So many problems

FIgured there was no point creating a seperate thread for each problem especially seeing as they might be linked.

Despite buying a meter (Sekonic 308) I'm still struggling to get exposure right it seems. Most of my photography is flash based and I take an incident reading. The slides look alright to my eye, they're meant to be a bit dark anyway but we all know hoe clever the eyes are at compensating for what the brain thinks we ought to be seeing. When I go to scan them the darkness of the slide is a real problem.

I'm using an Epson 4490 and the Epson software. I prefer to scan in Professinoal mode to give me more scontrol at the input stage but in pro mode it tries to pick out the frames in strip automatically and when the slides are dark it struggles to see the edgres of the frame and makes a guess. Most of the time these guesses are a mile off. I then have to go to home mode which scans ther whole window of the film holder and manually select the frames, I don't mind doing this but then I have less options on what to do to the image as it is scanned and I think there is a noticable drop in quality.

When the dark frames are scanned in home mode there is noise in the dark areas, not film noise but horrible dgitial like noise, where there is detail on the slide there is mushy noise on the scanner.

What am I doing wrong in my processes and am I expecting too much of my gear?

Kev

care to post samples?

I'm scanning them now. I should have something up in about 10 minutes.

This short is one of the worst.



I'm not bothered about the shot as the positioning etc is all wrong but it highlights the problems I'm having. It was meant to be a dark shot, the ambient was under exposed and a grid was used to light the model (it was supposed to make a spotlight shape which didn't work but that's a different story). I set the camera up as per the meter reading at the model's position.

Here's a crop of the mushy wheel.



Shot on Provia 400.

You need to try some empirical experimentation to work out where the problem lies I guess.

1) Eliminate metering problems; Shoot some stuff on black and white film or colour neg and see if you can get the exposure right there. Might even be worth proofing with polaroid or digital.

2) Sanity test the scanning process; try playing with the backlight compensation in pro mode and tweaking the exposure a bit


It looks like the slides are underexposed and the scanner is struggling to cope with the dynamic range between the bright white shirt and the dark background. I've had this problem with my epson v700 with shots that were underexposed by about 1 stop.

You may not be doing anything wrong at all - not at the film/camera stage anyway. When you're scanning film you have to accept that you're combining two mediums, and unless your scanner is a mega expensive top end job, or you've got the very best neg carriers you can get, you're unlikely to get spot on sharpness straight from the scan. Similarly, with levels and white balance you're very much at the mercy of your scanner and scanner software as to what you get.

If this was a digital image (in fact it effectively now is) you wouldn't think twice about adjusting the image to get the sharpness, levels and colour balance you wanted....



Nice shot IMHO and nothing there to cause you massive problems?

You guys have nailed it.
There is a limit to what scanners can do, they can't reproduce what you see in the slide with your eyes.
Its a cross filmy's have to bear when forced to display as digital files.
Frustrating, but that's the way it is, you can tell somebody what you see, but you can't show them really, without them actually holding the thing in their hands.
It's not just you Kev, I'm gutted a whole roll of slide of a steam train I shot, is not worth scanning, because it just can't reproduce what the slide looks like.
I can see all the detail without noise perfectly on a light box.
It's my own fault for forgetting my grad and not having access to the sunny side, I want the sky and the train.



If I lift it enough so all the detail shows that I can see with my eyes...





Its not you, its scanner technology, some are better than others, but nothings gonna save this except some dodge/burn with a print.