CraigK
Established
Hi All,
Ever try scanning a colour neg? If you are like me and my canon film scanner, the results can be downright ugly. Grain, grain and more grain with mediocre colour and contrast. I understand there may be some scanners out there that do a decent job but I have not run into any yet.... until this week.
You see, a while back I had some C-41 negs in for processing at a local lab that had recently aquired a fancy new Konica mini-lab. The machine makes pretty decent prints from 35 and medium format negs and transparencies. It does so by first scanning the neg and then printing on RA4 type paper.
The day after dropping the negs off to be processed and printed, I got a call from the lab telling me that there was a problem with one frame on one of the rolls. It seems that a small piece of the emulsion had flaked off during processing. The lab manager, a great guy, said the problem could have been a bum roll or it could have been their neg dev. machine at fault. In any case he proposed that they set the scanner on the printing machine to the highest resolution it was able to muster and save the scan on a disk for me. That way I would at least have a file to use in case the frame was a "money shot" that absolutely needed to be fixed in photoshop and then printed.
Well, after all was said and done, I got all my prints and a disk with the scan of the damaged neg frame. It was not a "must have" shot anyway so I was relieved but somewhat curious as to how the scan would look. Well lo and behold, when I openned the file I found the best scan of a colour neg I have ever seen. The file was HUGE, the image clean as a whistle and spot on for colour, contrast etc.
Now, you may be wondering what I am yammering on about but if you have ever tried to scan a colour neg or get a decent scan of one done, you may have realized that it ain't easy. For some reason, most dedicated film scanners seem to really accentuate the grain of colour negs...especially 35 mm. In the past I would actually make a print and scan that instead of scanning the neg.
Let's face it from time to time, many of us need a good scan of a colour negative. Whether it be to post a photo to a website or send it as an email or even to rescue in Photoshop.
So considering the outstanding quality of the scan I got from the lab and the equally good quality scans I have gotten from a few more that I had done, I would just like to suggest that if you ever find yourself requiring a good scan of a neg, check wtih the local labs in your area. If they are running one of the new machines from Konica or Fuji or even Kodak, they may be able to make you a great scan at a fraction of the cost of the pro lab using a drum scanner (our local lab with drum scanner actually has the same problem with pronounced grain. Apparently they will not scan colour negs, period). See if the local lab can crank up the resolution on the scanner and save the file to a disk for you. The ones I've had done, colour negs and transparencies in 35 and MF have been gorgeous....and less than a quarter of the price of a drum scan.
Try it, you might like it.
Cheers!
Ever try scanning a colour neg? If you are like me and my canon film scanner, the results can be downright ugly. Grain, grain and more grain with mediocre colour and contrast. I understand there may be some scanners out there that do a decent job but I have not run into any yet.... until this week.
You see, a while back I had some C-41 negs in for processing at a local lab that had recently aquired a fancy new Konica mini-lab. The machine makes pretty decent prints from 35 and medium format negs and transparencies. It does so by first scanning the neg and then printing on RA4 type paper.
The day after dropping the negs off to be processed and printed, I got a call from the lab telling me that there was a problem with one frame on one of the rolls. It seems that a small piece of the emulsion had flaked off during processing. The lab manager, a great guy, said the problem could have been a bum roll or it could have been their neg dev. machine at fault. In any case he proposed that they set the scanner on the printing machine to the highest resolution it was able to muster and save the scan on a disk for me. That way I would at least have a file to use in case the frame was a "money shot" that absolutely needed to be fixed in photoshop and then printed.
Well, after all was said and done, I got all my prints and a disk with the scan of the damaged neg frame. It was not a "must have" shot anyway so I was relieved but somewhat curious as to how the scan would look. Well lo and behold, when I openned the file I found the best scan of a colour neg I have ever seen. The file was HUGE, the image clean as a whistle and spot on for colour, contrast etc.
Now, you may be wondering what I am yammering on about but if you have ever tried to scan a colour neg or get a decent scan of one done, you may have realized that it ain't easy. For some reason, most dedicated film scanners seem to really accentuate the grain of colour negs...especially 35 mm. In the past I would actually make a print and scan that instead of scanning the neg.
Let's face it from time to time, many of us need a good scan of a colour negative. Whether it be to post a photo to a website or send it as an email or even to rescue in Photoshop.
So considering the outstanding quality of the scan I got from the lab and the equally good quality scans I have gotten from a few more that I had done, I would just like to suggest that if you ever find yourself requiring a good scan of a neg, check wtih the local labs in your area. If they are running one of the new machines from Konica or Fuji or even Kodak, they may be able to make you a great scan at a fraction of the cost of the pro lab using a drum scanner (our local lab with drum scanner actually has the same problem with pronounced grain. Apparently they will not scan colour negs, period). See if the local lab can crank up the resolution on the scanner and save the file to a disk for you. The ones I've had done, colour negs and transparencies in 35 and MF have been gorgeous....and less than a quarter of the price of a drum scan.
Try it, you might like it.
Cheers!
