Trouble scanning Fuji PRO 800Z... Hints?

[kraker]

Hi all,

My first post at HybridPhoto, but some might know me from APUG, where I post more frequently. So, hi to all of you.

I've been shooting some Fuji PRO 800Z lately, I think it is a lovely film, the lab does a good job of making prints of it, but... when I scan the negatives, I just can't get the colours right.

Although most of my scanned film is B&W, I do manage to get good results using other C-41 films, like Fuji Superia 100. But not with Fuji PRO 800Z.

Setup used: Epson V700 with Vuescan (on Mac). I've tried all kinds of settings in Vuescan, starting with "Generic colour negative", trying out the majority of all included film profiles, but none gives the desired result.

I've given this more than a few tries as well, but alas, still the colours are way off. Reds go pink, snow turns slightly green; it's a mess. And I'm no expert at colour-correcting in post-processing (I use PWP for my post-processing, by the way), so it would be great if I could get better results straight away, from the scan. (Hey, if the lab can do it, why shouldn't I be able to?)

Is there anybody here who manages to get good scans out of Fuji PRO 800Z? Or does anybody have more general tips or tricks to get better results?

If it helps, I can post an unedited scan in the evening (my local time).

Thanks in advance for any hints you might have.

 

[pellicle]

I've tried many times to like vuescan ... I wanted to like vuescan

in the end I've found Epson scan to be less tedious. I work like this post with 3200 / 4870 and 4990

gets good results for me on Pro 400 and Pro 800

at the bottom of this post (on black and white) I put some links to the other posts on the topic

 

[kraker]

I've tried many times to like vuescan ... I wanted to like vuescan

in the end I've found Epson scan to be less tedious.

Wow, I've been using Vuescan for years... Never thought of using Epsons own utility. But even without the rest of the workflow, the initial result is fantastic.

I guess I'll stick to Vuescan for B&W, just because I'm happy with the workflow there, but for colour, I'll be using Epson scan from today onwards.

Thanks!

 

[pellicle]

Kraker

glad to help ... make sure you sort out the colour management, as this will play a critical role in reducing how much unneeded work you do in tweaking it.

and don't forget ... assign profile

 

[kraker]

make sure you sort out the colour management, as this will play a critical role in reducing how much unneeded work you do in tweaking it.

And how would I go about doing that? Get an IT8 card, IT8 film, do the whole calibration stuff?

There are probably already some topics on that... But I'd like to know where to start.

 

[pellicle]

And how would I go about doing that? Get an IT8 card, IT8 film, do the whole calibration stuff?

no, you can't do that with negative, but you can follow these guidelines which I put together and are buried in the bowels of Epson documentation (with some implicit assumptions).

Essentially when you scan anything it is a file of data. Image files can (and should) have colour profiles associated with them (or its any guess on what the numbers should display as). Photoshop allows you to either Assign or Convert to a profile. Since your scanner software does things with the data before writing it, but does not give you a profile when you're scanning into Photoshop you must assign the profile.

 

[pellicle]

I believe that I also gave the right instructions at the link I supplied before (here it is again).

Look for the words : "start - its now in your editor
my scanner is set to produce its data in a colour profile of Bruce RGB, so your next step is to assign that profile."

that advice was for the Nikon, and depending what you have your configuration set for on your Epson it will be probably something else (see the above guidelines)