Spot meter on space between frames should be sufficient if the spot does not cover too much of the two frames. It’s imaginable that the reading on space between two dense/dark frames can yield another result than between two underexposed/light frames, so I recommend careful testing. So why not, give it a try with two underexposed frames. Or create a blank frame on next roll (1 picture underway with lens cap on).
You can get a pretty good idea by just making use of the highlight warning on Live View if you have it. If you get just a hint of it on the base layer between or around the frame, or any unexposed part of the film that should be OK as the RAW file will have more range than the range of the jpeg that you will be seeing, or just knock down the exposure by half a stop from there. That saves you comparing different spot readings. Presumably you’ll be using manual exposure for this and from that point on.
Once you’ve arrived at your perfect exposure by however means (and you can always refine it from experience of course) I’d also suggest taking the film out and taking another about 3 stops down, same aperture, just to see that you have evenness of illumination. You can also use the highlight warning to give you a visual indication of that in fact, just increase the shutter speed from the one you’ve settled on (with film in place) until the highlight warning starts to disappear. It’s almost bound to start to disappear from the outside of the frame first, but hopefully over a very small range of exposure.
Could you elaborate more on this one? Cinestill just released there scanning light source CS-Lite. They claim its cool light mode (9743k 93CRI) is more suitable for color negative scanning.
Here is what they say in its manual:
This mode is designed to reduce the orange mask present in color negatives to allow for more neutral scans. Color balanced captures result in superior color separation with less noise due to excessive gain produced when shifting color temperature below 2800K in a raw file. Also helpful for images taken on slide film under incandescent light to reduce the orange cast.
The CS-Lite also has 5073K 95CRI white light mode. Cinestill claims it is designed for B&W film scanning.
Standard white light for scanning black and white images and slides processed in Cs DynamicChrome warm-tone developer. Can also be used to scan color negative film for post-processing workflows based on white-light scanning.
It also features 2962K 98CRI warm light mode for slide film scanning.
Slide film is designed to be viewed with a tungsten balanced backlight. This setting also produces richer tones and enhanced color separation, especially in the red channel.
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I’ve started playing around with flat field correction by taking a blank frame after each roll and applying it to all my frames before conversion. If I do this, I’m thinking that technically I should not use the lens profile for vignette when inverting in NLP correct? Because if it auto applies the lens vignette setting after already flat field correction, it would be applying an extra correction?
I’m wondering if you could add flat field to the best practices guide. Things like should I ensure to set a constant white balance between frames and the flat frame and/or white balance off the film border before correction? Should you apply lens correction to the images (including flat frame) before flat field correction or after or both or neither?
I’m thinking the “most correct” way to do it would be as follows but I’m open to suggestions/input to make this a better solution:
- Set white balance off the film strip and apply it to all frames including the flat frame.
- Apply lightroom lens profile to all frames including the flat frame.
- Apply flat field correction to the images.
- Invert with NLP (which would not double down on the lens profie corrections since they are already applied before FFC).
- Enjoy your conversions!
Thoughts?
@amvoith I found that manually setting your WB to the coolest colour temperature possible (my camera goes to 2500K) when scanning helps reduce any colour weird orange colour casts, it improves the consistency of colours and WB across a roll, and it doesn’t max out the LR white balance slider when you set the WB off the film border before you convert the scans.
@Sethsg What color temperature do you set on your light source, Seth?
My light source is a 5200K halogen bulb inside an film enlarger.
Thanks, Seth! I appreciate the help as I’m just getting started on film scanning.