On 12/7/05, ScottGee1 <scottgee1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'm baffled as to why folks using identical equipment get very
> different results. If one person can use a Canoscan 4000 and do
> justice to film, why can't the second person do the same? Scanning
> seems a mechanical, repeatable operation very different from the
> creative, individual use of a camera. Perhaps the exposure and/or
> processing the film is a significant variable? Or the film itself?
There's a lot of variables. If you're using the same equipment on the
same film with the same density and colour values while using the same
settings then the results should be comparable. But that's a lot of
ifs so it mostly comes down to the operator's ability to extract the
best quality scan.
The big thing to remember is that automatic settings generally suck.
That's not just something that's unique to scanning, just look at the
scads of crappy 1hr prints you see (not that all 1hr places are crappy
but there sure are a lot of crappy prints coming out of those types of
labs). For instance, it can be really hard for the automatic settings
to tell the difference between a shot that has a lot of dark shadows
and an underexposed neg. If there's too much dark in the neg then it
will assume that it's underexposed and adjust things to bring out that
detail. This kills the mood of the shot and can also tend to blow out
the highlights. Then there's the problem with different coloured
lighting. Most auto settings try to balance things to be white, which
can completely kill the mood in a sunrise or sunset shot.
So in order to get the best results you have to be willing to discard
the automatic settings and to do some individual tweaking. You can
avoid some of that by creating individual profiles for each film you
use. Again though, that's getting away from the "one size fits all"
mentality of automatic settings.
What you want is to get scans where both the shadows and the
highlights aren't blocked up. From there you have the potential to
create the image you want. If your scanner is giving you scans that
block up in the shadows and/or highlights then there's no way you can
extract any further detail from those areas. If the detail is there in
the film then you need to adjust your scanner settings so that it is
picking up that detail (which may or may not be possible depending on
your scanner).
Once you've gotten your shadows and highlights worked out you get into
the black art of colour adjustments. This really requires an eye for
what the image needs. Again though, this isn't something that's unique
to digital. If you've ever done your own analog colour printing then
you'll know that it can take a lot of effort to get it right. I took a
colour photo course in the summer (analog printing of colour neg film)
and the experience I gained from that has really helped me when it
comes to evaluating the colour in my scans and knowing how to adjust
things. It's usually a good idea to start with figuring out if the
image is too cold or too warm (assuming your density is correct. If
it's not, fix that first). From there, try to figure out what colour
there's too much of. My instructor broke it down to warm is too much
red, yellow or green while too cold is too much cyan, blue or magenta.
Adjust the colour accordingly. In both analog and digital this can get
very picky at times. Sometimes all you need is a very slight
adjustment in the colour balance to make everything "pop". When you
start playing with this you'll find that a colour cast works almost
like a veil or fog over your image. When you get the balance right it
will seem like that veil has been lifted away and you'll notice
details that you weren't seeing before.
To get back to your original question, as you can see I've mentioned
that a lot of this isn't something unique to digital. What's happened
with digital is that it's made us all much more aware of the
difficulty in doing this work because the work has been passed to us.
In the analog days you shot your film and took it to a lab. Depending
on the lab (and maybe even who was working the machine that day) your
prints would range from excellent to abyssmal. Or you could shoot
slides and know that, unless the operator completely fouled up the
process, whatever the image looked like on the slide was your own
doing during the exposure. Digital (either with a digital camera or
scanning) is essentially the same as neg film in the analog world,
except now you're the lab operator too. It's great that you get all
that control over the end product but you're results are going to be
dependant on where your skills fall on the range from drugstore photo
counter to high-quality pro lab.
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