Help with negatives

<p>I process my own mono film - usually Ilford HP5+ or Fomapan 100 - in 120 size but various formats are used 56x72 / 6x9 / half frame / 6x12 / 6x6<br>

What I am finding is that whether I use</p>

<ul>

<li>an Imacon Flextight scanner (I don't own it but have use of it with the appropriate software!) or</li>

<li>my own <strong>very</strong> low-end scanner or</li>

<li>an alternative method involving placing negative on light box and taking a digital photo of it with Canon 50D and Canon 60mm macro lens</li>

</ul>

<p>the resulting positive obtained through the "invert" command in Photoshop is very pale and washed out. I don't think it's over-exposure because my colour photos/slides come out fine (they are processed by a lab).<br>

I have attached a half frame example taken on an old 50s camera but I get the same answer from a Shen Hao 5x4 with 120 backs and a Linhof Technika 6x9. The neg isn't as sharp as it could be but it's the principle rather than this particular neg that I'm wrestling with.<br>

I use Rodinal - recently purchased and kept cool and dark - at 20C diluted 1+100 for recommended time with recommended agitation. I check the developer when it has been used to make sure temp hasn't changed - it does not.<br>

If I had hair I would be pulling it out! Any help gratefully received.<br>

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58960410@N04/32494028726/in/dateposted-public/<br>

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58960410@N04/32494029006/in/dateposted-public/<br>

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58960410@N04/32494029186/in/dateposted-public/<br>

<p>It's not clear if you have tweaked the parameters after scanning at all. You <em>need</em> to do this or you will get terrible images. I am not an expert on this (I print in a darkroom), but you need to at least set the black and white levels properly and adjust the curve between them. Negatives don't have enormously deep blacks or enormously bright whites (ie the film is never completely clear nor completely opaque): adjusting the black & white levels means that your blacks will be black and whites white, and you then need to adjust the curve (really the gamma mostly, I think) between them to correspond to what paper is like.</p>

<p>More serious people than me will adjust the black & white levels of the scanner, but I have never been very good at that (it can obviously help the scanner get more bits of dynamic range from the neg).</p>

<p>When scanning B&W film including the edge of the negative results in the scan exposure being off. The same may be true for copying with a digital camera.<br>

Increasing your negative exposure by 1/3 stop and increasing development time by 10% to 15% will help also.<br>

HP5+ can tolerate a full stop extra exposure with no change in development.<br>

Color film is a different beast. It uses dyes to form the image and will print well when exposed at 1/2 of box speed. Pro labs required it to be exposed at 1/2 box speed as they did not need the extra density and it speeded up the printing process.</p>

<p>+1 to Tim. Also, my scanner software does the inverting, so I don't know what I'd get if I did it in PS instead. I nearly always need to adjust the image (I usually use a levels layer so I can see how it's going). <br>

I'm not sure I agree with Charles as I seem to get easier to adjust images if I include the rebate. But I have a fairly ancient scanner (Epson 4870) - don't laugh, it still works. I'm primarily a darkroom printer, though.<br>

Assess your negatives by looking at your negatives, not by how they scan. </p>

<p>If I recall correctly, the invert in Photoshop is a linear (let's say literal) invertion, while most scanners apply curves, and as Tim said, changed white and black points. Basically, for identically processed film, you would only need to find the optimal curve and black and white points once, and then you can save it as an action to quickly process multiple images.</p>

<p>At least, I found when I was checking to print negatives (for use with alternative print process) on my inktjet, it was recommended quite a bit to apply a pretty hefty curve to get good densities in the printed negative.</p>

<p>Could it be that you are expecting too much from the technologies you are combining?<br>

To my limited understanding a negative film is using the histogram range as yours does to provide exposure latitude. Any kind of flatbed film scanner is probably made to (kind of) cope with way contrastier slides, same about DSLRs and nastier part of reality.<br>

Maybe shoot RAW and convert to 16 bit TIFF to have more half tones to start with but once in photoshop I'd mess with the little triangles below the histogram til my picture looks bearable.<br>

The only scanner technology that could be adjusted to deliver a contrasty scan straight out of the box would be drum scanners.<br>

