the quest to scan 35mm colour film

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3
Name
Alexander
Edit My Images
No
Here goes.

I shoot colour and B&W 35mm film.
  • The problem: I cannot achieve good colour scans
  • The goal: good colour scans with high colour fidelity and a reliable, consistent workflow
I own a Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400 and a Nikon Coolscan V – operating with VueScan.

Having had much greater success with B&W, colour is the focus of this post.

I define a “good colour scan” as meaning colour fidelity to the real-life scene: balanced colour values and the vitality of those values.

My main points:
  • The Minolta produces a distinctive green/blue cast – a common complaint of users
  • I cannot achieve colour fidelity to real-life/the negative despite altering the red/green/blue levels (and others) in VueScan
  • The Nikon produces better scans at the outset. Ed Hamrick suggests so himself. However, even the Nikon is not achieving optimal colour fidelity
I have followed the advice of some Minolta users out there, but I haven’t been able to find/extrapolate a solid base workflow.

In VueScan > Color tab > Color Balance, I have tried working from None, Manual, Neutral, Auto Levels, White Balance. I have also scanned the negative RAW, reverted in Photoshop, and used levels etc. Despite also altering a variety of the other factors in VueScan, the green/blue cast present in the Minolta scans seems to indefinitely dull the colour values, even with post-production work in Photoshop.

Admittedly, I am not an advanced user of Photoshop, and the extent of post-production has involved using levels and playing with contrast and saturation.

I don’t mind doing post-scan work if I know the original scans will lead to satisfying post-production images.

I mentioned that I shoot B&W film to highlight that the Minolta does a fantastic job with B&W (better than the Nikon, to my eye) – yet I still feel that my scanning knowledge inhibits me from understanding what is the best practice.

I am not against hunting down the original software for either of these scanners if better results can be obtained than if using VueScan.

In closing:
  • Can the Minolta replicate the apparently better colour scanning of the Nikon?
  • If so, how? I would appreciate a detailed initial scanning workflow on this, with suggestions for post-production work.
  • In Photoshop, should I use colour plug-ins?
  • Should I get a calibration device for my screen, such as the Spyder5?
 
Hi Alexander, welcome to TP! First post in the T&C section - you'll be popular :)

I trialled both Vuescan & Silverfast (Epson V550) and much preferred the Silverfast software for general results - especially using the film emulations (although you don't state which colour films you're using). The Internet gives it a bad rep, but it's simply better (for me!) than Vuescan. Have you trialled it?

I try and get the flattest tone I can from the scan then do all my contrast & colour work in Lightroom. Lightroom makes fixing WB a complete breeze (compared to the horror show that is Photoshop) and minor individual colour adjustments (using the HSL tab) are also quick & easy. All non-destructive. Admittedly this is mostly for tone based stuff as I'm happy with the colour I get from Velvia, Ektar & Portra through the Epson using Silverfast.

Screen calibration is only really worth doing if you're sending files off for print. Do you have digital files that show you a nice neutral image? If not - do images on the internet look fine? Do images print like they look on the screen? If yes to any of these then your screen is fine. How do you know you're not achieving colour fidelity of the neg? Are you projecting or looking through a loupe/lightbox?
 
I'd normally recommend a Pakon for 35mm film, but they are silly money these days. Having said that, if you're doing a lot of colour negative scans, and your time is valuable, it may be the way to go. The colour balance of my C41 scans rarely need to be tweaked.

This was scanned on the Pakon, and output as a low contrast TIF file. I just whacked up the contrast in Lightroom:

42068467460_9ecdcb43ec_b.jpg


I use an Epson V550 and Vuescan for medium format, and output 48 bit RAW files. I used to use ColorPerfect to invert the negative, but switched to using this simple Photoshop action: http://www.eigakai.ro/ps-action/cn-scan-inversion

All you do is sample a piece of the negative rebate (the orange bit) to set it to the foreground colour, crop the image so there's no black border, and hit 'play'. I find it inverts 95% of images very well and gives great colour. The remaining few just need simple tweaks in lightroom.

Example RAW scan:

39380946995_7162f0b8f0_c.jpg



After one-click conversion:

40233279212_a9e8af6b59_c.jpg




Edit - re. screen calibration: yes. It will make it much easier to match what you see on screen to what you see in a final print. But, I don't think it will necessarily help with negative conversion or getting rid of colour casts.
 
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I too have trouble with scanning colour negative film, and my most common solution for newly shot film is to send it to Filmdev for process and scan (insert your favourite lab here). However, on occasion I have tried the recommended ColorPerfect (as @FujiLove mentioned above), which is a Photo$hop plugin and is rumoured to have the best colour inversion going. You have to scan as a uncorrected positive, load it into PS, call up CP then choose the film stock and perhaps fiddle with a few other variables a bit.

