New NLP user here. Loving the plugin so far, and have had really great results with it once I got my camera and lens setup working well. I’m using a Sony A7rIII with Minolta A 100/2.8 macro, with Cinestill CS-lite and a simple laser cut acrylic negative holder.
The only issue I haven’t been able to solve is that some frames come in with the highlights way too bright. It’s usually on pictures where it was a sunny day with bright objects in the frame. I can often make it work by bringing “Lights” all the way down, but I’m usually at the very limit of the slider just to get it in a reasonable range and this is kind of limiting.
I’ve tried scanning the same roll at different exposures, and over, under or bang on it doesn’t matter, same issue. The highlights aren’t blown on the neg, the data is definitely there, but for some reason they come in as being really overly bright. Am I doing something wrong? Any guidance would be appreciated, thanks. Here’s a link to two examples to show what I’m talking about. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwhiho81pKRFTR63hLcT1QOSJMmbXy3g?usp=sharing
Verifying what type of film… color neg (C41) or slide (E6)?
What distance is the film from the light?
Are you using the CS light enhancing sheets, and if so, are they oriented properly?
What are the capture settings: aperture, shutter and ISO?
And have you tested at what point you lose highlight data on each specific film base?
can you upload a series of raw files of the same image at different exposures for others to try?
Hope to help a bit with more info. Others may have more to say, too. It could be a funky software glitch with your lighroom? But that’s just speculation!
Sure, sorry for the lack of specifics in the OP. Here are some answers:
-C41. The examples are from Proimage 100 but I had the same problem with several other C41 films.
-About 8mm.
-No, I’m not using the light enhancing sheets.
-F8, usually 1/40 (this has varied, as I tried different exposures) ISO100
-Not sure I understand the question? Do you mean exposure wise? I haven’t overexposed so much that I lose highlight data, I’ve only gotten close.
-I have these same ones at several exposures, but every conversion I do in NLP comes out almost exactly the same. Let me work on getting the raws up.
Try some of the different presets and you may get betters results than the default preset. Here, I would try the “Cinestill” or “Kodak Gold” presets
Learn how to use the “blackClip” and “whiteClip” controls. For instance, in this case, setting the whitePoint to a negative number (like -8), would just provide a little space in the highs to make sure nothing is clipping. By default, NLP will clip both blacks and whites just a tiny bit, but you can adjust this as you’d like, and it’s all non-destructive!
Thanks so much for taking the time to respond. It sounds like you think I should play with settings in NLP more so than tweak my process of acquiring the RAWs. Is that correct? I realized that I had done less experimenting with exposure than I thought, and I could try retaking these with more bracketing.
I tried your suggestions, and the best so far has been the Kodak Gold preset, that definitely helped and felt like it brought the images into a better realm to start from. Thank you!
I’m having trouble finding the “whitePoint” and blackPoint" settings, I’m guessing this is another name for WhiteClip and BlackClip? Thanks again!
I realized I had not bracketed the exposures as widely as I originally thought. Maybe only 1/3 stop in each direction. I could try retaking some with wider bracketing if you guys think that would be a smart move. Thanks for your input so far!
Symptoms of changing the Clip values: Shift the ends of the histogram in- or outwards.
Nate’s hint:
Learn how to use the “blackClip” and “whiteClip” controls. For instance, in this case, setting the whitePoint to a negative number (like -8), would just provide a little space in the highs to make sure nothing is clipping. By default, NLP will clip both blacks and whites just a tiny bit, but you can adjust this as you’d like, and it’s all non-destructive!
You could test this by creating a few virtual copies to which you apply the same settings except for those clipping point values. You should see something like this:
First, @Digitizer and @Nate are morel likely to know a solution than I am.
Second, I test each film stock by finding a few shots with very bright highlights (AKA shadows after inversion). Then I start at ISO 100 and my fstop of choice and run every 1/3 from -2 stops to +3. Then I look at the RAW files and look for clipped highlight data (AKA shadows after inversion). I convert the 3-4 closest to the ideal frame just barely clipping to decide if there are any color shifts or data loss I don’t like in the dark areas of the film (AKA highlights after inversion) and make my adjustments from there for that film stock. Write the settings down and you’re good to go for your sensor, lens, light combo.
Extra step for slides, I take the 3-5 images around the clipped highlights data loss point (these do not need to be inverted, obviously, they only need a linear profile applied) and I equalize them all to the ideal exposure that has zero clipping. I bring the dark images up and the bright images down to match the ideal one to look for color shifts or highlight data loss in my slides just in case I got it wrong. Write it down and off to the races again.
Slides tolerate absolutely no overexposure because of their linear nature and therefore have no latitude past it’s clipping points. If you clip it, it’s gone.
Note: Negative film exhibits highlight compression, making it much more recoverable than slide film and ETTR can be reasonably pushed pretty far. Even better, some cameras that allow more fine tuned aperture or shutter controls can let you get even more precise in your ETTR process. My Lumix S1r allows me to do apertures in steps of 0.1, so I can set apertures of 5.8, 5.9 or 6.1 if I wanted to. Great for totally perfect scans. I would be other brands have this as well but I don’t know for certain.
Not really part of the thread’s topic, but an important preparational step:
Each film, even if it’s the same brand and type, can vary a lot, depending on exposure and development and how the film was kept before and after exposure, just to name a few. There are so many conditions for change that it’s almost inevitable to get some variation from roll to roll. Therefore, the “characterisation” step you propose makes sense to some extent.
On the other hand and according to what I found, NLP is fairly tolerant to variations of exposure in the camera scans. ETTR mostly serves to prevent noise in bright areas of converted images. Still, some slight change in colours and tonality exists between converted exposure-bracketed camera scans, but for me, they are mostly within the “landing zone” from where fine tuning will do the rest.
Careful with ETTR: Don’t push it too far. Lightroom applies some magic to highlights (and shadows) which can make images look slightly different from what you’ll get with export.
Thread’s topic:
Assuming one has an optimal starting point due to doing the above and considering that NLP clips the extremes slightly (according to what Nate wrote above)…
… the white and black clip settings are an important possibility to prevent the clipping
… clipping can also be managed by e.g. the exposure, brightness and contrast sliders
As I often repeat NLP conversion output is to be understood as a starting point for further tuning. Sometimes, tuning can be difficult and sometimes, NLP conversions are spot on.
Just corrected it. Thanks for pointing that out!