Newbie question: problems scanning slides

Shinnentai · Jan 14, 2005

Hi! I'm new. This is my first posting.

I'm relatively new to photography. I like to use slide film mostly, and I've been having trouble getting/making usable scans of my slides. I had the shop where I get my develping done scan a set, and they really didn't come out right (small color anomalies- red going a little to purple and such, mostly BIG exposure anomalies- more on that further down). I eventually ended up buying a slide scanner (PrimeFilm 3650u). I can fiddle with the settings more when I'm scanning at home, but I'm still getting just varying degrees of the same exposure anomalies.

It's like the scanner itself has a really tight exposure threshold that's being stacked on top of the slide image. Areas that are a little darker than the "center" of the exposure (but not by a lot, still with lots of depth and detail) are rendered as significantly underexposed in the scans. An in frame contrast of one stop gets amplified to three stops, for example.

Although I don't know for sure, I don't think this should be expected. The guys at the shop told me that this was just the limitations of the technology at work, but at the same time, I know that a lot of professionals like to use slide film, and I don't believe for a moment that any professional would tolerate the degree of inaccuracy I'm experiencing with this.

Is there anything I can do to improve the accuracy of my scans?

Thanks!

BernieSC · Jan 14, 2005

Never heard of that scanner you said you bought. Is it strictly a film scanner? Because to get the dynamic range you need to get a perfect slide scan you need to have one of the best like one of the nikon film scanners. If its a flat bed with a film adapter forget it.

I use a cheap scanner mainly just to get a sample scan of a slide. You might try scanning them straight and saving them as a tiff then adjusting the levels in photoshop.

Artemis · Jan 15, 2005

I think youll find the prime films are quit cheap models...which one was it? the £100 one that jessops make?

Shinnentai · Jan 15, 2005

Thanks. I got it through a friend, they bought it at Costco originally (around $300). I'd considered the idea that it was just a bad model, but the fact that the developing lab scans had shown the same inaccuracies was making me worry.

It's a dedicated film/negative/slide scanner type, not a flatbed with film attachment. Apon closer examination It's got a pretty bad internal light source: dim (less than 1/3 the brightness of my lightbox), and directional. It's got one little white light souce shining in from the side and reflecting off a flat (parallel w/ the back of the slide) diffusion film. Theres a clear reduction in light coverage from one side of the slide frame to the other, and around the edges/corners.

Can you recomend a good model?

Artemis · Jan 15, 2005

umm, well I use a flatbed, but Nikon do some good models.

Maybe there is something wrong with it...even a cheap model shouldnt be like that...

BernieSC · Jan 15, 2005

If you look at your slides with your eye and they look good and you see the detail and exposure that you like then its not the slides its the scanner. Just because you get them scanned at a photo lab does not mean they are using the absolute best equipment. I have had slides scanned at labs and they suck because either the equipment is not optimal or the person scanning didn't know what they were doing.

Thats why so many photographers use slides because what you see is what you get. If the exposure is correct and so on then when you reproduce them in the correct way then you will get an exact copy of what that slide looks like.

If you want to have them done at a one hour lab then you might look for a lab that uses the fuji frontier I have had negs and slides done at labs that use that printer-scanner and I think for a one hour lab they looked great. You have to remember also if you have slides or negs scanned at high resolution and you are judging them by how they look on your monitor sometimes they do not look correct. Unless you have a monitor that can display high resolution photos they will only look as good as that monitor can handle.

Mitica100 · Jan 17, 2005

Shinnentai said:
Thanks. I got it through a friend, they bought it at Costco originally (around $300). I'd considered the idea that it was just a bad model, but the fact that the developing lab scans had shown the same inaccuracies was making me worry.

It's a dedicated film/negative/slide scanner type, not a flatbed with film attachment. Apon closer examination It's got a pretty bad internal light source: dim (less than 1/3 the brightness of my lightbox), and directional. It's got one little white light souce shining in from the side and reflecting off a flat (parallel w/ the back of the slide) diffusion film. Theres a clear reduction in light coverage from one side of the slide frame to the other, and around the edges/corners.

Can you recomend a good model?

Hi,

I recently purchased a Plustek film scanner with resolution up to 7200 dpi. I have posted in another forum some pics from scanned slides. Perhaps that might help you.