filmscanners: Sprintscan 120 and new negative proile scheme (LONG)
OK, here's my 2 cents on this. First, Polaroid are not alone in offering this. Silverfast ships with a bunch of profiles, as does Vuescan. Are they helpful? NO. The first problem is that they don't keep up to date with the emulsions. It is extremely confusing trying to work out which profile goes with which emulsion. Vuescan for example has profiles for Tmax 400 in D76 at various contrast indices, but no profiles for TriX or any Ilford films. It has profiles for all six generations of Kodak Gold 400 but nothing for 400 VC. And so on. Silverfast has profiles called Kodak 1, Kodak 2 and Kodak 3 but no clue as to which emulsions they refer to. So, inevitably, they are out of date as soon as shipped. The second problem is that it's never clear what these 'profiles' are supposed to do. I remember reading something in the Vuescan manual which said something about 'making the image look as much like the original scene as possible'. In other words, applying a inverse H&D curve, presumably, plus a custom base removal mask in the case of color neg. This seems absurd (the first part, I mean) since if successful it makes all emulsions look the same. The Silverfast profiles, for their part, apply a custom 'color space expansion', which means that they come with predefined min/max set points for the individual color channels. Does this *actually* work on color neg? No. Do minilabs read the emulsion type before printing neg? No. The third problem is that *even if the profiles were useful and worked properly* film developing varies so much that you always have to tweak afterwards. I wish scanner manufacturers would stick to the knitting. What is ACTUALLY useful (ok, to me) in a scanner driver? -- faithful rendition of *actual image colors* in all cases. In other words, proper calibration of the scanner CCD. Silverfast does this well on the SS4000. -- ability to handle color neg properly. This is SO simple and yet rarely done well. In essence, remove the orange mask, invert and set the expansion points for the individual channels. Vuescan does this well, but the GUI is very confusing which negates the benefit. -- ability to handle bw neg properly. As Austin says this means set black/white points and tonal curve. This means we need a good, detailed histogram and a curves box which functions as well as the industry standard, Photoshop. Neither Silverfast nor Polascan are up to snuff on this. -- the ability to output gamma-corrected high-bit scans. In the case of neg, inverted gamma corrected high bit scans. In the case of color neg, mask removal on high bit scans. -- intuitive GUI which reflects standard interface guidelines. Silverfast, Polascan and Vuescan all fail miserably on this one. Polascan not quite as miserably as the others. Now, once you can do all this you can add as many consumer-friendly bells and whistles as you like. But UNTIL you can do it... yeah, well, you get it. So, film profiles? Who cares? There's a lot of stuff to get right first. -- John Brownlow http://www.pinkheadedbug.com
Re: filmscanners: Sprintscan 120 and new negative proile scheme (LONG)
Johnny Deadman wrote: > Do minilabs read the emulsion type before printing neg? No. > I don't know exactly what you mean by "do mini-labs "read" emulsion types before printing negs" If you mean do they read for each subtle change of emulsion a manufacturer makes, then your answer is correct. If you mean do they have a starting point that is based upon the emulsion dye base, the answer USED TO BE absolutely. Our Noritsu unit had something like 32 "channels", each one was pre-programmed for a specific emulsion dye base. As new emulsions became available, I programmed them myself, if they weren't provided by the manufacturer. Today, I think newer machines just read the blank film area and make an automatic correction. With faster computers and more sophisticated software it is no longer really necessary to have a base filter pack programmed into the machine for each film type. That means they do not correct for difference responses of the emulsion layers, or characteristics of the color balance of the film, but just attempt to come up with a "zero" point, so that if you were to make a print for a 18% grey card, you'd get something approaching a print that looked like 18% grey. Unless one considers the sensitivity peculiarities of a specific film as a type of defect to be corrected for (all films suffer from their own versions of reciprocity errors, as well), then it would be best not to correct in complex profile of the film. Kodak used to offer two versions of scans for PCD. One was a base correction type that did not alter for film characteristics. The other was an averaging type that attempted to make all films look the same regardless of the emulsion type. The reason for this was simple. For a pro photog who wanted to maintain the integrity of the film's characteristics, the base type was good, but for a person creating a PCD presentation where they had multiple sources (different age, emulsions and film types -including maybe both slides and negs) and they wanted some consistency of color throughout the presentation, then the second type of scan made more sense. This is a philosophical issue. Some photogs simply are after repeatable results, and do not want to either play with or emphasize the film characteristics, while others want the scan to represent the film image, and have chosen (or accidentally) gotten a result that works with the specific emulsion characteristics. I know that sometimes an image has been pushed beyond my expectations due to the film doing something I wasn't anticipating, making it into a winner, while other times, upon reflection, I can look at an image and say "Gee, had I just used __ film instead, this would have been so much nicer." More often than that, I say "Gee, had I just bracketed that a bit more, or had I just waited for the lighting to change a bit more, or had I just not used that lens, or that angle or that processor (who put a scratch in the middle of it!)..." you get the idea... Although I haven't gotten to the point where I'm saying "Gee, if I had just remembered to recharge the batteries, put film in the camera, to remove the lens cap, or worse still, to bring my camera equipment!" I'm sure that will eventually happen. I have had one "gee, if I had just remembered to rewind the film into the cassette BEFORE opening the back of the camera, that would have been a really good idea (or works "to that effect" ) ;-) Actually, in case this happens to someone else (I'm SURE I'm the only photog who ever did it...) if you do happen to open the back of the camera before rewinding the film into the cassette (yes, I know, Canons work the other way around) Quickly slam the camera back shut. Believe it or not. Film is relatively opaque before processing, and although you will lose your last frames and have some edge light fogging, most of the frames will likely survive... really! Art Art
