Scanning photos and negatives

GeneV · 11-04-2010, 07:56 AM

My scanner has the capability to do 16bit color, but FWIW, I've never found a big enough advantage to it to merit working with the huge files. It's funny, because I do see significant advantages to working with higher-bit RAW files from a DSLR.

tuco · 11-04-2010, 08:08 AM

Originally posted by GeneV

My scanner has the capability to do 16bit color, but FWIW, I've never found a big enough advantage to it to merit working with the huge files. It's funny, because I do see significant advantages to working with higher-bit RAW files from a DSLR.

I found 16-bit color to be an advantage when scanning a BW negative. It gives more room for things like highlight recovery in a raw editor.

GeneV · 11-04-2010, 08:21 AM

Originally posted by tuco

I found 16-bit color to be an advantage when scanning a BW negative. It gives more room for things like highlight recovery in a raw editor.

Interesting to hear. I'd only tried it on Kodachromes, and did not see much difference.

tuco · 11-04-2010, 08:46 AM

Originally posted by GeneV

Interesting to hear. I'd only tried it on Kodachromes, and did not see much difference.

You still have a lot of colors in 8-bit. But a 8-bit color pallet made to be gray scale is a much narrower range of tones. I've tried 16-bit gray scale scans before. It does okay. But with the color pallet made to be gray scale, it gives me the choice to adjust the R-G-B channels in shadows/midtones/highlights to "tone" the image like you'd get from BW paper choices in the final results without mapping a tone map to a gray scale.

stevebrot · 11-04-2010, 10:19 PM

Originally posted by tuco

I found 16-bit color to be an advantage when scanning a BW negative. It gives more room for things like highlight recovery in a raw editor.

...and better tonal gradation...

Steve

RobG · 11-05-2010, 04:34 PM

Originally posted by tuco

2400dpi

Just to expand on this a little, if the scanner is advertised as 2400x4800, it means that if you scan at 4800ppi it will be interpolated in one direction. The software will guess at the information in one direction of the scan. So in reality the maximum resolution would be 2400ppi where it is true resolution in both the X and Y axes.

Steve is also quite right that scanners don't necessarily meet their claimed specification. You could try comparing scans at 1200ppi, 1600ppi, 2000ppi and 2400ppi and see if there's really more detail or just more pixels.

artobest · 11-06-2010, 02:05 PM

Originally posted by Capslock118

You know,

as a seperate question - in todays standards, what scanner capabilities are considered acceptable to scan negatives to treat them as I would a raw image from a digital camera?

A TIFF can be treated almost like a RAW file as long as it has sufficient overhead for editing. One way to do this is to make sure that no colour channel is clipped at the scanning stage - better still, leave a touch of slack at each end of the histogram - not so much that the scan is completely flat and dull, though. A good strategy is to select '48-bit colour positive' in the scanner software and tweak the settings from there. (Even b&w - I never scan as greyscale.)

Always scan into a wide-gamut colour space - Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB, for example; never sRGB. This will ensure the maximum colour information is retained.

cats_five · 12-27-2010, 01:20 AM

Whatever else you do, use some sort of naming convention so that if you want to rescan a negative you can find it easily. The prints from most of my negatives are in albums holding prints from 4 films, and the albums are numered, so the scans from the first film in the first album are prefixed 'F01_1_'. The other thing is what actually is the first negative number? Quite possibly 00 rather than 01, it's worth checking. My slide films are numbered as well, so there I have prefixes 'S01_' and so on.

BTW just out of curiosity I looked what Nikon scanners are going for on Ebay now, and ones like mine (new 5 years ago) are selling for somewhat more than I paid for it! At the time the gap between new and Ebay was fairly small and I judged new worthwhile for the warantee though I've never had a problem with it. I also managed to get a batch slide loader on Ebay so the slides got scanned fairly quickly though the card mounts on old Kodachrome are a nightmare as they are forever shedding dust, and also D-ICE doesn't usually produce acceptable results with Kodachrome. Thankfully I switched to Fuji somewhere along the line.

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11-04-2010, 07:56 AM	#16
GeneV Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Albuquerque NM Photos: Albums Posts: 9,830	My scanner has the capability to do 16bit color, but FWIW, I've never found a big enough advantage to it to merit working with the huge files. It's funny, because I do see significant advantages to working with higher-bit RAW files from a DSLR.

