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Scanning colour with V700 - Recommendations


Jon Pop

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What are the best recommended settings for scanning colour negatives with the V700? I shoot lots of black and white with my Leicas (MP, iiig), and scan successfully (have published this way actually), but also I occasionally shoot a roll of Portra, and also just tried Rollei Digibase 200CN. Firstly, I get a lot of 'tint' difficulty in the scans (I don't use any adjustments in scanning), but I also seem to get a lot of what is similar to chroma noise in digital at high ISO. I'm scanning at 48 bit colour, 3200 dpi. Would welcome any advice, settings, etc.

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John , a photo posted would be welcome

Best

Henry

Here some pictures scanned with Eps V700 (thread "I like Film" in "Other")

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/205842-i-like-filmopen-thread/?p=2338230

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/205842-i-like-filmopen-thread/?p=2343394

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/205842-i-like-filmopen-thread/?p=2345942

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/205842-i-like-filmopen-thread/?p=2348120

Scan with Epson scan software that came with the scanner :)

Edited by Doc Henry
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Ignore the 'quality' of this picture for a moment. This is an email export from LR. I use Epson scanning software. This was scanned at 48 bit colour depth, 3200 dpi. You'll notice in the dark areas, if you're able to zoom, that there is considerable blue 'flecking' within the black areas. This same thing happens in darker areas on other surfaces as well (sometimes it's lots of green flecking, or red, or a combination of a lot of RGB 'noise'). I'd prefer to not have to get into a histogram game prior to each scan, if possible. I also find it a real challenge getting proper WB when scanning colour (slide or negative). 

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Thanks for posting

Difficult to have a nice picture with artificial light (except perhaps in b&w)

I find it's normal. I looked at the photo on Lightroom (LR) and black (top left) is black on

my screen Eizo
 

With another shot in daylight , what happens ?
If you have the Epson software it's good, I put all in neutral (RGB calibrated) and I scan in Tiff
eventually but rarely I correct in Lightroom (LR).

Best

Henry
 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I use the V700 (b&w, colour C41 and E6).  Initially I tried Vuescan and Silverfast SE but for the colour films just could not achieve acceptable results.  Resorting to the Epson Scan software at default settings proved to be the answer.  I post-process in LR but rarely need to adjust WB or tints.

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Scanning colour with a V700 drove me nuts for almost a year. I could get ok results scanning as a linear negative in Vuescan, and converting with Color Perfect. EpsonScan gave OK results less laboriously Eventually I bought a Plustex 8100 which seems to do fine without the Color Perfect step. Now, for 35mm, I use a Pakon F135+ which gives effortless good results.

Pete

Edited by Stealth3kpl
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I'm far from an expert on the V700 and its interaction with Vuescan, but I've been scanning for many years with Coolscans and Vuescan and have experienced the same noise in shadow areas. One reason for this (I have been led to believe from my research) is that a scanner is designed to try as hard as possible to pull as much information as possible from every part of the image. This causes (and here I am skipping over a technical explanation that I neither know nor would likely understand if told) green, red and blue colour noise in the darker areas of a scan.

 

Vuescan offers a few ways of dealing with this, depending on the hardware specs of the scanner used. On some Coolscans it is possible to use the multi-sample function which means that the scanner samples each line more than once and then averages out the result. I have found that three samples give much better results on dark/dense images, esp with slide film.

 

With scanners that lack this functionality one can use Vuescan's multi-pass function (which is not related to the Fifth Element, incidentally). Again, this depends on scanner specs. Here the scanner makes more than one pass over the image and then averages the results. This takes longer and also introduces a risk of error as the head may not be positioned exactly at the same spot with each pass (with multi-samples the scanner makes several samples with the head at one and the same location over the neg).

 

A third way is multi-exposure, which also is hardware dependent, whereby the scanner makes two exposures, a normal and a long and averages the result. This also takes longer than multi-samples as the scanner has to read the image twice.

 

On my Coolscan 9000 I've compared the results of the above three alternatives (including combinations thereof) and found that a 3-time multi-pass gives the best (and quickest) results with very dense/dark photos.

 

A scanner that can do wet mounting (which the V700 can with Better Scanning holders) can also smoothen out colour noise to a degree. I get rather good results in this respect when I wet scan with my 9000.

 

If the above alternatives don't work, post-processing is likely the best way to deal with shadow noise. I don't know Lightroom but I believe it has a similar function to Photoshops Reduce Noise filter. With this filter one can desaturate the noise very precisely. This filter can, when mixed with further post-processing, give very good results. There are also third-party software like Noise Ninja.

 

One thing one shouldn't forget is that when a scene is looked as a whole, the shadow areas of the scene will look more or less completely black to the human eye. Conversely, when the eye focuses on the darker areas of a scene it will be able to discern a lot of details there. Naturally this depends on the scene; cloudy days will not look as contrasty as bright sunny days. Or evening/night scenes.

 

When editing a colour image it may (depending on one's artistic preferences, naturally) be an option to do it in such a way that (parts of) the shadow areas appear very dark, again all provided that one wants to have a photograph that more or less mirrors what the human eye would see.

 

There are likely also other ways to deal with noise but the above are what come to my mind at the moment.

 

Was the image you posted shot on Rollei Digibase 200CN? From what I understand it is a fairly peculiar film that is designed to be developed as C41 or, for more, well, artistic use, as E6. That sounds like a film based on compromises to me. The datasheet says it is a fine-grained film but most of the online examples I've seen are fairly grainy. Grainy films (whether at native ISO or when pushed) will also increase the colour noise. But perhaps you used another film? In any event, in my experience it is quite difficult to get an acceptable colour balance on night shots, particularly with lots of street lights present. 

 

I get very good results colour-wise with C41 film when I use ColorPerfect and Photoshop. However with slide film I tend to get poor results and it is something I've been frustrated about for a while because it doesn't happen all the time. Recently I've begun scanning slide film as ordinary white balanced TIFF files (i.e. not linear RAW). This means I skip the ColorPerfect step. The main problem with slide film and ColorPerfect is that it is difficult (at least for me) to deal in post with the linear RAW file's gamma of 1.0. ColorPerfect will very often blow out the image in ColorPos mode and given the narrow latitude of E6 films this is not easy to correct even with ColorPerfect's highlight recovery. A white balanced TIFF (i.e. RAW unticked in Vuescan) simply doesn't have this problem and is much easier to correct in Photoshop to look like the slide looks on my lighttable.

 

Hope this helps some.

Br

Philip

 

 

What are the best recommended settings for scanning colour negatives with the V700? I shoot lots of black and white with my Leicas (MP, iiig), and scan successfully (have published this way actually), but also I occasionally shoot a roll of Portra, and also just tried Rollei Digibase 200CN. Firstly, I get a lot of 'tint' difficulty in the scans (I don't use any adjustments in scanning), but I also seem to get a lot of what is similar to chroma noise in digital at high ISO. I'm scanning at 48 bit colour, 3200 dpi. Would welcome any advice, settings, etc.

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