nice article >Digitizing Negatives with a Camera – Revisited

[frame-it]

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nice article

 

https://photopxl.com/digitizing-negatives-with-a-camera-revisited/

[roydonian]

Until I read that article, I didn't realise that there was so much science involved with the process of digitising B&W and colour film negatives. The procedure and hardware described might be needed for the most demanding tasks, but I've had acceptable results by using an LED light panel, a Leitz BEOON copying stand, an M9-P camera fitted with a prewar 5cm Elmar, and Photoshop.

 

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[LocalHero1953]

2 hours ago, roydonian said:

Until I read that article, I didn't realise that there was so much science involved with the process of digitising B&W and colour film negatives. The procedure and hardware described might be needed for the most demanding tasks, but I've had acceptable results by using an LED light panel, a Leitz BEOON copying stand, an M9-P camera fitted with a prewar 5cm Elmar, and Photoshop.

 

I saved money over your set-up by using a tripod instead of a Leitz copy stand, but then blew the budget by using a Apo-Macro-Elmarit-R 100😁. 
I agree the video looks OTT for want I want, especially as I want to digitise 2 x 36 rolls at a time.

[Pintpot]

Obviously to get the very best digitization some kind of rig as set out in the article would be needed, especially when doing multi format negs, but costly unless one has all or most of the gear. A cheap & simple way is to use a digital point & shoot  - C (typ 112) for example, the only extra would be a lightbox.

Handheld 'C' shot of a 4x5 neg processed in Lightroom.

 

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[roydonian]

1 hour ago, LocalHero1953 said:

I saved money over your set-up by using a tripod instead of a Leitz copy stand

In my case, I already had the BEOON, which had been acquired back in the days when such devices lay unwanted on camera shop shelves.

[Steve Ricoh]

There’s at least two threads elsewhere on the BEOON, but I’ll mention briefly my experience when using an enlarger lens. Basically I can not hunt around critical focus due to the column bottoming just as it’s close to acquiring focus. I’ve thought about getting the column lengthened; the head (which the camera is attached) is screwed to the column.

[Steve Ricoh]

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5 hours ago, roydonian said:

Until I read that article, I didn't realise that there was so much science involved with the process of digitising B&W and colour film negatives. The procedure and hardware described might be needed for the most demanding tasks, but I've had acceptable results by using an LED light panel, a Leitz BEOON copying stand, an M9-P camera fitted with a prewar 5cm Elmar, and Photoshop.

 

Have you developed a procedure for colour conversion using PhotoShop?
It starts with correcting white balance by sampling the clear orange mask, but what then?

[LocalHero1953]

2 hours ago, Steve Ricoh said:

Have you developed a procedure for colour conversion using PhotoShop?
It starts with correcting white balance by sampling the clear orange mask, but what then?

I use Alex Burke's process in Lightroom (which would also work in PS). Once I'm happy with the colour, I export it as a TIFF and reimport it (and delete the DNG) - the sliders then work the right way round!

I started out using Negative Lab Pro, but was never entirely happy with the results, and found myself making so many adjustments that the approach in the link was just as easy.

I should say that my only colour negatives have been 4x5, so there are few enough of them that spending time on each one is acceptable. I might use NLP more if I was doing 36 exposures at a time!

Edited May 2, 2022 by LocalHero1953

[Steve Ricoh]

10 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

I use Alex Burke's process in Lightroom (which would also work in PS). Once I'm happy with the colour, I export it as a TIFF and reimport it (and delete the DNG) - the sliders then work the right way round!

I started out using Negative Lab Pro, but was never entirely happy with the results, and found myself making so many adjustments that the approach in the link was just as easy.

I should say that my only colour negatives have been 4x5, so there are few enough of them that spending time on each one is acceptable. I might use NLP more if I was doing 36 exposures at a time!

Thank you very much. 😊
I’ll try it out in real time when I get my copying equipment set up.
I’m more of a LR person, so in a way I’m glad it’s not PS. (I tend to shy away from PS due to the complexity, so many virtual buttons etc - I’m probably being lazy I suppose.)

