Coolscan/Vuescan and C41 BW film issue.

[januaryman]

Hi- just got my Coolscan V ed and using Vuescan for my BW400CN negatives. I get a lot of graininess in the scans if scanned as negatives? Anyone have any tips? The tips on the Vuescan website are wrong.

 

[daveywaugh]

I had exactly the same issues with a couple of different Minolta scanners and 400CN, so I can certainly relate to what you are talking about. If you are judging primarily on-screen then my little ramble below may help - otherwise you can totally ignore it all 🙂

IMO the graininess mostly relates to VueScan's sharpening algorithms. Coming from a design and pre-press background I have always been comfortable with how drum scans appear on-screen (kind of oversharpened and grainy) knowing that once an image has been 'halftoned' in print, the 'look' was very different. These days we've become so used to seeing digital photos that look sooo smooth on-screen but frankly print terribly unless they have been prepped for press by an experienced operator. Even these days, I have seen stuning pics from D3's and the like look awful in a magazine.

The scans I was getting via VueScan were kind of 'drum scan like' in their appearance and in print the results were really quite good. On screen however, they did look strange and if I was doing stuff for the web, I'd scan with no sharpening, then scale exactly and finally applying a bit of USM in PhotoShop.

Anyway, I am sorry if I am way off the mark, but it could be as simple as that. Just the way it handles the sharpening.

 

[januaryman]

I guess I need to try printing something out, instead of looking art my monitor screen.

Thanks

 

[J J Kapsberger]

I have a Coolscan V ED and it too has major trouble with C41 colour. The Coolscan gives you good slides, OK BW (depending on the film--e.g., my scans of HP5 have been noisy typically), and generally bad C41--lots of noise (what you might take for grain) and not so great tonality.

 

[shadowfox]

Jim, I mess with Vuescan once. I didn't like the results nor the experience. So I stick with the Nikon software. Never have a problem with grains:

In fact sometimes, I'd like to see some more visible grains from this film 🙂

 

[robertdfeinman]

The best way to use Vuescan is to just have it capture the raw data and then do editing in Photoshop or similar.

Set black and white clipping points to 0 (or at most 0.01 for highlights). Turn off all sharpening. You can do some color balance, or find a neutral spot in the scene and right click on it.

Set the scan dpi to the real maximum of the scanner (not the phony extrapolated values).

Import the TIF into Photoshop and then use curves to set the contrast range and fix the brightness as well.

I have a bunch of tips on my web site on how to optimize your scans.
Just follow the tips link on my home page.

 

[furcafe]

Agreed. Try setting the color balance to "None."

The best way to use Vuescan is to just have it capture the raw data and then do editing in Photoshop or similar.

Set black and white clipping points to 0 (or at most 0.01 for highlights). Turn off all sharpening. You can do some color balance, or find a neutral spot in the scene and right click on it.

Set the scan dpi to the real maximum of the scanner (not the phony extrapolated values).

Import the TIF into Photoshop and then use curves to set the contrast range and fix the brightness as well.

 

[januaryman]

Okay! I'm ready to try it as a RAW capture. Thanks all for the tips and advise. I DID buy Vuescan in a moment of instant-decision, so I'll be damned if I don't use it. 😉 Now I just have to learn HOW! I'm off to Robert's website to check it out and take notes.

 

[robertdfeinman]

If you need any help just ask (email is fine).

Keep us informed as to your progress using this thread as well. I'm sure others will want to learn from your experiences.

 

[januaryman]

Found that scanning in with no adjustments to the scanner, I got a "clean" scan of the frame with all all highlights and shadows and just awful, flat and colors all "off." BUT I load up Elements, play with the Levels adjustment layer for each color channel and all is well. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Now a tougher task -- get good B&W scans.

 

[Petroleum V. Nasby]

People have issues. Scanners have problems.

 

[januaryman]

Ah! I guess you were trying to parse the "subject" of my thread, Petroleum? You'll note it was not a sentence at all, just some nouns, adjectives and a conjuction. Perhaps that was what confused you. If you'd like a subject and a verb, try this: I Have a Coolscan/Vuescan and C41 BW film issue.

Does that clear it up for you?

Thanks for the help, though!

 

[JTK]

Vuescan's slightly more efficient than Nikonscan for silver film in my experience, but not better or worse. Nikonscan operates the motorized negative carrier much more efficiently. They make equally good files from color slides or C41 negs in color or B&W.

Evaluating scans at scanner-level is a mistake. Look at the file where the scanner saved it, via Photoshop or Elements...the scan isn't complete until it's tweaked in post-processing.

