What’s With All the Poor Negative Film Reviews?

[ariel7515]

Here an article published in PetaPixel, maybe someone here will agree with what this guy is saying:

https://petapixel.com/2018/03/17/whats-with-all-the-poor-negative-film-reviews/

At least the he shared some interesting links about how to work with color negatives and the scanning process:

• Color Correcting Color Negatives. An old article on color correcting negatives in Photoshop, the program has changed a bit but much of this info still holds true, and the insights are excellent.
• How To: Eliminate Banding From Your Scans. It’s rare these days to get significant banding in scans, but this is solid info on how to deal with it if it happens.
• Film grain and Aliasing. One of the very few articles on the Web on grain aliasing, few folks even appreciate this happens at all, many tests I have done confirm the complete truth of this matter, at least for me.
• Myths About Scanning Film for Maximum Quality. Good solid background info on film scanning.
• How to ‘Scan’ Film with a Camera—Well. Part 1 of a series on scanning film with a camera by Ctein. He ultimately feels it is a bit too tricky to do well but acknowledges the quality. That said with dedication you can create an excellent rig to do this, which is precisely what I have done and used for the scans in this article.
• Grain and sharpness in scans and enlarger prints. Great info on grain and sharpness from Norman Koren
• Understanding Color Negative Film for Scanning. Excellent article on film scanning by Sebastian Schlueter, someone who really does do lovely neg film work.

 

[skysh4rk]

Here an article published in PetaPixel, maybe someone here will agree with what this guy is saying:

https://petapixel.com/2018/03/17/whats-with-all-the-poor-negative-film-reviews/

At least the he shared some interesting links about how to work with color negatives and the scanning process:

• Color Correcting Color Negatives. An old article on color correcting negatives in Photoshop, the program has changed a bit but much of this info still holds true, and the insights are excellent.
• How To: Eliminate Banding From Your Scans. It’s rare these days to get significant banding in scans, but this is solid info on how to deal with it if it happens.
• Film grain and Aliasing. One of the very few articles on the Web on grain aliasing, few folks even appreciate this happens at all, many tests I have done confirm the complete truth of this matter, at least for me.
• Myths About Scanning Film for Maximum Quality. Good solid background info on film scanning.
• How to ‘Scan’ Film with a Camera—Well. Part 1 of a series on scanning film with a camera by Ctein. He ultimately feels it is a bit too tricky to do well but acknowledges the quality. That said with dedication you can create an excellent rig to do this, which is precisely what I have done and used for the scans in this article.
• Grain and sharpness in scans and enlarger prints. Great info on grain and sharpness from Norman Koren
• Understanding Color Negative Film for Scanning. Excellent article on film scanning by Sebastian Schlueter, someone who really does do lovely neg film work.

I think he's onto something personally, as there is a considerable amount of poor film scanning out there at present, even from some photographers and websites with quite large followings, that is serving to either misrepresent the capabilities/qualities of film or bring down what is otherwise quality work.

I believe it's against the spirit of the forum to critique others' work without their direct involvement in the thread, so I won't single out any specific photographers, social media accounts, or websites, but I've been really surprised by the poor quality of scanning that is presented by some photographers and accepted by their fans/audiences.