tips on scanning dense negs

Hi Jon,

One thing I can think of is to photograph the good prints and get better negatives made. The alternative is to scan the prints.

You could fiddle with levels in Photoshop, but the above alternatives might be quicker in the long run.

let me clarify . . no prints to scan from, those prints i mentioned are other images. i know about levels, i wouldnt ask if it were that simple. sheesh.

Hi Jon. I don’t know software of dimage but in general you have another alternative that the levels. You must search a exposure or gamma control. If you don’t have this buttons maybe you will need to try a third part software to get more exposition thru the negatives. If i don’t remember wrong Nikon have a control to give more intensity of the led lights. A flatbed Canon I have now have a 100% exposure control so you can slide more to one or another side of the spectrum.

Try scanning in 16 bit (makes a difference in some software, some not) and doing your adjustments there. In PS, don’t use levels but the curve command. The levels command is “slope limited” which may not work well with your image.

In the end though, if you’re not getting good results, chances are there’s not much you can do. The image quality from your desktop scanner is dependent on the dynamic range of the sensor, everything els is just adding better tires to a 3 cylinder car to make it go faster. Even with analog controls like with Nikon, they are more hype and less substance:

http://www.lumika.org/gear_digital_editing.htm

If the images are worth it to you, the best bet is taking it to a place with a drum scanner and getting it done there.

jon :))

amigo, i need the same help…’cause my negs are always like mud/coal/bedrock since i push +3, +4…etc…

will be paying close attention to this thread…

hope u and david alan harvey had fun ))

running

b

Try too this alternative with photoshop
http://www.lightstalkers.org/extracting-detail-

the dimage duo sucks. i could never good good b/w scans from it. ive been using a friend’s nikon ls 4000 and another friend’s 5000—both give me good results…..

Hey Jon . Glad to know you are alive ( bueno casi) I hope you are using the Silverfast software with the Dual IV is you are, try to use the “exposure” and “auto tolerance” control. Also you have the ability to choose
from different flims. Let me know or PM me. Un Abrazo. Alex

Jon

I was shown a long time ago a method of scanning that will always deliver good results even with dense negs. However, I have only done it using Nikon scan software.
Take back the contrast in the preview so it looks flat as shit and scan with that. The scan will render a lot more information. You will have a flat as hell neg but it should have a lot more detail than if you scanned it looking reasonably good on screen at the preview stage.
Than work it hard in Photoshop deciding what you do and don’t want to lose, an obvious sacrifice with a cooked B/W neg.

Best of Luck

Try using vuescan or silverfast. The standard Minolta software is quite bad, I’ve found that with the above mentioned softwares you can get hold of every negative. Vuescan is cheaper, offers a lots of controls and it is a bit slow and clumsy. Silverfast is fast, easy to use, less control and a lots of presets, very expensive.

Vuescan is the best option. I think you can download a free version that adds watermarks and then buy it if you think it does the job.

I have a Minolta Dual Scan III, I can do prints up to 30×40 with it, that are very difficult to tell apart from wet prints.

Anyhow, what density range are you talking about? A CI of 0.8 can be managed very well from Vuescan, I don’t remember having denser negatives.

My now washed out experience with Silverfast is that it is one of the best. Used it both with nikon and Umax scanners and liked it more than any thing elseYou might get a hold of an old enaogh version for it to be good but not brake your budget. (unfortunately mine is in a box in a ware house other vise I would ship it to you right away)

I have heard good things about Vuescan as well.

By the way have you tried to scan the film as color film and see if you get beter results that way.

One way could also be to scan twice(or more sort of HDR) and combine in PS

John

Here is my take. Whist I do use Vuescan I don’t agree with some comments on the Dimage software, used correctly it can give you a good scan.

First off if you are scanning B/W negatives set the scanner to colour positive. Many scanners tend to clip the historam in B/W mode (I have had this experience with both Minolta and Nikon). Just invert the result in Photoshop and convert to greyscale. Scan in 16 bit.

If this doesn’t improve things try multipass its in the preference dialog. Try 2 or 4 it will take an age to scan but should help.

Hope this helps if it doesnt let us know.

Cheers

Martin

Hi Martin,

I also tried scanning as positive with the Dimage software several years ago, the results are not as goos as Vuescan, but they might be good enough. That was a good tip.

b.

Jon,

While I`m not an expert on PS, I still think that the Levels tool (not Auto Levels) in PS should be utilized manually to a full extent. In addition the Curves tool can be used, but Levels show a distribution of tones graphically, so it is easier to see what you need to correct. Essentially you need to redistribute tonalities throughout the whole histogram.

I don`t know how you use it, but I have found with my color images you can adjust the histograms of color distributions a great deal with Levels.

I`ve found a couple of sites discussing scanning B/W negatives, but this site goes into some detail why it is more difficult because scanners and software associated with it are biased toward color slides.

This is a site going into more of scanning software.

