Filmdev: Sharpening - Yes or No?

Messages
8,275
Name
Ian
Edit My Images
No
So I considered the "no sharpening" request on their order form but decided against it.

And I think that I'd consider my scans to be "over sharpened" - esp the 3200 (Ilford as well as Kodak) which I find needs careful work to avoid sharpening the grain. 800 wasn't so bad and I imagine I'd probably not notice it on 400 or less.

Anyone else experienced this or is it just me?
 
I tend to do my own b&w and use Filmdev for colour, so not a direct comparison. I take my Filmdev scans as they supply them and don't find them to be over sharpened. I then scan the negs that I think might be worthwhile and find they need very little sharpening, so not sure how much Filmdev are actally applying?
 
Well I'll be doing a comparison when I get my negs back with my V550 but TBH, Filmdev have done a much better job than I ever could with 35mm scans - even with their sharpening. I just want Nige's (@FishyFish - tag for a tip :)) secret to a super scan :)

I'm kinda in the same boat as I'm doing my own B&W going forward. More practise I guess....
 
Just AAMOI...once you sharpen, you can't go back and unsharpen. So you would have to scan the neg again.
 
Just AAMOI...once you sharpen, you can't go back and unsharpen. So you would have to scan the neg again.

Depends when you're doing it, I don't sharpen in the scan software as I don't have as much control over it as I do in LR.
 
Well I'll be doing a comparison when I get my negs back with my V550 but TBH, Filmdev have done a much better job than I ever could with 35mm scans - even with their sharpening. I just want Nige's (@FishyFish - tag for a tip :)) secret to a super scan :)

I'm kinda in the same boat as I'm doing my own B&W going forward. More practise I guess....

Hi Ian,

I posted my scanning technique using my V550 & Epson Scan here a while back if you're interested.

I never had as much success scanning colour negatives with the V550 and have now started using FilmDev for those - mostly to get the colours looking right. I did try a test scan of a Portra 160 negative on my Plustek yesterday to compare it with the FilmDev Noritsu scan (medium) of the same image and was able to get it looking extremely close. The Noritsu scan was a tiny bit sharper than the Plustek (at 2400dpi), but hardly noticeable unless zoomed right in - my Plustek scan showed some signs of pixelisation that weren't there in the Filmdev scan, but those might be down to the fact that the Filmdev scan was a jpeg, or to differences in sharpening / noise reduction etc. My Plustek 3600dpi scan was noticably more detailed than the Noritsu scan, but would probably lose out to a larger resolution Noritsu image.

To be honest though, it took quite a bit of time to get a good match of the colours in my Plustek scan, so I'll still probably use Filmdev for colour stuff anyway, if only to save myself a load of time faffing around with the colours.

Here are the results in case anyone is interested:

Plustek Scan @2400dpi normal sharpening applied. Quite a few changes in lightroom to attempt to match the colours / contrast etc. of the Filmdev scan.


VW Test - Plustek @2400dpi
by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

Filmdev medium Noritsu scan. I didn't request an unsharpened file, so this will be using whatever defaults they have set.


VW Test - Filmdev Noritsu medium scan
by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

Plustek close-up crop


VW Test - Plustek @2400dpi crop
by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

Noritsu close-up crop


VW Test - Filmdev Noritsu medium scan crop
by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

The plustek file is very slightly larger than the Noritsu scan, so that is why the cropped images look slightly different size-wise.
 
Since fairly early on I have asked Filmdev not to sharpen, as a couple of times they were a bit overcooked. I usually just use a bit of definition in Aperture, rarely touch the sharpening tool at all. Sometimes I'll brush a little sharpening in for a specific area; been learning this technique recently, and it can be very useful!
 
I've done a fair bit of scanning of 35mm originals at 2700ppi and above, and it's always been my policy to avoid any kind of sharpening in the scan software, bit rather to produce an unsharpened tif file at the max res of the scanner. This would produce archive files that could be processed later (in Photoshop) for various end uses.

The final process for any given output would normally be re-sizing (down, or if necessary, up), and if the image at its final size would seem to benefit from sharpening, I'd do it then as the final operation (Photoshop - unsharp mask).

In other words, I think that you should gauge sharpening to specific outputs, not before. I'm convinced that this is best practice. I would never sharpen before final output sizing.
 
Last edited:
Since fairly early on I have asked Filmdev not to sharpen, as a couple of times they were a bit overcooked. I usually just use a bit of definition in Aperture, rarely touch the sharpening tool at all. Sometimes I'll brush a little sharpening in for a specific area; been learning this technique recently, and it can be very useful!

I'd still check your scans. I always specify no sharpening, but two out of the last three scans they've done they've left some sort of auto setting on which seems to amp the sharpening up to max. You can usually tell in Lightroom if that's happened or not, the images will be grainer than normal and moving the sharpening slider will just amplify the grain rather than sharpening the image.
 
I used to have a Noritsu scanner and TBH it is very poor for B & W Scans IMO; it emphasises the grain to much - I use my Epson flatbed for scanning B & W negatives.

The Noritsu is exceptional though for colour or XP2 files.

It is impossible to turn sharpening completely off on the Noritsu.

I sold my Noritsu because I didn't like it and am very rarely using 35mm which it was good for.
 
Last edited:
I'd still check your scans. I always specify no sharpening, but two out of the last three scans they've done they've left some sort of auto setting on which seems to amp the sharpening up to max. You can usually tell in Lightroom if that's happened or not, the images will be grainer than normal and moving the sharpening slider will just amplify the grain rather than sharpening the image.

Yes, this happened after they did some maintenance on the scanner. I spotted it on the download, and contacted asking for a re-scan, but re-processing was all that was needed. So you're right, ask for no sharpening, check your downloads. I was going to say, request the Fuji Frontier for black and white, but their current form (on the web site) only offers that choice for C41. My last b&w, a roll of FP4+ scanned on the Noritsu, was just fine.

(As it happens I only send them black and white when under pressure for time, away from home etc.)
 
Yes, this happened after they did some maintenance on the scanner.

This happened for me the first time during this period. The second time it happened was last week, and in exactly the same way as last time.
I can't quite believe it's someone coming in and changing the settings on the scanner and filmdev not noticing each time.
I just think due to how cheap their C41 scanning is they're just cranking everything out on auto with everything turned up to 11.

To be fair to filmdev they've been very good at sorting things out when you raise a problem. They gave me a refund and re-scanned the negs on both the Noritsu and Frontier without me asking for either.
 
Back
Top