Getting the most from my new scanner

[ChrisCummins]

Hey all,
since I've started developing my own film, I decided to start doing my own scanning and so bought a Canon 9000f. It arrived this morning and I am trying to figure out now what to do with it. It came with SilverFast-SE, PS Elements 8 and some bundled Canon scanning software.

So, how would you propose I go about using this new scanner? I will largely be using it to print 6x4's and the occasional 8x12 from 35mm b&w negative film. I get through a lot of film and so having some way of streamlining the scanning process as much as possible would save me a lot of time. Would you recommend I scan 6x4 @ 300dpi and then rescan the odd frame for a larger print?

I use lightroom to do all of my organising/processing of shots. Any info on recommended sharpness/scanning res/software/etc would be really great. Thanks
Chris

 

[f/14]

Hello Chris.
I have saved a lot of time with SilverFast by skipping all the original software that came with the scanner (exept the low lever Win drivers) and using Silverfast to scan in "raw-mode". What the SilverFast raw mode does is simply to record the density of the film for each pixel. This means that 9 out of 10 times you only run each negative once though the scanner. You store that file as your "digital negative" and do all the manipulations in the PC afterwards. Normally what cosumes all the time when you use the oridinary scanner software from Canon is to sit and wait for the scanner to rescan the negative each time you have tweaked the scanner settings and then observe whether the tweaking was what you hoped for.
The result that comes out of the scanner in raw-mode appears as a negative and you then invert the scan in Photoshop to see the positive image. Then you can see the Photoshop tweaking results in real time from the already scanned data. With some training you can do the tweaking in 30 to 60 seconds per slide. The tweaked result should be stored under another file name. If you want to make another tweak to the negative later you simply open up the digital negative file and store another version of the picture.
Whether my comments here apply or not depends on whether SilverFast SE has the raw-scan function that is available in the full version.

 

[ChrisCummins]

Hi [large aperture] 🙂 RAW mode sounds like exactly what I need. I used to hold the negatives on a lightbox and take a photo with my digi-cam so I'm very familiar with working with a negative in Photoshop. I don't know if my stripped down version of Silverfast can do that, to be honest I find the layout to be quite disorientating, with too many buttons which do the same/similar things...

Regards
Chris