screen cezanne workflow - post your secrets here!

[bohngy]

hello all,

I've had a cezanne for some time now, but I'm rather embarrassed to say that it has been laying dormant for over a year! What i'm about to type will make me sound as if I'm new to the machine, but off and on I've been scanning with it for years and I've had some fantastic results in the past!

I cranked the ol' best up last night to scan some 5x4 negs that have been piling up in the "to be scanned tray". Having been away from the scanning process for so long, I've kind of forgotten how to get the best out of it! So I've now a load of questions that, previously, I think I might have ignored.

1. which way up should the negatives go? emulsion up or film base up? I have trouble discerning the difference, but at the moment I'm scanning with the negative identifiers reading correctly (so I think that's emulsion down)
2. does your film touch the scanning plate, or do you use the mask to 'raise' it. I've been allowing my plastic mask to act as a spacer, reducing the chances of newton rings etc.
3. do you use the perspex cover sheet? surely this is another 2 surfaces for dust to collect?

MY WORKFLOW AT THE MO...
-tape the negs to a home-made mask
-load into the cezanne 'mask first'
-scan as a positive with details as set in Peter De Smidt's blog (thanks peter you were really helpful to me some years ago)
-invert in photoshop
-levels to clip H/L and shadow in RGB layers
-remove colour noise by gaussian blur > edit> fade gaussian blur > colour (works wonders!)
-despair with the lack of colour consistency between frames!
-place a post on LF forums, begging for help!

is there anything I can do to automate the 'conversion' of a negative to a positive? Not to save time, but to ensure colour and contrast consistency between similar frames?

I'll add to this as I try to remember what I did with my workflow?

[Peter De Smidt]

You want to scan with the negative resting on the bed. The farther the negative is away from the bed, the more likely it is that that anti-Newton texture of the bed will cause a loss of resolution. Because of the anti-Newton texture, you shouldn't get Newton's rings.

The way Screen wants you to do it is as follows:
1. Set the cover sheet upside down on a light table.
2. Place appropriate mask on cover sheet.
3. Tape negative, base side down in place on cover sheet.
4. Flip cover sheet and place on scanning bed.

I've decided that wet-mounting is an advantage on a Cezanne at the highest resolutions, and so that's what I do, using a diy carrier and a piece of optical glass.

Unfortunately, I can't remember the last time I scanned a color negative, and so I wish that I could be more help. Something to try, though, would be to use the curves panel in Color Genius. If you take the point on the lower left and move it to the upper left part the of graph, and also move the upper right point down to the lower right, then your negative will be inverted, and it'll be much easier to make adjustments in the Color Genius software. You can experiment with using the eye droppers. For example, if you click on the orange film base with the shadow eye dropper, that ought to go a long ways to neutralizing the orange base.

I recommend turning off all sharpening in the CG software. Unfortunately you have to do this for every scan.

[bohngy]

Thanks Again Peter, I'll give it a try this evening.

Ironically it was transparency all the way for me too, but I have started using negatives due to the prohibitive cost of E6.

right, so its the emulsion that touches the scan bed... got it.

[Peter De Smidt]

My film use is over 99% black and white. If I wanted (and could afford) shooting color in LF, I'd probably go for color negative, mainly due to the greater range it can record.

I do have some older color negatives, though, and I plan on doing some scanning over the next few days. I'll try a few things and report back.