After a year of testing various setups, comparing lab scans to my own scans (either flatbed, DSLR) and every conversion imaginable from manual to competing NLP software…
I’m still getting scans that look like it was taken on a DSLR…it’s crisp if I can put it into words. Maybe I’m just so used to the “Noritsu” look. I can get colours to match after testing out my setup with an xrite…but the Noritsu scans always have this “soft glow” that I’m trying to replicate.
Does anyone know what I mean or have any tips? I’m assuming it’s in the curves with the noritsu, it’s doing something…
Fading blacks, pulling highlights with a curve and lower contrast gets close. Or maybe it’s just a placebo in the end…but I feel my DSLR scans are coming out too digital when comparing to a Lab who knows what they’re doing with a Noritsu…
What film stock are you using? I have found that professional colour negative stocks like Portra 400 can look shockingly close to the colours of a digital CMOS sensor.
May I suggest something? You most likely know Nik (now Dxo) plugin for Photoshop/lightroom Analog Efex which allows you to simulate look of various film stocks. So you can basically take you DSLR scans and put them in that plugin to return to “film look” and of course you will be be able to observe what happens to the pictures once analog look is applied. Most likely it’s the LUT to which we don’t we have access and can only guess the shape of that LUT , but it’s also some grain, halo , all sort of unsharpen tool tool which you may try reverse engineer. BTW, Layers in Phototoshot can be converted into LUT if needed, so if you spend time you can probably achieve the look you are after - or most likely discover the wizard behind the curtain.
