurate results which needed virtually no adjustment and that was Silverfast with the results produced by Epson Scan being in Second place but a long way second with results that where very flat and weak in comparison to silverfasts efforts, with Vuescan bringing a very poor third place with results that had more depth than Epson scan but with a very heavy green cast.

Now to add to my confusion I compared each of the batch of scans side by side in Photoshop 1200, 2400 & 2400 Dpi and zoomed in to see which was better and closer to the true optical resolution of the scanner which Epson Claim is 4800Dpi but many report that it is probably only 2400 or even lower. the trouble is that side by side with the images zoomed in to examine grain, noise and detail I cannot tell them apart, they all look just as soft, grainy and noisy and nothing close to the Enlarger produced test print that has the super smooth skin tones you would expect from 120 film printed on RA4 Colour Paper.

Starting to think its time to forget about scanning as a way of using my negatives. starting to think I need to investigate building a darkroom again, not sure how that will go down with SWMBO.

Paul

 

[L Gebhardt]

Paul, I've recently stopped my color darkroom work. My reasoning is I like the look of the inkjet papers (FB) much more than the RC color papers. Combine that with the fact that the only color papers on the market have contrast that is too high for my tastes without masking most every negative. I'm not really trying to dissuade you from this path since I found it fun to print optically, but I also don't want you to hit the same issues I did and abandon it.

If you want to keep scanning I'd recommend you get a drum scanner. Being able to control the aperture will help you get smooth tones but sharp details in your scans. And the resolution will be higher. If you watch the auctions they come up every once in a while for about the cost of a nice DSLR.

 

[Paul-H]

Thanks for that, just been looking on ebay for a decent enlarger, how I wish I had not got rid of mine 10 years ago, had a nice 16 inch rotary processor as well.

Re the drum scanner, got any makes and model numbers worth looking out for.

Paul

 

[lenny]

Paul, I think the best bang for the buck is a Howtek 4500. The range from $1k-$4500, depending on condition, and whether they include drums, mounting station and software. Aztek bought Howtek many years ago and they still support these machines. There are other scanners that are very good, but they don't have as much support...

Lenny

 

[L Gebhardt]

Thanks for that, just been looking on ebay for a decent enlarger, how I wish I had not got rid of mine 10 years ago, had a nice 16 inch rotary processor as well.

Re the drum scanner, got any makes and model numbers worth looking out for.

Paul

Paul, where are you located? I have some nice Omega D5 enlargers, but I don't want to hassle with shipping them.

I'd second the Howtek 4500. I have a ScanMate 5000 and it works well, but as Lenny says there isn't much support in the US. I've had a Howtek 4000 and it worked well for a while. I tried to fix it, but ended up getting the ScanMate for less than the shipping to get the Howtek fixed.

 

[Alan Klein]

Comparing the results was quite surprising as from a colour and exposure point one of them was miles better giving very accurate results which needed virtually no adjustment and that was Silverfast

Paul: I don't see how Silverfast or any other software for that matter can provide those results without adjustments? The scan results should come out the same. The scanner is "dumb". The sensor can only see to its limitation. Some curves or black and white points must have been applied during the scan. Silverfast must be adjusting the image somehow. It could be similar to jpeg out of a camera. You can change settings in camera before the picture is taken. But even if you don't the camera applies certain factory adjustments that you have no control over.

 

[Paul-H]

The trouble is if I set everything to off I get a totally RAW scan, which is still a negative which then has to be processed into a positive in Photoshop, is that what I should have done.

My normally process is to actually use Vuescan to produce RAW scans which I then convert to positives using Colorperfect, but the quality of the results are just not a patch on the wet prints I produced from the same negatives years ago.

I still wonder what I am doing wrong or am I just expecting too much from the scanners I use, not sure I can justify the cost of a Drum scanner, not even a used one, and being in the UK they are as rare as hens teeth over here.

Paul

 

[Paul-H]

Just for the fun of it, I just tried making a digital copy of the negative with it in the Epson Carrier but the carrier sitting on my lightbox using may camera and macro lens.

the result was surprisingly significantly sharper than the results I get from the 4490 with every speck of the films dye structure visible and sharp when zoomed in at a high magnifaction.

Think this might be worth investigating more with some sort of mounting rig on the horizon.

