The future of colour analog photography is....

Alan Klein said:

I've been bouncing around this site trying to learn things; just recently joined. They say ignorance is bliss. I didn't realize I was suppose to have a problem with negative masks. I scanned using my Epson V600 flat bed and just used in Elements in PP Levels mainly and a few other adjustments to bring the colors back. I set the scanner on negative for negative and positive for positive film using the Epson scanner program with only ICE, 2400 and 24 bit.. No other scan settings. What's this thing with the mask? I scanned old negatives: Fuji SHG 100, Agfa Optima , Ektar 25, as well as a lot of transparencies (Velvia 50) - you can see on my gallery below. I didn't have a problem. I'm getting ready to start shooting film again with Portra 160vc and 160nc.. Is there something I should be expecting when I get to scan these negatives? Thanks and Happy New Year everyone. Alan.

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Please post your question in a new thread. You have major topic drift in your post.

Thanks,

Don Bryant

Like so many here I had big scanning troubles when I used negative film which disappeared as soon as I switched to slide film. The neg scans looks incredibly grainy and noisy despite the claims by professional scanner guys that neg film is so great for scanning.

Here are my thoughts:

• Most scanners, especially non professional ones, are not nearly as good as their data sheets claim. pellicle himself posted measurements where a V700 barely yielded 8 or 9 bits of real information per color channel.
• If you look at the data sheet of negative film, you see that the density range of each layer is quite narrow while the density ranges start at different points. In order to scan e.g. Fuji Pro 160S, you'd have to set the sensitivity of the scanner so that D 0.2 gives full range. The lowest density of the blue layer is, according to the data sheet, about D 1.0, which yields 10^(-1) = 1/10 of the light.

Result: you scan with a Dmin of D 0.2 and a resolution of 8 or 9 bits. The blue layer, which already starts at D 1.0, will be scanned with less than 5 or 6 bits, the rest is noise! If you add any type of post scan color correction to this mess, you reduce the number of relevant bits even more.

This also explains why pros don't share the problems we have with negative film: they have good scanners which yield more than 9 bits of actual information per channel, thereby completely avoiding the noisy mess I described above.

Rudeofus said:

pellicle himself posted measurements where a V700 barely yielded 8 or 9 bits of real information per color channel.

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I did? I only have Epson 3200 (now sold), 4870 and 4990. Any information I give on V700 is usually obtained from my friends who have given me scans but I did not drive the process.

Definately I've said that the blue channel is weakest on scans and significantly challenges the Dmax

Its true that there are advantages in scanning slide, but that does not mean there are not advantages in scanning neg. I personally would like a scanner which like a drum scanner allowed me to tune the optimally density of the media to the input scope of the sensor without needing to buy a drum scanner, but I don't think such creature exists.

I can't recall off the top of my head if I've compared blue channel between the Epson and the Nikon for the same neg... sounds like a good thing to do

Thanks for your input Rudeofus. Do you have a link where I can see some of your scans? Alan

Rudeofus said:

This also explains why pros don't share the problems we have with negative film:

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They shoot digital color which eliminates scanning altogether.

Don Bryant

pellicle said:

I did? I only have Epson 3200 (now sold), 4870 and 4990. Any information I give on V700 is usually obtained from my friends who have given me scans but I did not drive the process.

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Sorry, I got that wrong. You did post results from the 4990 here in this thread, and stated it's close to the V700.

pellicle said:

Definately I've said that the blue channel is weakest on scans and significantly challenges the Dmax

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I don't think it's a Dmax problem, especially with negative film which doesn't even get all that dense (see the data sheets! ). The problem is rather the small Dmax-Dmin combined with awful bit resolution. Not surprizingly, the blue channel starts at the highest Dmin, so it suffers most from this. Don't forget that D is a logarithmic measure while all digital sensors record in a linear fashion.

Let's take this Fuji film once more. Dmin for the red channel is 0.2, if we assume 8 bits per color channel we assign the value 255 to D 0.2 (before channel inversion). Dmin for blue is 1.0, which would be assigned the value 255/(10^(1.0-0.2)) = 255/(10^0.8) = 255/6.3 = 40. This means we have only 41 distinct blue channel values for the whole range from bright white to pitch black. The green channel does slightly better: 255/(10^(0.75-0.2)) = 255/(10^0.55) = 255/3.5 = 72, almost twice as many discrete steps as the blue channel. Only the red channel yields the full 256 steps.

