Hardware supported Digital Ice doesn't work like the global dust and scratches or a blur filter. It uses an infrared scan of the negative to find dust. (Dust is much more opaque to IR than e6 film.)
Hardware supported Digital Ice doesn't work like the global dust and scratches or a blur filter. It uses an infrared scan of the negative to find dust. (Dust is much more opaque to IR than e6 film.)
“You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know
professional drum scanner here... as requested. ;-)Originally Posted by tbirke
200% is unnecessary as others have mentioned. Printers will unlikely see beyond 50%, we scan to 66 or 100, depending.
The first thing I would say is where is the dust coming from? If you are getting the kind of dust you describe (and are wet-mounting), it is highly likely that its the film and not anything to do with your scanning environment or process. Likely, you are getting dust in the holders... if we're talking about sheet film. I have had to train many of my clients in proper film loading, especially in the field. Every couple of times I load my holders I use an Ilford Anti-staticum cloth to wipe everything down. And plenty of dust-off, of course. I also have a Harrison tent instead of the old changing bag, it makes a huge difference. They should win a Nobel prize for that invention.
My floor isn't great, either. I might make sure your floor always clean. I use Kami fluids to wet-mount, they have been perfect, and their drum cleaner appears to have an anti-static element to it. If you aren't wet mounting, get some fluids and start. There are a number of brands, all good, from what I can tell.
An ionizer will drop certain sizes of dust out of the air, which can be helpful.
Finally, older film has a lot more "dust" on it than a brand new piece of film. It looks like the grains just fall off over time. I'm sure that's not an accurate description of exactly what happens, but it has that appearance...
Our scans, which cost less than $200 for the largest size, over 3 Gigs, include a 10-15 min scanning pass. If there is substantial work, like fixing a large scratch, most clients will take care of it themselves. Some ask us to take care of it, and we charge an hourly rate for the service. We expect that clients will want to go over every little area very carefully, and they do. Most take an additional 15mins or so to do their spotting.
Lenny
EigerStudios
Museum Quality Drum Scanning and Printing
Not much I can add to all the posts above. Except for general housekeeping/vacuum cleaning the room get a HEPA filtered vacuum cleaner. They cost more but are worth it because they don't emit near as many fine particles as regular vauum cleaners. One can buy a commercial unit similar to what the mold and asbestos abatement contractors use (cost about $2k) but Sears and other manufacturers offer HEPA filtered units as their top of the line home vacuum cleaners.
Worth it also to get a room air filter as several other posters mentioned. I use a HEPA filter unit but there are ionizing and other types that will also work.
I also recommend staying away from Dust-Off and other canned air products. A Rocket or other squeeze-bulb type device is a better choice. Dust-off is a haologenated hydrocarbon and is liquid inside the can. When sprayed the vapor pressure of the liquid is what gives the pressure for release and tiny cold droplets of the chemical (and water vapor) often form in the spray due to the adiabatic expansion. I learned this the hard way by nearly ruining a favorite old transparency when I first got my flatbed scanner. Too much spraying to remove dust and the cold droplets are first wetting then freezing the enulsion. So to me a Rocket was the solution.
Dust off also has no oxygen so (as I mentioned in another post) don't go spraying the heck out of your Harrison tent with your head stuck in there. It only takes two breaths of oxygen deficient atmosphere to put you down. Bob G.
All natural images are analog. But the retina converts them to digital on their way to the brain.
That's some very good hints!
I also suspect the dust to come from the air, not from the negative. Everytime I mounted the drum and inspected it prior to loading, there was no dust visible, not even with a loupe. I also use an anti static brush before mounting.
Since the dust is distributed pretty evenly and almost uniform in size, it could well be just a few dust spots that are swirling through the air and settling down every now and then.
I will try the following process now:
0) Remove everything from the room, except from the bare essentials
1) clean inside and outside of scanner and mounting station with a wet cloth (still have to figure out how to dismantle that D 8200)
2) vacuum clean walls, floor and ceiling
3) wipe floor wet
4) wipe negative several times with antistatic brush before mounting
5) wipe drum with anti static brush
Will take a week to set everything up, but I can't wait to push my dedust time under 1 hour for an 8x10 at 500MPix
By the way: removing dust at 200% is the only way to not damage the structure of buildings in most of my shots, 50% is just to small to cope with geometric patterns, for sky and areas of green it works at 50%, but not for buildings...
Thanks for the good help so far! Thomas.
As a reminder to people, since lots don't seem to know the trick, if you are scanning negatives: Once the negative is scanned and final (i.e. if you are viewing the positive image), if the dust spot is black it was there before exposure (i.e. on the film in the holder or cassette, or whatever), if it is white then it was there post exposure, at scanning time.
Therefore I assume that it is just blasting off surface particles and not affecting the integrity of the image?
Also is this Ice program workable with a variety of scanners?
I'll risk a slight diversion to this thread.
I've been fairly successful with eliminating dust from my scans so far but sometimes an annoying particle or two does creep through and get in.
I would like to know if it is possible to eliminate these few spots easily with the tools in Photoshop elements that came with my flatbed scanner?... or do I need to upgrade to the full Photoshop version. To date I have done essentially no editing of my scans but I realize I will need to remove a couple of dust spots from a few of them before getting them printed.
So just wondering if this can be done with Photoshop Elements and, if so, the best way to begin the learning process how to do it.
Thanks and best regards. Bob G.
All natural images are analog. But the retina converts them to digital on their way to the brain.
Paul:
I recognized this fact some time ago when I began scanning my own film... about the color of dust specs, black or white.
Does the opposite hold true for transparencies? i.e., if the dust particles are white after scan then they were on the film before exposure and if they are black they settled on the film after exposure?
Seems logical. Regards. Bob G.
All natural images are analog. But the retina converts them to digital on their way to the brain.
The "good version" requires specific hardware support from the scanner. It works this way (simplified):
Dye based films (eg E-6, C41 processes) are pretty close to completely transparent to infrared light. Dust, hair and scratches are not. So, if you can a piece of film with infrared light, all you will see are the dust, hair and scratches; you basically have a scan of the defects on the film. You take this infrared scan and where you see pixels that are 'black', you interpolate in the original scan. The pixels in the infrared scan that are white are left alone in the scanned (RGB) image. In an application like Vuescan, you can actually view the infrared scan; you'll see there can be a very slight amount of the original image but software processing can easily tell the difference between image and defect. It works surprisingly well with very very minimal image degradation when it is done correctly. Films which still have the silver present (not bleached out), the silver is not transparent to infrared, so the image cannot be separated from the defects.
Unfortunately since there is no reversal process, you cannot tell with transparency. All dust spots should be black; a white one indicates something different, perhaps a pinhole in the emulsion or the like.
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