Scanning B&W medium format negatives on Epson 3200

[brian_keller]

If anyone has found a good solution to scanning black and white

medium format (6x6) negatives on the Epson perfection 3200 could you

please send me the recipe. Everything I have tried has come out like

crap. I've tried the Epson software and the Silverfast software,

scanning a transparency in colour mode or black and white mode -

nothing seems to work. I must be doing something wrong because I

can't imagine the scanner can't do better. Thanks for any help on

this.

 

Brian.

[jbq]

I've found that traditional B&W was hard to scan on the 3200 indeed, that I had to tweak the curves a lot in silverfast to get the data as I wanted. I use silverfast, in B&W mode, with the proper film profile, and I have to play with the mid-tone and contrast sliders until I get satisfactory results).

 

I've had better results scanning Kodak's orange-mask C41 B&W.

[jakob_norstedt_moberg]

I have not tried negative B/W, but I have got good results from positive Agfa Scala film. I used the Epson software, but I didn't let it set the black and white points automatically.

 

I brought up the histogram and put the white point slider far away to the right, and the black point slider far to the left. I scanned i 16 bit mode and by doing this I believe I fetched as much information as possible from the film.

 

Jakob<div></div>

[leonard_evens]

I use Vuescan. I've done lots of scanning of bw negatives with an Epson 2450 without difficulty, but I just scanned a 6 x 7 TMax 100 negative with my (relatively) new 3200. I scanned it as a b/w negative in 16 bit color depth and saved it in 8 bit depth. I adjusted the black and white points so shadows and highlights were about right and set the brightness (really a gamma adjustment) to about 0.68. I usually scan at 3200 ppi, and I modify the image in a photoeditor. For this purpose I just scanned at 200 ppi without sharpening to produce a file I could post and I did no post scanning adjustments. The resulting image is attached. Since it was scanned at a low resolution and saved as a jpeg file, it is a bit soft. If I had scanned at a higher resolution, it would have looked very sharp.

 

I've read your previous post on this issue, but I have no idea why you are having problems. I think Vuescan is the best available tool for scanning, but I've scanned with the Epson Twain software and with Silverfast, and I don't think my results would be radically different.

[sjmurray]

Brian, like Leonard, I have scanned many black and white medium format(and 4x5) negatives with the 2450 using Vuescan. If you go into my folders here on PN you will see numerous examples. With Vuescan I use the "black point" and "white point" controls extensively, along with "brightness." I often find myself using near zero on white point and black point if the neg has detail in the brighter areas I want to capture. I go for a much lower contrast scan than you would want in a neg for printing. Once scanned you can play with contrast in PS. Scanning gives you a range of contrast that you couldn't get printing on traditional papers. I see the negative scanning process somewhat like creating a virtual "negative" for printing digitally with tweaking in PS as the final step. Using 16 bit mode gives you more tonal gradations to adjust brightness and contrast before converting to 8 bit if you need to. Hope this helps.

[andy_piper2]

Brian: Sorry to be so late to the party - I've been shooting this weekend.

 

Can you be a little more specific about what looks "wrong" with your scans? Too flat? Too contrasty? Shadows? Highlights? Midtones? Softness? Oversharpening?

 

I've been getting good results from 6x6 with a variety of B&W silver films (400TX, Agfa APX100, Ilford PanF/HP5) just using the basic EpsonScan 1.x; straight grayscale (both 8- and 16-bit) scans, no sharpening during the scan (but a fair amount in Photoshop).

 

One is attached.

 

Tell me more.<div></div>

[ben couvillion]

i use the epson 1250, which was the previous model, to scan all my b+w 120 negs. i mostly shoot traditional b+w films, but have had no problem scanning c41 b+w or color negatives as well. i don't use silverfast because you don't have as much control over the scanning in my opinion. rather, i use the epson twain software, scan at 16 bit greyscale and use the profiles that came with the scanner ( linear and a higher contrast) then i sometimes back off from the shadows a little. photoshop for the rest, and always use the scanners initial unsharp masking. i usually scan between 1800 and 2000 dpi - i would assume you could do these same things on the 3200, possibly better? attached is a sample image.<div></div>

[jtk]

Nice examples!

 

I find the 3200 easily handles a wide variety of B&W emulsions and densities from 4X5 to 35. It's far better with 35 than people generally admit, though it's important to scan maximum resolution...there are definite gains. I rely on the bundled Silverfast SE or, recently, Vuescan. I still prefer Silverfast SE, almost always with default settings, but there seems potential in Vuescan.