Scanning Dense Negs

[Bruce Pottorff]

For years, I routinely developed my B&W negs so that they could be printed using a Howard Bond style unsharp mask. They are dense, most with a max density around 1.60. These negs do not scan well on my V700, with very poor separation in the highlights. Is there a solution to my problem?

[sanking]

For years, I routinely developed my B&W negs so that they could be printed using a Howard Bond style unsharp mask. They are dense, most with a max density around 1.60. These negs do not scan well on my V700, with very poor separation in the highlights. Is there a solution to my problem?


You could use a proportional reducer like R-4b to reduce highlight density.

Sandy King

[Ken Lee]

You could contact-print the negatives - onto either paper or film - and then scan the new images. If you give enough exposure to the new images, you can print through the high values.

[Kirk Gittings]

This is one of the limitations of the pro/summer scanners. Unfortunately I have found that I need a better scan, drum or pro flatbed, to handle a dense negative.

But.......come to think of it (I haven't actually tried this), since most scanners are really designed for transparencies, you might try scanning it as a positive (transparency setting) and flipping it in PS.

[Bruce Watson]

For years, I routinely developed my B&W negs so that they could be printed using a Howard Bond style unsharp mask. They are dense, most with a max density around 1.60. These negs do not scan well on my V700, with very poor separation in the highlights. Is there a solution to my problem?

B&W negatives have images formed from metallic silver. This means they are subject to Callier Effect. And Callier Effect increases with density. The result is often seen as a non-linear decrease in local contrast in the densest areas of the film. And that's what you are describing as poor separation in the highlights.

The thing to remember is that the information is still on the negative, and most any scanner can scan through the relatively low density of your film (yes, 1.6 is low compared to what you get with a color tranny). The image information is just compressed into the shoulder of the film's response curve, and Callier Effect increases that compression. But you can uncompress most of it in Photoshop if you work at it.

Consider building a mask in Photoshop to mask off the bottom three quarter tones (lower density areas) in your image. Then apply a curve to open up the highlights using the mask, so the curve only effects the top 1/4 of tones (high density areas -- the highlights).

This used to work for me when I was experimenting with density and drum scanning, but I haven't had to do it in around five years so I've forgotten the specifics.

Play with it some. I think you'll be amazed at how much you can do and how well the final print works. It'll never be quite as good as a negative optimized for scanning, but it can be really quite good.

[Cesar Barreto]

Sometimes I think b&w digital workflow is harder do follow than actual printing, maybe because I've been so used with paper response. And scanning, never mind on wich scanner, can be painful if you try to get the best on the first shot.
As suggested above, scanning like positives helps, but can lead to trouble if you're not working on high-bit files. Scanning twice with differents curves and using the best of each on PS may also help sometimes.
Something you should take care about is gamma correction aplied by software wich will deliver most of your bits on one end of the scale, encreasing the chances of posterization after strong moves on PS.

[Andrew O'Neill]

make a copy negative with a much shorter density range. I'm really liking APHS film for that.

[sanking]

B&W negatives have images formed from metallic silver. This means they are subject to Callier Effect. And Callier Effect increases with density. The result is often seen as a non-linear decrease in local contrast in the densest areas of the film. And that's what you are describing as poor separation in the highlights.



Another good case for staining developers. I have made very nice scans with Epson consumer scanners of pyro negatives that read as high as log 2.0 and higher in UV density with the stain. Much lower of course with visual densitometer reading.

With stained negatives much of the overall density is stain rather than silver metal density, and you avoid the dreaded Callier Effect.

Sandy


Sandy King

[Bruce Pottorff]

Sandy
The negs I processed in p-cat are easy to scan. It's the older, intended-for-masking negs that are not working out. Perhaps I should send the important ones off for drum scanning per Kirk's suggestion. Will this likely result in a good scan?

Bruce

[IanMazursky]

Hi Bruce,

I just drum scanned a job that had some very dense HP5 processed in a version of pyro. IDK which one though.
They came out great with full highlight & shadow detail with excellent separation.
A good drum scanner will be able to pick out every bit of detail that's there. I had no problem at all on our Howtek.

I was so happy with the results of that job that I am about to attempt PMK on my 12x20 HP5 negs.
I will drum scan all of them and make some large prints on fiber paper.

[sanking]

Sandy
The negs I processed in p-cat are easy to scan. It's the older, intended-for-masking negs that are not working out. Perhaps I should send the important ones off for drum scanning per Kirk's suggestion. Will this likely result in a good scan?

Bruce

Yes, a scan with a drum scan or a high end flatbed would probably bring out the highlights.

I have a lot of those type of negatives myself, from years before I started using pyro staining developers. I had a lot of trouble with them with Epson consumer flatbeds, but I have been able to capture all of the highlight detail with my EverSmart Pro flatbed.

That said, you could probably make excellent scans of those negatives with your V700 if you reduced them with a proportional reducer. And it is not that big of a deal, though you should experiment first on negatives that are of no value.

Sandy King

[IanMazursky]

Another thought came to mind.

You might be able to tweak the icc profile to give a boost to the highlights.
I did this on an old Umax mirage and Agfa duo scan. It did work but introduced noise and other artifacts.

I wouldn't recommend it for critical work but for small stuff it should be fine.
OSX has the colorsync utility that might be able to do some mods.
There are also some free pc utilities out there.

[Anupam]

Consider building a mask in Photoshop to mask off the bottom three quarter tones (lower density areas) in your image. Then apply a curve to open up the highlights using the mask, so the curve only effects the top 1/4 of tones (high density areas -- the highlights).

I have found these contrast masks in PS to be very effective for handling difficult scans.

-A