Paul

 

[jeffreyg]

Paul,
As I mentioned on page 1, I get excellent results with my old Epson 4870 and the Epson carriers and SilverFast Studio Ai8 despite not being into the details that others here are. I don't know what version of SF you are using but since you are trying different approaches why not try their Work Flow Pilot if it is on your software. I don't use that but here are my settings that I start from: format=custom, preset=1200 (in the green), input width=5.04 height=8.82 zoom=100, output is the same as the input, histogram start all at 0, vendor=ie Ilford, Kodak etc, film type=Delta etc, ISO=400 etc, ccr=checked, exposure and tolerance start at 0, curves start with a straight line 0-255, midtone and contrast start at 0, power=100, radius=1.0 and threshold=2. As I recall SF can be reset by going to the wrench or tool and reset to their original defaults. When I had a previous version that's what I would do when it was problematic. You might also contact their tech support - they have always responded quickly.

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[Paul-H]

Hi

I have version 8 for the Plustek but only 6 for the Epson, will give your settings a go though.

Paul

 

[Paul-H]

Hi all

Just for fun after reading about other methods of slide on negative copying in the digital age, I though I would give my digital camera a go. So following some simple guides found on the web, I used the neg carrier from my Epson scanner to hold the 120 negatives, this was placed on my small A4 size light box and the camera plus macro lens was tripod mounted and pointed at the negative.

The resulting images where imported into Photoshop and converted to positives using ColorPerfect.

The results compared to the same negative scanned using my Epson 4490 @ 4800 Dpi and old scans of the same negative done on a Minolta MultiScan Pro at 4000 Dpi are quite simply miles better, especially in the sharpness stakes, I had been seeing so many soft scans over the years that I was starting to doubt my own abilities to see sharp images. If it was not for the fact that I had sharp wet prints from these negatives I would have been convinced I was using poor quality lenses instead of the sharp Hasselblad lenses I was using.

The Digital Camera produced negatives are totally pin sharp with the grain and dye structure of the film fully visible when zoomed in, it was just digital noize on the scanner produced images.

Anyone wanting to digitise their medium format negatives should give it a go.

It's so much quicker as well only taking a few seconds for each image instead of 10 minutes each scan took.

Only downside is the lack of IR dust and scratch removal but with clean well looked after negative they shouldn't need too much post cleaning in Photoshop anyway.

Give it a go, you might like me be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Paul

 

[Alan Klein]

Paul: Which camera and lens did you use? Is there any barreling effect. Is the amount of light even across the picture? (Not sure if you can measure this in your post processing program.) Have you tried to print the results and to what size if you have? Thanks Alan.

 

[Alan Klein]

PS: Can you post a couple of the results out of the camera before any additional post processing adjustments were made?

 

[Paul-H]

Will do

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Thanks for that, just been looking on ebay for a decent enlarger, how I wish I had not got rid of mine 10 years ago, had a nice 16 inch rotary processor as well.

Re the drum scanner, got any makes and model numbers worth looking out for.

Paul

I came to the same conclusion:analog gives me a better-qualiry print;but then, to be fair,I also spent 40 years in the darkroom,trying to perfect my technique.I haven't spent 10% of that with digital printing.Nevertheless,I'm convinced;digital capture is best done with a decent digital camera and not scanning an analog negative.I like the idea of a hybrid workflow but to me that means digital camera,followed by PS post processing.then, making a digital negative and contact printing it in the darkroom on FB paper.this gives me excellent results and the best of both worlds;flexible digital capture and optimization and a real analog silver-gelatine print.I't's my preferred method now

 

[lenny]

Nevertheless,I'm convinced;digital capture is best done with a decent digital camera and not scanning an analog negative.

Ralph, you may be convinced, but with all due respect, you would be incorrect. I shoot with large format, 4x5 and 8x10, and scan with a drum scanner. There isn't anything that can touch this quality, other than perhaps contact printing with platinum or another alt process.

Digital cameras aren't there yet, altho' they are getting better. I spent at least as much time in the darkroom, and I have also spent the time to master the scanning digital printing. When done properly, its truly exquisite...

Lenny

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Ralph, you may be convinced, but with all due respect, you would be incorrect. I shoot with large format, 4x5 and 8x10, and scan with a drum scanner. There isn't anything that can touch this quality, other than perhaps contact printing with platinum or another alt process.

Digital cameras aren't there yet, altho' they are getting better. I spent at least as much time in the darkroom, and I have also spent the time to master the scanning digital printing. When done properly, its truly exquisite...

Lenny

Dear Lenny, at the end of the day,all that matters is which process works best for you.I liked analog a lot and I like to think that I was pretty good at it.My recent move made me lose my darkroom and forced me into digital. Now, I like that a lot but I still have to get a lot better at it;have the feeling though that I will given the time.To me, digital leaves more opportunity to be creative.analog is a lot of hard work.

 

[lenny]

Dear Lenny, at the end of the day,all that matters is which process works best for you.

Agree wholeheartedly...

Lenny