Negative or Chrome 4x5, Which is best for scanning?

[Rafael Macia]

I have had many 75MB scans made on an Imacon 848 (I think that is the model), of 4x5 chromes, and they have been fine.
Recently, when visiting Photo Gizzmo, in NYC, I was told I should think to shoot negative film, rather than transparency film. I was told the latitude is greater, exposure is easier, ... etc.....
I asked the scanner guy about what I heard about negative stock being better, and he said what I heard was not true, that scans from chromes are better than scans from negatives (color). ... ?
Does anyone have an opinion on this topic
thank you,
Rafael

[Wayne Crider]

Well the latitude is greater and I suppose the exposure easier, but from what I remember reading years ago it was considered better to scan a chrome, not that that information hasn't been updated. I say go with what you prefer. Positives are easier to judge on the lightbox and you don't need a scan or print to determine exposure, composition etc.

[Kirk Gittings]

Generally it is easier to scan trans (easier to find the right color balance etc.) because the IT8 targets for calibration of the scanner are transparencies. But color trans scan well too with a little more work and have some advantages like lower contrast, greater exposure latitude etc. A minority of professionals swear by color negatives for scanning. For the highest quality scan I prefer a good transparency. For high production I prefer color negatives. For color shot specifically for B&W conversion, I prefer color negs.

[65Galaxie]

A well exposed negative can scan well enough (have only scanned 6x9 neg.) but a well exposed 4x5 chrome beats them altogether. I think that a scanner (especially cheaper flatbed) has to increase the contrast so much out of a negative that the scanner will add too much electronic "noise" to the output. That's my take. I've had a pro lab scan some 6x6 neg. about 5 yrs ago and the 16x20 looked ok but nowhere near the detail a cheapo scanned 4x5 chrome can have. Some people claim that negatives have higher grain than chrome but I think what's happening is the scanner adds it's own grain and we mistake it as neg. grain. I don't think that an Epson flatbed can actually resolve any film grain (except in extreme cases).

[Walter Calahan]

All depends on how well you train yourself as a scanner operator, or if you are hiring out, how good the person is who you hire.

I find transparencies easier to judge 'cause they are true color positives. I'm comparing apples to apples. But now with some time under my belt scanning 8x10 color negs, they are all that tough either.

You'll need to do the heavy lifting and test, test test.

[Hollis]

My vote is for the trans. I have always had better results when scanning on an imacon and even on a drum. As far as exposure latitude with negs, it is definitely better and could be what swings your vote that way, its all personal preference in my opinion. When I have to travel light and have only one chance to grab the image, I will usually shoot neg. just so I can cover my ass.

[Bruce Watson]

I have had many 75MB scans made on an Imacon 848 (I think that is the model), of 4x5 chromes, and they have been fine.
Recently, when visiting Photo Gizzmo, in NYC, I was told I should think to shoot negative film, rather than transparency film. I was told the latitude is greater, exposure is easier, ... etc.....
I asked the scanner guy about what I heard about negative stock being better, and he said what I heard was not true, that scans from chromes are better than scans from negatives (color). ... ?
Does anyone have an opinion on this topic
thank you,
Rafael

Like most things photographic, there are just about as many opinions as there are people to ask.

The question is too open ended. Much depends on the scanner, it's software, and the scanner operator. In particular, it depends on the motivation of the person doing the scanning. You'll definitely get different answers from prolabs that are interested in volume and keeping human interaction to low and predictable levels, and individual artists who are interested in getting the best scan possible even if that means lots of hands-on work to get the scan just right.

In general, prolabs and high volume scan houses tend towards trannies. Artists and people doing their own scans tend to be mixed, but the trend seems to be toward negatives.

There are a number of complex reasons for this. For example, you can profile a scanner for scanning trannies, but not negatives. You can profile for trannies because the Dmax range for trannies is comparatively small. Negatives exhibit a much wider range of Dmax values rendering profiles moot. A profiled scanner minimizes operator time because the whole idea of a profiled scanner is that the operator doesn't make any changes to any settings. So the operator doesn't spend as much time with the trannies, and indeed doesn't have to have the experience level to work with film manually. Bottom line is you can use a less qualified scanner operator and still get acceptable results. For trannies, not negatives.

The flip side is artists who do their own scanning. I'm one. I bought my own drum scanner. The right scanner with the right software makes scanning negatives no more difficult than scanning trannies. The learning curve I found to be about as difficult as learning to use a view camera. If you can do one you can do the other. What you learn about negative film is that you have to make settings for each sheet individually. Generalized settings like you would use in a profiled scanner for trannies won't work well for negatives. But if you are willing to do the work, your scans from negatives can be at least as good if not better than scans from trannies.

