I need some scanning tips

AshleyC

AshleyC

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Got my epson v750 this morning and all seems well. However ive been trying to scan in some 6x6 black and white negatives with mixed success.

Below is a section of a scan i just did, you can see in the shadow areas its very "blocky" with a huge amount of edge enhancement most notably around the guy and his boy fishing. If you load up the large version you can see the effect better.

Im using Silverfast with the film setting to the right Ilford type. Are there any settings i should be using to get a better scan?

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6234/6245852963_6a35b71946_o.jpg
 
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That will not do anything other than give you a smaller sized scan, scan it at 2400dpi, turn off any sharpening etc and see what you get then. What bit depth are you scanning to and to what file type are you outputting? Try outputting as a TIFF because there can be no compression issues then.
 
To know what settings you need to change, we need to know what settings you are currently using.
 
silverfast.jpg


Adjust the black level and midtone level as necessary in the histogram dialogue. Occasionally you may need to twiddle with the brightness settings in the film type bit but generally it can be left alone.
 
cheers peeps, will fiddle a bit more later. I was scanning at 3200dpi 16bit black and white to a tiff with USM sharpening set on. I'll make a better note of the settings when i try again. One thing i thought of, there are little blocks on the frame that holds the negative to adjust the height between film and glass. Would it be better to remove them, should the negative be as close to the scanning surface as possible?
 
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Check to see if you have digital ice off, if it's turned on for B&W it will give results like this.
 
essexash said:
One thing i thought of, there are little blocks on the frame that holds the negative to adjust the height between film and glass. Would it be better to remove them, should the negative be as close to the scanning surface as possible?
Click to expand...

Don't remove them - those little blocks are crucial to the scanning height and allow adjustment for the sharpest results. I used mine with the blocks in the default setting, or just how they were fitted on delivery, but found that changing them to the other setting made the images much sharper, so that's something you need to look at.

I found the '+' rather than the '0' setting gives the sharpest scans.
 
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loads better! i took off the digital ice, move the blocks to + twiddled the histogram a little and its come out lovely :) thanks peeps. And sorry for the image size in the first post! didnt realise.
 
essexash said:
...sorry for the image size in the first post! didnt realise.
Click to expand...

There's a resizer in place that takes care of the display of shots that are over 800px, but the restriction of a max. side length of 1024px is there more for the poor benighted souls amongst us who are either on dialup or short bandwidth dongles for viewing the forum. If you need to display anything larger, just put a link to it, mentioning that there could well be a Mahoosive file behind the link ;)
 
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