Impossible to scan B/W without clipping?

[mafoofan]

Is it impossible to scan black and white negatives with a high-end consumer scanner without clipping? I'm using a Nikon 5000ED and have yet to figure out how to capture the full tonal range from black and white negatives. I've tried using Vuescan's Lock Exposure feature, manually setting the white and black points to 0%, adjusting the buffer area to exclude the film edges, inputting and outputting in various combinations of 16-bit grayscale and 48-bit RGB, etc.

No matter what I do, the highlights are always clipped and the shadows are usually clipped.

I've followed various online tutorials and walkthroughs, too.

Is this simply an inevitable problem with black and white?

 

[johannielscom]

Should not occur. At least not always.

Maybe your negatives are quite dense? Or high contrast? As a result the scanner might not pick up too many middle tones and clipping might occur.

 

[mafoofan]

Should not occur. At least not always.

Maybe your negatives are quite dense? Or high contrast? As a result the scanner might not pick up too many middle tones and clipping might occur.

Possibly. The film in question is Tri-X, developed in Diafine. I was under the impression that was a very scanner-friendly combination.

 

[VTHokiEE]

I see you've tried RGB so this probably won't help, but I gave up using greyscale on my V500. I found that I got much better results when I scanned the negative as a positive then inverted and desaturated the result...

 

[jljohn]

I got vastly better results this way too. My workflow was as follows: scan as a color slide (CoolScan with Vuescan), batch invert all scans from that session in photoshop and save over the original scan, import into Lightroom; and edit them either in Lightroom or Silverefex. The extra, inversion, step is well worth the trouble in terms of output. Good luck with it!

I see you've tried RGB so this probably won't help, but I gave up using greyscale on my V500. I found that I got much better results when I scanned the negative as a positive then inverted and desaturated the result...

 

[Particular]

If you set the exposure carefully, and lock it, but do not set a black and white point you should be able to scan the whole tonal range. The clipping probably is occurring because you set the black and white points. I do not let vuescan do any adjustment. I scan 16bit, and then do the rest in Lightroom. Negatives shouldn't really ever clip. I have scanned old technical pan negatives that are very dense, but the Nikon could cope fine. The closest I have come to clipping was with kodachrome slides, but as long as the exposure is set correctly they are ok.

 

[mafoofan]

Well, I tried setting the film type and it seems to have worked on the first few trial frames. Originally, I had it set to Generic and Color Negative. I switched it to Kodak TMAX-400 (not the right film) and D76 CI = .80 (not the right developer), and the clipping appears to be gone.

I hate that this appears to work because I have no idea what's actually happening.

 

[Brian Legge]

Hmm. I've used generic/color with it and don't have problems.

I do find that I need to occasionally play with the curve low and high to get the range I want. Beyond that, black point 0/white point 0.1 to capture a lot of range. Again, I'll occasionally move these for specific frames if I want the detail elsewhere and don't care about certain areas of the frame.

 

[brbo]

Check if setting your output color space in Vuescan to something wider improves (decreases) clipping.

 

[mafoofan]

I always set Curve Low and Curve High to .001, the minimum. Whether I turn color balancing completely off or set it to manual and adjust black and white to 0%, the results don't change.

When I try color output, I use a ProPhoto RGB color space.

 

[Jamie123]

I've been having terrible trouble trying to scan bw on my Nikon 9000 with Vuescan. Nikonscan did a much better job but unfortunately I can't use it anymore since I updated my Mac to Lion.

 

[250swb]

I asked a similar question to this is regard to a Plustek scanner, and the answer my be the same. And the answer is to make sure your preview scan is relatively high resolution if the main scan is using the preview to set exposure.

If you also ignore any presets and use 'generic' you will get a scan without any attempt at replicating a film type and its tone curve which can cause clipping.

Steve

 

[Tim Gray]

I've never had much of a problem with - Vuescan and a Coolscan V. These are my setting for the most part:
http://125px.com/articles/photography/digital/vuescan/

 

[250swb]

Thanks Tim, very interesting and I'll definitely be trying some of your settings.

Steve🙂

 

[jsolanzo]

I'm also having this problem, hopefully a simple solution can be found. I'm using a minolta dimage sd2

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Is it impossible to scan black and white negatives with a high-end consumer scanner without clipping? I'm using a Nikon 5000ED and have yet to figure out how to capture the full tonal range from black and white negatives. I've tried using Vuescan's Lock Exposure feature, manually setting the white and black points to 0%, adjusting the buffer area to exclude the film edges, inputting and outputting in various combinations of 16-bit grayscale and 48-bit RGB, etc.

No matter what I do, the highlights are always clipped and the shadows are usually clipped.

I've followed various online tutorials and walkthroughs, too.

Is this simply an inevitable problem with black and white?

So many issues are involved: dynamic range of the scanner, ability to do multiple sample scans (which try to do the pseudo-HDR thing, if you will), the film itself lending itself "friendly" to scanning (oh, yes), not letting the scanning software do "auto-corrections", post-production...not one workflow will be a silver bullet. One must understand every single step of the process in order to be able to adjust accordingly to get to the desired end-result.

You know, like it happens with perceptions of expensive cameras vs. cheap cameras: having a good camera won't compensate for lack of exposure knowledge, and good exposure knowledge won't compensate for a really bad camera when a specific end-result is expected. One must know what's involved in order to have the correct expectations of the possible end-results.

 

[danielmk2]

I also have this very sad problem. The solution is using Silverfast. My Vuescan is always clipping and I already gave up. I'm using a Plustek 7600i with TriX, HP5.

 

[johannielscom]

I've been having terrible trouble trying to scan bw on my Nikon 9000 with Vuescan. Nikonscan did a much better job but unfortunately I can't use it anymore since I updated my Mac to Lion.

Easy fix!

• Hook an external drive to your Mac with a FireWire (faster) or USB (slower) connection.
• Insert the Snow Leopard install DVD into the DVD player.
• Hold down the Option key when booting and select the DVD player.
• Tell it to install (Snow) Leopard on the empty drive.

From now on when wanting to use (Snow) Leopard, just keep the Option key down and select the correct drive.

Try THAT on a Windows computer! 🙂

 

[VTHokiEE]

Easy fix!

• Hook an external drive to your Mac with a FireWire (faster) or USB (slower) connection.
• Insert the Snow Leopard install DVD into the DVD player.
• Hold down the Option key when booting and select the DVD player.
• Tell it to install (Snow) Leopard on the empty drive.

From now on when wanting to use (Snow) Leopard, just keep the Option key down and select the correct drive.

Try THAT on a Windows computer! 🙂

Starting to get off topic, but you can set up any computer to dual boot. You don't even need separate drives, I wouldn't want someone to think they need a MAC to do this...

 

[Particular]

I've never had much of a problem with - Vuescan and a Coolscan V. These are my setting for the most part:
http://125px.com/articles/photography/digital/vuescan/

I for the most part use the same settings, with one exception. I leave the Color tab set to None. I see no reason to let Vuescan do any black and white point adjustments to the 16bit scan file as opposed to doing it myself in LR or PS. I output from with the 'Raw output with Save' option, so I do let Vuescan do the inversion. Especially while batch scanning it is easy accidentally over compensate, and up clipping the file. Just make sure Lock exposure is set correctly, and the scan should be fine.