Getting the most out of New Coolscan 5000 (and comp w/Fuji Frontier)

[dcsang]

That's pretty much what I do as well, but in 48bit RGB and then continue in Photoshop. I switch all filters and sharpening in Vuescan off, except ICE for C-41 film. I generate both large tif files and small jpeg files in one shot (the jpegs for browsing, later).

Cheers,

Roland.

Having the JPG files is a good idea Roland - sure would make browsing quicker - they retain the same file name as the TIF (or DNG for that matter) files right?

Cheers,
Dave

 

[dfoo]

Do you find the 48 bit RGB to give better black and whites? I'm not sure which channels vuescan uses for monochrome... The thing about 48 RGB is the monster file size at 4000 DPI.

 

[ferider]

Having the JPG files is a good idea Roland - sure would make browsing quicker - they retain the same file name as the TIF (or DNG for that matter) files right?

Cheers,
Dave

That's correct, Dave. Reg. the entire roll, I do have the Nikon cannister that comes with the strip feeder (got it for Christmas). You attach it to the back of the scanner, it's a drum, probably 15-20cm in diameter. Convenient, because I can leave the film in over night, dust-protected.

Sometimes, to reduce noise mostly, I do 3-4 samples / scan, than the scanner gets slower, and the 45min beer translates to a movie and falling asleep 🙂

Do you find the 48 bit RGB to give better black and whites? I'm not sure which channels vuescan uses for monochrome... The thing about 48 RGB is the monster file size at 4000 DPI.

I do mostly color, dfoo. And disks are cheap .....

Cheers,

Roland.

 

[noimmunity]

Thanks, Roland. It is a great scanner and I'm really happy I decided to reallocate resources from lenses to the scanner. Gradually, I'm heading in the direction of taking more and more control of the process that produces a final image, both for colour (M8) and B&W (ZI and Eastman 5222). S'pose that means developing B&W myself, but I really hate chemicals, so we'll see.

This is very interesting and helpful and I want to thank eveybody for contributing, once again especially dfoo. I played a little last night with the workflow in the link provided by dfoo. It seems to make sense, but I think some tweaking may still be necessary even after the film base is locked. I also found that setting the high/low curves to 0.25 and 0.75 (as suggested by another post in the linked thread) works better (I have Vuescan 8.5.02).

Frank, I am turning everything off (just had to learn where "everything" is first!!!).

I want to get back with more results for feedback...later.

 

[dfoo]

....
I do mostly color, dfoo. And disks are cheap .....

Yes, I mostly do black and white, although I do have around 50 rolls of color to scan that I shot last summer. The biggest problem with big files is not the cost of the disks, its the "cost" of doing backup.

 

[dcsang]

Yes, I mostly do black and white, although I do have around 50 rolls of color to scan that I shot last summer. The biggest problem with big files is not the cost of the disks, its the "cost" of doing backup.

hehe.. too true (sayeth the man who just put in a 1TB drive into his system for just his personal photos..... 700 GB to go...)

Dave

 

[ferider]

I like silver for back-up 🙂

1 TB USB disks can be had for around US 120 at Best Buys today.
For back-up, just add another one ....

Cheers,

Roland.

 

[craygc]

I find with sharpen true B&W scans with the unsharp mask needs thought. If its grainy, I don't sharpen. This just exacerbates the grain and as it is, gain tends to provide good edge actuance anyways. Even on a good scan, in conjunction with an edge mask, I find the highest value I apply is about 80 with Radius set to 1, and Threshold set to 0. With colour, especially transparencies, with the same radius and threshold values I can usually apply between 150 ~ 200 without getting over-sharpening effects.

I also find with this scanner - using Vuescan - that locking an exposure value into an emulsion specific .ini file that can be loaded as required is beneficial. Vuescan can calculate this for you using clear film base (and they're all different). Doing this more or less anchors your black point which minimises tonal stretching on that end as you set the white point. Stretching out the white side of the histogram seems to introduce far less noticeable speckling than if done the other way around.

I use 8x sampling on the basis that each doubling of the sample rate increased the significant bit depth by 1-bit. Regardless of whether these scanners have 14- or 16-bit registers, they certainly don't capture data to that depth. For example, if a one pass scan captured 12-bits of real data, an 8x scan would extend that to 15-bits (3 doublings 2, 4, 8). As a caveat, like everyone one else I haven't actually seen a visible difference but from a theoretical perspective, I do it anyways. (I stop at 8x rather than 16x as a compromise on scan time 😀)

 

[Tim Gray]

I try to scan flat in Vuescan. Setting the white and black points to their minimums help. I also set the Buffer % in the crop tab to ignore 5 or 10% of the cropped area when setting the exposure. Helps keep any film base or white areas at the edge from mucking with exposure.

