scanning: transparency vs color neg?

[Sascha Welter]

For reference to the look and feel I'm after, here's a link to a British photographer who's images are shot on film. Especially his portraits of restaurant people and food shots. He's a photographer I've only just learned about. Hope it's OK to post a link:

http://www.tobyglanville.com/

Some of those portraits are done with available light in contrasty conditions (direct sunlight with background in the shade). You will do yourself a huge favor when you work with color negative film there. You'll just expose for the shadows and recover the highlights in scanning. With slide film you'll be in for a spot meter, probably some softbox lighting (or at least a portable reflector) and a good amount of bracketing.

In the food shots I see more pictures where he let the shadows "drop off", but then you can do that too with color neg film. The difference is that you get to decide in post-processing - with a big safety margin - at which point exactly you want the shadows to get off.

The lab where they develop my C-41 gives me rough scans on a CD. From that I'll decide which ones I want to really scan myself. (I'm using 6x9 on 120 film.)

Given that a color negative contains everything a slide does and given that it's much easier to bring it all out in a scan... get yourself some good color neg film and never look back. The ability to bring all that contrast on film and get it all digitized is just so worth it.

I have very good experience with both of the 160 "neutral color" films, only once with a 400VC (which I didn't like so much, but with careful scanning it was ok). The finer grain doesn't make that much difference in large format, but then it's all a matter of what you want to do with it (i.e. how big you want to go). The 400 obviously can give you a little bit more room in respect to exposure times when doing portraits.

[Bruce Watson]

I can not do that with color neg film.

You might be surprised.

It can be learned, if you want to make the effort. Just like with B&W. Just like with looking at the ground glass. I no longer see the ground glass as upside down and backwards unless I consciously will it while I'm working, and I seldom have any reason to do that.

I learned how to evaluate color negative film on the light table with a loupe. It's easy enough to evaluate sharpness and focus. Highlights and shadows are the same as B&W, which is pretty easy in any case. Color is the most challenging, but that's doable too -- the more you do the better you get.

It's never going to be like looking at a chrome. You won't know exactly what it's going to look like -- but you can easily evaluate it enough to know if it's worth scanning. And in my experience you never know exactly what a scanned chrome is going to look like either. Everything -- all films -- need some level of contrast and color correction after scanning.

The real question is whether or not you want to make the effort to learn. In my case I really wanted the dynamic range that I can only get from color negative film, so I had to learn to evaluate color negative film on the light table. And if I can do it, anyone can. I'm just not that special.

[Arne Norris]

Thank you for all of the responses and information so far! Can anyone tell me more about the topic of grain aliasing? I'm not familiar with this. Are certain specific scanners more prone to this problem? Are b&w neg films prone to this problem as well?

[Ben Syverson]

Grain aliasing is something that happens around 4000 DPI, as the size of the grain approaches the size of the pixel in the scan.

It's not something you need to worry about. You will certainly never ever see it on a flatbed scan.

[rdenney]

Thank you for all of the responses and information so far! Can anyone tell me more about the topic of grain aliasing? I'm not familiar with this. Are certain specific scanners more prone to this problem? Are b&w neg films prone to this problem as well?

In my experience, grain aliasing occurs when the sampling density of the scanner is close to the average grain size. It is really a moire pattern between the two.

For me, it was a problem with medium-speed color negative materials being scanned at 2700 samples per inch in an old Acer film scanner. I scan film, both negative and transparency, in a Nikon scanner at 4000 spi and don't see aliasing. I also scan large-format film--so far black and white and transparency--at 2000 or 2400 spi and have not seen aliasing. We tend to scan small formats at high enough resolution to avoid aliasing, and large formats at low enough resolution.

And old scanners were worse about it than newer scanners. Before the Nikon, I used a Minolta Multi-II that scanned small-format film at 2820 spi and I never saw aliasing. What that is different from 2700 in the still-older Acer I don't know. The usual solution in digital cameras of introducing a diffusion filter in front of the sensor does not seem to have been the solution.

