LS8000 and HC110

Hi all,

I am having real trouble getting good scans off film developed in HC110* on my

LS8000. HP5+ and TMX I am using at the moment. They are coming out very "muddy"

even tho' the negatives themselves look good (TMX negs developed in FX39 scan

beautifully). I think the problem is an interaction between the autoexposure in

the LS8000 and the way HC110 develops highlights - the scanner is using up too

much of the available grey scale to preserve highlight separation that I don't

care about. I will post an example scan later, but I happened to take a shot

where the softbox is in the frame. It was manually metered with my Sekonic and

the subject ought to have been perfectly exposed - but in the default scan, the

subject is very dark and the shadow of the reflector is visible in the softbox!

Now, well done to the LS8000 for extracting that, but I'd rather it just blew

out all the highlights there and gave a full tonal range to my subject. Is

there an intelligent solution to this, when in batch scanning mode?

Thanks!

* This is an interim solution until Aculux 2, my all-round favourite, is

available again.

Scan in 16-bit mode (14 bit or whatever) with the scan-time curves turned off. Make sure the histogram is symmetrical (adjust the exposure if necessary) and clean them up in post (Photoshop?). The basic adjustment would be to adjust the white and black points in Levels.

Another approach is to scan them to NEF files, then do the processing afterwards using NikonScan (these NEF are not compatible with ACR). That way you can try different settings without repeating the actual scan.