About my own 3rd or 4th post on TP was to start a thread asking similar questions to you, see https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/help-with-old-pentax-scanning-etc-please.404577/ . As you can see if you read that, someone ook my file and ran it through CP and the results were excellent. OTOH I haven't used CP very much since...
 
As @ChrisR said, ColorPerfect is great, but not super-intuitive to use.

I'd be happy to run one of your RAW scans through the colour conversion action if you PM me the file (doesn't have to be large). Just tell me what colour profile you used to output the file so I can sync things in Photoshop.

Oh, and include a bit of the rebate for me to sample.
 
Hi all,

Thank you for your responses!

@Harlequin565 I was very interested to know that you prefer Silverfast. I have encountered a couple of forum posts elsewhere stating that VueScan doesn't marry well with Minolta scanners. I found a website run by a fellow called Robert D Feinman comparing VueScan and Silverfast using the same negative with a Minolta 5400 -- Silverfast outbeat VueScan by a long way (great colour fidelity, accurately represents a Macbeth chart, and good "pop")!

I haven't used Lightroom before, but I am not against making the switch if it yields the desired image more easily/more ergonomically. Thank you for the heads up.

@FujiLove Nice scan! The Pakon. The Legend. Do you find that it gives enough resolution? I am by no means pixel precious, but I do like having a sharp image. I note that you also use Lightroom -- do you prefer over Photoshop?

Thanks for posting a demonstration of ColorPerfect - I like the result! Very nice indeed. I will get around to scanning RAW soon -- thank you for the offer!

It seems like Silverfast with the Minolta will be my best bet shot, especially if I want to simultaneously hold onto the Minolta's better B&W capabilities vs. the Nikon. From there I'll compare Photoshop and Lightroom, as well as trial ColorPerfect.

A.
 
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@FujiLove The Pakon. The Legend. Do you find that it gives enough resolution? I am by no means pixel precious, but I do like having a sharp image.

It gives enough resolution for me. I have two prints in the living room, both scanned on the Pakon. One is a 35mm shot printed 15" x 11". The other is an Xpan shot that's almost three feet wide. Both look great at normal viewing distances.

I note that you also use Lightroom -- do you prefer over Photoshop?

I use them both, but for different things. PS for tidying up photos, such as dust spotting and inverting negatives. Lightroom for basic editing that I would normally do in the darkroom, such as altering brightness and contrast, cropping, vignetting etc. I find it a good image catalogue too.

Thanks for posting a demonstration of ColorPerfect - I like the result! Very nice indeed. I will get around to scanning RAW soon -- thank you for the offer!

The example above is the Photoshop action (http://www.eigakai.ro/ps-action/cn-scan-inversion), not ColorPerfect.
 
I trialled both Vuescan & Silverfast (Epson V550) and much preferred the Silverfast software for general results - especially using the film emulations (although you don't state which colour films you're using). The Internet gives it a bad rep, but it's simply better (for me!) than Vuescan.
Me too.

I try and get the flattest tone I can from the scan then do all my contrast & colour work in Lightroom. Lightroom makes fixing WB a complete breeze (compared to the horror show that is Photoshop) and minor individual colour adjustments (using the HSL tab) are also quick & easy. All non-destructive. Admittedly this is mostly for tone based stuff as I'm happy with the colour I get from Velvia, Ektar & Portra through the Epson using Silverfast.
By contrast I do as much tone work as I can before scanning, having assumed that this would minimise file degradation?
 
By contrast I do as much tone work as I can before scanning, having assumed that this would minimise file degradation?

Now that's really interesting because a photo I stuck in the 'film shot' thread had some poor rendering of the sky which I presumed was my bad processing. I shall try a rescan I think and correct before going into LR. Thanks for the idea.
 
...@Harlequin565 I was very interested to know that you prefer Silverfast. I have encountered a couple of forum posts elsewhere stating that VueScan doesn't marry well with Minolta scanners. I found a website run by a fellow called Robert D Feinman comparing VueScan and Silverfast using the same negative with a Minolta 5400 -- Silverfast outbeat VueScan by a long way (great colour fidelity, accurately represents a Macbeth chart, and good "pop")!

I haven't used Lightroom before, but I am not against making the switch if it yields the desired image more easily/more ergonomically. Thank you for the heads up.
...

It seems like Silverfast with the Minolta will be my best bet shot, especially if I want to simultaneously hold onto the Minolta's better B&W capabilities vs. the Nikon. From there I'll compare Photoshop and Lightroom, as well as trial ColorPerfect.

A disadvantage of Silverfast is that it is tied to one device; if you get another scanner you have to buy another copy (though they might possibly have an option to transfer a licence, dunno).
 
By contrast I do as much tone work as I can before scanning, having assumed that this would minimise file degradation?
Now that's really interesting because a photo I stuck in the 'film shot' thread had some poor rendering of the sky which I presumed was my bad processing. I shall try a rescan I think and correct before going into LR. Thanks for the idea.

