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Arkady001

Arkady001

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Name
Rob
Edit My Images
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Just (finally) got my Silverlight account verified so I can start actually scanning some of my old legacy images going back to the early 80's - most of which are not nearly as good as I remember.
If anyone has any handy hints, I'm all ears.
I'll be editing in LR and PS once they're up and running...
 
Arkady001 said:
Just (finally) got my Silverlight account verified so I can start actually scanning some of my old legacy images going back to the early 80's - most of which are not nearly as good as I remember.
If anyone has any handy hints, I'm all ears.
I'll be editing in LR and PS once they're up and running...
Click to expand...

My tips would be:

Scan as TIF files. They're bigger but give much more scope for editing than JPGs.
16-bit Greyscale for B&W images. 48-bit colour for colour images.
Don't go above 3600dpi resolution. Although the scanner can go higher than that, you'll just get bigger files with no noticeable increase in detail.
If using the film-types when scanning, don't be afraid to use the "wrong" type. Sometimes the results will look better, e.g. sometimes I scan my HP5+ images using the Delta 400 preset. Also, there may not be a preset for some older, no longer recently manufactured films.

Good luck!
 
That's what I figured - I wondered if there was any advantage to scanning in RAW, but from the demo version I was using up until this morning to practice, the RAW files are rendered as negatives whatever you have set and will have to be reversed again in LR.
16-8 seems to be OK for B&W as far as I can tell so far
 
If you use (or might use) Capture One Pro, do not scan to greyscale, it cannot handle it. I scan all mine to RGB now (and converted the old greyscale files using xnconvert).

With respect to Nige @FishyFish , I have yet to find a compelling reason to scan to TIFF rather than JPEG. For me, the savings of disk space (which mean I can conveniently store all my images on the main drive in my laptop) outweigh the (so far) un-noticeable quality issues. I even did a test comparing multiple edits on JPEG and TIFF, and could see no difference afterwards (although it was 8-bit TIFFs which was all we could get from FilmDev in those days). Your mileage may vary, as may your intentions re print size, etc!

I tried JPEG2000. Don't bother!

Having said that, there could be an advantage in using Raw, in that you might be able to re-load the Raw image into SF and re-virtual-scan it with modified settings (that's how it works in Vuescan, anyway). Beats digging out the negs yet again and re-scanning them if you're dissatisfied. I've got a feeling you may have to have the most expensive version of SF to make this work, however (as opposed to the bog standard version of Vuescan Pro).

Silverfast is very powerful; my first few thousand legacy image scans were done with version 6. When that stopped working, I shifted to Vuescan Pro. Since then I've trialled SF 8, but have not been able to regain the former magic. I guess it's experience, practice, and watching the videos! Good luck...
 
There are some threads where we discussed similar either here or on dpreview. When I find them tomorrow/today ( too hot to sleep ) I will post a link.

Am about 3/4 through scanning our col negs and some slides. A load of aps went to MrScan who dumped tiffs to a dropbox acc -they did a great job.

Am using a Reflecta Proscan 10T from scandig.de. It came with a version of silverfast which I struggled with so I switched to vuescan which works for me. Since you are using silverfast prob. no point in going through my settings. so just general stuff:

All I am trying to do is to regain images for display on a screen/tv and maybe print a few 5x7 and a very few up to a4. These are all from consumer films: konica/ agfa/ kodak and some fp4/hps - nothing special - nor are the pictures just snapograms.

I scan just to 4k - tried higher resolutions but never seen any inprovement

I do use the IR scratch detection filter but at its lowest setting. No other sharpening or grain reduction apart from vuescans jpeg engine.

Now, I profile the film base on every roll first - successful only about 70% of time.

Scan to jpegs - mostly but for important stuff to raw/tiff though I have never managed to get any more information from the tiffs than I can get from jpeg .

Have used LR for post in the past but now use dxo pl4- personal choice but easy for me to adjust global parameters, some NR if nec. but mainly exposure, WB, channel saturation tones using HSL colour wheel etc etc. So again my experience - not much use to you. In general, I do as little as possible in Vuescan, mostly leaving it in "generic" settings and leave tweaking to post - I have tried other strategies but none work as well for me. Silverfast may be totally different of course.

I think the "proper" way is to take raw neg into Post and use Colorperfect. I don’t bother.

Now happy with the results I am getting - even managed to recover decent images from old ? faded slides from a half frame penF from the 70’s. Most negs taken just by my wife on her minolta x700 and my self on contax with zeiss glass. Recent negs of mine on lots of cameras/lenses.

Happy scanning!

richard
ps last year I thought I would have another go with silverfast but i had changed my mac and the license key wouldn’t work. Neither silverfast nor scandig responded to emails - I should just have phoned them but I gave up.

EDIT the link was:

a Vuescan users thread so probably not too much use to you. Chris R ( above ) started a thread on scanning which I found really useful. He hasn't mentioned it so I will HERE
 
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Now that I'm finally getting to grips with Silverfast SE Plus 9, is anyone here using the Ai Studio 9 version? Fairly big jump in price, so I was wondering what practical benefits anyone had noticed...
 
Can't help with software but your username pinged a few bells, after checking out your opening posts I'm certain you are the Arkady I remember from way back.
Just want to say, welcome back.....legend...:cool:
 
joxby said:
Can't help with software but your username pinged a few bells, after checking out your opening posts I'm certain you are the Arkady I remember from way back.
Just want to say, welcome back.....legend...:cool:
Click to expand...
Yup. 10 years since I was here last, I think. Just getting back into film photography after a decade of mostly shooting filthy smut for fun. The last 18 months of lockdown put an end to that, so I'm kind of starting over...
Looking forward to some spirited forum banter...
 
I do not remember that thread, or posting in it... :p
 
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Oooh that's hilarious...
*takes names for future reference*
 
Arkady001 said:
Now that I'm finally getting to grips with Silverfast SE Plus 9, is anyone here using the Ai Studio 9 version? Fairly big jump in price, so I was wondering what practical benefits anyone had noticed...
Click to expand...
I've a feeling (no more, haven't checked) that one of the big advantages of the SF AI versions is that you can scan as RAW and then re-process RAW files without re-scanning? (A benefit that the basic version of Vuescan Pro also gives, although the set of controls may be more basic...)
 
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