Shouldn't these drum scans be better than this?

[paulr]

I had 20 drum scans made from 2-1/4 inch negatives. This was based on the assumption that the scans I'd already made (and laboriously color corrected, burned/dodged etc.) with my Epson 4800 wouldn't be good enough for exhibition prints. I dreaded the project, since it meant doing all the work over again, but I wanted the prints to look as good as possible. To this end I ponied up and had the scans done by the lab with the best reputation in NYC.

Now that I'm working on the scans, I'm not at all sold on the quality. They're sharper than my unsharpened epson scans, but not the sharpened versions. And shockingly, they have worse dynamic range. I see more shadow detail in the epson scans than I do in the drum scans.

I also find the color in the drum scans to be exaggerated. The greens are almost fluorescent, and all the colors need to be desaturated somewhat (the film used was Fuji portrait film ... not velveeta or anything similar).

Does this sound odd? I've never had drum scans done before. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I really didn't expect this.

[Ken Lee]

Did you ask the people who did the scanning for you ?

They would probably be very interested in making sure you are happy with the results.

[Ash]

It may the format they're saving them.

What colour space? Are they uncompressed tiffs?

[Kirk Gittings]

I have found drum scanner operators who are great at transparencies and b&w film but are incompetent when scanning color negatives.

[paulr]

I haven't talked to them yet, primarily because my sales drives me nuts (he gave me a good deal, though, at least on paper).

Nothing funny about the file format. They're uncompressed tiffs, Adobe RGB.

[QT Luong]

I've no experience having negative film scanned, only transparencies. That said, I have many 35mm images scanned on both scanners, and found the difference between the LS4000 (a dedicated 35mm film scanner) and a Tango scan to be quite noticeable, both in terms of sharpness and detail in shadows.

[Noeyedear]

Are you sure they are drum scans? Some years ago a printer scanned some images for me on an expensive flatbed, I thought the colours looked child like, the greens were very green, reds very red etc. Does the exif say anything about the origin? I have a drum scanner and colour negs can be hit and miss for me. One thing I did notice recently when I scanned some B&W on my old broken Artixscan 1100 was that they had better DR than my drum scanner. I think if it's not a late model drum scan the DR could be less, on tranparency it does not matter so much, in fact my drum pulls detail out of shadows from transparencies that has me going back to the original to see if I can see it. If you could post some samples it would be good.
You probably put a lot more work into your scans than the drum operator and did you have more dpi on the drum scans, if you are looking further into the negs from the drum scan it might not look so good.

Kevin

[Bruce Watson]

Now that I'm working on the scans, I'm not at all sold on the quality. They're sharper than my unsharpened epson scans, but not the sharpened versions. And shockingly, they have worse dynamic range. I see more shadow detail in the epson scans than I do in the drum scans.

Just to be clear we are talking about detail from the least dense parts of the film, yes? Either way something is wrong. A good drum scan often shows more shadow detail with negatives than do consumer flatbeds. Surprising but true in my experience.

As for sharpening, you aren't comparing apples to apples. Sharpen both files and see what you think then. PMTs are sharper then CCDs - that's just the laws of physics. But drum scanners can be picky beasts; they want to be fully tuned up to do their best.

I also find the color in the drum scans to be exaggerated. The greens are almost fluorescent, and all the colors need to be desaturated somewhat (the film used was Fuji portrait film ... not velveeta or anything similar).

I do drum scanning for hire and specialize in LF and negatives (both B&W and color). I've scanned a lot of color negatives and never had a complaint like yours, but your post of 10-Nov-2008 about this same subject piqued my curiosity so I've done some investigating since then. I think it comes down to the huge working space that most drum scanners use internally. The working space is huge because the drum scanner has to be able to handle the most contrasty, dense, saturated film you are ever likely to throw at it.

In very simplified and general terms, what happens when you drum scan is that you mount the film, spin the drum up, define the location of the film on the drum for the scanner, then make a preview (low resolution scan). From the preview the software pulls a representative sampling of data for your film. From this it builds histograms and things for the operator to view and work with. When the operator sets his black and white points for each channel, the software sets the scanner's hardware to reflect the operators choices. Specifically, the analog limits for the log amps for each channel are set. Most low end scanners can't do this, and it has ramifications.

The advantage of this is that the scanner can use its full digital range to represent the density range of each channel on the film.

The disadvantages is the same. And that's what I suspect is happening in your case.

An example from my experience: I found a scene with a subject brightness range (SBR) of 1.0 stops. It was an early morning in spring and raining; extremely flat light. I captured in with 5x4 160PortraVC. When I drum scanned it "normally" by setting the black and white points for each channel normally, the resulting image file "stretched" the density range out to be a full range image, with black being zero and white being 256 (say 8 bits for the sake of argument). It stretched all the colors too showing me things I didn't even know where in the scene. And yes, it stretched out the saturation too. I had to dial it back a fair amount in Photoshop.

This type of stretching is usually seen just in color negatives. Trannies tend to fill the scanner's internal color space better so it's seldom noticed. B&W negatives are mostly about just the luminosity axis so this is seldom a problem outside of some intentionally high key images (think heavy fog). Color negatives, OTOH, tend to be lower contrast and lower saturation. And... most drum scanner operators see few negatives so have little experience with negatives.

That, I think, is why you are seeing this "exaggeration" as it were. It's not a bad thing. It's only marginally controllable with most drum scanner software, and it's easily corrected in a photo editor like Photoshop.

Bottom line, negatives aren't trannies. Because of the inverted color and the orange mask, the operator doesn't really know what the scene is supposed to look like. As a drum scanner operator, I always try to err on the side of giving more data in a scan rather than less. That's what I as a photographer want; most photographers want the same in my experience.

[Stephen Best]

Just getting a "drum scan" means nothing. I've seen some pretty lacklustre drum scans (from high end scanners) in my time, most of which cost the customer serious money. It's more about the dialog with the customer, knowing what they expect from the scan, what they're going to use it for, educating them on how to prepare the scan for print etc. The actual scanner used makes less of a difference than many here are prepared to admit. If you can't get the results you want, take your business elsewhere.

[Nathan Potter]

Paul, I know it would be an expensive pain but it might be worth sending a neg out to a very high quality custom scanning guy who you can talk to, say by phone. Describe your expectations and hopes. This would give you some sort of a benchmark. Somebody like Lenny Eiger comes to mind.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.