Scanner Talk - 16-bit TIFF Positive - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > Scanner Talk - 16-bit TIFF Positive

SMERSH Mouth: Jun 25, 2005

I'm trying scan some negatives for the first time. I've got a Canoscan 9000fmkii and I'm using the supplied 35mm slide holder. I've tried several different scan settings using the supplied software (Auto & 'Scan Gear' custom settings) as well as the OS X built-in scanner function. I'm using 2400dpi TIFF, positive color. (I can't seem to find a way to select bit depth, although I've ticked the box that says [16/48-bit] somewhere deep in the Canon software settings.

My first couple of scans from home-developed B&W film came out looking pretty soft. Since the negatives were a little curled, I decided to throw in some color strips that I'd had developed at a lab. They're good and flat, although not perfectly so. Unfortunately, they still come out looking the same:

That's a little more than 66% crop of the full-size image, with a very quick and dirty color inversion/levels job in PS.

When I use this same lens adapted to a digital camera, it produces images that are very sharp across the whole frame. Is there something else I can do to pull some more detail out of this?

SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Oct 9, 2015

# ¿ Oct 9, 2015 21:17

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 14:20

SMERSH Mouth: Jun 25, 2005

Surely is isn't that lovely, is it? It costs about the same as the Epson and has good reviews. Based on the consumer reviews I browsed (admittedly not that many) it seemed like a toss-up between this and the Epson V550/600. Could the Epson really be that much better? If there's a just a slight edge to the Epson in critical image quality at high magnification, I can live with Canoscan. But it has to be in focus - the results I'm getting right now aren't acceptable to me.

I guess I won't start shaving down the film holder if I'm going to return it. But I will try adding some paper shims and placing the film directly on the glass, to see if I can get it to resolve grain.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2015 23:08

SMERSH Mouth: Jun 25, 2005

Can anyone see a significant detail difference between these two 66% crops?This is with equal sharpening applied in PS. (Unsharp Mask with scanning software looks even worse.) Everything should be the same in terms of processing, except that the colors are ever so slightly different. I wish I could find somebody around here with an Epson V600 to compare to.

Touching the glass:

Correctly placed in holder:

No Newton rings. The film is very well-flattened so I guess that's to be expected?

Raising the holder seemed to degrade the image further.

I think the negative touching the glass looks ever so slightly sharper, but not to a really appreciable extent.

SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Oct 10, 2015

# ¿ Oct 10, 2015 01:28

SMERSH Mouth: Jun 25, 2005

Welp! Back to the store you go, Canoscan.

I've tried 5 different arrangements of film, paper shims, and film tray. None of them produce scans that look like they're in focus. Even after careful sharpening in PS, I can compare some neg scans I did today with some from the same negs I had made at my local drugstore, and the drugstore files are invariably much sharper and show better clarity, even though they're jpegs about 1/20th the size of the scanner's tiffs.

Will pick up an Epson tomorrow. I hope it does better. I'm shooting an event tomorrow, too, and I'd like to have negatives developed and scanned by the end of the weekend. If I could get both those things done at home, that would be awesome.

SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Oct 10, 2015

# ¿ Oct 10, 2015 05:53

SMERSH Mouth: Jun 25, 2005

The drugstore scans I get are very plainly sharp and in-focus, but the level of detail is very low due to resizing.

Here a link to one of the scans. (Sorry, can't autogen a bbcode link on my phone) https://flic.kr/p/yQX2X2

I like the color and am glad it's in-focus, but will appreciate the latitude that a large 16 bit tiff gives.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2015 13:43

SMERSH Mouth: Jun 25, 2005

Thanks for telling me about epson, thread. There's quite a difference between my new V550 and the now-returned Canoscan. How strange that one produces such dramatically shittier results compared to the other, and yet they are priced and reviewed largely the same. Maybe my Canoscan was just defectively misfocused, but I wasn't going to bother with exchanging it for another. The V550 solved the problem.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2015 04:29

SMERSH Mouth: Jun 25, 2005

Sorry to double post, but what's up with the epson software making multi-page TIFFs instead of saving discrete files? I can only get photoshop to display the first scanned image in the 'stack' of scans. I have to go into Preview and export each page individually (on a Mac). Can I change this behavior?

SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Oct 11, 2015

# ¿ Oct 11, 2015 15:21

SMERSH Mouth: Jun 25, 2005

So, how high-end do you have to go to get a scanner that actually reproduces fine detail from 35mm negatives? My Epson v550 does well enough for checking exposure & focus, and sharing on platforms like Instagram, but right now if I find a good keeper I have to take it to the local camera store to get a high-res scan. I'd bet they use some kind of commercial-grade equipment. Whatever it is, it gives very good results- close to a modern DSLR in detail level.

Can I get anywhere close to that in the consumer space, short of something like the Hasselblad mini drum scanner thing that costs as much as a car?

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 06:11

SMERSH Mouth: Jun 25, 2005

Awesome. I've already got an FF DSLR an a 1:1 macro. But I bet 1:2 is better for 35mm. I'm sure I can rig something up.

And thanks for the scanner rec. Good to know.

Edit: So just to compare, I set up my 7D on a tripod (not the FF, I thought the crop sensor's additional magnification might be useful.. but it can't fit the whole frame so unless I want to stitch I'll stick to the 5D2). I don't have a light pad so I just used a smartphone app to achieve the same effect (although it's not optimal because the pixel pattern on the screen seems to create a texturing effect). It's a fiddly, inconvenient setup, but the results speak for themselves.

Trigger warning: bad composition & dirty negs below.

7D + 100mm Macro:

You can see that the neg was tilted slightly, as the left edge shows AMOLED pixel banding and the right edge is out of focus.

Epson V550:

Guess I'll be investing in a dedicated mount and light pad, along with a better film holder. It's not perfect, but it's way better than the flatbed.

SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Feb 10, 2016

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 15:09

SMERSH Mouth: Jun 25, 2005

That could very well be exactly what I'm looking for, thanks.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 15:35

SMERSH Mouth: Jun 25, 2005

It's been a problem for me, but only since updating the version of MacOS my laptop uses. Will have to check out that patch.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2016 14:14

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 14:20

SMERSH Mouth: Jun 25, 2005

Wild EEPROM posted:

I did for a while.

I suggest buying a good lightbox with a full color spectrum, a solid tripod head, and shoot tethered.

I was having endless issues with color correction, because my lightbox produced very blue light.
Shooting tethered is probably the best idea because you can see your focus on a huge screen and not a small viewfinder or lcd.

Autofocus won't matter, so just buy whatever good manual focus macro lens you need. In fact, probably preferable because of the long focus throw I used my 55mm micro-nikkor (maxes out at 1:2, suuuuper long focus throw) but I would probably suggest 100mm+.
Having a wide aperture doesn't matter much either, since you'll probably be shooting at f8.

I've found that a Durst M301 or M601 enlarger can be converted to a cheap but useful copy stand. With those two models of Durst, the condenser head is attached with a 1/4" threaded mount, so you can remove it and attach a ball head directly to the stand. Works great as a solid, easily adjustable platform for your digital camera, and makes doing multiple formats in one sitting very easy.

The soft box is a good idea. For a light source, I traded out my iPad for an LED array covered with either a piece of acrylic or translucent white glass. I do the 'scanning' in a darkroom. It's still possible that I'm terrible at manual color correction, but it could also be the color temperature of the light. I set a custom white balance on my 5D2 based on the LED array, but I'm not sure if that's enough (again, could just be my own ineptness).

After doing a lot of digital reproduction with this DSLR, I've found that it works most naturally with 35mm film. The sensor size matches up with the 24x36mm frame, so I get 100% 1:1 reproduction with a 100mm macro. 645 is the next natural step up, then 6x9. Now that I have the stand, though, I think it could be worthwhile to experiment with stitching together multiple exposures for 6x7 or 6x6 frames.

Finally, what's kept me going back to a flatbed scanner, at least for medium format, is the limitation of the 5D2's sensor. Inverting a .CR2 kind of brings out the worst of its characteristics, i.e. banding noise in the erstwhile shadows. So I often end up with obvious digital garbage in a daylight sky. And overexposing to compensate risks destroying detail in the shadows of the final image. All experiments with making an 'HDR' image by bracketing multiple exposures have ended up looking like crap, but once again that could also be due to the lack of requisite photoshop knowledge.

Someday I plan on getting another digital camera to experiment with. Right now I'm thinking about either an Olympus EM5II (for the high-res shot mode and good macro selection) or a Sigma DP Quattro. I've had promising results, using a fixed-lens Foveon sensor camera in place of the 5D2, but it doesn't have the magnification necessary to reach the same level of detail as the Canon 100mm macro.

SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Dec 31, 2016

# ¿ Dec 31, 2016 04:30

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > Scanner Talk - 16-bit TIFF Positive