I have two suggestions: (1) when processing your film, you might try either
underdeveloping the negatives a little so as not to have such dense
highlights or a compensating two developer process to get the shadow detail
without blowing out the highlight detail (you did not memtion if the
negatives themselves lack significant highlight detail or not) and (2) try
Vuescan scanning software, which does not make use of the twain scanner
driver but uses a proprietary driver developed by Ed Hemrick and which has
multiple pass and long exposure providsions that will help bring highlight
out of both highlight and shadow areas if it is there in any significant
fashion.
I am not familiar enough with Silverfast or the Polaroid software to know if
they also have such features or not. If they do, you might try to use them.
I am familiar with the Minolta software and know it does not have such
features, unless it is in the newer versions of the software, which is why
many Minolta users turned to Vuescan.
>Confronted with a dense highlight when working in a traditional chemical
>darkroom, I could easily deal with it by "burning it in" on the print.
Not if it were bullet proof. If it is too dense, any prolonged exposures to
burn in the higlight detail would have fogged the paper so there are limits
to what you can do here too. If the highlights were coming out very dense
on a regular basis the only way to try and handle it would have been to
adjust one's film developing process like I suggested above.
>On the scans, however, however far I take the highlight density value down
from
>255, either in the scan process or in PhotoShop, the scanner has given me
no
>detail at all to work with.
To be expected since both the scanner software and Photoshop work on the
scan data post data acquisition or capture so if it was not captured by the
scanner sensors and digitalized in the raw file there is nothing for the
software to work with.
---Original Message-----
From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Bard Martin
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 9:55 AM
To: laurie@advancenet.net
Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Burned-Out Highlights
I hope someone out there can help me with a problem I have scanning black
and white negatives.
The first film scanner I bought, a Minolta, a couple of years ago, was
inadequate when it came to recording detail in the dense (highlight) areas
of my negatives. I realized I had to go elsewhere when the only thing a
Minolta tech rep could suggest to solve the problem was to shoot with a
different film. Perhaps they have improved their product since then.
I now have a Polaroid SprintScan 120. Using this device I have much better
success with the highlights in my negatives, but the problem does persist
with some of them, to the extent that nothing I do with my SilverFast
software helps. I haven't tried Polaroid's own software yet, but I suspect
that the problem will persist.
Confronted with a dense highlight when working in a traditional chemical
darkroom, I could easily deal with it by "burning it in" on the print. On
the scans, however, however far I take the highlight density value down from
255, either in the scan process or in PhotoShop, the scanner has given me no
detail at all to work with.
Any suggestions? -- Bard
> From: "Julie Cooke" <julie@lightdrawing.com>
> Reply-To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
> Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 23:33:30 +0100
> To: bardmartin@earthlink.net
> Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Nikon Coolscan LS4000 not recognised
>
> Help! My scanner is no longer recognised, If I go to Control Panel,
System,
> Hardware, Device Manager under Windows 2000 I know longer see Scanners
> although the firewire interface is listed. When I switch the scanner on I
> just get the flashing LED, so I guess it's either a hardware malfunction
or
> a connection problem.
>
> I haven't used the scanner since installing a PCI modem for ASDL, does
> anyone know if that would cause a conflict?
>
> Thanks
>
> Julie
> ---
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