How to scan extremely contrasty negatives

[mllanos1111]

I have some negs that date back to 1984 that have images I really need to scan.
The negs are B&W extremely dense and contrasty.
I have not been able to get a decent scan out of these since they scan almost pure black and white.
I'm using a Coolscan V but I don't think it has the ability to scan such a dens neg.
I'm wondering if there might be a way around this. I read somewhere that I may be able to somehow bleach out the negs and get them down to a more acceptable range.
Any ideas would help.

Thank you

 

[Matus]

If you can set the exposure of the scanner manually, than you could try to scan once for the shadows and once for the highlights and use some sort of HDR software to combine them. I am not sure whether Coolscan V can do that, but you would definitely be able to do that with a digital camera on light table.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Set the scanner to scan a color transparency instead of black and white neg. Transparencies have the very wide density range you're seeing with your contrasty neg. After scanning, invert the image in photoshop.

 

[mllanos1111]

Chris thank you so much! I read all your stuff and ended purchasing Viewscan the other day afterwards. Thank you I will try that tonight!

 

[Highway 61]

Chris thank you so much! I read all your stuff and ended purchasing Viewscan the other day afterwards. Thank you I will try that tonight!

This is the basic advice Chris and others (including Bob Michaels and myself) have been keeping giving here for years. Sadly it seems that people still want their scanner software to do it all and create a well balanced positive image in a few minutes.

NB : scan in 16bits per channel mode, and in tiff (or dng). Do NOT scan in jpeg.

Scanning is having a machine capture the most information possible off a negative and create a sharp image (the only job a scanner driver must really do is to make the autofocus work properly - and that's all). Then the goal is to get a very flexible RGB file with lots of headroom on the left and the right sides of the histogram (as if you had shot a RAW file with a full frame DSLR) which you edit in a GOOD images editor.

That is, PhotoShop (from the CS2 version onwards please).

No other way.

 

[mllanos1111]

Thank you for that advice, I will practice all this tonight.