Scanning thin negatives

Cerebum · Nov 2, 2022

MattKing said:
I have to respond - sorry for the pedantry.
You cannot "push" a film when you expose it. All you did was use less than recommended exposure (aka "under-exposure"). The "pushing" happens at the development stage.
One "push" develops in order to partially compensate for under-exposing film.
And yes, I know a lot of people seem to have started referring to the under-exposure part of the workflow as "pushing", but it truly doesn't make sense.
And now back to the scanning discussion.

Very true, lazy writing on my part

George Collier · Nov 3, 2022

jtk is right about "pushing" (added development} in that it isn't linear, but you do lose values, and they are the ones in the dark areas.
I'll avoid the word zones, since the final image will still have the same number of zones but they will be occupied by different areas of the image, than if the negative was properly (fully) exposed.

gone · Nov 3, 2022

Unfortunately, the negative is the negative. You could try this or that, but the film's underexposure needed to be addressed at the development stage. But you could see what happens in PS or something, where you could make major adjustments.

I once came inside from a sunny day, took a shot w/o resetting the shutter, and suddenly realized it was going to be seriously underexposed. You could barely see the image on the neg, it was almost clear. But a fair amount of data was there, and a lot of it was recovered that way. Very surprising, I didn't expect that.

George Collier · Nov 3, 2022

Another question: do you "push" film so that you can underexpose it, or do you underexpose film so that you can overdevelop it?

JerseyDoug · Nov 3, 2022

In the past, people underexposed and overdeveloped to achieve the 60's 35mm Tri-X chalk-and-soot look. More recently it seems to have become a social media inspired hipster thing.

Patrick Robert James · Nov 3, 2022

If you are planning on doing a lot of hand held night photography then don't bother metering. Just shoot wide open at the shortest shutter speed you can comfortably hold (you will have to figure that out). That will almost always get you the best results that you can get.

Cerebum · Nov 4, 2022

Patrick Robert James said:
If you are planning on doing a lot of hand held night photography then don't bother metering. Just shoot wide open at the shortest shutter speed you can comfortably hold (you will have to figure that out). That will almost always get you the best results that you can get.

Thanks I do quote a bit with my Pentax DSLR but that has ibis. I was hand holding at 1/4 yesterday, sadly film cameras don't have that luxury. My friend was shooting bulb on his nettar, hand held, they came out great you can't beat a leaf shutter for this kind of thing. I have been out with a tiny, relatively weightless Ricoh 500 RF and that's easy to keep steady. The shots above were plenty sharp enough and mostly shot at 1/30-1/60 & f2.8-f5.6. What I messed up with was the developing. At the end of the day I am shooting for fun. I love film noir style high contrast so they worked for me but its mainly about using nice cameras like my Yashica-mat, my clunky but fun Fed3a and my recently acquired Contaflex super BC, now that really is a unit

Andrew O'Neill · Nov 4, 2022

A note on intensifying negatives with Selenium. It will only be effective if there is enough density on the negatives. And if there is, it mainly does its work on mid to high values. It will not add density to the shadows. When I was shooting night scenes at abandoned coal mines in Japan, I never pushed film. I used the same EI as if it were photographing in day light... but, I almost always extended the development time (N+1). I did intensify a few negatives with Selenium, but there was sufficient high value density to begin with...

Alan Johnson · Nov 4, 2022

Cerebum said:
I was shooting a station last night using Rollei retro 400s pushed to 1600 and I think I under exposed by a stop. I scan using a dslr and macro lens. I initially used the histogram when scanning but I read that the histogram in live view isn't a good guide, so I aim for exposure to be ±0. Is there a magic formula for getting the best out of underexposed negatives?

You get an extra go at it when using a scanner instead of a dslr.
With a dslr there is only the option to change the exposure. Then it goes to the editing program.
With eg Silverfast recent version in a scanner there are also options like multi-exposure, contrast control, gradation etc. before it goes to the editing program.

brbo · Nov 4, 2022

Alan Johnson said:
You get an extra go at it when using a scanner instead of a dslr.
With a dslr there is only the option to change the exposure. Then it goes to the editing program.
With eg Silverfast recent version in a scanner there are also options like multi-exposure, contrast control, gradation etc. before it goes to the editing program.

Those are all post-processing operations, none of it is done "in scanner".

Alan Johnson · Nov 4, 2022

If you prefer I will say you get an extra set of post processing operations.
Only the multi exposure is done in scanner.

brbo · Nov 4, 2022

Alan Johnson said:
Only the multi exposure is done in scanner.

