Scanning Velvia 100 with Epson V500

[bojanfurst]

It took three months for the local lab to develop a roll of Velvia 100. The slides look fine, but the scans are awful. Awful. Colours are shifted all over the place, the scans are dark... Any and all tips will be appreciated. I should probably mention that I use Epson V500 with Photoshop and Epson scanning software. C41 negs scan fine and black and white stuff is gorgeous. In fact C41 is really good - I just had a photo from my Yashica Mat published as a mag cover and it looked stunning. So what the heck am I doing wrong with the slides??? :bang:

Thanks.

 

[thegman]

Maybe if you post an example, some people can help. Have you tried Vuescan? I find it gets decent results without much effort.

 

[bojanfurst]

Right. Samples. Sorry. The first one took about 45 minutes and three million adjustments in PS to get it somewhat resembling the actual slide. The rest had no adjustments at all except the third one where I turned Restore Colour option on which simply shifted the cast into yellow... Arghh... Those mitts my daughter is wearing are the most gorgeous Christmas red you've ever seen on the slides... These are all form the SAME roll.

P.S. Sorry for cute kid picture, but this was just a test.

Thanks.

 

[katgut@earthlink.net]

I have great success with Velvia 50 and Provia 100 on my V500. There's definitely a magenta cast to these images. Have you tried the auto color correct in PS? It usually gives good results. The other thing is to photograph a gray/white/black card to achieve proper color balance.

 

[Jamie123]

The problem with these consumer flatbed scanners is that the light intensity is not adjustable. With slides that's a problem as they are generally denser than neg film.

 

[bojanfurst]

The problem with these consumer flatbed scanners is that the light intensity is not adjustable. With slides that's a problem as they are generally denser than neg film.

Thank you. That makes perfect sense. Although it's not really much help. Sigh... time to invest in a serious film scanner.

 

[ruby.monkey]

Perhaps try Vuescan first? It allows you to profile each roll before you scan it, and gives you plenty of scope for corrections on a frame-by-frame or batch basis.

There is something of a steep learning curve involved, but it's well worth the initial effort.

 

[david.elliott]

For single images -- In vuescan, to adjust the white balance, right click on a neutral point. To reset it, right click twice. At least, I think that is the proper procedure. Been a while since I scanned any color film.

Alternatively, for images all from the same roll, you can lock the film base color to eliminate color casts. Have you done that?
See - http://benneh.net/blog/index.php/2008/04/21/better-colour-neg-scanning-with-vuescan/
and - http://www.flickr.com/groups/ishootfilm/discuss/72157608204093047/

 

[bagdadchild]

You should be able to easily clear away the magenta cast by adjusting the individual rgb levels in PS or you can try the temperature and tint sliders in ACR. Photo 1 looks ok, no 2 has only a slight cast, no 3 looks superb, just right, only the last one has too much cast.

 

[Ezzie]

I´ve seen a review of the v600 where this was the main (negative) issue. For all practical purposes the v500 and 600 are the same scanner, the difference being in the v600 having a larger area for transparency scanning.

Vuescan did indeed do a better job. But putting the Epson scan SW in professional mode also did a very much better job, as I recall. Also make sure you have the latest driver.

See here for more tip (review mentioned): http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/V600/V600.HTM

 

[bojanfurst]

Thanks all.

 

[pevelg]

I use IT8 targets to correct colors. Helps quite a bit. I had the v750 and the IT8 targets made color most accurate (to my eyes) than PS editing. I am getting better results with the Coolscan 8000 though.

 

[pevelg]

Oh, and I used to use the Coolscan 5000 and didn't use IT8 tagets, but did use Vuescan as the software. Other than the slight adjustment in contrast, the images were pretty close to the slides.

 

[35photo]

To get the color in the ballpark you really need to calibrate the scanner with IT8 target preferably a Velvia 100 target to get the colors spot on.

Marko