First roll film after 20 yrs break

[Attila]

I put to the laboratory my first roll film after 20 yrs break to shoot on film. I used my Nikon FA and some pretty good Nikkor lenses like 24mm f2.8 AIS, 85mm f2 AIS and 50mm f1.2 AIS. I am curious about how they able to scan the film if ok I will shoot again on film the wide angle shoots.

[Orio]

I think you will be pleasantly surprised, my Budapest slide film shot with the Bessie and the Russian lenses exceeded even my optimistic expectation about quality.
Did you shoot positive or negative film?

[Attila]

negative, better to shoot on positive for scanning ?

[Orio]

[Attila]

Let we see I talked about a professional he said the most important the scanner people who is do it. I put to the old shop where we were together,hopefully they able to make in good quality.

[LucisPictor]

[Attila]

Don't know it was economical choice for wide angle territory, I worried about scanning quality, hopefully it will fine.

[LucisPictor]

[Orio]

[LucisPictor]

[peterqd]

I was quite disappointed with the lab scanning of my slide film recently. I've been re-scanning at home with my cheapo scanner, and I think I'm making a better job of it. Certainly the sharpness and colour are improved, but a high end scanner would make a hugh difference of course.

I don't think there's any difference between scanning negatives and slides, the only thing is with negatives there is an extra step needed in Photoshop to correct the orange cast (which becomes blue in positive). This cast is needed to fix the dyes used for paper printing. It's really simple to correct - I can explain how to do it if you want.

[Attila]

Please explain it, thank you!

[peterqd]

OK, when you scan the negatives you see a picture which has a very strong orange colour. To get rid of this orange cast, in PS you do this:

First make a scan of part of the film leader that was completely exposed, in other words the pure orange colour. Also make one of part of the leader that wasn't exposed at all - i.e. completely black. You use these two pictures to set the white and black settings in your proper pictures. In PS you can use full Gaussian Blur on the orange and black to make sure you get an even colour, but it's not vital.

Then in PS, with the orange and black pictures visible, open your first negative. Click on Image > Adjustments > Curves and click on the white "colour dropper" tool for setting white balance. Now click this tool on your orange picture and all the oranges change to white. Then do the same with the black dropper tool on the black picture.

Now when you invert the negative to positive, the colours are basically correct (but might need a little tweaking). I think you can do this as a batch operation on many negatives, but I haven't worked out how to do that yet.

[Orio]

I didn't know of this trick, thanks, it sounds useful, although I never shoot colour film except in emergency (when I can't find slide film) - for me it's either colour slides or B&W negative.

[Attila]

Many thanks Peter!

[LucisPictor]

[peterqd]

Attila, I was thinking yesterday after I posted the stuff for Jes about changing screens, and also now after explaining this trick, would it be possible to have somewhere on the forum where it's possible to find this kind of information quickly for reference or to point someone else to? Maybe we could use the Links section in a wider way?

[Attila]

Yes, link to there. I guess that is the right place and left in original thread.

[peterqd]

Just for interest, I was flicking through some old negatives this evening and came across this one of a house with a fractured wall, caused by foundation subsidence. This was taken in 1994 or 1995, using cheap 200 ASA unbranded colour neg film in the ME Super and Pentax-M 1.7/50 kit lens. I scanned it at 2400 resolution and corrected the orange cast as I explained. In comparison, the scanner software can correct the cast automatically if you tell it you are scanning a negative, but the result was highly over-saturated and dominated by red colour.

[Attila]

Scanning in the laboratory was crap, so I disappointed now...

[Orio]

[peterqd]

[Attila]

Thank you Peter, I will give it a try to scan by myself based on your instruction what you did in an other thread.