Scanning B&W highlights

Local time
9:09 PM
Joined
Jul 7, 2011
Messages
2,572
Location
Tasmania
Hi all,

I'm curious how people manage their highlights when scanning black and white?

It seems that if I protect the highlights in the scan, I just end up with a heap of muddiness and 'grey'. But I haven't found a way of 'blowing' them without introducing very hard 'digital' edges.

I've been scanning for nearly a decade now, and it's the one thing I still really struggle with...

Any suggestions?

A random frame of Tmax400 as an example...

 
Nick, that's a difficult image in which to produce some 'pop', thanks to what I believe is veiling of the scene due to mist or low cloud - by that's just my assessment.

I took the image into Lightroom 5 and adjusted contrast +12, highlights -14, shadows +24, blacks -48 and clarity +19. I thought those adjustments did show some improvements, but nothing overly dramatic. Much will depend on exposure, development, your scanning technique, film used and so on. If you use Lightroom, you may think differently!

I have been shooting monochrome for over 50 years and during the early days, my father-in-law always encouraged me to produce images with punch, but this is not always possible, especially when conditions even out the tonal range, as is the case here. You have used a great film, but I can only suggest you try a different approach to your post processing.

Ray
 
Nick,

I don’t know what scanner or scanning software you are using so, in additions to the other advice offered here, there may be some room for improve there. If I had a scene like that, and wanted to get the result it sounds like you want, which I would want as well, the easiest way for me to get that, and the thing that would make the greatest amount of potential difference, would be to do a multiexposure scan, then bring out the highlights and shadows where you want them in post. Silverfast will do this, as will others. Scan takes twice as long, but you are putting a lot more information into the resulting file, which makes it more malleable later on.
Just a suggestion.
 
I scan my films with ancient Minolta film scanners, 35mm film with the Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400. The original Dimage Scan software is very good (most recent software OSX Snow Leopard), and supports up to 16x multi-sample. The multi-sample function is very useful when scanning a high contrast image like the one you have shared in the opening post. Sometimes I have encountered b&w negatives that have a too demanding dynamic range for even the Minolta 5400 16x multi-sample. Ilford SFX 200 semi-infrared film is typically one such problematic film. The "method" I have used with these negatives is to scan "linear", similar to a RAW scan. The scanned file is afterwards inverted and edited in Aperture 3.6 (yes, I still use Aperture). The image below was shot on Ilford HP5 plus, and was very difficult to scan due to the high contrast. No matter what I did, the buildings (Manhatten skyline) in the central background were completely washed out. The only way I was able to achieve a somewhat satisfactory result was by scanning "linear".


Dumbo
by bjolester, on Flickr
 
Nick,

I scan using a DSLR (RAW). In Photoshop (CS6) I invert, and (after cropping) apply levels by capturing everything--all highlights and shadows. Then I work with the contrast and highlights/shadows functions to achieve the proper tone.

Some shots are just hard to strike the right balance, especially when the pictures include fog.

Coincidentally, here is a foggy scan from yesterday:

51191770725_6a7f746718_b.jpg
 
Once thing I have done to save hopelessly contrasty old slides is to shoot multiple exposures then use an HDR setting on ON1. You could certainly do the same for B&W; though I usually do not need to. Here is an example of K64 professional, 120. The shadows were a big issue.


Girl Splash by Mark Wyatt, on Flickr

Here is another (K25, 35mm) where I saved the shadows (this one looks a little like "classic" digital HDR)


Water Truck I15 Construction by Mark Wyatt, on Flickr
 
Switch to Epson and its native software. Most of the time very little if at all needs to be done in PP on Epson tiff files. The only drawback is less sharp files for big prints. Nature of any flatbed.
 
Back
Top Bottom