11-04-2010, 08:08 AM	#17
tuco Pentaxian Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Pugetopolis Posts: 11,026	Originally posted by GeneV My scanner has the capability to do 16bit color, but FWIW, I've never found a big enough advantage to it to merit working with the huge files. It's funny, because I do see significant advantages to working with higher-bit RAW files from a DSLR. I found 16-bit color to be an advantage when scanning a BW negative. It gives more room for things like highlight recovery in a raw editor.

11-04-2010, 08:21 AM	#18
GeneV Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Albuquerque NM Photos: Albums Posts: 9,830	Originally posted by tuco I found 16-bit color to be an advantage when scanning a BW negative. It gives more room for things like highlight recovery in a raw editor. Interesting to hear. I'd only tried it on Kodachromes, and did not see much difference.

11-04-2010, 08:46 AM	#19
tuco Pentaxian Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Pugetopolis Posts: 11,026	Originally posted by GeneV Interesting to hear. I'd only tried it on Kodachromes, and did not see much difference. You still have a lot of colors in 8-bit. But a 8-bit color pallet made to be gray scale is a much narrower range of tones. I've tried 16-bit gray scale scans before. It does okay. But with the color pallet made to be gray scale, it gives me the choice to adjust the R-G-B channels in shadows/midtones/highlights to "tone" the image like you'd get from BW paper choices in the final results without mapping a tone map to a gray scale.

11-04-2010, 10:19 PM	#20
stevebrot Otis Memorial Pentaxian Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Vancouver (USA) Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 42,007	Originally posted by tuco I found 16-bit color to be an advantage when scanning a BW negative. It gives more room for things like highlight recovery in a raw editor. ...and better tonal gradation... Steve

11-05-2010, 04:34 PM	#21
RobG Otis Memorial Pentaxian Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Canberra Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 8,891	Originally posted by tuco 2400dpi Just to expand on this a little, if the scanner is advertised as 2400x4800, it means that if you scan at 4800ppi it will be interpolated in one direction. The software will guess at the information in one direction of the scan. So in reality the maximum resolution would be 2400ppi where it is true resolution in both the X and Y axes. Steve is also quite right that scanners don't necessarily meet their claimed specification. You could try comparing scans at 1200ppi, 1600ppi, 2000ppi and 2400ppi and see if there's really more detail or just more pixels.

11-06-2010, 02:05 PM	#22
artobest Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Swansea, Wales Posts: 455	Originally posted by Capslock118 You know, as a seperate question - in todays standards, what scanner capabilities are considered acceptable to scan negatives to treat them as I would a raw image from a digital camera? A TIFF can be treated almost like a RAW file as long as it has sufficient overhead for editing. One way to do this is to make sure that no colour channel is clipped at the scanning stage - better still, leave a touch of slack at each end of the histogram - not so much that the scan is completely flat and dull, though. A good strategy is to select '48-bit colour positive' in the scanner software and tweak the settings from there. (Even b&w - I never scan as greyscale.) Always scan into a wide-gamut colour space - Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB, for example; never sRGB. This will ensure the maximum colour information is retained.

12-27-2010, 01:20 AM	#23
cats_five Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Fife, Scotland Posts: 835	Whatever else you do, use some sort of naming convention so that if you want to rescan a negative you can find it easily. The prints from most of my negatives are in albums holding prints from 4 films, and the albums are numered, so the scans from the first film in the first album are prefixed 'F01_1_'. The other thing is what actually is the first negative number? Quite possibly 00 rather than 01, it's worth checking. My slide films are numbered as well, so there I have prefixes 'S01_' and so on. BTW just out of curiosity I looked what Nikon scanners are going for on Ebay now, and ones like mine (new 5 years ago) are selling for somewhat more than I paid for it! At the time the gap between new and Ebay was fairly small and I judged new worthwhile for the warantee though I've never had a problem with it. I also managed to get a batch slide loader on Ebay so the slides got scanned fairly quickly though the card mounts on old Kodachrome are a nightmare as they are forever shedding dust, and also D-ICE doesn't usually produce acceptable results with Kodachrome. Thankfully I switched to Fuji somewhere along the line.