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Re: [OM] Scanning with camera--revisited.

Subject: Re: [OM] Scanning with camera--revisited.
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 16:45:29 -0800
On 12/9/2014 12:41 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
"Little work" appears to be a vast understatement and the lack of automated
work flow a non-starter for many. Still it is interesting. AG had mentioned
the camera technique was perhaps equal for slides (IIRC)---they seem to get
very good results with standard color negs, but experience tweaking the
results is the wild card, and I suspect a tough learning curve as with other
forms of scanning.

I'm sorry to be critical, but any article on LL about film or scanning
seems to be so poorly written and shallow to be incomprehensable. ...

That said, there are nuggets of good information in there, but
overall, the advice is rather dodgy. ...

I've browsed some more, and must agree with you. Many words about nothing much and certainly nothing special. Just a couple of things I noticed.

Casual mention of the lack of IR dust/scratch removal, but no indication of the additional time spent spotting. I know CH found this an expeditious solution (and I'll bet did a better job with color), but I find the IR solution magical. No, it won't work for the B&W mentioned near the end, but the thrust of the article is color neg film. For that, slides, now including KR, the time the computer spends unattended scanning is well worth it to me for clean scans.

Take a look at the woman at 400% (which isn't the same thing in a PDF where, as here, the embedded image is being downsized for page display). Do You want to fix the white speckles on her arm?

They carefully treat scans and photos with exactly the same NR, sharpening, etc., as though that's somehow more scientific, fairer, or something. But it is just wrong, Find the settings that optimize each, then compare the results, is the correct way to evaluate the alternatives. Here, too, their limited scanning equipment makes their generalizations suspect to me. One of the reasons I went with a Canon scanner is that it doesn't have the grain, dirt and scratch accentuating light source of the Nikons.

The color just isn't very good, after all that effort. In the grain/noise comparison image, the scan is green and the photo seems a little bit reddish. If my v. slightly red-green color blind eyes can see that, it's probably even worse for most folks. Oh, I see, he has 'balanced the color channels'. That seems wrong to me.

The portrait just doesn't look particularly like good color to me, but I don't 
know the model.

As I mentioned, they seem completely unaware of the use of ICC color profiles to get color/contrast right. No help for old films, but amazing for recent films where a profile may be available or may be made.

Under Whelmed Moose

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What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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