Scanner Problem or Human error

**seawolf66** · 19-May-2009, 08:18

I just shoot some Porta 400 VC of 35mm I have one negative that I really like I have
scanned it Three time'S First it came out [ out of focus @ 30.4 KB] second time [ is sharp @1312 KB] Third one is @13.0mb and is out of focus] like File0007.jpg these negatives were shot with a Very New Vitomatic IIa which was never used , You that new leather smell you get with a very new camera, Its sure Nice:

Any thoughts , Thanks

**Ken Lee** · 19-May-2009, 14:21

You need to tell us which scanner you are using, how you are placing the film in the scanner, which scanner settings you have used, etc.

**seawolf66** · 19-May-2009, 15:33

Ken Lee: I hope I can Communicate this Correctly: Thanks
Screen shot ! one is the pre-scan procedure
Screen shot ! two is the real scan

and the foto is a reduction in size via Resize option in photo shop elements 5

**Ken Lee** · 19-May-2009, 18:40

Considering that you are scanning 35mm film, 300 dpi is pretty low resolution. In addition, you have selected the option for Unsharp Mask, which means that the scanner software is going to perform sharpening on that low-res image. I may be wrong, but you have also chosen to scale (enlarge) the resulting image by 1,333 %, which means that your image will be large (49.38 megabytes), but a sharpened version of a blurry image. No wonder your results are surprising.

Instead, you should scan at a high resolution, but don't scale. In other words, scale should be set to 100%. Also, de-select the Unsharp Mask option. You should perform any sharping of the image, after you have corrected the colors in Photoshop, cropped, etc - and chosen the output size of your image. Sharpening is a "destructive" process, so you should not save a sharpened image, unless you plan to print it exactly the same size next time.

It might be a good idea to take some time, and become acquainted with your scanner's instruction manual. This way, you will better understand all the different options and what they do. There are plenty of tutorials on the web which cover the basics of scanning, which you would find fun and rewarding to read.