Color way off with Nikon Coolscan V ED?

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mross

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Hi guys,

I have some massive trouble here with my Nikon Coolscan V ED / Silverfast 8. Hopefully someone can shed a light on what's going on..

I scan using the SA-21 film strip adapter. My workflow is:
- Overview scan of whole strip
- select image -> preview scan
- choose right profile in negafix (Kodak Gold 200, Kodak Ektar, ..)
- reset the RGB color adjustments to center of the color circle
No matter what I do, the negatives always (as a tendency) come out as green and too contrasty/with garish color. I can try to asjust with the color circle etc etc, but it still look freaking ugly.
When I scan slides (as positive), the scans always have a violet cast.

I tried switching on and off Auto CCR (Color Cast Removal), but it barely improves things, mostly messes up things even more. Even worse, switching it from off to on to off again, the colors look different afterwards than before. Is this a joke?

Even when I have found a setting of the color circle that produces somewhat less ugly color: when I move on to image right next to the one just scanned (same film strip, same scenery, same exposure.. I did multiple exposures with different focus settings), the color is completely off again and requires color settings completely different from that of the image just scanned. It is not some improperly framed scan by the way (with areas of no film in the scan or similar) which could throw off the auto calibration or something.

For a change I've downloaded and tried a demo version of Vuescan. Similar problem with the neg profiles loaded, but without any neg profile I can easily tweak the image to look more neutral and with less garish colors. However Vuescan shows strange noise patterns that look very unorganic, which Silverfast doesn't have.. which is a deal breaker for me.

Can anybody tell me what's going on? I'm experienced with professional motion picture film scanning (telecine, film scan), so I know some tweaks are always required to compensate between different processing batches etc etc.. but what Silverfast is currently doing is just grotesque. Something must be very very wrong here?

Is there a workflow that will give me somewhat neutral images to start with, given identical films, subjects, exposures, and processing?

All the best,
Marc
 
Color is way off with silverfast. Use Nikonscan, shut off everything but ICE, use Colormatch as the output profile.
 
Ranchu said:
Nikonscan runs on osx.. https://support.nikonusa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/16452/~/nikon-scan-4.0-full-version
Click to expand...

Um ... from that article, compatible Mac systems are quoted as being:
• Mac OS 9.2.2, OS 10.1.x
Click to expand...

Mac OS X v10.1.x was obsolete as of August 2002. NikonScan was based on the PowerPC cpu architecture, which was replaced by Intel cpu architecture in 2006 and available through emulation (Rosetta) until Mac OS X v10.7 "Lion" in July of 2011, which removed the Rosetta emulation mode. Since then, NikonScan has been completely dead in the water on OS X.

Unless, of course, you run Windows in Parallels or other emulation software. Then you can run some version of NikonScan and copy its output files to OS X folders.

G
 
mross said:
...
For a change I've downloaded and tried a demo version of Vuescan. Similar problem with the neg profiles loaded, but without any neg profile I can easily tweak the image to look more neutral and with less garish colors. However Vuescan shows strange noise patterns that look very unorganic, which Silverfast doesn't have.. which is a deal breaker for me.
...
Click to expand...

Hi Marc,

I drive my Coolscan V ED (and Super Coolscan 9000 ED) with VueScan. I have to admit that I haven't scanned many color negatives lately, but my experience has been that the supplied color profiles are often not particularly great, but they shouldn't produce cartoonish junk. If you want to get accurate color straight out of the scanner, it's best to use the pro version and produce IT8 color calibrations for your scanner and film. For production volumes, it's the only way to go.

I don't bother with that, however, since I don't need to do production volumes of scanned images. If I'm being picky, I include in a roll of film an exposure of a tri-tone exposure card (white, gray, black) and Xrite color checker. I work the scans using a raw workflow. I set the color tab parameters manually until I get something reasonably close to what I want after a preview scan, checking the graph to be sure that I'm not clipping data, and output to raw files in DNG format with the "Raw save film" option checked (always 16bit per component RGB too).

I can then load the DNG files into Lightroom and make color balance adjustments very easily and precisely using the eye dropper and LR's color adjustment capabilities. If you do this on the tri-tone and color checker exposures first, you can apply those adjustments to all the images on the same roll of film in one action and be very close to final across the board. It's much easier and more precise than trying to jigger the scanning software parameters.

I don't know what strange noise patterns you're seeing. Can you post an image that shows them? I haven't seen any such things with my scans.

G
 
Been a while, but I was running it on 10.4 on an intel laptop and 10.5 on a G4 laptop, my dad has it currently, he has 10.8 now. I used it a few months ago, he may have had 10.7 then. He hasn't complained about it.
 
Nikon Scan 4.0.2 (one has to install v. 4 and then patch it to the latest version) runs on 10.6.8. That's the last Snow Leopard version. I have a volume on my Mac Pro which runs Nikon Scan perfectly. There is a sticky in this very sub-forum explaining this.

For 135 film I use Vuescan, professional version (which offers unlimited future updates and is well worth the extra cost of the basic version) with my V ED and 9000. It's easy to set up and use (except for 6x6 which requires fiddling about with frame spacing and offset; Nikon Scan is better for 6x6).

I typically use a film profile in Vuescan but is more habit/laziness than anything else. Since I do colour corrections in ColorPerfect scanning as Generic will work just as well.

I would highly recommend looking into Vuescan in combination with ColorPerfect.

br
Philip
 
I turn off everything scan for positive film. Then convert the negative image with Color Perfect, using their color negative feature. With it you select the film you used and that adjusts for the orange base. The mouse pointer will color cast correct. And you are practically done.

They have a trial version so no costs and you buy if you like it.

http://www.colorneg.com/colorperfect.html?lang=en
 
Thanks for the tips, I think I'll need to dig a bit deeper into Vuescan.
Not sure if I want to sink more money into Silverfast, especially with the flaky GUI behavior, as described above..

Unfortunately, as stated Nikonscan seems to be dead for OSX in practice. It runs on ancient OSX versions, but this is nothing one would want to do nowadays when every computer is internet connected and should have all important security updates. Also it's not practical with a new Mac, which comes with the latest OSX by default.

I've attached a split image of the same neg, on Silverfast (left) and Vuescan (right). Colors are not particularly well matched yet, but it does show the difference in noise (grain?)... look at the black handle of the brush...

All the best,
Marc

EDIT: Sorry for the lousy quality. Is there any way to attach a higher resolution image? In the scaled down attachment it looks like heavy edge enhancement/sharpening (which is not as apparent in the original image).
 

Attachments

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IT-8 only works for slides (which are easier to fix manually). The real problem is color negative...

What I'm still wondering... so when one scans in Vuescan and then modifies the DNG in Lightroom et al, how do you know you arrived at the "right" representation of that negative? Just subjective taste fueled ajustments until one arrives at something that is thought to be somewhat close to what the neg is expected to (how would one know?) look like? After all, analog printing is not widely available any more (which one could use as a comparative reference, not concerning RGB/Brightness but concerning general image characteristics)..
 
By the way.. this is Vuescan, with Kodak Gold 200 profile, uncorrected. It looks similarly green in Silverfast.

Is it expected that the uncorrected scan is that far off? Or am I too picky?
 

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philipus said:
Nikon Scan 4.0.2 (one has to install v. 4 and then patch it to the latest version) runs on 10.6.8. That's the last Snow Leopard version.
Click to expand...

New Yosemite Macs won't run Snow Leopard even on an external drive. 🙁

Generally the oldest version of OS X that can run on a Mac is the version that it was installed on it, when you bought it.
 
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