It's not. Multi-exposure is two separate passes with different exposures and then combined in software (Silverfast, Vuescan...). Same can be done with digital camera and Photoshop.

grat · Nov 4, 2022

brbo said:
It's not. Multi-exposure is two separate passes with different exposures and then combined in software (Silverfast, Vuescan...). Same can be done with digital camera and Photoshop.

This is a very tedious splitting of semantics. Both passes are done "in scanner", just as if you do exposure bracketing with a digital camera, you're doing multiple exposures "in camera". The fact that the two images are combined in software external to the scanner isn't really relevant-- it's not like you can create that second pass without the original negative in the scanner.

Note that some DSLR's will quite cheerfully do exposure bracketing / HDR "in camera".

Alan Johnson · Nov 5, 2022

grat said:
Note that some DSLR's will quite cheerfully do exposure bracketing / HDR "in camera".

Yes, this along with combination of the two bracketed images in software would seem to be the DSLR equivalent of the stand alone scanner, to get maximum shadow detail out of a negative, at least for a contrasty negative.

However, I don't recall seeing reports of the use of such a process. I wonder if there is some inherent problem with it like camera shake or if it is just inconveniently difficult to remember all the steps of combining the two DSLR images in software.
With a scanner multi exposure is a one click job.

brbo · Nov 5, 2022

Alan Johnson said:
However, I don't recall seeing reports of the use of such a process. I wonder if there is some inherent problem with it like camera shake or if it is just inconveniently difficult to remember all the steps of combining the two DSLR images in software.
With a scanner multi exposure is a one click job.

People regularly do multi exposures when camera scanning the slides. Although the benefits are not that great since most modern digital cameras have sufficient dynamic range to not need multi exposure (unless you are sloppy at determining the exposure at scanning).

George Collier · Nov 5, 2022

With a scanner, you can also finesse that second scan manually by actually making a second scan (immediately following the first scan) and tweaking the interpretation curve (in Silverfast for me) to optimize the dark end of the image (thin part of the neg). Then stack them in PShop and mask the main exposure to expose the "shadow" scan, which, if below the main scan, can be amplified with its own adjustment curves layer for max effect. I don't do this very often, as Silverfast's own second scan, and using shadow optimization in camera Raw (which I use with every scan as a first step) does a great job.

grat · Nov 5, 2022

Alan Johnson said:
Yes, this along with combination of the two bracketed images in software would seem to be the DSLR equivalent of the stand alone scanner, to get maximum shadow detail out of a negative, at least for a contrasty negative.

However, I don't recall seeing reports of the use of such a process. I wonder if there is some inherent problem with it like camera shake or if it is just inconveniently difficult to remember all the steps of combining the two DSLR images in software.
With a scanner multi exposure is a one click job.

With my particular DSLR, it's a one-click operation as well-- I set it into HDR mode, tell it how many stops to bracket, and use a wireless remote to trigger the process. Combine with mirror lock-up, and there's no real shake. The down side is, it produces a JPG in-camera. Alternatively, I can use bracketed exposure, and do an HDR merge via Affinity-- which amounts to loading the multiple images into an HDR stack and clicking "Go".

brbo said:
People regularly do multi exposures when camera scanning the slides. Although the benefits are not that great since most modern digital cameras have sufficient dynamic range to not need multi exposure (unless you are sloppy at determining the exposure at scanning).

And that's why I usually don't bother. Best estimate on my DSLR is a "mere" 10 stops of dynamic range, which is a couple stops more than I estimate the film's good for when I meter.

tnp651 · Nov 6, 2022

Try layering the scan in Photoshop in Screen mode. Use Layer Styles to remove the effect from the highlights. You may need to duplicate the Screen layer several times.

Alan Edward Klein · Nov 6, 2022

brbo said:
What I actually said was that scanner’s DMax is irrelevant when you are trying to extract information that is on the verge of DMin of the negative.

I think the expression is you can't get blood from a turnip.

Alan Edward Klein · Nov 6, 2022

George Collier said:
I agree with brbo on the DMax issue. A high DMax capability is to capture image detail in extremely dense areas, where some scanners may produce blank white, probably has no benefit in the very thin areas, which is what you are trying to optimize. If such a scanner captures better low end detail, I would say it is not because of the high DMax capability, but some other property.

Doesn't this depend on film type? For chromes, dMax is important in the shadows. With negative film, Dmax is important in the highlighted areas.

George Collier · Nov 6, 2022

Of course, I agree with you, Alan, which is why I avoided the terms "shadow" and "highlight" in that statement, since they would refer to the opposite end of the scale.
Thin and dense work for either, in the context of my statement. (except I should have said "thin" instead of "low end")

Scanning thin negatives

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