film scanner

[mysteryscribe]

For the last few years I have been scanning b&w negs with a home made back light. So when it came time to scan color negs, I broke down and bought a film scanner. I chose a flat bed because I could do several film sizes with the same scanner.

All that in mind, I scanned a black and white neg on the new scanner. it was way to contrasty and over exposed after the scan. The neg looked pretty good to me. I remembered that there was no control with the homemade back light so I had several pieces of foggy plastic laying around which I had used to cut the light output from the home made backlight.

I stuffed a couple of those into the flatbed between the lite lid and the negative holder. there was a marked improvement in the negative's image output.

Now I'm wondering if one couldn't put a texture screen between the negative and the back light and get the same effect that i used to get with sandwiching things in the enlarger. I know you can add them digitally but it would be interesting to use the old technique in a new way.

 

[Don Simon]

Only one way to find out!

By the way, does the scanner software not have exposure control? It may be hidden away somewhere but it should be there. I had a similar problem but with slides; highlights were totally blown out on the scans until I worked out how to reduce the exposure.

 

[mysteryscribe]

yes but they only go so far this saves a really thin negative. And the last one was more contrast than thin..

Im not sure but I think it is going to be more like an enlarger where you lower the light itself to reduce or increase the contrast. the contrast contol in the software tends to get that weird smoky look when it lowers.

 

[selmerdave]

Tell me more about your homemade back light...

Dave

 

[mysteryscribe]

it was good for black and white but i couldnt get the color balanced at all. it was a hardware store trouble light with a florescent light bult. The space from the negative to the light was a cylendar of rolled up construction paper. then sheets of clean plastic foggy style to cut the light. It worked just fine for me. Just ahve to experiement with how much light to cut with the pastic can also use plain whte paper...

 

[markc]

A lot of the included scanning programs do a crappy job. I'd check out VueScan. It's what I used when I was scanning film and was really pleased with it.

Adding layers sounds kind of neat. You could also scan them separately and add the textures to other scans, like tissue paper and such, though doing it this way makes sure each one is unique.

 

[mysteryscribe]

Looks like it works pretty well with stuff included. My scan program works about 80% of the time better than the 3rd party demos I am trying. I have several of them as test programs I'm still trying to find the best fit.

Except that the scans are a bit soft, I like the scanner. I just know those negative are sharper.