Can't seem to get colors to work

Hi! Thanks in advance for any help. I haven’t used NLB in a few years. Been spending thousands on lab scans so thought I would get this setup going again. Except i can not get scans to work. Hopefully someone can help. Shooting on 80D raw (but no macro lens, its coming in the mail)

Here is my raw photo no WB correction, using a cheap light (nice one also coming in mail)

And here is one attempt

B2-color-protests-1-2 — ImgBB (i cant upload more than one photo)

And another attempt with cropping, WB correction

And here is a lab scan

(I also can only put two links so its going in comments haha)

So I think this is a mistake somewhere in my order because I have rolls and rolls from last year that I used all this same cheap equipment and the scans were easily as good or better than the labs (same lab, same scanner)

here is an example
( Comments )

Curious if anyone can see maybe a simple fatal flaw here? I am getting negative supplies equipment (light bed, holder) and ordered a nice macro for the future but comparing last years to today is still frustrating me. I have tried to attempts are this roll for over an hour with no luck coming even close to a high contrast good color-balanced photo. any help?

Thanks

Lab scan

And reference of Old Negative Lab Pro

The shots look like they were taken -ty years ago on whatever film you used - and they don’t look that bad to me, considering that you wrote you used a cheap light.

Please share RAW shot(s) of the negative(s). We might be able to see what you could do to get “better” colour, supposing that you’d prefer a bluer sky mostly and possibly better definition in the field behind the fence.

The above is a raw shot of the negative.

I mean you can see the difference between my attempt and the lab. No its not THAT bad but I am confused by the lack of richness compared to my results last year.

Hi @griffinmalone

If you want this closer to the lab scan, inside Negative Lab Pro you can increase the contrast a bit, and in the white balance section of Negative Lab Pro, move the temp slider a bit more towards blue, and the tint slider a tiny bit towards magenta.

Personally, I think the color balance is not quite right in the lab scan, but it shouldn’t be too hard to match if you’d like to.

Cheers!
-Nate

Thanks for the advice! I was able to match a bit, but not exactly. Maybe I am simply overthinking it… Maybe I will reassess after the nicer lightbed.