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Back again with a color negative film scanning example. I had to re-scan this image for a book project as the lab scan did not have enough resolution for the book and therefore I thought this would be an intersting example for everybody interested in scanning film.
In the video I show the steps I do in SilverFast HDR Studio. SilverFast HDR Stduio works with linear scans and if you are interested in how you make these scan check my previous blog post for a detailed explanation.
This is going to be a short post. In order to use SilverFast HDR Studio as an archival workflow solution as well as for a optimized FineArt workflow I find the idea of creating linear scans fascinating. What we basically do is splitting the workflow into two parts. First is the scanning process and second the post-processing that is required for every scan. During the scanning we make sure that we capture all relevant data from film. In order to do so, we do not alter the data in any way and we save the file as a linear 16bit Tiff file.
It has been a while since I posted my last video here. After my visit to Photokina in September I realized how many photographers see digitalizing their archive of slide film as a big challenge. I do agree that it is a time consuming task, but the reward of having the complete body of work on the hard drive is worth it in my opinion.
In this video I introduce a concept that includes Silverfast HDR studio. The scanning part of the workflow will be detached from the processing part and this will make the whole process absolutely future proof.
Epsons consumer scanners all come with "Epson Scan", a scanning software for all needs. Many scanner operators however tend to use third party software for their scanning tasks. Today I will show you how to get good results from Epson Scan, but I will also try to elaborate the drawback of Epson Scan and why Silverfast will give you even better results in the end.
After my video tutorial in the last post, I thought a short follow up post with a detailed example would be helpful. So, no video today, but some further explanations on how I scanned the photograph below. But just in case you have missed the video, I highly recommend going back and watch it. It will give you a good overview of all the tasks required during the scanning process.
I always wanted to write about scanning color negative film. Now I was finally able to put together this site with lots of useful information to get started with scanning color film. The main part of this section is the video tutorial that can be found below.
While positive film seems so much easier to scan, obviously you can see the positive image already, it seems some kind of mystery to scan print film. The first thing you hear is, that you cannot get accurate results due to the orange mask. The orange mask and the fact that the image is inverted are of course two complications we have to deal with, but these challenges are not as complicated as you might think. The biggest problem is that we need to accept the fact that there is no accurate or "correct" scan that we retrieve from the scanner. Even during darkroom printing all prints were interpretations. The old Ansel Adams quote about the score and the performance is also true for color film. Once you have accepted this, you are good to go!
Black and White printing has always been a mastery that requires many years of learning, knowledge and dedication. Nothing will ever compete with a carefully printed black and white print. However acquiring these skills, maintaining a darkroom and finding the time to print regularly exceeds the possibilities of most people. Digital made things easier, but still it can be regarded a mastery to skillfully make a digital master print file from an analog negative. This tutorial will show you in detail how to scan black and white medium format negatives and than process them in Adobe Lightroom like the old masters did it in the darkroom.
In my last post I talked about how to prepare Silverfast for negative scanning. Today I aill show you how I mount my medium format film into an Epson V700 film holder. Therefore I have prepared a short video showing how I do the mounting. Let me just tell you real quick why I use the conventional Epson holders and not any kind of third party holders which get good critiques. Well, I have used them, literally every mounting solution availbale for the Epson V-series, and I must say in the end they are not worth the effort. I find the conventional standrad Epson film holder do their job very well. Maybe I am lucky and my scanner is manufactured the way it should be, but I was able to get better sharpness and grain from the Epson holders than from any other holder I was using.
When I started scanning film, I thought it would be an easy process. I severely underestimated the learning curve required to become a good scanner operator. I intentionally use this term, as it precisely describes what you do when scanning film. Beyond the basic operation of the scanner and software, you need to make basic artistic decision when scanning, similar to those made by master printers in the traditional darkroom.
A difficult 2020 that has blended into a difficult 2021 has made it harder for many of us to get outside and shoot, but that doesn't mean you have to neglect your photography. If you're like me, you probably still have years' worth of unscanned slides and negatives waiting to be tended to some rainy day, and a COVID lockdown gives you a golden opportunity.
