Newbie film scanning question

[Russoc]

Forgive my naivety, but I hope someone can clarify this for me

I have been thinking about a hybrid work flow- film scanned to digital but one thing I'm still not 100% on.

There are various posts and claims on the internet saying that film - especially b&w film has more latitude than your average digital camera file.

If one were to scan in a 35mm neg, would you still have the latitude in the file as you would printing it traditionally in the darkroom? What I think I'm trying to ask is that is the full information from the neg captured in the scanning process and do you have as much flexibility with the file as you would if in a darkroom exposing with light through an enlarger?

Are or can the scanned neg files be treated like a raw file or are they always just scanned as a flat tiff or jpeg?

I know the flexibility of 35mm raw files, but would you get as much flexibility from a well scanned 35mm neg?

I still have the lure to shoot film as I like the atmospheric less clinical soul to the images as opposed to digital captures which are getting cleaner and more clinical as we go on.

I was going through some family photo albums the other day (remember those?!) and what struck me was the almost 3d depth of the prints, they felt real if that makes sense? Maybe it's because I've been brought up in an era before digital but I can definitely see an atmosphere in the old film prints I just don't get or see in digital pics, no matter what vsco emulation you try. On the film prints it almost looks as though the images sit under a layer of atmosphere if that makes any sense?

 

[Scrambler]

You always lose info with conversion. But good quality scanner and software will get enough info to do the job.

You can "expose" the negative at different levels to maximise the features you want.

Some software will output raw.

 

[joeswe]

If one were to scan in a 35mm neg, would you still have the latitude in the file as you would printing it traditionally in the darkroom? What I think I'm trying to ask is that is the full information from the neg captured in the scanning process and do you have as much flexibility with the file as you would if in a darkroom exposing with light through an enlarger?

This depends on the quality of the scanner, but a typical film scanner should be able to get the full tonal information that is in the neg. Depending on the density of the highlights, cheaper scanners might have problems getting details out of highlight tones on dense negatives, but this is usually more a problem with the shadow areas on slide film. The flexibility in the hybrid workflow will be much bigger than with traditional optical printing, as you can tweak brightness, curves, black and white points etc. very easily via software. In a traditional darkroom workflow, getting the full latitude of a negative with a wide tonal range on paper while still maintaining good tonal separation will usually require careful choice of paper grade and some tweaks like dodging and burning.

Are or can the scanned neg files be treated like a raw file or are they always just scanned as a flat tiff or jpeg?

I know the flexibility of 35mm raw files, but would you get as much flexibility from a well scanned 35mm neg?

Depends on the scanning software, usually the ouput is saved in TIFF format with different corrections to exposure, gradation etc already applied, but the better software like Vuescan or Silverfast should have an option to save the scanned information in an unmanipulated raw format. However, getting a great picture out of this raw data can be quite challenging. As scanning film isn't so easy and intuitive to begin with (even the TIFF output files usually require some post work to get brightness, contrast and colors where you want them), starting with scanner raw files, especially from color negatives, might be a bit frustrating for a beginner.

 

[NY_Dan]

You can scan a black and white negative as a positive and invert in PhotoShop -- certain negatives benefit greatly from this.

You can also scan at different exposure levels and combine the images later -- almost like HDR -- but I use for obtaining highlight detail in some negs.

I find 16 bit scans not worth the extra time.

I recommend on scanners with the feature to do a high quality 4x multi-pass scan to reduce banding.

For color, the white, gray, and black point curve adjustments are hugely helpful for obtaining decent color.

Glass carriers are great for keeping negs flat and providing full sharpness across image area. But, you want to keep them clean. For that Zeiss lens wipes are great -- I open the wipe fold it once in each direction -- yielding 2 surfaces -- flip fold -- 2 more surfaces -- turn inside out -- 2 more -- flip again -- 2 more. I use a film dryer and immediately insert into archival sleeves. For black and white that can't make use of the digital ICE dust removal -- the more dust free the scan the better -- then I view at 86 percent and remove and dust or scratches.

Also, moire can occur from time to time with glass to negative contact.

Upside -- for 35mm b&w I get 44 mb files -- triple for color -- and for 120 6x9 I get 100 plus mb b&w files.

Sometimes if you clone out development streaks in sky areas, you may want to add noise to preserve the grain effect in these areas.

 

[mdarnton]

Something that may be leading to your confusion and question is that while film can capture a very large dynamic range, on the film this is compressed into a more limited range. That is, (assuming a B&W neg) there may be a 20 stop span of SUBJECT data represented on the film, but it will be rendered by something like six or so stops of film density range. This is what makes it possible to make a digital conversion from film that contains a wider range of information than a digital camera could have taken from the same original scene. This is only regarding B&W negs--color transparencies capture less range than digital cameras, and present them in quite a wide range on film that scanners may have trouble with. I don't have experience with color negs, but they are closer to B&W negs than to transparencies in their range and rendering.

The resulting scan will be limited to the 256 levels of grey of digital rather than the infinite levels of analog, but it will not be inferior to any other type of digital version. (That is, the limitations are the limitations of digital, not the limitations of conversion/scanning)

Here's an example: this situation had an actually-metered range of something like 16+ stops from the areas under the desk to the full-lit wall outside. My Nikon D300 wouldn't have come close to getting it all, but film did. However, I was able to "scan" the resulting negative with my D300 to make this digital version:
(and my scanning rig with a explanation of how I use it: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mdarnton/7183241686/ )

Julian Hersh by Michael Darnton, on Flickr