Re: filmscanners: Sprintscan 120 and new negative proile scheme (LONG)
In a message dated 6/8/2001 8:11:44 AM EST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > I remember reading something in the Vuescan manual which > said something about 'making the image look as much like the original scene > as possible'. In other words, applying a inverse H&D curve, presumably, plus > a custom base removal mask in the case of color neg. This seems absurd (the > first part, I mean) since if successful it makes all emulsions look the > same. This is exactly the design goal of PhotoCD, and it's a design goal of VueScan. Regards, Ed Hamrick
Re: filmscanners: Sprintscan 120 and new negative proile scheme(LONG)
on 6/10/01 6:16 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> I remember reading something in the Vuescan manual which >> said something about 'making the image look as much like the original scene >> as possible'. In other words, applying a inverse H&D curve, presumably, > plus >> a custom base removal mask in the case of color neg. This seems absurd (the >> first part, I mean) since if successful it makes all emulsions look the >> same. > > This is exactly the design goal of PhotoCD, and it's a design > goal of VueScan. wow your design goal is to eliminate the specific characteristics of individual emulsions??? which we as photographers CHOOSE because we like the rendering??? genuinely speechless in Toronto -- John Brownlow http://www.pinkheadedbug.com
Re: filmscanners: Sprintscan 120 and new negative proile scheme (LONG)
In a message dated 6/10/2001 9:23:24 AM EST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > your design goal is to eliminate the specific characteristics of individual > emulsions??? The design goal is to reproduce the actual scene as much as possible. Displaying the scene on a calibrated monitor should look like the original scene as much as possible. > which we as photographers CHOOSE because we like the rendering??? If you set the film terms to the default, the image should end up looking like the print you'd get back from Kodak. It's only if you set the film type to match the actual film that you'll end up matching the scene. Similarly with slide film, if you set "Device|Media type" to "Image" you'll get a scan that looks like the slide. If you set it to "Slide film", you'll get a scan that looks like the original scene. Regards, Ed Hamrick
Re: filmscanners: Sprintscan 120 and new negative proile scheme(LONG)
I take Ed's comment, that the goal is a *custom* base removal for that any particular film, and to make the image "look as much like the original scene as possible", means making it look like the original as captured by that particular film, but not making it look like the original as a generic person would see it. Otherwise, the different mask settings for the different films would seem to be spurious. Maris - Original Message - From: "Johnny Deadman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Filmscanners" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2001 9:18 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Sprintscan 120 and new negative proile scheme(LONG) | on 6/10/01 6:16 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | | >> I remember reading something in the Vuescan manual which | >> said something about 'making the image look as much like the original scene | >> as possible'. In other words, applying a inverse H&D curve, presumably, | > plus | >> a custom base removal mask in the case of color neg. This seems absurd (the | >> first part, I mean) since if successful it makes all emulsions look the | >> same. | > | > This is exactly the design goal of PhotoCD, and it's a design | > goal of VueScan. | | wow | | | your design goal is to eliminate the specific characteristics of individual | emulsions??? | | which we as photographers CHOOSE because we like the rendering??? | | | genuinely speechless in Toronto | | | | | -- | John Brownlow | | http://www.pinkheadedbug.com |
Re: filmscanners: Sprintscan 120 and new negative proile scheme(LONG)
Maris wrote: >I take Ed's comment, that the goal is a *custom* base removal for that any >particular film, and to make the image "look as much like the original scene >as possible", means making it look like the original as captured by that >particular film, but not making it look like the original as a generic >person would see it. Otherwise, the different mask settings for the >different films would seem to be spurious. Conversly, i.e. the other side of the coin, is that one can use "Default" or "Image" as the original preview scan, and then use any one of the film-type profiles to alter the appearance of the picture, using the Scan Memory facility of Vuescan, regardless of what film you happened to be using that day (or in my case, what film "Whomever" happened to be using). :-) Seems to me, this gives an artistic photographer a lot more lattitude than just loading up the favorite film and banging away. Excuse me if I'm missing something here, but I've always thought that artistic expression was always enhanced by the artist's recognizing the value of "Happy Accident." Nothing against "total control" (I envy it), but sometimes the "suprise" is better that our plans. Not always, of course, but sometimes. :-) Best regards--LRA Get 250 color business cards for FREE! http://businesscards.lycos.com/vp/fastpath/
