M9 vs old slide film from Yashica T4

[jmahto]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

What you get in the shadows of a scan or a digitalization is a function of the dynamic range. My experience is limited to scanning with an Imacon Precision III and, now, digitalizing with an M10. My impression is that the dMax on the M10 digitalizations are close to that of the Imacon, although I've scanned only two of the same slides for comparison with the same setup.

 

The Imacon has a dMax of 4.2 while, from what I've read, that of the Plustek is 3.6 — that’s 2 stops less (0.3 on the log scale is 1 stop) — apparently you can get to 4.0 using SilverFast software with multi-pass scanning, but that reportedly takes 30 minutes per frame.

 

Incidentally, looking at my slide above on a light table with a loupe, the deep shadows are just like the image above.

Yes, I used multipass scanning which does take a long time. However I realized that shadows were another beast with deep color cast (only in shadows). In one slide it was lots of blue, reducing that in PP I could see underlying features. They were not visible in projection or in slide viewer. In one case it was greenish cast. I don't know why. Advantage of scan was that lifting shadows (or scanning with desired histogram with light shadows) didn't create artificial banding in the shadows, as happens in digital sensor. In fact the grain looked quite natural. I guess this is the advantage of scan vs shooting with digital camera (unless one does HDR).

 

I also stated above that 99% slides don't need recovering shadows and look good the way they were exposed but I was glad to be able to recover few underexposed slides (family pics) and get usable color scan (and excellent BW conversion ).

Edited May 8, 2018 by jmahto

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama