Film Profiles

[Mr_T]

Hello everyone,

I've been having a good look around the film and conventional threads to see what people are doing about this but can't seem to dig anything up.

I was wondering what people do to make sure that the colours in any negatives or positives they scan are true to the original. Most scanning software just seems to offer RGB negative or RGB positive. After a little bit of research I found a PhotoShop plugin called ColorNeg which may be useful but other than that I'm really not sure. I had high hopes of Vuescan but that also seems to only have basic options. Perhaps Silverfast would be a better option although I don't really see what the difference is between all of the versions. for such expensive software it's not very well explained! :shrug:.

I thought it would be a simple task of playing around with the levels in PhotoShop but this isn't the case. I want to see the little differences in the rendering of different film stocks to help me to choose which one I prefer, currently I'm relying of my interpretation of a film in PhotoShop (which is particularly difficult when I've never used a particular film before!).

Any advice on this topic would be greatly appreciated, as a user coming away from the world of digital the last think I want to be doing is wonder how the colours should look. I want the film to decide this for me!

 

[TheBigYin]

I use Silverfast - it's the SE version bundled with my Canoscan 8800F. This uses film profiles, and provides a pretty comprehensive range of films covered. By and large, the profiles are not bad at all, and are updated regularly. As you say, it's incredibly badly documented for such expensive software, and I find it about as user friendly as a cornered rat. It does however produce rather nice results. And, if you don't actually like the effect that the "correct" profile gives - you can always try one of the different ones...

One thing to remember, coming from digital to film, is if you're used to shooting digital with AWB set on the camera, that it was quite common BITD to use warmup/cooldown filters with normal daylight film. Nowadays, this IS something that's best applied in Photoshop, after the event.

 

[excalibur2]

***I want the film to decide this for me***

Maybe more with positive film, but with negative film it's difficult also with too many variables from lenses to printing paper. Who knows the truth for what is on the negative as to even show a shot on a forum and the neg gets corrupted by scanning.
The best thing for new film users is to decide on whom do you want to please, and select a film that you get very good results on average, which could be a combo of film, lens, scanning/scanner and maybe where you get the film developed.

 

[Mr_T]

Thanks for your reply TheBigYin, Silverfast is certainly an option I'm looking into, judging by what you've said SE comes with pretty much everything I'd need anyway. Having said that they now have Silverfast SE, SE Plus, Ai and Ai Studio so God knows what the difference is between those.

excalibur2, you have a good point there and I do intend to shoot positives however after doing a bit of reading around the subject it seems that positives need tweaking too.

I gave ColorNeg a whirl late last night and wasn't particularly pleased with it, this morning however it seems to be performing much better. I guess the best I can do is get a few trials and see what works for me. I only have colour negs at the moment so it should be a nice challenge for any of these software packages.

 

[Mr_T]

OK, this is a quick bump just in case anyone is interested.

I have decided to buy ColorNeg and the associated software package, I made this decision after managing to correct the colour cast on a web-sized scanned jpeg image. To put it in perspective you're only supposed to use 16bit positive scans of a negative for the software to work at its best. The interface isn't all that intuitive compared to anything else I've used but it's easy enough to get used to and very importantly it seems to have profiles for literally every colour neg possible (Silverfast lacks Ektar for example).

I'm hoping this will be perfect for scenes are too contrasty for slide film or I've forgotten my grads .

 

[TheBigYin]

...Silverfast lacks Ektar for example...

It's there in mine - Silverfast SE V6.61.r7 0 - they periodically issue updates, part of which are extra film profiles. It's under Kodak/Others/Ektar 100.

 

[jamesb84]

OK, so I'm looking at Silverfast SE and it seems to suggest that Negafix (film profiles) is "limited" within SE...

Just how limited is it? I'd like to have the option select film types, ISO speeds and adjust exposure...is that more functionality than SE has? They show that this is possible but is that only in the expensive version?!

 

[TheBigYin]

OK, so I'm looking at Silverfast SE and it seems to suggest that Negafix (film profiles) is "limited" within SE...

Just how limited is it? I'd like to have the option select film types, ISO speeds and adjust exposure...is that more functionality than SE has? They show that this is possible but is that only in the expensive version?!

All those 3 options are available in the version of SE that came bundled with my Canoscan 8800F...

 

[jamesb84]

All those 3 options are available in the version of SE that came bundled with my Canoscan 8800F...

Excellent stuff. Looks like it could be a worthwhile purchase then. I finally caved and bought a scanner (Epson V500) but won't be using it until this evening when I have my new computer desk The old one was a bit too small and the sight of a scanner box brought the comment "oh, more silly camera things...and where's that one going"

So, a trip to Argos with the girlfriend later when she's back from work...and some home furniture construction!

I figured 15 rolls scanned and I've made my money back...plus this will allow me to turn around much faster for clients. I can now get the 2hr C41 service at my current lab then scan at home and PP for clients within a day.

 

[TheBigYin]

I figured 15 rolls scanned and I've made my money back...plus this will allow me to turn around much faster for clients. I can now get the 2hr C41 service at my current lab then scan at home and PP for clients within a day.

I dropped lucky, a couple of days after I'd picked up my scanner, a mate of mine rocked up and said "Hey... will that thing scan negatives and slides? 'cause if it will - i've some stuff that I'd really like getting into digital format" - turned out he meant his former portfolio (he's an ex-pro 'togger :shrug - loads of MF velvia slides and so forth, which he'd always wanted to get prints of, but was too tight to pay for 24" x 18" cibachromes Ended up that one job (even at 'mates rates') paid for the scanner!