Next step up from Epson scanners

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Its an example, with an explanation, if you can't see a difference nor understand what has been said, then just simply ignore it.

Anyone can do there own testing just take a piece of exposed leader, adjust the exposure time, the film leader is very dense yet still transparent, but the scanner will still be able to penetrate it. The noise in the image will also be high. You can compare the amount of noise in the image when you adjust the exposure time just like the example given.

You can even trick the scanner to adjust the exposure time by putting a piece of unexposed and developed film over the scanner calibration area.

You can also easily measure at what point the noise level is unacceptable.

I thought about using a grad nd between light source and negative to do tue same thing when taking an image in the field. Although, need to find one a little over 5 in in width like this https://www.formatt-hitechusa.com/ph...d-grad-filters

It is a 165mm wide or 6.5 wide and 180 mm long. I think it would work. Just need correct density for a given negative or positive scene.

[Pere Casals]

Why do you need two scans.

Easy, if you extend exposure to get better DMax then you burn the areas in DMin, so you need a second capture for thin areas,

just the same than in HDR feature in DSLRs and smartphone cameras, two shots (with different exposure) to extend dynamic range beyond the electronics allow with a single shot.

Finally, combining two scans is problematic from what I've read. The scanner mechanical limitation prevents alignment among the thousands of rows of scanning between two scans.

Multi-Exposure in a V850 has no problem, it works perfect to me.

If the carriage guides aren't lubricated then stepper perhaps can lose steps (because of open loop control type), but I never had this problem.

A few years ago, someone showed that comparison. There was no difference. Maybe you can do better.

It only has an effect when you scan dense negatives/slides with areas beyond 3.0D, extending effective DMax from around 3.1D to around 3.4D.

If you use Multi-Exposure with a regular negative reaching (say) 2.5D then you will see no improvement, but with a dense Velvia shot you may find way better shadow detail with way lower noise, just try it in that situation, you'll find a very clear improvement.

Multi-Exposure improves extreme shadows in slides. In negatives it improves detail in extreme highlights, the counter... don't think it will improve shadows in a negative !!!

Also check that the scanning DR limits are not cutting the histogram ends... and you have to save 16 bit per channel in tiff format, if you save bmp or jpeg you save 8bit even if you scanned 16 bits !!!!

Some people ignore that...

https://www.silverfast.com/highlight...posure/en.html

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Also one has to understand that an slide may have a way larger dyamic range than a monitor can show (as when BW paper has lower range than a negative), so when we scan a linear flat wide dynamic range of a medium that's wider than the monitor (or print) can display then we need to edit well the curves and the image itself to get a sound result.

... in the same way that a RAW dslr file is edited ("developed") to fit the captured dyamic range in the limited dynamic range of the presentation display, etc...

[Alan Klein]

Dynamic range is not an issue from what I see. The scanner picks up the full range in one scan because there are only 5 stops effectively in slide film. Here's an example of a scan of Ektachrome 35mm. Scanned flat with a V600. The adjustments were made in Lightroom or Elements to the scanned imaged. I can't test different speeds with a V600. But I have noticed that you can pull out the shadows pretty well with the slider.

[Alan Klein]

Note the histogram at the upper left of each picture. As you can see, there's plenty of room to move to the right. But will adding more time to scan just add more noise? I would think, Epson has the speed where it is because that's the optimum between dMax and noise by extending the time.

[Alan Klein]

Its an example, with an explanation, if you can't see a difference nor understand what has been said, then just simply ignore it.

Anyone can do there own testing just take a piece of exposed leader, adjust the exposure time, the film leader is very dense yet still transparent, but the scanner will still be able to penetrate it. The noise in the image will also be high. You can compare the amount of noise in the image when you adjust the exposure time just like the example given.

You can even trick the scanner to adjust the exposure time by putting a piece of unexposed and developed film over the scanner calibration area.

You can also easily measure at what point the noise level is unacceptable.

How do you judge what testing a film leader will do to a real world image. You really want to compare real world images for real world impact.

[Alan Klein]

This was my first concern when I first heard of the multi-pass technique: are the stepper motors in these consumer level devices really repeatably accurate at the pixel level. I think I remember seeing a rubber toothed belt in the V700 which didn't exactly inspire confidence in that regard. And what exactly are in those deep shadows, if anything, after all. From looking at projected slides, often not much. The dynamic range of transparencies is what it is.

Exactly. Everyone gets concerned about shadows. But the eye doesn't care about shadows. We are drawn to lighter parts of the image. The brain ignores shadow areas for the most part. Making them a little lighter can be done in any case with the shadow slider. Also, contrast with darker shadows makes photos more interesting. I think we get too caught up with technology. We do things because we can. But they don't necessarily add anything to the quality and effect of the image. It becomes another exercise in pixel peeping.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Note the histogram at the upper left of each picture. As you can see, there's plenty of room to move to the right. But will adding more time to scan just add more noise? I would think, Epson has the speed where it is because that's the optimum between dMax and noise by extending the time.

I use multi-exposure often and multi-sample and the noise is not noticeable. Also, posted up a thread about a difficult slide and i just could not get the scanner to pricess the deep shadows well regardless of technique. I have found then the limits of the scanner.

But I do not get more noise using multi-exposure. I also scan everything as 48bitrgb in and out. Do my conversion to bw for bw film in PS prior to bringing into Colorperfect. Color negs and positives I bring directly into Colorperfect from PS. Be sure not to change the gamma of image and assign do not convert image profile to adobergb orior to Colorperfect. If bw assign gray gamma 2.2

[Pere Casals]

Dynamic range is not an issue from what I see. The scanner picks up the full range in one scan because there are only 5 stops effectively in slide film.

If you want 8 bits to grade the darkest step then add more bits for the other steps.

Does V600 support multi-exposure? What DMax?

Slides may reach beyond 3.5D...

IIRC there is a huge difference from v600 to v700

[Steven Ruttenberg]

I tried SF tonight, no real difference between it and Vuescan, but I am still working it.

[Ted Baker]

How do you judge what testing a film leader will do to a real world image. You really want to compare real world images for real world impact.

Alan, its for you to do your own testing. It is just a simple example to show you that your scanner can vary its exposure and penetrate very dense areas. You can vary the exposure to see the difference in signal to noise ratio. The signal to noise ratio will be BETTER with a longer exposure for a very dense area. You could if you wanted to shoot a few frames of dark scenes with your chosen stock where low tonal values might be of interest and determine if the effort is worth while.

If your shooting negative stock you could use this simple test to be confident that your scanner set-up or DSLR can adequately cover the density range of your film with an acceptable S/N ratio.

Or you could just carry on an enjoy your hobby.

BTW the the luminance range of a chrome when viewed is NOT 5 stops. What a chrome can capture in a scene does not have anything do with the luminance range of the chrome itself.