Strange green (purple from negative) rendition in DSLR scanning issue

Digital Camera Scanning
1

I am having an issue that keeps showing up with, what I believe is a scanning problem.

My setup is as follows:

  • Lightsource: Skier Sunray Box.
  • Camera: Lumix G9
  • Film holder: Sandwiched between two anti-glare glass plates. (I had the same problem with the regular film holders from Skier, with no glass. It seems not to be a reflection problem).

The problem that keeps showing up is how the color green is rendered in the inversion from the scans. My first guess was that it was a processing problem. I did a project containing lots of green hues, photographing forests and jungles. I had processed the negatives myself and was convinced I had messed up the processing step. Since then, I have sent all my negs to the lab for processing.

The other day I was scanning some old negs, lab processed, and I noticed the same problem again in the green areas, often leaves, grass, or green neon sign. I have attached some pictures of the issue below.

I’m currently trying to find another camera body that I can try, and see if the same problem occurs. I updated the camera software to the latest version, but it didn’t help. It is hard to see from the purple areas directly on the neg, but I do not believe the problem is on the negatives, it looks ok to me.

However, has anyone come across a similar problem? I have tried to search in several forums, but can’t find anyone having the same issue. So what do you guys think? What is this?

To eliminate possible errors:

  • Scanning in RAW
  • Adobe RGB color space
  • Tried exposure bracketing (HDR) and single.
  • Masking out the light source
  • Reset and installed the latest camera software.

Screenshot 2023-02-14 at 16.53.47
Screenshot 2023-02-14 at 16.53.471920×691 102 KB

2

Hey there – Welcome to the forum!

I’ve had a similar issue with negatives without a clear black/white point. The inversion process then messes colors up. Leaving a bit of the film border in solved the issue for me.

Would you mind sharing the RAW negative file for us to check things too?

– Chris

3

Thank you for the reply. I do not think it is a problem with the black/white point. Here is a google drive folder where I have shared some examples of the issue, Raw files with film borders. I want to stress that I have only made an inversion in photoshop. Nothing I have tried resolves it in further processing. It is like the green in those areas is blown out.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HGuc4Jm7ol6v7uH3vgQhXblbspq9x4By?usp=sharing

4

Your scans are perfectly fine, they convert as they should.

See here: https://chris.bmonkeys.net/i/9148y40.jpg
Details: https://chris.bmonkeys.net/i/k02dh55.jpg

These are conversions done with NLP, though you can achieve acceptable results with Photoshop alone, too. The issue is the conversion settings you’re using. You are using 8bit with Adobe Color. Using Adobe Color on the negative will add a biased contrast and colour rendition to the negative and reducing it to 8bit doesn’t help at all. With 16bit you’ll have (at least) all colours but will still see the colour bias from Adobe Color (https://chris.bmonkeys.net/i/ckig618.jpg).

I’d recommend using NLP for the conversion. This is well invested money!

1 Like