[Steve Ricoh]

17 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

I use Alex Burke's process in Lightroom (which would also work in PS). Once I'm happy with the colour, I export it as a TIFF and reimport it (and delete the DNG) - the sliders then work the right way round!

I started out using Negative Lab Pro, but was never entirely happy with the results, and found myself making so many adjustments that the approach in the link was just as easy.

I should say that my only colour negatives have been 4x5, so there are few enough of them that spending time on each one is acceptable. I might use NLP more if I was doing 36 exposures at a time!

Unless I’m missing something here, Alex Burke describes the conversion using PS. Can you please point to the LR version if one exists.

“The goal here is to make a scan with no adjustments applied to it, we will be doing everything manually in Photoshop...”

[LocalHero1953]

37 minutes ago, Steve Ricoh said:

Unless I’m missing something here, Alex Burke describes the conversion using PS. Can you please point to the LR version if one exists.

“The goal here is to make a scan with no adjustments applied to it, we will be doing everything manually in Photoshop...”

Sorry, you're right. But I took his approach and applied it in LR - adjusting the 'black' and 'white' points in R, G & B separately and then adjusting the curves for each. 

Edited May 3, 2022 by LocalHero1953

[Steve Ricoh]

19 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Sorry, you're right. But I took his approach and applied it in LR - adjusting the 'black' and 'white' points in R, G & B separately and then adjusting the curves for each. 

Thanks again for that.

Looking on the bright side, it may be the catalyst I need to start using PhotoShop, but I’ll give LightRoom a go before going to the ‘dark side’.

[LocalHero1953]

4 minutes ago, Steve Ricoh said:

Thanks again for that.

Looking on the bright side, it may be the catalyst I need to start using PhotoShop, but I’ll give LightRoom a go before going to the ‘dark side’.

I started using the method in PS, then transferred back to LR when I saw how it worked. It is exactly the same method whether you use LR or PS.

[frame-it]

i also follow that same process in Lr for exotic films that dont have a profile in silverfast, save it as a develop preset for the 1st scan, the paste it on all the other shots, then all thats left is to adjust the curve sliders a bit in each shot and double check the exposure etc if required

Edited May 3, 2022 by frame-it

[250swb]

I use ColorPerfect or Negmaster in Photoshop to invert negatives, it takes about, hmm, maybe five seconds?

[roydonian]

On 5/2/2022 at 3:28 PM, Steve Ricoh said:

Have you developed a procedure for colour conversion using PhotoShop?
It starts with correcting white balance by sampling the clear orange mask, but what then?

 

I've written an article on using the BEOON to copy negatives, and this has been published in the current issue of the LHSA's 'Viewfinder' magazine. To summarise the process – I set the camera WB manually to match the colour temperature of my LED light panel, then use the BEOON photograph the colour negative.

The DNG is imported into Photoshop via Adobe Camera Raw, which is set to 'Auto' WB. This removes the effect of the orange layer of the colour negative. (In theory, you could set the camera to 'Auto' WB and set Camera Raw to import the images 'As shot', but my experience has been that the final results are not quite as good.)

Inverting the image in Photoshop generates a poor quality colour positive, but the program's 'Auto Color' command seems to produce an acceptable result.

[Aryel]

5 hours ago, roydonian said:

Inverting the image in Photoshop generates a poor quality colour positive, but the program's 'Auto Color' command seems to produce an acceptable result.

The quality achieved in photoshop depends on how you do it. ‘Auto Color’ hasn’t the flexibility nor the information required to correct a scanned negative.

I use the photoshop plugin colorperfect to invert the negative and find it fast and easy for both black and white and colours. As mentioned by @250swb, it is done in seconds. 

[roydonian]

The procedure that I described is not intended to create a definitive positive version that would satisfy the most critical standards. But for people who have Photoshop it's a zero-cost solution, and the normal Photoshop controls can be used to refine the end result if this proves necessary. When processing a batch of photos before writing my 'Viewfinder' article, I found that some photos did not respond well to the Inverse + Autocolor  operations, so had to be adjusted. But when I put the same pics through Colorperfect, once again several needed adjustment. What was interesting is that in all but one case these were not the same pics that had proved troublesome after the Inverse + Autocolor process.