the beauty of scanning black and white in color
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Still nobody who can show us the difference between scanning b/w film as color or as b/w?
Imho it looks like we are talking about something that cannot be proved, like religion.
But ok, I will start up the old Imacon Flextight and scan. Any suggetions which colorfilm profile to use for tmax 400?
Regards,
Frank
Imho it looks like we are talking about something that cannot be proved, like religion.
But ok, I will start up the old Imacon Flextight and scan. Any suggetions which colorfilm profile to use for tmax 400?
Regards,
Frank
Scan in B&W or colour, I have done both, but it is not the tonal difference that bothers me, it is the predominance of grain that stops me from doing both. Especially B&W negatives. I have tried both with my flatbed (Epson V500) and my Nikon Coolscan V. The Nikon is worst because the resolution is that bit higher and it is capable of resolving more than the flatbed. I just revert to printing a B&W picture and if I have a need to, I can scan that on the flatbed to sent to image by E Mail thus avoiding the grain. - but what a carry on.
Use the film profile for T Max 400. The only change is to select 24 bit RGB 0r 48 bit RGB in place of 8 bit Grayscale or 16 bit Grayscale.
I doubt that the difference will be noticeable by the time a scan is resized to post here.
Some negatives will have a more distinct difference than others so don't rely on one sample only.
The real beauty shows in post where you can adjust the tones in one channel or two to get the desired tone in the final image.
I doubt that the difference will be noticeable by the time a scan is resized to post here.
Some negatives will have a more distinct difference than others so don't rely on one sample only.
The real beauty shows in post where you can adjust the tones in one channel or two to get the desired tone in the final image.
That’s interesting, With the Minolta 5400 I also had the impression that grain was sometimes too sharp.
But I think it is not a matter of resolution, but it’s the lightsource. I do not see this problem with the Imacon, which has an even higher resolution but another type of lightsource.
Regards,
Frank
I'm not entirely sure about grain being an issue with B&W, or grey scale scanning.
I am very much a beginner with regard to scanning negatives, I have an Epson V800, so far, I have managed to figure out how to scan B&W negatives; I only use the grey scale option that comes with my scanner. Within reason I have not seen any issues with grain, unless the negative itself is grainy. With a fairly well exposed and developed B&W negative, I have found grain is usually minimal, sometimes hard to see.
The attached image is a straight scan using all default settings on my V800. The file has then been imported into an imaging program, some minimal spotting was done, cropping on the top, left and bottom done, contrast adjusted, then saved.
This image was then imported into Irfanview where it was reduced pixel wise, to 2048 pixels on the longest side to comply with this forum site. I then did a sharpen from the Irfanview drop down menu; that is it.
If I don't reduce the file in Irfanview, just do a single sharpening thing, the apparent screen sharpness is, to my eyes, quite stunning.
I use Irfanview as I don't know how to convert the TIFF file from the imaging program into a jpg file and reduce the pixel count. I am a raw beginner with this side of photography and pretty much use scanning only to place images in this forum and one other.
That said, I have never seen noticeable grain with any of my negatives, unless it was already noticeable in the negative. Are you suggesting, that if I use the colour possibilities in my scanner settings, I'll get much less apparent grain showing, than what I am already getting?
Mick.
Edit, I changed the last sentence to scanner settings; I had imaging program.
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Well, it depends. You could get dozens of combinations. I use Silverfast on my scanners and there are many film combinations and setting like CCR (Color Cast Removal) on or off which can be selected. Also the base colour cast of the film itself will alter results of course.
I find occasionally tweaking the settings while scanning in color I can get a nice pseudo sepia or selenium tone, but by and large I usually just scan in B&W with the CCR switched on. I find using the Ilford Pan F film choice regardless of B&W film being scanned gives me a good first scan with the level of detail and contrast I can work with thereafter. A few examples below of TMX 100 film in 35mm showing the Silverfast film choice and whether scanned in color and with or without CCR on. I could go on for hours
Edit: I noticed the filenames don't appear anywhere.
1. Color scan no CCR film selection Fuji NPH
2. As above with CCR on
4. Color scan no CCR film selection Kodak TMX 100
3. As above B&W scan with CCR on
I find occasionally tweaking the settings while scanning in color I can get a nice pseudo sepia or selenium tone, but by and large I usually just scan in B&W with the CCR switched on. I find using the Ilford Pan F film choice regardless of B&W film being scanned gives me a good first scan with the level of detail and contrast I can work with thereafter. A few examples below of TMX 100 film in 35mm showing the Silverfast film choice and whether scanned in color and with or without CCR on. I could go on for hours
Edit: I noticed the filenames don't appear anywhere.
1. Color scan no CCR film selection Fuji NPH
2. As above with CCR on
4. Color scan no CCR film selection Kodak TMX 100
3. As above B&W scan with CCR on
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As far as grain most often the scanning program has some sharpening turned on as a default. If the amount of sharpening and the radius is not set right the grain can get ugly. Often when I try to sharpen up a film scan I set the radius larger than the percieved grain size to avoid sharpening the grain by much. This is most often encountered with smaller formats, I usually set my radius at .9 if scanning a 4x5 much like I would a print. This is with Viewscan and an Epson 3200 Photo flatbed scanner.
A non-OEM diffuser was once available for the 5400 light source. Personally, I like to see the grain...I printed "point source" before I started scanning and I never liked Beseler and Omega's poor condensers...which is why I liked Durst...and why I like Nikon.
I used a 3200 for a year or two...now Nikon...I think the reason grain became an issue for some was that 3200 detail resolution left a lot to be desired (with 35mm...was OK printing to 16X16 from MF neg). When wanting better resolution of detail that was certainly in the film, people often over-sharpened...that produced various artifacts including exaggerated grain (exaggerated...not accurate, sharp resolution of grain) and white halos between horizon and sky.
Epsonscan in professional mode with default settings clips the Black and White ends of the Histogram to give a "pretty picture" plus it has Unsharp Mask selected and resets to default settings each time a Preview is done.
Silverfast SE scans in 16 bit but outputs in 8 bit.
Both scan programs ship with the V800.
Shutterfinger, thank you for that. I was a bit interested in your statement about unsharp masking being automatically selected with my scanner, so I checked out my workflow.
Turns out, I do uncheck the unsharp masking feature. This means that the above picture went through without any kind of sharpening (that I know of anyway), until I moved it to Irfanview to reduce and give that programs sharpening feature once; which seems to work for me.
As I do a preview with every negative I scan, that unsharp mask feature is always ticked; I've learnt something new and now know that if ever I do some batch scanning, it will not automatically be selected.
Mick.
Turns out, I do uncheck the unsharp masking feature. This means that the above picture went through without any kind of sharpening (that I know of anyway), until I moved it to Irfanview to reduce and give that programs sharpening feature once; which seems to work for me.
As I do a preview with every negative I scan, that unsharp mask feature is always ticked; I've learnt something new and now know that if ever I do some batch scanning, it will not automatically be selected.
Mick.
Epson scan settings box , clicking on the Configuration box at the bottom of the page opens some more control options. On the color tab selecting No Color Correction turns off all adjustments, the Auto Exposure Level has little to no effect on the scan. In PS Under the Image Tab is the resize option, other software should be similar.
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These 4 scans of the same image were done at the settings shown in post 39 starting with 8 bit grayscale, then 16 bit grayscale, 24 bit RGB, and finally 48 bit RGB. There was a nasty under the scan glass dust mark in the sky on the right side that I removed with the clone stamp tool. The levels were adjusted in the highlights from 255 to 150 and the black from 0 to 2. The negative could have benefited from additional development but for camera testing after repair box speed and published times by the film manufacturer are used as are marked shutter speeds.
The image size was reduced to 2048 pixels on the long side then the resolution was reduced to 600 dpi as the 1200 dpi scan size was too large for the site.
Free to download/save a copy to your computer and play with if desired.
The image size was reduced to 2048 pixels on the long side then the resolution was reduced to 600 dpi as the 1200 dpi scan size was too large for the site.
Free to download/save a copy to your computer and play with if desired.
As adviced in several posts, I did some pixelpeeping today.
Made 2 scans of the same negative (FP4+) on the Imacon.
-16 bit grayscale 6300dpi tiff file size 104Mb
-16 bit rgb 6300dpi tiff file size 312Mb (there is no 24 or 48 bit option in the aged software)
First thing I noticed, is that the histograms are exactly the same, so the information in both files is exactly the same?
Opened both files next to each other in PS at 100%.
