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Very disappointed
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Ciaran,
Please PM me your address as I have a few rolls you could try and will snail mail them to you.
FintanCiaran,
I have my own neg scanner here and when i got it nearly 4 years ago it was one of canon’s latest flatbed/neg scanners out. For the money I paid for it ?492 at the time!) I’ve never been happy with the way it performs. I’ve got stuff scanned in places likes Conns and I’ve found there to be very little difference in quality. Definitly someone else doing your processing is going to flatten your images (but shouldn’t make much difference if the lab keeps its processor clean and dhanges chemicals regularly), but nothing that can be regained in printing.
From my time years ago working in a small Fuji lab and printing C41 B&W film, there was definitly one brand that was miles ahead of the other (sorry I can’t remember which, but I think Ilford was the very poor performer compared to the Kodak?).
When printing, the not so good brand would produce images with strong purple casts, orange cast and green casts across the images for no reason (which flip flip was referring to), even though the printer recognised the film type. The other brand would almost always come out B&W looking (as it can do on colour paper on a colour printer) but did always look quite flat and dull.
Another problem (which Thorsten already pointed out) is C41 B&W doesn’t use silver in the film to capture the image but dyes like regular colour film (I think the C41 B&W uses only 1 colour dye) so you don’t get the same contrast or the usual grain with B&W film.
After all that what I’m trying to say is that in my experience scanning negs, they have always been quite dull and flat and needed some PS work done. I’ve accepted that neg scanners aren’t what I’d like them to be.
I shot neopan 400 for years, then decided to try some Kodak Tmax film (which I think is the same as Tri-x or a very slight variant on it?) and fell in love with film. Its very versatile and can even be pushed easily as far as 3200.
Well that there is more long winded 2 cents, and feel free to correct me if I’ve misinformed about anything too.
Strange as it may seem, one of the selling points of C41 black and white film is the low contrast. This is particularly important for wedding photographers as one might imagine (black suit, white dress, sun beating out of the heavens). Another selling point is that it scans well because of it’s low contrast.
It’s a relatively easy matter to add contrast latter on (usually a simple levels adjustment is all that’s needed) but removing contrast is next to nigh impossible. Give me a flat negative to scan over a contrasty one any day!
T-Max and Tri-X are two entirely different films which have a different look to them. Tri-X features good old fashioned “lumpy” grain whereas T-Max features tabular grain, hence the “T” in TMax. As far as I recall there are differences in highlight and shadow contrast between the two films as well (stand to reason I suppose). If you want a really gritty look, then of the two, Tri-X is the way to go, IMHO.
It should be possible to get neutral black and white prints from C41 black and white film on colour paper but the operator needs to know what they are doing and in most cases they simply shove the stuff through with the remaining colour negatives (that’s been my experience in the past). That’s one of the reasons that the orange mask is on the C41 black and white film and why you can’t easily print silver halide films on colour paper (if at all).
Thorsten wrote:
Absolutely a lot of sense there Thorsten-
Although I’ve no idea why anyone would want mono prints on colour paper,
they look like poo.Different film/scanner combinations will give completely different results too-
j
Some interesting feedback and comments in this thread… thanks everyone.
Just a point about adjusting contrast in Photoshop… I know it’s possible, but the problem is you just don’t get the same level of detail in a scan that you do shooting RAW. So when you boost contrast, and try and pull out the detail, you can (or certainly I did) get posterisation. Obviously a high quality scan, regardless of whether it’s flat or not, would give you more latitude. I’d rather higher contrast straight out of the camera, so it seems the CN film is not the way to go. Perhaps this is the character of the film and perhaps it suits some uses, but I’m going back to the HP5+
Thanks again everyone.
ciaran wrote:
Some interesting feedback and comments in this thread… thanks everyone.
Just a point about adjusting contrast in Photoshop… I know it’s possible, but the problem is you just don’t get the same level of detail in a scan that you do shooting RAW. So when you boost contrast, and try and pull out the detail, you can (or certainly I did) get posterisation.
Sounds to me like it was an 8-bit scan. Using a higher bit depth should resolve the problem of posterisation (or at least minimise it significantly).
A decent quality flatbed scanner can really produce the results now. I have a Epson V750 pro (which is the best part of 1000 euro).
But to pick up on what JB said, scanners and films will give different results. also which software is used will give you different results, with mine i have two different applications and there is a world of difference between the resulting images
I do agree with thorsten about the bit depth of the scan too. If i remeber rightly mine will actually do 48Bit the files it can produce are massive too and the detail is really there
stcstc wrote:
A decent quality flatbed scanner can really produce the results now. I have a Epson V750 pro (which is the best part of 1000 euro).
But to pick up on what JB said, scanners and films will give different results. also which software is used will give you different results, with mine i have two different applications and there is a world of difference between the resulting images
I do agree with thorsten about the bit depth of the scan too. If i remeber rightly mine will actually do 48Bit the files it can produce are massive too and the detail is really there
Steve, 48-bit or higher is really the way to go when scanning. It takes a lot of resources but is worth it in the end. Do you use Silverfast scanning software? Not sure if it comes bundled with your scanner. There was a time a few years back where it only shipped with scanners in the US, but I think that’s changed now.
thorsten
Yea i use silverfast Ai, came with a proper IT-8 reflective & transperant reference slide to calibrate and profile from etc
Well… the scans from the second source have come back. They are MUCH contrastier, much more along the lines of what I expected. And with the higher resolution that I asked for, you can see the noise and grain too :)
BUT
They’re softer :(
To sum up my film experience so far:
Too many variables, all of which are beyond my control (unless I start developing and scanning everything myself) = completely inconsistent results.
Thank God for digital :)
Ciaran
I think what you need is to find someone who can do the developing the way you want and someone who can do the scans the way you want.
once you have that i think you could find you would be happy, without having to invest money in equipment etc and more impportantly money in your time (which is the bit most people forget about)
ciaran wrote:
Thank God for digital :)
OI WATCHIT !!! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:
btw have posted you some real film, enjoy
There are indeed a lot of variables, but if you stick to the same lab and ask always for exactly the same, most of those variables will be under your control.
I remember you reported inconsistency when developing you rolls at Gunn’s, I think I know why. If you ask for low resolution scan you get around 2MP scans and the film grain will be more visible due to the low resolution, but if you ask for high resolution you get 7MP scans with little noise that you can reduce and get nice results. We already did talk about this and at the end I posted posted my conclusion.
Hopefully I will finish a T-max 400 this weekend and we’ll see the results by the next weekend, in the meantime you can see I have already gotten some nice results.
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