This next site shows how your adjustments at the scanning software level would change a scanned image through adjusting the histogram before you get into Photoshop.

Tomoko

Hi Jon, with dense negs you are limited by the scanner’s dMAX, in other words it’s ability to see into shadows well. Scan in 16 bits, try out VueScan and Silverfast as others mentioned, and there is one other little trick to try, if your scanner (dunno about the Minolta) offers “analog gain”, fiddle with that. with very problemous negs you can make two scans at two different gains and combine them later (with masks,...) in Photoshop. IE scan the dark parts with high gain, and then again with low gain, combining the shadows and highlights manually. However, I still think B&W is best served by chemical printing, so scanning the print might get you a better result (as I am sure you are quite good B&W printer). Not mentioning such things as “grain aliasing” which deteriorate high iso/B&W scan quality which are nonexistent in scanning a good print…

Hi Jon

If you dare, you can try and treat your neg’s with a product called something like Farmers Weakener, I think. I used with succes some years ago, when a lab had mistreated a lot of my films when they developed them. They were so dense, that i couldn’t even scan them on a Flextight Precision.
I bought the weakener over the internet. I think B&H has got it.
K

klavs

farmers weakener is what i call farmer’s reducer, its great for killing roaches and most other living organisms it is cyanide by another name lick those fingers if you are sick of dense negs and all your problems will go away…

Farmer’s Reducer is best used outdoors for the above mentioned deadly reasons. And even when used the proportional way, it will eat away at the most fragile shadow detail, WAY before it begins to reduce the density in the highlight regions of negatives. Ruined more of my stupid negs with it than I care to remember. I have been successful in using it on prints made with fogged or outdated paper, where it cleaned up muddy highlights quite nicely. However, the method is not archival.

I think I understand Jon. For copy with cold light heads is better get consistent negatives that not scan well in some dedicated scanner. Except is really necessary i recomend not to use farmer with negatives since you are dealing with originals and ferrycianure is not so precise to work.

Oops!!!

thanks folks. Actually I ownt use reducer on the negs, because the whole point about trix is taht you canpriont dense negs and they even have a kind of charactre i like, so i stick with my original shot always. acutally the scans, even on my dimage, which does not suck but fo course is not the best, are perfectly fine, but i am a perfectionist and i like to get the best out of it. so i am dickering. have the software, am trying ou tyour suggestions and the resulst so far are fine.

as for printing the negs, once i get my lab set up, after i buy my farm, i will be able to work that way, butdonw here everyting is fully digital, there is no chemistry or film anymore. so i have to order the stuff and that is a pain. and expensive. still, this is how i work, and i am sticking with it. thanks eveyrone. got good stuff here.

alicia patterson results will be posted soon. will let everyone know.

Jon, I think you have your answer, but for others who may be interested, just to some up, in case there is confusion…..scanners are like cameras with fixed apertures and exposures. The only way to get better results (as far a tones) is to to get a scanner with a larger range of tonality.

In general thin negs scan better and don’t print as well….so its a bit of a dilemma. My suggestion is that if you have a static situation and time, shoot an overexposed frame to print and a slightly underexposed (or correctly exposed frame) to scan.

Hi Jon. Have you tried Vuescan scanning software? I’ve been getting consistently better results from Vuescan compared to Minolta Dimage software when scanning BW. Here’s the link http://www.hamrick.com/

Cheers

Petr

My scans suffer from the same problems. I’ve got a nikon coolscan IV. its shit, like all of the nikon bricks. Crap Software and i have major problems with the film carrying device [doesn’t recognise the frames with a lot of dark space in your images, frames on the ends of strips are soft because it doesn’t hold the film straight, etc].

Best results i’ve seen [besides the Imacon’s]for the $’s was the now discontinued Microtek ArtixScan 4000tf with silverfast. Silverfast’s softare is great and the film holder works hows a professional scanner should.

The Vuescan will give you a “RAW” tiff that is everything that the Coolscan can get, which you can then manipulate in Photoshop—combine two “processed” versions, if that woriks for you…....but to reiterate, no software will increase the anount of information a scanner can pull out of any negative.

Hey, I was thinking to do the two scan layers for color scans. Any advice? Must i put the more dense as “overlay”?

Herman, amigo, que pasa? If you use Vuescan with the RAW option, you can get the benefit of two “scans” by only scanning once…..just adjust the RAW “tiff” in Photoshop using layers, then blend. Of course you could get the same results by actually scanning twice, but I just want to keep making the point that regardless of how many times you scan your scanner will only pick up the same highlights or shadow detail or whatever. A scan is a scan, the rest is digital tweaking, whether it it is done in PS, Silverfast, etc, etc.

Tommy really had this covered right off the bat.

Hi Andy, como va. I have not problems with software of my flatbed canoscan. Only want to compensate a difficult color negative that have three or four points of difference between shadows and hightlights. But I get the point you said before. I will try this superpose of layers and will see how comes. Thanks