In the scanning program the software has access to the full bit depth from the scanner heads, so it does seem reasonable that you'd get better results than doing the same transformations after the file has been encoded/decoded as a (8-bit, lossy) JPEG. Perhaps less of an advantage if you can get 16-bit TIFFs out of the scanning software.

However, the corrections available in Vuescan Pro are much poorer than in Aperture (my obsolescent edit software of choice), so at the moment I just take the hit. Plus I don't usually have a choice as new films I get processed and scanned, by Filmdev. Old films are a different matter. I've done thousands of packets of negatives, but some years ago, and when I started again with some new packets from my kids growing-up years, the results were very disappointing.
 
A disadvantage of Silverfast is that it is tied to one device; if you get another scanner you have to buy another copy (though they might possibly have an option to transfer a licence, dunno).
I did spot this and thought it was a bit cheeky. Could see how this might put someone off. However I don't envisage changing my scanner unless it breaks - and even then I'd probably get the same. I get what you're saying though - and it's an important point to anyone considering Silverfast.

Perhaps less of an advantage if you can get 16-bit TIFFs out of the scanning software.
I can luckily get 16bit TIFFs from my scans, but still worth a try. Silverfast does have comprehensive tonal tools. I can just work Lightroom's better...
 
@droj and @Harlequin565 Forgive me, but could you elaborate a little on what you being by tone work prior to scanning, or prior to Lightroom? Thanks! :)

@ChrisR Wow. That is cheeky of SIlverfast. Looks like the Nikon is outta' the window, then!
 
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Now that's really interesting because a photo I stuck in the 'film shot' thread had some poor rendering of the sky which I presumed was my bad processing. I shall try a rescan I think and correct before going into LR. Thanks for the idea.

Ideally you should output a RAW file, because that contains all the information that the scanner is able to capture. You can then choose how to process that file in much the same way you would enlarge a negative in the darkroom.

The next best thing is a low-contrast, high bit depth image (a 48bit TIFF for instance). That will ensure you don't lose shadow or highlight detail at the scanning stage. It gives you a flexible image to process as you see fit. If you use a non-destructive editor, such as Lightroom, you can experiment with contrast and exposure changes without fear of damaging the 'digital negative'.
 
could you elaborate a little on what you being by tone work prior to scanning, or prior to Lightroom?

In Silverfast there are two buttons on the top: Histogram (which is a 'Levels' tool) and Gradation which is a Curves tool. When you click them it opens a panel on the left hand side allowing you fine control over the tones in the image. Note that any changes you make will be applied to that frame only! If you want to apply the same changes to multiple frames, do one, then CTRL+D will create a new frame with the exact same settings which you can then drag over the next neg.

Making different adjustments to multiple images in Silverfast is clunky and awkward which is why I generally do a "flat" setting and import into LR for further tweaks as @FujiLove suggests. I will try the raw settings though...

gree245y.JPG

Edit to add: It's always best to make any adjustments from a zoomed in perspective. Select the frame and click the "zoom" tool. This will force a rescan of that single image at a better resolution and will allow you to better see the effect of the changes you're making.

2nd Edit: All my negatives are 120, so I generally have less messing about per film because of fewer images. I also curate from the scan, only importing keepers, so I'm generally importing only 4-6 images per film (of 10).
 
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I did spot this and thought it was a bit cheeky. Could see how this might put someone off. However I don't envisage changing my scanner unless it breaks - and even then I'd probably get the same. I get what you're saying though - and it's an important point to anyone considering Silverfast.
If you change your scanner you'll need to buy an upgrade. It's linked to the particular device AFAIK.
...
@ChrisR Wow. That is cheeky of SIlverfast. Looks like the Nikon is outta' the window, then!

Also don't forget that Silverfast comes in many different versions. Luckily all will produce raws. The cheapest (for my scanner) is SE which does not include multi-exposure or auto IT8 calibration, both of which are very useful for transparency scanning (Vuescan Pro has both). Multi-exposure helps punch through dense shadow areas in slides, and calibration helps get colours right. SE also doesn't include their special Kodachrome setting (which I used to use and was quite good). SE costs €49. SE Plus adds multi-exposure and Kodachrome but not auto IT8 and costs €119. AI Studio has nearly everything for €299... but not entirely everything, as there's also Archive Suite SE (which is basic SE plus HDR) also for €299, or Archive Suite (being AI Studio plus HDR) for €499...
 
@droj and @Harlequin565 Forgive me, but could you elaborate a little on what you being by tone work prior to scanning, or prior to Lightroom? Thanks! :)

@ChrisR Wow. That is cheeky of SIlverfast. Looks like the Nikon is outta' the window, then!
The Nikon will work perfectly well with Vuescan
 
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