You get some interesting things from negatives. For one, the Dmax is considerably lower so you don't push the scanner's capabilities as much, so you don't get as much noise in your scans, and you don't clip the high density parts of the scan like CCD scanners can do with some trannies that exceed their Dmax capabilities. Even consumer flat beds can scan most negative film without clipping. The same can not be said for their performance with trannies.

For another, negative film has far greater dynamic range than tranny film. That is, negative film can capture a far greater scene brightness range (SBR) without clipping (loss of shadow detail, blown highlights) than can tranny film. For example, here's my favorite white flower in full sun (http://www.achromaticarts.com/big_image.php?path=flowers&img_num=2) test image shot on 160PortraVC. The scene measured about 11 stops from black to white. The film shows no problems of any kind -- no shouldering, no color shifting, nothing. Nice shadow detail, and nice detail in the whitest flower petals. Just not possible with tranny film. And it scanned easily with beautiful results.

What I'm trying to say is, you should use the film that lets you capture what you want to capture. Then find someone (could be yourself) to scan it the way you want it scanned. If that turns out to be tranny film, your options for scanning are wide open as just about anyone can scan tranny film with acceptable results. If it turns out to be negative film, you'll have to look a little harder to find someone who is interested in negative films -- who is more interested in getting a good scan than in getting a quick scan. And there are plenty of those people out there. But you do have to look for them.

[Lenny Eiger]

My vote is for the trans.

This is not a contest. There are some subjects where chrome is great, and others where negatives make all the difference. I think the decision, for someone who knows what they are doing (which film does what), is quite personal.

I think a good scanner and scanner operator should be able to make magic out of either neg or chrome.

I am not going to speak to flatbed, or 50 meg scans, which to me are a waste of time and money. (a 4x5 scan from here is 1.7 Gigs.) If one is talking about quality, there are only two considerations. Is the operator experience enough to do what's needed, and can the equipment accomplish it.

The Tango is particularly poised to make a mess out of negatives. This is because it uses a fixed aperture of 11 microns, which is way too small for negatives. (Not bad for chromes at all.) The Aztek Premier has aperture settings at 3,6,8,10,13,16,19,22,25 and on up. One of the tasks that an operator ought to do is to match the grain to the aperture. One zooms all the way in and takes a look at what a 1/4 inch of the neg looks like at different apertures and then makes a judgement. There are a number of drum scanners that can do this. It's one of the reasons they can yield much better results than flatbeds.

I can honestly say that both negs and chromes are quite good for scanning. And like any scan, provided you have the right operator and the right equipment.

Lenny
EigerStudios.com

[Rafael Macia]

Many, many thanks for your informative feedback!
I have learned (I think), a lot.
From what has been said, since I have only shot chromes, and after listening to all your replies, I will continue to shoot chromes.
I neglected to say, I do not make prints from what shoot, (sorry about that ..). The intended market for my output is stock photography.
again,
thank you all for your helpful help
rafael

[Roger Krueger]

Because a negative has a lot smaller dynamic range (not how much info it can hold, but the actual range of dMin to dMax of the film), it uses fewer bits of what the scanner captures. If your scanner has a lot of noise in its least-significant bits it's going to make a much bigger difference for neg scans.

If your scanner has 8-bit internals (drums from before about 1995, consumer scanners a bit later) it will make a godawful mess of color neg, giving you maybe 6 useful bits. Which is a decent part of why no one in their right mind shot neg for offset repro 15 years ago.

Neg is only more complicated to scan because you have the issue of what to do with over- and under-exposed shots. With trannies the answer is clear: bin it and reshoot.

[Leonard Evens]

About profiling negative film.

I use Portra VC 160, which I scan with vuescan and then process with gimp under Linux. I was able to get very predictable results on my display because both vuescan and gimp use the same color space. But I often had to fiddle in both to get the color balance right. Also, printing was more problematic, and I had been using "correction curves" I preapplied to images before printing, with variable results.

Gimp has recently introduced color management and vuescan has had it for a while, so I've been trying to understand the subject. Despite the warnings, I found that vuescan was able to produce a visually plausible profile for color negative film. Note that the profile is just used within vuescan to convert readings to RGB values in the sRGB color space. That is, what appears on the screen in vuescan and gimp looks reasonable. I haven't used it with more than a few negatives, so I may find it is not so simple as it seems, but so far it seems to work.

[Bruce Watson]

Because a negative has a lot smaller dynamic range (not how much info it can hold, but the actual range of dMin to dMax of the film), it uses fewer bits of what the scanner captures.

Maybe. Maybe not. In many high end scanners such as most modern drums and professional flatbeds, the scanner software can set the log amp limits. So the scanner applies its full digital range to the full density range of the film.

What you are saying may well still apply to consumer flatbeds, for now.