Rick "who has not seen it as a problem in about 10 years" Denney

[rguinter]

In my experience, grain aliasing occurs when the sampling density of the scanner is close to the average grain size. It is really a moire pattern between the two....

Rick "who has not seen it as a problem in about 10 years" Denney

Rick: I too have not heard of "grain aliasing" before. Is there a reference where I can see what it looks like? Or can you post an example image?

My comments in this thread are a bit redundant and not as educated since I have only used an Epson 4990 flatbed for my own scans so far. They are good enough for my eyes and more than adequate for anything I want to print.

But my only comments about the transparency vs. negative discussion is "for me" it is still much easier for me to see what I am going to get after scanning with a transparency than I am with a negative. So I still shoot more transparency film by at least 2 to 1. I guess my brain hasn't yet learned to interpret the inversed colors as well as it has the inverted image on a ground glass which does seem normal.

But I do really like the Ektar 100 which I have been using lately. I find I can't let the scanner software select the scanning parameters automatically like I usually do with transparencies. It takes more work and I have to manually tweak the brightness, saturation, and use the histogram to select the white, black, and gray points. But once I've done that the Ektar scans wonderfully and I certainly appreciate the extra exposure latitude. Nuff said.

Cheers. Bob G.

A recent example attached.

[mrladewig]

To the original poster, the portrait examples on that website all look like color negative to my eye.

In my case I really wanted the dynamic range that I can only get from color negative film, so I had to learn to evaluate color negative film on the light table. And if I can do it, anyone can. I'm just not that special.

And Bruce's articles on scanning color neg convinced me to roll up my sleeves and try it too. Now I can use both tools. I shoot slide films when dynamic range is really well controlled or I want tonal contrast to dominate an image, and I shoot color negative when I want color contrast to be more important than luminosity contrasts.

I recently printed this shot on Portra 160VC at 30"X40" for a customer and the detail is every bit as good as the 30X40 from E100VS sitting right next to it on the wall, both from 4X5. Grain and sharpness are really much better on modern Pro color negative films. I shot this on both color neg and E100G and the color neg allowed me to have much richer yellows in the upper areas.

[Bruce Watson]

I shot this on both color neg and E100G and the color neg allowed me to have much richer yellows in the upper areas.

Good get! That's what I'm talking about!

[Lenny Eiger]

Thank you for all of the responses and information so far! Can anyone tell me more about the topic of grain aliasing? I'm not familiar with this. Are certain specific scanners more prone to this problem? Are b&w neg films prone to this problem as well?

Grain anti-aliasing in drum scanners happens when the grain clumps in the image are in the range of 20 microns and the aperture of the drum scanner is set to 12 microns. The scanner scans the area at 1 1/2 to two times and the overlapping of the samples creates a more grainy effect as a result. The farther away you are from the actual size (in the smaller direction) the worse this gets.

The opposite effect is not having enough samples, which causes blurriness.

In drum scanners with adjustable apertures one can zoom in to a very small area and watch what happens at 6, 8, 10, 13, 16 and 19 microns, for example. It is clear which one is the sharpest with the least amount of grain.

Lenny Eiger
EigerStudios

[rdenney]

Rick: I too have not heard of "grain aliasing" before. Is there a reference where I can see what it looks like? Or can you post an example image?

Here is a scan of a small piece of a negative that reveals what I believe is grain aliasing:



The image is shown at 100% (scanned pixel = screen pixel), and the 400-pixel width covers about 0.15" of negative. The scan density was 2720 sensors/inch at the full optical resolution of the scanner, which was an Acer Scanwit 2720. The image was made 8 or 9 years ago, so the scanner technology is pretty ancient. I replaced that scanner with a Minolta Multi II, and then again by a Nikon 8000, and have not had this sort of a problem since.

Rick "not positive that this is aliasing, but reasonably sure" Denney