Last night, I scanned three rolls of film in the Coolscan V-ED with
Vuescan. They were all bog-standard rolls of long-expired Fujifilm
200. Nearly all were shot with the OM-4T (the champagne one) and the
Zuiko 50/1.4 lens.
Scanning rolls of color neg film has been one of my least desirable
activities. Probably ranks down there with getting my teeth cleaned.
After futzing around with my usual nightmare of batch scanning and
ending up with schlock, I stumbled onto a setting that turned out to
be quite the time saver.
1. Set the framing to auto. I have generally always scanned beyond the
image margins, getting both the roll-film guide and the inter-frame
blank area. But what I discovered is that this has messed up the
exposure mechanism a lot.
2. Don't preview. Just load the 6-frame strip and hit scan. Combined
with the auto framing, the scanner does a preview scan where it
determines not only the border, but also the scanner brightness level.
Cool beans!
3. Auto levels. It'll bomb out on the occasional image, but you can
always go back and rescan that individual image if need be.
4. Single pass. The Nikon V-ED produces a sharper image on single-pass
than multipass. The grain does get more pronounced with a singe-pass,
though. Again, if it's something you want to do a hyper critical print
of, do a custom scan with a half-dozen passes. The more passes, the
better. If you can at 4000ppi, you can set the grain reduction to
light and it make a whale of a difference.
5. For mass production of rolls, don't be afraid of using 2000ppi.
There isn't much extra detail that the 4000ppi will give you, but it
does help with grain control. If you aren't concerned about the grain,
2000ppi gives images 1/4 the file size and does make the scanning
process go a little quicker.
The other random thoughts to go along with this adventure:
1. The combination of the OM-4T with MD2 and 50/1.4 (final version)
produces image sharpness of epic proportions with films capable of
capturing it. Fujichromes don't do so hot in this regard, but most
print films do. I was able to get image with pixel-level sharpness ON
FILM! I'm still not sure what Michael Richtmann was rattling on about
10 years ago when he claimed that 3MP beat his 35mm Provia slides, but
it is true that Provia was astonishingly bad in this regard and MR
used a lot of Provia.
2. The Bokeh of the Double-Gauss Lens design of the 50/1.4 is in
another universe at certain distances. While I love the bokeh of this
lens when you are in close to the subject, the bokeh is awkward when
the lens is focused around the 2 meter distance. While I love this
lens for so many things, Olympus really pee'd in the pool on this one.
Fortunately, there are other Zuikos that rock the bokeh.
3. More reminders that I've made the right decision sticking it out
with this system. People like my digital images, but my film images
have that something extra/different to them that people REALLY like.
It might be format, but it might also be due to the fact that the
OM/Zuiko combination contributes so much to what I shoot and how I
shoot. As I've said before, when shooting with the OM system,
photography is an interactive process with the camera contributing
much to the composition.
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
--
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