If your scanner has 8-bit internals (drums from before about 1995, consumer scanners a bit later) it will make a godawful mess of color neg, giving you maybe 6 useful bits. Which is a decent part of why no one in their right mind shot neg for offset repro 15 years ago.

Most drum scanners with which I am familiar have 12 bit or higher internals. I've never seen one with 8 bit ADCs, but that may just be my inexperience. Some drums and pro flatbeds will only allow 8 bit file saves (which is an entirely different thing), but that's a software design issue, not a hardware issue.

The reason everyone shot trannies for offset reproduction had nothing to do with the capabilities of the films. It has everything to do with making an art director's job easier. It is far easier and faster to evaluate a tranny on a light table with a quick look than it is a negative where you have to mentally drop the orange mask and invert the colors (one can learn to do this, but it's certainly not intuitively obvious). People shot tannies because it was the only path through the art directors. And there's nothing wrong with that.


Neg is only more complicated to scan because you have the issue of what to do with over- and under-exposed shots. With trannies the answer is clear: bin it and reshoot.

There's a little more to it than that, but not a lot more. And it's not necessarily over and under exposure (or push or pull processing) that gives you the larger variance in density ranges with negative films. Negative films tend toward lower gammas (contrast index) so that they can record higher SBRs without clipping at the high end of density (so called "blown out highlights"). The larger variation in density range is a design feature of negative films and is highly desirable IMHO.

Then one has to set the correct black and white points, yes. The orange mask has to be removed also, either by the scanner software or by the operator manually in a photo editor. The image has to be inverted. Finally, the scanner software output contrast curve has to be matched to the density range of the film in question. There are other adjustments as well but this gets farther down the rat hole of capabilities of individual software.

------------------------

All that said, if you are most comfortable shooting tranny film then by all means shoot tranny films. One can certainly get outstanding results from tranny films, just as one can get outstanding results from negative films. One should always use the best tool for the job at hand if possible, and then use the tools with which one is most comfortable if possible. The more comfortable one is with the tools, the easier it is to push them into the background and concentrate on what is important -- the art.

[Henry Ambrose]

Nope.

The reason that color positive film is the traditional choice for reproduction is because it provided a reference for color. Holding that piece of positive film in his hand or on a light box allowed the scanner operator to make a scan that matched. Include the client, art director, photo editor, pressman and printing sales rep into the loop and you can see that when they have a reference in hand discussions of color have a place to start and end.

Average, typical commodity 4-color offset printing can not reproduce anything like the information that could be in a piece of color film either negative or positive. That covers about 95% of all the 4-color printed things you've ever seen.

In some ultimate terms a color positive may have less "grain" (or evidence of grain that shows in the scan). But I don't think you'll see this until you are at the very highest levels of scanning. And even then only if the scene illumination that was put on film fit within the range of that film. So if you shoot in controlled conditions there might be some small, almost theoretical, advantage to positive film.

On the other hand, if you shoot under varying conditions you'll likely get better, more consistent results, more often by using color negative film. That a particular person can't scan negative film isn't a reason not to use it. As Bruce wrote you can learn to get great scans from color negative and I'll add that if you're starting out its not really any harder to learn than just stopping with a few good scans from color positive and thinking you know all about scanning the second week you try it.

I suggest you consider carefully the desired end result of your photograph. Think about what your output device is capable of and feed it what it needs.

You may also note that photographers who successfully use color negative film find that it is capable of extremely high quality results when handled correctly (and it may even save a picture that you goof).

[Henry Ambrose]

Nope.

The reason that color positive film is the traditional choice for reproduction is because it provided a reference for color. Holding that piece of positive film in his hand or on a light box allowed the scanner operator to make a scan that matched. Include the client, art director, photo editor, pressman and printing sales rep into the loop and you can see that when they have a reference in hand discussions of color have a place to start and end.

Average, typical commodity 4-color offset printing can not reproduce anything like the information that could be in a piece of color film either negative or positive. That covers about 95% of all the 4-color printed things you've ever seen.

In some ultimate terms a color positive may have less "grain" (or evidence of grain that shows in the scan). But I don't think you'll see this until you are at the very highest levels of scanning. And even then only if the scene illumination that was put on film fit within the range of that film. So if you shoot in controlled conditions there might be some small, almost theoretical, advantage to positive film.

On the other hand, if you shoot under varying conditions you'll likely get better, more consistent results, more often by using color negative film. That a particular person can't scan negative film isn't a reason not to use it. As Bruce wrote you can learn to get great scans from color negative and I'll add that if you're starting out its not really any harder to learn than just stopping with a few good scans color positive and thinking you know all about scanning the second week you try it.

I suggest you consider carefully the desired end result of your photograph. Think about what your output device is capable of and feed it what it needs.

You may also note that photographers who successfully use color negative film find that it is capable of extremely high quality results when handled correctly (and it may even save a picture that you goof).