The only difference I can see, exept from the filesize, is a greenish stain in the rgb file, nothing else.
What should I look for?
My question still is, what is the advantage of rgb, if both files contain the same information?
Regards,
Frank
Made 2 scans of the same negative (FP4+) on the Imacon.
-16 bit grayscale 6300dpi tiff file size 104Mb
-16 bit rgb 6300dpi tiff file size 312Mb (there is no 24 or 48 bit option in the aged software)
First thing I noticed, is that the histograms are exactly the same, so the information in both files is exactly the same?
Opened both files next to each other in PS at 100%.
The only difference I can see, exept from the filesize, is a greenish stain in the rgb file, nothing else.
What should I look for?
My question still is, what is the advantage of rgb, if both files contain the same information?
Regards,
Frank
Your request is very reasonable.
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hi frank53
ii don't mind showing you why i like scanning in color
first of all, i don't really care how big the file size is, i have enough storage space
that a few extra MB is nothing, here are a couple links and a file
https://www.photrio.com/forum/media/federal-building-s-from-bacon-hill.58201/
https://www.photrio.com/forum/media/spring.58182/
both taken with regular old black and white film, both processed in a caffenol mixture ive been using for around 5-10 years
and split processed with ansco130, a developer i have been using for the most part since around 2001 ..
tonality and colors being pickedup by the stain in the developer. i just used levels ...
also
not sure if you can see it or not but its a 8x10 glass plate i coated with emulsion 35 yeras ago,
left in the sun and then scanned 2 hours later
colors and tonality i couldn't even imagine being trapped in the image just comes to life
(green, blue red gold, yellow & black and white )
with pretty much a straight scan / barely any burning or dodging, hue manipulation, over the top saturation,
( for the most part its just contrast and brightness) .
have fun!
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Hi John,
I was not addressing anyone in particular, just contributing to the thread. With the examples you give, I fully understand scanning in color, because you are using the colors.
But in some posts it is suggested, that scanning b/w film in rgb gives something extra and that is what I try to understand.
Regards,
Frank
Thanks for taking the time to provide this test result. I don;t see any real difference between them. I haven't noticed any differences on my own BW vs. color scans of Tmax 100 on a V600 with Epsonscan flat. RGB has no meaning to a BW photo. Now, scanning a color film in color and them adjusting each of the colors to change the tones works really nice when converting to BW. But you have the color spectrum in color film that's not there in BW film. There is no RGB in BW film.Well, it depends. You could get dozens of combinations. I use Silverfast on my scanners and there are many film combinations and setting like CCR (Color Cast Removal) on or off which can be selected. Also the base colour cast of the film itself will alter results of course.
I find occasionally tweaking the settings while scanning in color I can get a nice pseudo sepia or selenium tone, but by and large I usually just scan in B&W with the CCR switched on. I find using the Ilford Pan F film choice regardless of B&W film being scanned gives me a good first scan with the level of detail and contrast I can work with thereafter. A few examples below of TMX 100 film in 35mm showing the Silverfast film choice and whether scanned in color and with or without CCR on. I could go on for hours
View attachment 207211 View attachment 207212 View attachment 207213 View attachment 207214
Edit: I noticed the filenames don't appear anywhere.
1. Color scan no CCR film selection Fuji NPH
2. As above with CCR on
4. Color scan no CCR film selection Kodak TMX 100
3. As above B&W scan with CCR on
Frank, there is nothing extra. It's like trying to change water into gold.
Perhaps if you prefer some slight blurring, that will be the inevitable result of using all three sensors, that will never overlap precisely or perhaps you like use the colour dyes left sometimes behind in negatives for artistic effect, or maybe you like the way the software inverts the negative better...
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Perhaps if you prefer some slight blurring, that will be the inevitable result of using all three sensors, that will never overlap precisely or perhaps you like use the colour dyes left sometimes behind in negatives for artistic effect, or maybe you like the way the software inverts the negative better...
maybe, or
maybe there is tonality in a sheet of film or print that can't be brought out
by a straight black and white scan. ive scanned warm toned paper or
glycin/ansco130 toned images and a straight black and white looks nothing like the print
no gold or water ... just prints.
have fun
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The V800 has an actual resolution of 2300 and is unable to resolve the grain. Your images should look smooth, albeit with less detail than with a higher resolution scanner.
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