Colour to Mono Conversion on Scanned Film

[Clive K]

I am well out of touch with modern scanning techniques and image editing. I am using Fuji colour film in my old folding Ikonta camera and intend to ask the lab to scan the film after processing. They offer two services; RAW Digitisation and Corrected Scanning. The scan is suited to printed images of 12" x 18". I am intending to have some of the images converted to mono if the subject matter suits prior to having images printed. I have Adobe Elements on the laptop.

I have two questions for the TalkPhoto massif;

Firstly which scan is better, the RAW or Corrected?

Secondly what in any are the advantages of shooting in b&w film compared to converted scanned files from colour film?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Harlequin565]

I think scan correction is often things like dust, sharpness, and colour tones which won't matter too much if you're converting to B&W. If there's no price difference, I'd go raw and correct yourself, but if you're not great at PP, maybe get the corrected version.

I'm not sure what a "raw" scan would actually be as most scanners I know scan to a tiff file or a jpeg.

The advantages of shooting in B&W film are mainly that you're getting the tonal response for each film. Every monochrome film responds to different colours in a different way. Some are more sensitive to red for example and others less so. By shooting a certain film for a period of time, you get used to how the film renders colour situations. If you have no intention of doing that, then shooting in colour and converting afterwards to your taste is probably a better solution.

If you're experienced in post processing, and you enjoy it, converting colour images might be the way forward. I'm not a fan of computer time and really like the look I get from certain black & white films like HP5, Tri-X, Delta 100, the various Washi films etc. I can use the scanned neg straight "out of the box" so to speak with very little editing. So I guess the main advantage for me is that I don't need to faff with a computer. Also, I develop & scan my own black & white film, so colour & convert would be a more expensive option for me.

Ultimately the benefits are going to depend on the individual. For you - there might be no benefit to shooting colour and converting in post.

 

[ChrisR]

I am well out of touch with modern scanning techniques and image editing. I am using Fuji colour film in my old folding Ikonta camera and intend to ask the lab to scan the film after processing. They offer two services; RAW Digitisation and Corrected Scanning. The scan is suited to printed images of 12" x 18". I am intending to have some of the images converted to mono if the subject matter suits prior to having images printed. I have Adobe Elements on the laptop.

I have two questions for the TalkPhoto massif;

Firstly which scan is better, the RAW or Corrected?

Secondly what in any are the advantages of shooting in b&w film compared to converted scanned files from colour film?

Thanks in advance.

I must say, I really don't like the idea of taking colour photos and converting them to black and white, specially from colour film... but I'm not sure I could properly justify my aversion, so let's call it prejudice! An advantage I can see is that you could play with different filter effects, eg yellow, orange, red filters during the conversion process, whereas with black and white film if you decide you really did need a different filter, you have to go back and take it again. But honestly, colour film is SO expensive these days, and there are so many lovely black and white films (which you could easily process yourself, though that's another thing), it's not clear why you'd bother!

I'm not sure how sophisticated Elements is these days in its RAW processing, so I'd be inclined to go for the corrected version, as Ian suggests. Though they will correct it for colour, which may not get you entirely what you want.

If you want to test your software with a Vuescan RAW file, there's a fairly recent thread on comparing colour inversion software, that includes a link to some RAW files I scanned; you're welcome to trry them.

But, seriously... you're going t use film and you want a black and white result, why, why, why would you NOT use black and white film?

 

[Clive K]

I would require two cameras or two film backs for the camera to do both. And I will be using a commercial lab to develop and scan. If converted colour film could produce good mono images then I can get by using one camera in each format.