I finished scanning 12k of negatives with remarkable results. Knowing this isn’t a positive film forum, I am hoping for some sage advice please.
I am now scanning 35mm slides with my Fuji X-T2- Fuji 80mm Macro and a Negative Supply 95CRI light source. Shooting in RAW, lowest ISO possible- 200, F/5.6 @ 30-60th sec.
The results are poor. Not even close to the original slide. The slides are properly exposed and in excellent condition.
Any ideas are appreciated.
Scott.
@outsideandy, can you provide a few examples of poor slide copies?
Maybe your shots could use some additional treatment like this, which covers a different situation though::
Here is an example of an 2 images I made yesterday.
Te film was a Fuji Velvia 100 asa. Colors are way off.
Thanks for stepping in to discuss.
A transparency film is much higher contrast than a properly exposed and processed negative, color negatives being especially flat or low contrast. Slide film is designed to have a high gamma or slope in its contrast curve. To scan with the best results, you want to scan to a linear gamma/contrast, and not introduce any further gamma/contrast in your capture and processing. I use Capture One and under “Base Characteristics” for the ICC profile for your camera, you should choose “Linear Response.” You will get a capture processing that is truly linear and it will have significantly better highlight and shadow detail than any other curve chosen. Having linear as your base setup, then test and set your correct exposure. I am not aware you can use a linear gamma with Camera Raw, but I have not used it since PS6, so others correct me. As of PS6 Camera Raw, even the “Linear” point curve does not give a linear response. Camera Raw ALWAYS introduces a built-in LUT gamma “correction” for the camera used and in my experience this LUT cannot be turned off. There are other raw processors I have not used that may have a truly linear response, so check out your favorite for this capability. I have no affiliation with Capture One but my experience with it is that it’s tethering is easy and reliable, and its color engine is superb. I make digital scans with it and my Nikon D850 that are extremely high quality and faithful to the original.
If you’re familiar with using the terminal, you could get a copy of DCRAW and use it to create a TIFF with custom gamma.
Due to the high density differences of modern slide film, a possibility to get better definition would be to capture two to three shots, exposed with the same aperture, but with different exposure times and then combine those shots with Lightroom’s HDR merge function.
Post a link to a few of the .raf files and I can try to see what we can do…
Thank you for your guidance. I have loaded the free version of C1 and will try it out. With all of my 34k images in LRC, I have more to load. Just have to look at the differences between the two .
I’m not very keen with that process but willing to investigate. Learning a lot throughout this endeavor.
Will try to load some scanned images.
I’ve had to do the multiple exposure and blend technique for focus when I used a less than stellar lens, and could not get sharp grain center to corner. I don’t recommend doing a three exposure blend for focus unless absolutely necessary (really curly film) as the software can create merging inconsistencies with visible grain, an in and out of focus look. As for HDR blending, it could be worth a try with a really difficult slide, but you will almost never need to do that if you can get a linear-processed capture. It’s better, more predictable and much faster in post to get it all in one shot, both focus and tonal scale.
Thank you for all the great tips and guidance. I’ll post images as soon as I get them worthy of this forum.
Hi @jeffstev and @outsideandy,
The camera profiles included with Negative Lab Pro are true linear profiles. So it should be exactly what you are looking for to get a more neutral starting point on your slide digitization.
In your case, you can use the profiles as a starting place for editing your slides (without the need to use the Negative Lab Pro plugin itself). Just open up the “profile browser” in Lightroom Classic by clicking the “four boxes” button to the right of the profile name. You should then find the “Negative Lab v2.3” profile. If you want to make it easier to find this profile, you can also click the “star” icon by that profile, and then in the future, it will show up in the main profile dropdown list.
Hope that helps!
-Nate
Hi Nate,
Never before I thought of using the “Negative Lab v2.3” profile in slides I digitized with my EOS 7D.
But in some difficult cases it really proved to be useful.
Thanx!
Dietrich
Though this an old discussion, I hope it is still active. I’m a bit puzzled with my slide scans. I took some pics of a transparent area of the slide film, adjusted exposure ETTR so that blank transparent area is defined as white at maximum exposure, and scanned the entire film with that exposure setting.
I used the NLP2.3 linear camera profile (yes that helps a lot as opposed to the LR provided profiles or my own custom profiles for my camera calibrated using a reflective target).
I also did a white balance in LR on that transparent part of the film, and LR provides a color temperature of around 5300K, which agrees roughly with my light source set to 5500K. So all seems fine and I should get more or less neutral colors, representing what I see in my camera viewfinder directly from the slide, with the WB setting as measured on LR through the transparent part of the film for the remainder of the roll, no?
No…the colors are way off, shifted significantly towards blue. Eying what I see on my (calibrated) monitor and the view of the slide through my camera viewfinder, the only way I can get comparable colors is when I tell LR that the WB is about 10,100K, i.e., twice as what my light gives and what LR tells me how the color temperature measures through the transparent part of the film.
I then only need some exposure, highlights, and saturation adjustments (and in some cases some contrast) and I can get on my screen pretty close to what I see on the slide, but with the silly WB value which is roughly twice as what I set and measure.
So in the end I can get close by comparison of the screen and the slide directly, but I’m completely not understanding why I need to adjust the WB in LR to some silly unreasonable high value to get the same tones as on the slide. This is also very subjective as opposed the my target to measure it through a blank part of the slide film.
Thoughts anyone?
Hi. Sorry to drag this thread up again but did you find a solution? Have been scanning some slides with an A7R4. They look Ok initially but once imported to Lr the tone curve looks off. The slides themselves are absolutely fine.
Just wondering if there is a good process to follow to get some consistent results with slides.
