Digital ICE - sometimes creates noise?

[va3uxb]

<p>I've been using my Epson V500 with the Digital ICE feature to scan colour negs and slides for a few months now, and it's been performing quite well. Then out of the last 4 rolls I've scanned, Digital ICE has failed to work correctly for three of them.</p>

<p>What it seems to be doing is creating very contrasty noise. The effect reminds me of when I accidentally tried to use Digital ICE on a black&white film. I'm wondering if there is a problem with the film or the processing that is causing the scanner to act this way.</p>

<p>I process my film at home, I'm using a Tetenal Press Kit for the C-41 processing. Maybe there's residual silver on the negative that's confusing the ICE thing? It's wierd because I had it happen once, then the next roll was just fine, then the last two (processed together) both exhibit this problem.</p>

<p>I've attached an image below, this is a crop which was scanned using Digital ICE. The film was a generic colour negative, ISO 800, exposed with "sunny-16" in an old Chaika II. The film was current, and was processed last night and scanned this morning.</p>

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[va3uxb]

<p>Here is the same exact crop scanned immediately after the first, with Digital ICE turned off. It shows none of the contrasty noise that the Digital ICE caused in the first scan.</p>

<p>No other processing has been done to these two scans, and none of the other scanner software settings were used.</p>

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[StuartMoxham]

<p>Maybe the bleach is not so good and you are getting silver retention. If you hold the neg emulsion side up and reflect light off of it you may see the silver.</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>In my own experience with FARE, Digital ICE and some others, I find it better (not easier) for high quality scans to switch off the automatic routines and do my 'spotting' and other corrections manually. Works great if you're cleaning slides and negatives carefully before scanning.</p>

[john_simon5]

<p>That effect is highly reminiscent of what happens when you use ICE with Kodachrome. Or, as you remark, B&W film. Your identification of it being batch related does point towards a problem with the processing.</p>

[francisco_disilvestro]

<p>Silver retention is a common problem related with insufficient bleach. Kits that use "Blix" instead of separate Bleach and fix are prone to this issue if the chemical is exhausted or temperature / time are wrong. This is the main reason some experts recommend processing film with separate bleach and fix.</p>

[david_littleboy__tokyo__ja]

<p>For some older slides, I found Vuescan's "IR clean" on its least aggressive setting to be fine whereas Epson Scan's ICE would cause problems at edges. It might be worth trying.</p>

<p> </p>

[va3uxb]

<p>Thanks for all the feedback!</p>

<p>I processed another two rolls last night, but extended the blix time by about 25%. The scans came out ok this time around, so I figure this means my blix is probably just about exhausted.</p>

<p>Time to mix up a new batch!</p>

[rick_mason]

<p>This problem is a direct result of Digital Ice's incompatibility with Kodachrome, its well documented and even in the Epson V700 manual. Its something to do with how the infrared processing works and how it sees the silver in Kodachromes as dust.<br>

"The silver particles reflect the infrared light in a similar manner to dust particles, thus respond equally in visible light and infrared light. A similar phenomenon also prevents Kodak <a title="Kodachrome" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome">Kodachrome</a> slides from being scanned with Digital ICE (Kodachrome's cyan layer absorbs infrared)."</p>