Note that the 8 bit resolution per color channel does not come from the file format used to store the data. It comes from the poor signal to noise ratio of the scanner line sensor!

pellicle said:

Its true that there are advantages in scanning slide, but that does not mean there are not advantages in scanning neg.

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There may be great advantages in scanning negs on a really good scanner. The crap the electronics industry is throwing at us seems to perform better with slide material. I failed miserably when I scanned neg film with a Nikon Coolscan V ED and gave up on color negative film as a result. Which is a shame as I really did like the look of Portra and the new Ektar.

Don Bryant said:

They shoot digital color which eliminates scanning altogether.

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I meant professional film scanner folks, not professional photographers.

Alan Klein said:

Do you have a link where I can see some of your scans?

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I can post some samples here if you want. Tell me what you want to see.

Rudeofus: How about posting some trans and negative scans indicating the scanner type and film type and size (Good and bad)? Maybe we can help you get better scans of negatives.

My own results don't seem to indicate too much different between these two. The biggest difference is between 35mm and medium format. 35mm blocks up more in the shadows. Alan

Alan Klein said:

Rudeofus: How about posting some trans and negative scans indicating the scanner type and film type and size (Good and bad)? Maybe we can help you get better scans of negatives.

My own results don't seem to indicate too much different between these two. The biggest difference is between 35mm and medium format. 35mm blocks up more in the shadows. Alan

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Dear Alan,

thanks for your offer! Yes, I did scan 35mm film strips, using the Nikon Coolscan V ED, when I gave up on neg film. I have in the mean time moved to an Epson V700, mostly because I added an RZ67 to my equipment.

My biggest beef with the Coolscan/neg film scans was the unbearable noise in dark regions. Think of a picture with black background which was literally peppered with red and green pixels.

Don Bryant said:

They shoot digital color which eliminates scanning altogether.

Don Bryant

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They do? Maybe you should let us all know....I know I missed that....as have many other pros I associate with.

David Luttmann said:

They do? Maybe you should let us all know....I know I missed that....as have many other pros I associate with.

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Save the sarcasm fpr P-Net or DPReview. The majority of pros don't shoot film any longer.

Don

Don Bryant said:

Save the sarcasm fpr P-Net or DPReview. The majority of pros don't shoot film any longer.

Don

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My apologies....I thought this forum was for film users. Most of us film users don't care what the digital shooters are using....and don't need the reminder.

Rudeofus said:

Dear Alan,

thanks for your offer! Yes, I did scan 35mm film strips, using the Nikon Coolscan V ED, when I gave up on neg film. I have in the mean time moved to an Epson V700, mostly because I added an RZ67 to my equipment.

My biggest beef with the Coolscan/neg film scans was the unbearable noise in dark regions. Think of a picture with black background which was literally peppered with red and green pixels.

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You ought to try negative scans on the V700. I've scanned RB67 negative and trans with my V600 which is not even as good as the V700 and have had succes with it. You can see my gallery. I also had problems with red blotches when I set backlight on the scan. Then I stopped selecting anything except ICE and did all my processing in Elements 8 afterwards. Seems to work better. Try scanning "flat" with the supplied Epson software and adjust afterwards in your post processing software and see what happens. Alan.

sperera said:

I'm not a scientist, im a photographer....I cant talk about chemistry and the nuances and variables but I can talk about what I see and what I feel when i see something.....so I've reached a conclusion....

....the future of colour analog photography is to bring out film designed specifically for scanning. In my opinion NO colour negative film is as easy to scan as a transparency.

Labs all over the world are dropping E-6 processing yet still doing C-41....pro users and pro labs go hand in hand and pro users and pro labs is what keeps Kodak and all the rest of them making films....biggest client being Hollywood.

....Kodak, Fuji etc just make the damn things easier to scan and you will get pro users and labs getting into it all big time again!!!!!!!!!!

I'm putting my money where my mouth is....I've invested in colour negative film, my fridge is now full of Kodak Portra 160NC (my fave as some of you know) and I bought a license for ColorPerfect brought to us by the great David Dunthorn....cos you have to scan film in order to get it published and to work professionally.....optical prints are great but you dont give magazines an optical print and get them to scan it, you give them the final images scanned and ready for print!

The hybrid workflow is unavoidable in the pro photographer's world....as much as I love APUG I cant say this without getting flamed there I feel.....

Regardless, these companies are not stupid and what Im saying is hardly an epiphany so I'd like to bring out the placards and stand outside Rochester HQ demanding Kodak etc to somehow make colour negative easier to scan!!!!! hehe hehehee

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There are galleries over at APUG.