Hi. I sent some 4x5 portra 160 to a lab for development and scan, everything looks good. I am wanting to scan in the future myself and everyone says NLP is the way to go so bought it. I am finding the colours after a conversion of the camera scan do not match real life or the lab scan.
There are two main colours, green and red. Real life eg the girl’s dress, matches my drone shots on the day, my mirrorless shots, and the lab scan. However when I convert my photo of the negative the red turns magenta, and the greens go really yellow. I havnt found a way to adjust my way out of this situation. The red dress is the main issue.
I have put all the files into this dropbox as there doesn’t seem to be a way to attach them to this post (my first post)
I would love any feedback to help me understand where I have done wrong, in particular the dress red being so different?
Thanks
Tony
I am using version 3.0.2, sony a74 with sony 90mm macro G lens, light table, lightroom (latest)
I have followed all the tutorials on DSLR scanning eg ringing my negative to block light, WB from clear negative frame section, using the camera profile, cropping in for picture only before conversion etc
After days of frustration, I think I got to the bottom of it. The lightsource I was using to backlight the negative had a high blue content on the colour spectrum, red weak, with green in the middle. It wasn’t a white balance issue, but the volume of light was uneven on this cheap light pad. I went to the photography store to look at more neutral (expensive) options and looking at the spectrum via my camera channels, it was very even, so bought it. The very first scan I did came out like I was expecting, this picture here.
The lightpad that gave me a good result was around USD $150 and is the Kaiser slimline plano… hope that helps others in the future
Very good to see the improvement over your cheap panel, a dramatic difference. Do you find this new improved result more pleasing or accurate than the lab scan though? You’re the only one who can say really.
I think this is much more accurate to how things looked on the day. This is what the fabric of the dress looked like and her skin tones. My hope is that things will look like real life, so for me this is a good result.