But are you better off using the software that came with your scanner, or should you shell out for a third-party alternative to get the best results? Before I rolled up my sleeves and started scanning, I wanted to answer this question for myself.
All three applications were tested with Windows 10 version 1909 on a 2018 Dell XPS 15 9570 alongside an Epson Perfection V850 Pro scanner. SilverFast SE Plus costs $99, although it was included free in the bundle with our Epson V850 Pro. VueScan Professional, meanwhile, is ordinarily $99.95.
Since I'm looking at this from the perspective of film scanning, I'm limiting my comparisons solely to scanning of positive and negative strip film and slides, and won't be considering features like document or photo print scanning, copying, OCR, and the like.
As is often the case with software from hardware manufacturers, Epson Scan's Professional Mode user interface feels quite dated and somewhat unintuitive. It's split across five floating control panels that, together, don't leave much room to preview your slides, yet still offers fewer controls than its third-party rivals.
Optional Full Auto and Home modes simplify things, but also hide many features altogether. And it's also sometimes a little buggy. For example, no matter how I configured Windows' resolution and scaling, its un-resizable configuration dialog overflowed its borders, preventing me from being able to do things like reset app defaults.
SilverFast has only two operating modes: WorkflowPilot or Manual. WorkFlowPilot only allows single-photo scanning, and takes you through the process step by step. Some choices feel odd, though: For example it won't allow you to simply scan a standard JPEG.
Manual mode gives access to everything at once, but is very busy and unnecessarily confusing. Button colors vary for no logical reason, and active functions are indicated only with a tiny red dot. Help is provided throughout, but the many (and often redundant) buttons linking to abbreviated PDF manuals and numerous lengthy tutorial videos make its interface even more cluttered.
I also found it prone to making me wait for preview scans more than its rivals, and cancelling a batch scan can be extremely tedious as it makes you separately cancel every remaining frame, one by one. This was my least-favorite interface of the bunch.
[Edit: I've since learned that SilverFast batch scans can be canceled entirely by alt-clicking the cancel button. This is, however, not obvious, although it's mentioned in one of 13 separate PDF manuals for SilverFast SE Plus 8 on the company's website.]
VueScan's UI has Basic, Standard or Professional modes, all three mostly using drop-down lists very logically arranged in two to five tabs. It's cleaner, faster and more modern than its rivals, and leaves more room to preview your images. Its single PDF user manual is also unusually detailed and helpful.
Performance will, obviously, vary depending both on the speed of your scanner, and what hardware features it offers. With that proviso, I found Epson Scan had a slight edge in scanning speed, but with a significant catch.
Epson Scan took just under 59 minutes to scan 18 negatives at 6400 dpi with dust reduction and sharpening active, while VueScan took 67 minutes, and SilverFast trailed the pack at 84 minutes. But Epson Scan's fixed crop for batch scanning threw away a significant amount of image data.
Calculating backwards from the image dimensions as scanned, Epson Scan managed around 14.8 Megapixels/minute, just fractionally faster than VueScan's 14.5 Megapixels/minute. SilverFast managed only 11.5 Megapixels/minute, making it by far the slowest.
While Epson Scan's auto-cropping was by far the least accurate of the bunch, routinely discarding 10-15% of the frame height, I was surprised to find both SilverFast and VueScan also struggled to accurately detect frame sizes, as well.
Both apps mostly got the frame height in the ballpark, but had some issues detecting the gaps between frames. SilverFast sometimes incorrectly rotated frames, too. Significant manual tweaking is needed for all three programs if you want accurate cropping.
VueScan's much more responsive interface made those adjustments easier than its rivals, though. And Epson Scan was the least flexible, preventing you from batch-scanning unless you're willing to live with its automatically-selected cropping.
I did find VueScan's enabled-by-default "multi outline" option a bit confusing, though. To look at the wildly flickering borders you'd think the cropping was wildly off, but the actual framing is indicated for only one frame at a time by the smaller border seen on the top-rightmost thumbnail in the picture above.
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