I've had a great idea (or a stupid one)

AJQS

AJQS

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Alan
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If I shot a series of grads against a light box, I could use the negatives as a kind of reverse grad when scanning - adding density to dark foreground areas and lowering the overall contrast so that the scanner can pull out detail in the top and bottom end of the spectrum.

Have I hit on something or do I need to stay away from the catnip? :thinking:
 
I can't decide whether it is brilliant or bonkers. Try it :thumbs:
 
Why not use multi exposure scanning? Keeps the detail rather than compressing the range in the negative, kinda defeats the point of using film for the dynamic range
 
Do you mean by sandwiching the negs together, yes?
It might do silly things with the focus and grain and such, but definitely worth a shot!

Why can't you just use the grads when actually making the negative? Or multi exposure scanning, as Rob said.
 
Joenail said:
Do you mean by sandwiching the negs together, yes?
It might do silly things with the focus and grain and such, but definitely worth a shot!.
Click to expand...
I assume that's what Alan is meaning. A few things I'm thinking
1) Doubling the amount of grain
2) exposing through two layers of film base
3) Newton rings
4) Double the surface area for dust to attract to
5) Potential focus issues

There are probably more issues, but I'm too tired to think of them
 
If it's just a grad then I can't imagine the grain being too bad, there will be none at all for half of it (I think) and, if done with a very fine grained film, not too much on the rest.

I wouldn't have thought there would be any exposure issues, nothing that can't be sorted with changing the backlight intensity or something.

Newton rings, dust and focus all seem likely though. And then there's the problem of lining them up perfectly. It might be best to do it on a larger format than you intend on scanning.

If you're doing colour it might mess that up a bit, black and white should be easier, but I'd imagine it would do something to affect the tonal range of the areas to be darkened.

There are lots of problems to think up but they're all in theory, we won't really know until/if you do it!
 
It's for that Adox stuff, no grain to worry about or film base. Scanner can't do multi exposure or I'd already be using it. Was thinking this way as it's expressly shadows tha tcause an issue with Caffenol, they're always full of detail but incredibly dark, and ramping up the curves just looks nasty and wastes all the tones that are there on the neg.

As always it's the digital bit that's the weak link. Really wish I had room for an enlarger!
 
Intresting idea but there might be a problem with newton rings if the negs are layered together.
Edit-
Then reading the thread again I see that's already been mentioned but I certainly think the idea is worth a go, it might just work really well !!
 
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Both brilliant & bonkers but it's always worth a shot! :}

Edit ➝ Accidental pun in there hahaha.
 
I think if you want a digital file, ie scan, the solutions that work best are digitally based solutions, so combining exposures is probably the way to go.
Now if you were printing with an enlarger, dodging and burning would be much more the manual operation you are seeking to use on a scanner.
That aside, I see no reason why you couldn't use a perspex ND directly on the neg instead of a film ND, but it seems more like an interesting exercise, rather than a solution..:)
 
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