I find color negs easy to scan ("grain" is of course adjustable in both Nikonscan and Vuescan, as well as in post-processing), but I was a pretty good color negative printer in the darkroom...when something's the wrong color I usually know immediately what to do to fix it, though it may take a couple of iterations.

 

[Nando]

I went through the same issue. Robertdfeinman gave good advice. Personally, I now save to a 16-bit TIFF file instead of using the RAW option. I simply turn off all the options except for the digital ice feature and then do all my adjustments in Photoshop. I find that a 16-bit file gives more flexibility when post-processing. I also do 3 passes as I find that it helps with the noise reduction.

Here's one scan from BW400CN film:


The main reason why I use Vuescan is that I found the Nikon Scan software to be a real resource hog. My computer would slow down significantly while scanning. With Vuescan, it does not and I can do other things on the computer while scanning without taking a big performance hit.

 

[januaryman]

Nando, thanks for reminding me about the multi-pass scanning capability of Vuescan. I helped with my color slides, and would probably do the same for negatives. Next batch, that's my game plan. Cannot for the life of me figure out how to set to 16 bit - actually, I think the V is 14 bit... But the results are pretty decent as it is now. Perhaps it'd be best not to muck about with it and end up with FUBAR.

 

[Nando]

The setting for 16-bit is in the output section. If you haven't done so already, click on the 'more' button at the bottom to reveal more options. Put a checkmark besides TIFF file. Then the TIFF file options show up. In the 'TIFF file type' menu choose 16-bit Gray for black and white film or 48-bit RGB for colour film.

 

[BrunoK]

Robert Feinman
Good of you to post your tips page.

Browsed through your Hawaii series. My view of Haleakala was from the right seat of a helicopter. Approaching from the south, the pilot was flying nap of the earth as he broke through the early morning cloud cover at the craters edge. Wow! Awesome views made more so by the realization that Manhattan could be contained within.

 

[januaryman]

Thanks to everyone who provided needed tips and clarifications!

 

[Imar]

Hi Nando, would you please be so kind to sum up what settings you use in Vuescan to get the results as in your Porche image? Like scan media and curve low and curve high etc?
I'm using the BW400CN and Vuescan as well but I do get a lot of noise and I get confused about all the different settings people use. My scanner is a Dimage Scan Dual IV.

Here is an image with the noise I get.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/imarr/3128244467/sizes/l/

When I'm able to get the results like the Porche photo then I will put it up here as well.

Thanks a lot!

 

[Nando]

Hi Imar.

I can't see your photo unfortunately. Flickr says I don't have permission to view it.

Here are my settings for BW400CN. I have a Nikon Coolscan V ED so perhaps there are some settings that are a bit different. I know that when I switch from the Nikon to my Microtek or to the scanner on my printer, a few options disappear and some new and different ones appear.

In the Input tab,
Media: Color negative (since BW400CN is a C41 film - I choose B&W negative to traditional B&W films)
Scan resolution: 4000dpi (this is the maximum my scanner will support)
Number of passes: 4
Frame alignment: on
Multi-exposure: off
Lock-exposure: off
Red, Green and Blue analogue gain all set to 1

I crop manually so nothing special in the Crop tab.

In the Filter tab,
Infrared Clean: medium
Restore colors: off
Restore fading: off
Grain reduction: none
Sharpen: off

In the Color Tab,
Color balance: none
Curve low: 25
Curve high: 75
Brightness: 1
Brightness for red, blue and green all set to 1
Negative vendor: Kodak
Negative brand: Portra
Negative type: 400NC (I'm not sure if the vendor, brand and type matters much - no entry for BW400CN so I used one of the Portra films)
Scanner color space: Built-in
Output color space: Apple RGB
Monitor color space: Apple RGB

In the Output tab:
Printed size: Fixed dpi
Printed dpi: 4000
TIFF file: on
TIFF size reduction: 1 (no reduction)
TIFF file type: 48-bit RGB (since BW400CN is C41 - I choose 16-bit for traditional B&W films)

The TIFF files usually turns out to be a bit dark and dull at this point. I then take the TIFF file and post-process it in Photoshop. Usually just set the black and white points using the Levels tool Then I use the Curve tool to brighten or darken the image if necessary. Usually by just moving the mid-points up or down. I then use the Curve tool again to make a slight S-curve to increase contrast a bit. While I'm using the curves tool, I keep an eye on the histogram to make sure that I don't clip the hightlights or the shadows. That's basically it. When I resize for the web, I sharpen it a little bit to compensate for the smoothing that occurs when resizing.

Edit: Just wanted to add that I also use the curve tool to give a warmer tone to shadows and mid-tones of the photograph while keeping the highlights neutral.