Scanning b&w film

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mark-b

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My trusty old Nikon Coolscan IV ED with digital ICE has been going strong for years now. I've been using it to scan 'chromes and C-41 negatives, which seems to be its calling in life. But I dread having to scan B&W film, because I can't use digital ICE on it. No matter how meticulously clean I keep it throughout the process, there's always a scratch, and dust galore.
I haven't researched scanners since the time I bought my Coolscan, and I'm wondering if someone's come up with a scanner or dust & scratch removal software that can handle b&w film?
 
Simply said: no.

But I believe there are software tools for that. Although you'll probably loose some sharpness by using these software tools.
 
Dust can be mitigated with anti-static cloth, air blowers, and the clone/heal tool in Photoshop or Lightroom. Scratches are more tricky, but you should be able to avoid those with good film handling.
 
As said above, meticulous attention in the handling of the film to minimize dust and scratches will save you lots of time later cloning out the dust spots. Still, there are alway some, but you'd be surprised how few sometimes. (Mind you, Denmark is a very non-dusty country due to the climate, and most homes, including mine, have wood floors instead of carpeting, and blinds instead of curtains, etc.)

When I do have to spot out dust, I try to do it when my mind is too tired for other things - I BLAST THE STEREO WITH GOOD MUSIC - and mindlessly clone away....

You may also consider shooting a C-41 Black & White film such as Kodak BW400CN or Ilford XP2 Super. I use the former for 6x6 work - digital ICE works like a charm!
 
Lot's of my scans have dust specks on it and I tend to ignore most of them ... There is virtually no way to avoid dust (except in a clean room) so I only remove the striking dust specks (PS, healing tool).
 
When I enable ICE the scan essentially takes twice the time it takes without ICE. It's usually quicker and easier for me to just manually use Photoshop's healing tool to clean the scans.
 
You must have really clean negatives ;) The 5000 ed is so fast I don't really notice a difference between ICE & non-ICE. It seems to me the scanner spends more time repositioning the film in the strip adapter than scanning the image.

BTW, with respect to scanning black and white I had continual problems until I adopted a cleaner workflow. I do the wash in filtered water, I dry in film in a _dryer_ and I scan it immediately after in one long strip. I do _not_ cut & sleeve the negs before scanning. That is a recipe for scratches and dust.
 
dfoo said:
You must have really clean negatives ;) The 5000 ed is so fast I don't really notice a difference between ICE & non-ICE. It seems to me the scanner spends more time repositioning the film in the strip adapter than scanning the image.
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I don't have a proper film scanner, just an Epson V500. The time ICE takes to do its thing is noticeable.

My negatives are rather clean, though. It's usually just a matter of removing two or three spots, most of them aren't even visible when not viewed at 100%.
 
I find that if I have a big dusty area in the image, and its out of focus, then I run the software based dust software that works during the scan. If it is just a few dust spots or scratches, It is quicker to clone them out later. I use the iSRD software in silverfast, and if you just circle the spots you want fixed, it doesn't mess with the sharpness of the rest of the image.
 
Digital ICE works great for me, but it renders thick-emulsion films into glob photos (referring to b&w film and old kodachrome slides). I'll have to look around for software that'll do it post-scan I guess.
 
I found that the storage file sheets I used to put my negs into could scratch things. I switched over to individual sleeves for each strip that you insert the film in on the long side. Or scanning before sleeving would work too.

Doing that and going through the extra effort to get clean negs really helps. In my current apt, I had to move to an all distilled water wash sequence, and its really helped. That and getting your photoflo dilution just right.
 
I wonder

I wonder

ChrisN said:
Half a cap in 2 litres of water works for me.
Click to expand...

Since I have a cute little 10ml graduate I use it. I wonder how much is in half a cap? I guess I will measure tonight. In the meantime, I'm using 6ml in 2 liters. That's 60% of what Kodak says to use: 5ml per liter.

I hung up 4 sheets to dry last night. I'll see how they look tonight. They were rinsed in 6ml Photo-Flo/2 liters distilled water. How's that for precise, hey?
 
When my tap water dries it leaves this sticky oily residue. I found that a final rinse in distilled water + photoflo wasn't enough, and that I had to do my washing (Ilford style) with all distilled water. I could probably do tap water for the first wash or two then switch over, but distilled water is cheap and its working. In my previous apartment, I did NOT have to do this - tap water all the way except for the last one with photoflo.

As far as photoflo goes, I have a little eye dropper that I use, and I put in 1 drop per ounce of wash water. I use stainless tanks and reels which are 8 oz per roll, so for the two reel tank, I put in 16 drops in 16 oz of water. I've tried Kodak's dilutions, which was a hair too much all the way down to no photoflo, and this amount works the best for me. I think my dropper is 10 drops/ml (roughly) so this works out to .1ml photoflo / 29.7 ml water, which is... a dilution of about 1:300. The photoflo I have states 1:200 dilution, so I'm using less, but not half as much, about 2/3's as much. Sorry for the long winded reply.
 
Tim Gray said:
When my tap water dries it leaves this sticky oily residue. I found that a final rinse in distilled water + photoflo wasn't enough, and that I had to do my washing (Ilford style) with all distilled water. I could probably do tap water for the first wash or two then switch over, but distilled water is cheap and its working. In my previous apartment, I did NOT have to do this - tap water all the way except for the last one with photoflo.

As far as photoflo goes, I have a little eye dropper that I use, and I put in 1 drop per ounce of wash water. I use stainless tanks and reels which are 8 oz per roll, so for the two reel tank, I put in 16 drops in 16 oz of water. I've tried Kodak's dilutions, which was a hair too much all the way down to no photoflo, and this amount works the best for me. I think my dropper is 10 drops/ml (roughly) so this works out to .1ml photoflo / 29.7 ml water, which is... a dilution of about 1:300. The photoflo I have states 1:200 dilution, so I'm using less, but not half as much, about 2/3's as much. Sorry for the long winded reply.
Click to expand...

Thanks! Not long winded at all. I'm in the ballpark with my 60% dilution.
 
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