I use the Tmax CI=.55 setting for all B&W film. This seems a good match for how I develop stuff.

One thing I found is that instead of letting Vuescan make gray from 'auto' I found which channel was the sharpest. I think it was blue for me. Less noisy and sharper. I don't find that scanning B&W as color really does anything for me except introduce another step and make for bigger files.

As far as color neg goes, I find Nikon Scan superior in about every way, with the exception of speed. Nikon Scan never seems to scan quicker at lower resolutions, which is a pain if I just want low res jpgs.

 

[dfoo]

... Helps keep any film base or white areas at the edge from mucking with exposure.

That's what locking the film base is supposed to do 🙂

...As far as color neg goes, I find Nikon Scan superior in about every way, with the exception of speed. Nikon Scan never seems to scan quicker at lower resolutions, which is a pain if I just want low res jpgs.

Full agree!

 

[craygc]

That's what locking the film base is supposed to do 🙂

Locking the "exposure"; ..."film base" just deals with removing the mask on C41's

 

[dfoo]

Ok, you are right. I was misusing the terms used by vuescan. There is lock exposure (which locks the base + fog), and then there is lock film base color, which is used to remove the mask (as you point out).

 

[piazza63]

Hello, I have a coolscan V ED that I'm borrowing from a friend, and I was wondering if the bath conversion worked on this as well. I don't see an exit for the film out the back..Could it store it internally? Or an I stuck with 6 frames at a time? Also are there any sites going over the different nikon scanners? I'm looking at getting something better than my epson v350 and have heard good things about the v750 and the nikon scanners, but dont know what will be best for me. I want to be able to get good scans in bulk that I can pull into lightroom and edit then save jpegs for web and bigger files for archiving..On that note what is the best format for that? TIFF? or are JPGs alright?

 

[dfoo]

You cannot use the bulk roll adapter on the coolscan V, nor can you modify the film feeder. With respect to the format, if you want the best quality scan to tiff (or DNG if using vuescan). I have both the v700 and coolscan, and for 35mm the coolscan is visibly sharper, but shows much more grain.

 

[Tim Gray]

That's what locking the film base is supposed to do 🙂

Oh I know. I just find it way easier with the buffer thing. Fewer steps.

 

[dcsang]

This is a link to the tutorial I was talking about. If you follow this, the exposure out of the scanner will be quite good and the highlights will likely as not be blown. I always scan to dng, 16 bit grayscale for black and white.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/ishootfilm/discuss/72157608204093047/

Thanks for this tutorial and link - I've given it a try with the latest version of VueScan and it seems to do the trick. Here's one that I've duotoned (the attachment is the "standard" version without duotone)

ETA: Silvertone (aka Agfa APX) 400 @ 200 dev'd in Rodinal 1:50 for 10 min - shot with the M7 and 50 Lux @ f1.4

Cheers,
Dave

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

This is a link to the tutorial I was talking about. If you follow this, the exposure out of the scanner will be quite good and the highlights will likely as not be blown. I always scan to dng, 16 bit grayscale for black and white.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/ishootfilm/discuss/72157608204093047/

Wow, I finally got a chance to read this--VERY useful information. Thanks a lot...this will make my scans much better right out of the scanner & there will be less work to do in Lightroom.

 

[Tuolumne]

To get rid of dust I blow my negatives after they are mounted in the carrier with compressed air. I blow them really hard, at an extreme angle, so the dust is blown away and not just scattered on the negative. It also helps to have really clean negatives to begin with. If static is holding the dust to the negative, there are deionizing guns that can be had, but I can't remember their names. I've never had a static build-up problems, so I don't use them, but in the old days I used to use them on my LPs before blowing the dust off them.

/T

 

[dcsang]

To get rid of dust I blow my negatives after they are mounted in the carrier with compressed air.
/T

Are you using the carrier for the Nikon 5000?

Cheers,
Dave

 

[dcsang]

Wow, I finally got a chance to read this--VERY useful information. Thanks a lot...this will make my scans much better right out of the scanner & there will be less work to do in Lightroom.

I totally agree - it completely changed the look of the scan and it really really helps to get a consistently good scan right off the bat with very little post processing of the scan.

It's going to become my default workflow for scanning.

Cheers,
Dave