Plustek 8600i (Silverfast SE) Scans too Bright

[mmartin09]

Anyone have any experience scanning BW film with a Plustek 8600i and Silverfast SE? It seems that even though my negatives look nice and well exposed, the scans coming from Silverfast are way overexposed. Note, using 16 bit and tiff output.

Sometimes, I can find a Negafix setting that brings things back to somewhat normal looking, but sometimes (especially in brighter scenes), the image is just too bright to salvage. I seem to have to choose the PanF or Plus-X negafix settings a lot to bring the image back to a reasonable exposure.

Is this a common problem? Any suggestions?

 

[Perks]

Yes!

I have often had troubles with bleached out black and white scans and a plustek 7600 and silverfast.

I found it a huge struggle.
I had to do a lot of trial and error and have tried two scanners with the same result, I blame the software but get scans I am happy with now. I also tried but couldn't get vuescan to ever work, despite corresponding with the creater.

My best results are with the Agfa film settings and selecting APX100.
I have all automated processes turned off.

Let us know how you go

 

[EdwardKaraa]

Silverfast scans faster than other software because it skips the auto-exposure pass. The exposure adjustment is done after the scan. I found that for scanning b/w the best setting is the standard color film profile with saturation slider at -50.