Help Diagnosing a Film Scanning Issue...

[acearchie]

Any help would be great.

Finally bought a hasselblad to take a step up from the 120 Lomo camera!

I've taken one roll and scanned it in however, I keep on getting some really nasty noise in any of the dark areas.

This has never happened with the scanner before (Canoscan 8800F) and even with all the filters turned off it's still there.

I have attached a picture to show what I mean. 100% crop at high quality 4800dpi tiff scan.

I don't think it's a case of under exposure either as I have been using a good quality light meter and if anything on an old camera the shutter would be slower than selected meaning more light surely!

Anyway I hope someone can shed some light.

 

[deep diver]

I don't have any ideas re: the noise. The overall quality of the scanned image is poor. I'd like to see an image scanned from another roll of the same film shot in the same conditions but with another camera.

 

[bocomo]

not a good quality scan

without seeing how thin the negative is, it's hard to comment further

 

[Designer Dale]

You are scanning film on a flatbed, right? Show us a scan from one of your other film cameras using this scanner. We need something to compare to.

Dale

 

[TheRegularGuy]

Film scans

Could have something to do with the film. What type and speed is it?

 

[acearchie]

Could have something to do with the film. What type and speed is it?

Kodak 160 NC

I have attached 4 more images.

First 2 are with the same film on the hasselblad.

2nd last one is from my Lomo camera (through a plastic lens so lacking sharpness etc...)

Last one is a different film on the Lomo but with the same scanner

Can't figure out what I am doing wrong.

Using VueScan and the transparency setting for the negative (as in I'm not using the flatbed part but a special insert with the light coming from the top)

Thanks again for the help!

 

[ComputersaysNo]

I hope i can explain this clearly as i haven't shot film in ages:

If you are shooting negative film for scanning, overexpose by one stop (slidefilm underexpose 1/2 stop). The iso-rating of film is the average range for non-scanning purposes, not the optimum. When scanning, you are basically lighten the lighter parts even more with the scan-lamp and therefore increasing noise as it will be inverted softwarewise. ( the lighter parts will be the darker parts when scanned in)

As it is a negative, the dark parts will be very light, and thus your scanner goes weird on that. It cannot 'see' in highly bright parts, but it can scan quite a bit more detail in darker parts of the negative. And darker parts of a negative means the higlights in real life.

Its kinda like a Dslr, you lose detail in overexposed areas, but can pull up the darker parts quite a bit, but this will increase noise. If your Dslr could shoot in negative, the opposite would count.

Try it

 

[TheRegularGuy]

Interesting.

I think you might be seeing noise caused by the film grain.

I've never shot 160 NC, but I have used Fuji 160C on occasion. I remember being surprised at how much grain this film has; it was really noticeable in my scans. I've attached an example--take a look in the shadows at 100%. The noise is similar to what you're observing.

To combat this problem, you can try increasing the 'Black point %' value under the Color tab in VueScan. Boosting this value will set the darker areas of your photo to pure black; this should help fix the photo of the girl on the ledge. (Keep increasing the value until you get a result that you like.)

Personally, I think using VueScan to scan C41 is more art than science--I've never been able to get a result that looks as contrasty and beautiful as the prints that I get from my lab. (I also usually shoot E6, so I'm admittedly not an expert on this topic.) I've always found it easier to send C41 to the lab for a print and then scan that in using a flatbed.

Is the photo taken with the plastic lens also on the 160NC?

 

[acearchie]

Interesting.

I think you might be seeing noise caused by the film grain.

Personally, I think using VueScan to scan C41 is more art than science--I've never been able to get a result that looks as contrasty and beautiful as the prints that I get from my lab. (I also usually shoot E6, so I'm admittedly not an expert on this topic.) I've always found it easier to send C41 to the lab for a print and then scan that in using a flatbed.

I sure do hope it is this film. I bought a selection of rolls of film to try out to see what I wanted to stick with and this has so far been the worst out of the ones I have tried!

I am keen on finding some scanning software which will automise my scanning process more.

Has anyone been able to batch scan in VueScan or does anyone have any tips for scanning in?

I often find that if I select the film type from the drop down menu that the colours are all off and when I let VueScan use Auto Levels it can auto to image 1 (which makes image 2 look really good) however, when I drag the frame to image 2 the Auto Levels feature makes it look worse than the preset used on image 1!