Coolscan, Reala, and Vuescan

[wjlapier]

I'm having a heck of a time with Reala and my Coolscan V. I used Nikon's software for most of my other films, like Velvia, Astia, Sensia, Kodachrome...but for some reason I'm not getting the "punch" affect right from the scan. In fact, the scan looks rather pale compared to the pictures I took and had printed-so I can't put the entire blame on the film--or could I?

Anyway, using Vuescan for the first time and using the presets for Reala, the pics still don't match the prints, not even close. I have to do alot of tweaking of each picture which is taking the fun out out of scanning.

Anyone have some tips or suggestions to scan Reala negs and get consistent color like the prints?

Thanx--

 

[mh2000]

Who did the prints? They probably just had the contrast and saturation jacked way up. Your scans are probably closer to the truth. Flat dull scans are usually easier to punch up than punched up scans are to tone down.

 

[historicist]

The prints will usually have had automatic adjustments made to them by the machine which prints them, print film itself is much less contrasty than slide film and so it needs these adjustments to look punchy when printed.

The scanner shows you what the negatives really look like, it's quite a difference often!

As far as I can work out, these adjustments are more or less the same as auto levels and auto colour in photoshop. I don't use print film much myself, so I can't give you great advice, but I have a couple of suggestions:

- Use the ROC option (though I find this either works brilliantly or gives a strange white balance)
- Use the curves and LCH editor to add contrast and set the black point
- Just do auto levels and curves in Photoshop afterwards

Hopefully someone with more experience with print film will have other suggestions.

 

[wjlapier]

Who did the prints? They probably just had the contrast and saturation jacked way up. Your scans are probably closer to the truth. Flat dull scans are usually easier to punch up than punched up scans are to tone down.

Prints were done by Walgreens. I was testing a Canon 7 and 50 .95 and wanted negs developed fast and I wanted prints to compare the scans to.

I shot some Reala with a Nikon F6 and 80-200AFS and the scans were dull, but I had no prints to compare to.

I can get the images close to the prints, but when I use those settings for other images they don't look the same as the first print. If I'm not clear, one setting doens't work for all prints.

 

[RayPA]

...

The scanner shows you what the negatives really look like, it's quite a difference often!

...

This is very true! What you get from a one-hour lab in a drugstore are often over sharpened and over saturated scans and unrealistic color on the prints. It's an eye-opener when you start scanning your own work and see "natural" colors.

I've not scanned Reala, but I have found that the presets for the different film types in Vuescan usually aren't "plug and play." The presets in my version of VS are odd and somewhat cryptic. With that said you can usually use the presets as starting points to build your own presets (options) and get very good scans with just a little bit of tweaking—once you have a good starting point.

Are the scans neutral in color balance? Once you get a good neutral results, you should be able to take that to post and get whatever you want result-wise.



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