Portra settings/workflow?

[omissions]

Anyone have a tried-and-true method to scan Portra (all types)? I have a 9000ed and recently picked up a v750 (as I move into LF work)......both vuescan and the copy of silverfast that came with the v750....but just can't seem to find a process that works anywhere near consistently. Colours require me to jump through hoops in PS afterwards, tonal range isn't anywhere near what's in the film....please help before the whole kit goes flying off the cliff.

[David Higgs]

for the V750 have you downloaded the latest version of silverfast and used Negafix - it works fine for me?

I also use Nikon scan on an LS50 - not dissimilar from the 9000 and have saved a colour correction profile for portra in the colour settings workflow area - only took a few minutes to do.

[omissions]

I do believe I have the latest silverfast - which negafix profile do you use for the new portra?

[Tyler Boley]

I've been scanning a lot of portra lately, with silverfast. I can't find any way around a lot of color work in PS after the fact. Be sure to set end points in negafux manually to avoid clipping.
Tyler

[Professional]

The problem is, i can't tell if the colors are ok/fine until i can see the true color scans of the Portra film, i scan 2 Portra and happy with the output so far unless i don't know what is the true or correct colors should be, and i use V750 with Epson Scan dry scan and no much workflow.

[omissions]

colour is my biggest beef w/ scanning my negs. there's just no life to them. it's not bad exposing or developing, it's just a scanning technique/workflow I can't get jack out of. i've tried setting up profiles that I've found are working.....but it always just ends up being for one or two photos then I realize it's worthless.
what I want is something like: http://anikington.com/photographs/photographs.html or http://www.shenphoto.com/

[mortensen]

... I am also having problems with color consistency across my negative scans. I scan portra160NC on an Imacon ft848 and try to do as 'open' scans as possible, meaning that I scan Histogram values from 0-255 on all three channels in 16 bit. In Imacon's flexcolor software, I can preview the colors and I have found a close-to-pretty-good setting with midpoints in red: 70, green: 110 and blue: 115.
... I don't know if you have similar controls/settings in Silverfast/Vuescan?
But I still get a greenish or yellowish cast on some of my scans - something that is pretty hard to correct completely in Lightroom (for me, at least), without introducing either magenta or yellow cast.

I'll search the archives tonight. Loads of people must have experienced similar problems previously.

[Daniel Moore]

I've found this page to be helpful. (http://www.jingai.com/scanningguide/sec%203%20balancing%20color%20film.html)

[mortensen]

thanks... seems helpful

[Daniel Moore]

Here's another great read (http://www.creativepro.com/node/57719) from the late Mr. Bruce Fraser that's pertinent.

[tuco]

I've shot both the New Portra 400 and 160. The new 160 is a piece of cake. The 400 is problematic with purple in the shadows. VueScan has no film base profiles for these films.

What you need to do is sample the film base in VueScan. I does the trick for Portra 160 and I've so far find it easy and quick to adjusting WB with this film and finish fine tuning in post. To sample the film base, you put in a clear area from say the leader of the film, select a decent size area, preview and an option should pop up for lock the exposure. Check it. Preview again and another option should pop up for lock the film color. Then put your negative in and scan.

[Professional]

I tested only one Portra 400 on 120 format [6x7], i bought 160 films also in 120 format, i will test them later in the future and see, but i agree with tuck that with Portra 400 i see some kind of color cast in shadows, but the highlights are great fantastic, but i try to ignore the shadows and keep highlights [but on that roll there is a person in shadows as his face is so dark and he is a dark skin, so his face became like un-natural :(]

[polyglot]

If your shadows are the wrong colour, just tweak either the film base colour or the black-point settings in the color tab. You should get a perfectly neutral result, for example (http://www.brodie-tyrrell.org/pad/index.php?id=2011/04/30) (that's only 6x7 though).

[tuco]

If your shadows are the wrong colour, just tweak either the film base colour or the black-point settings in the color tab. You should get a perfectly neutral result, for example (http://www.brodie-tyrrell.org/pad/index.php?id=2011/04/30) (that's only 6x7 though).

I believe I tried that but I have a roll I'll be developing soon so I'll give it another go. Nice results on that shot, btw.

[Uri A]

Thanks everyone for this thread and Daniel thanks for these references! Just getting started with Portra/v750 setup and need all the help I can get..

[Tim Gray]

Sorry to be late to the game. In my testing, I don't think you can correct all color neg scans in Lightroom. It just doesn't offer all the tools you need. Again, from what I've found, you need to be able to move the black point around in RGB, not just in terms of luminosity.

Photoshop curves/levels is what I would use. Move the shadow endpoints of the RGB curves around a bit, then the highlight endpoints, and finally tweak the color with the midpoints. It's iterative, so after you do one pass, you might find you want to move a shadow endpoint or something afterwards.