Preview scans using DSLR - C41 colour casts

[insanephotography]

Gday guys,

I have a bunch of shots that I have had developed. I plan to buy an epson V700 in a couple of months, but can't afford it right now.

I am in a remote city of Aus (Darwin) and there are no cheap scanning options. I could send the negs to a friend, but postage would outweight the benefits.

Basically I want to preview what my images will look like once scanned properly. To that end, I have used a tablet PC as a white background, and taken a photo with my DSLR.

I have then imported the photo into Photoshop, but am unsure of how exactly to get rid of the orange C-41 cast. It's doing my head in.

Here is the original photo:
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2858/10734641923_45cc9d2ddf_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/insane_photo/10734641923/)
_MG_3452---original (http://www.flickr.com/photos/insane_photo/10734641923/) by insane phototography (http://www.flickr.com/people/insane_photo/), on Flickr

Here is the photo after some manipulation to try and get the colours to somewhat normal:
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2812/10734339555_31afb25095_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/insane_photo/10734339555/)
_MG_3452 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/insane_photo/10734339555/) by insane phototography (http://www.flickr.com/people/insane_photo/), on Flickr

And here is a similar photo from the DSLR:
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3770/10734435686_64cf6ba83d_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/insane_photo/10734435686/)
_MG_2372 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/insane_photo/10734435686/) by insane phototography (http://www.flickr.com/people/insane_photo/), on Flickr

The whole point of this is to see what / if anything I need to improve on as I continue to take Large Format images, but before I can purchase a scanner.

Cheers
Dan

[StoneNYC]

If you have an iPhone, there's an app called filmScannerLite, you can just put the film on a lightbox, and snap a picture with this particular app, and it will converted to a normal photo and that will give you a decent idea?

[insanephotography]

Of course there's an Iphone App for it :)

Cheers mate, checking it out now.

Dan

[Peter De Smidt]

It'll be live in a few minutes: http://youtu.be/xzSntNY-ePk

[Lachlan 717]

If you're comfortable enough to send them to Melbourne, I'll run them through mine and burn them to disc.

[insanephotography]

Champions one and all.

Thanks for the Peter, I will give it a crack.

Lachlan,

Cheers for the offer mate, but I wouldn't want to put you out. I need to get a scanner anyway was just looking for a way to do a quick preview.

Thanks!

Dan

[AtlantaTerry]

Your problem is that you don't have anything "standard" to work with. At least shoot a grey card or better yet, a McBeth Color Checker.

Once you know what it takes to bring one of those back to normal those same settings will work with any image.

If I remember correctly, Photoshop has an eyedropper tool that will tell you how far something is off from grey.

Nikon's free tool for their NEF images, View NX, has a device that when suspended over a grey object then clicked will adjust the image so the grey is properly shown. Perhaps your camera manufacturer has a similar utility.

[Lachlan 717]

Cheers for the offer mate, but I wouldn't want to put you out. I need to get a scanner anyway was just looking for a way to do a quick preview.

Thanks!

Dan

It's really not a hassle, as it will only take a couple of minutes, and I regularly scan. Of course, it's up to you. But I'm happy to help until you get the scanner!

[Larry Gebhardt]

Simple method: open in photoshop. Invert (cmd-I). Add a new levels layer. Adjust the red green and blue channels independently to adjust the shadows. Hold the option key down and move the sliders until you see the clipped region filling in the border of the image. Once this is done the orange mask will be neutralized. Then bring the highlights down for each channel. You don't want to clip the channels, and the exact endpoints will determine the color balance. Hopefully you will have a neutral subject in the frame to check with.

In my opinion if the subject clips on any channel along with the border as you adjust the shadows you have underexposed the image (looks like you have). This will make it hard to get a correct color balance in the shadows as you are missing detail for one or more colors. Also, when you take the image with the DSLR, try to get the image exposed to the right. As it is you severely underexposed it so you don't have much to work with. And shoot it in RAW more, or 16bit tiff.