You could try soaking your film in paper developer to get contrastier negatives but it will be much harder to get exposure right for those</p>

<p>First, I'm very grateful to you all for taking the time to help me. Thank you very much. I'll try to address the issues raised in order.<br>

Tim - when I use the Imacon drum scanner I have started doing a manual curves adjustment and that does help but does not completely eliminate the problem. Still getting to grips with the software. I set it to "auto correct" the last time (not sure of the actual term used in the software) and that also helped but did not eliminate. My own scanner is so low-end that I maybe should not have mentioned it! Not too many adjustments there so I tend to deal with it via curves in Photoshop.<br>

Charles - I have been thinking about increasing dev time and was even looking at stand dev't until I saw that it reduces contrast and my problem is lack of contrast at least at the scanning stage (I think). I also toyed with the idea of increasing the temperature of the developer as I read somewhere that this could increase contrast.<br>

Bethe - the Imacon that I use does the inversion too. I use Photoshop invert only with my other two methods. I'm not going to name my own scanner - suffice to say it's an all-in-one printer/scanner and tea maker! Of these, the tea making function is the best. :) Your last sentence brings me to one of the points that have been bothering me - I look at the negs and think "wow! they look good" and it's only when I go through one of my digitising processes that I get discouraged. This made me think I need a masterclass in assessment of negatives. I'm still not sure I know what a good negative looks like - it is early days in my learning process though after years of digital only photography.<br>

Wouter - this is encouraging (as are the other comments) because it seems to suggest that most negatives need a bit of intervention and if it's a decent bit then that would include mine.<br>

Again, thank you all.</p>

<p>You don't want high contrast negatives when scanning. Scanners are at their weakest when dealing with the densest areas of the negatives, and longer development times will result in higher maximum densities (Dmax) in the negative.<br>

The most important thing to set with any scanner is the black and white points, using the histogram display.</p>

<p>What John says is correct in my experience: if you make things (either at scan time or later) so that the thing you want to be black on the neg <em>is black</em>, and the thing you want to be white <em>is white</em>, then you are most of the way there. After that you just need to adjust the response curve to make it look like paper.</p>

<p>This is remarkably similar to how you print in the darkroom in fact, especially with a fancy modern enlarger: the one I have used most recently has a sensor which you use to tell it the black and white points on the neg, and then it will tweak the contrast on the paper so they are indeed black and white.</p>

<p>(Not all images have true black and true white in them of course, but very many do, and picking one which does to start is easy enough.)</p>

<p>Just what I needed - I understand now that when I was reading about more contrast in negatives that was to do with standard darkroom printing. Scanning is different. I need to not rush to the scan stage but first consider carefully and play with the histogram to get where I want to be. That way the resulting, inverted, image will be close to the final answer and any further tweaks can be done in software. Thank you John and (again) Tim.</p>

<p>If a very dark shadow or black object scans at 50-75 on the histogram you need to increase exposure, If the brightest white scans at 150-200 you should increase development. A 1/3 stop increase in exposure is all that is needed most of the time and is just noticeable in a wet print. A 5% increments in developing time is just noticeable in wet printing. Higher developing temperature may make grain more apparent.<br>

My deep blacks usually scan at 15 to 30 while the brightest highlights usually scan in at 210 to 235.<br>

If you over expose the blacks will be above the threshold at 0, if you over develop your highlights will be above threshold at 255.<br>

Do not base exposure/development on one negative. When experimenting change 1 variable per test negative (sheet film)/roll of film.</p>

<p>In scan software setting Film-Negative gives you the scan software inversion, setting Film-Positive (scanning the negative as a slide) will give you a negative image that you can invert in post processing.</p>

<p>Here are two sites that give an idea of how to look at your negatives. I've under and over exposed at various times and still been able to print most of them in the darkroom. I've never had a problem scanning them, but always have to adjust them in PS to get what I want. A lot depends on experience. Keep working at it!<br>

http://www.aregeebee.net/negs/eneg.htm <br>

http://www.theonlinedarkroom.com/p/how-to-read-negative.html </p>