[filmscanners] Re: Colour management on Negatives

["Al Bond" <al@greenspace.freeserve.co.uk>]

Eddie Cairns wrote:

> The photographer in question allways uses Fuji Superia 200 . I have
> Profileprism and will therefore get the lady to photograph the target used
> to profile digital cameras provided with PP and scan the resulting negative
> in the Minolta 5400.
>
> Therefore that would give me a profile to use in Photoshop for Fuji Superia
> 200 and that specific Minolta dimage scan elite 5400.

> As has been said in the previous replies the proilfe will be for those
> lighting conditions as the negative orange mask reacts differently in
> changing lighting conditions.

...but also be careful to use only the same settings in the Minolta software.
The best bet would be to switch AE off and save to a 16 bit positive linear file
so the Minolta software makes no adjustments to the output at all.

> There is no specific film brand lookup tables with the Minolta software
> unlike with Nikon and some other film scanner brand software.

If the Minolta software for the 5400 is like that with the original Elite 
(which I
have), not only does it do a relatively poor job with removing the orange mask
on negatives but it also clips the black and white points.  With the version of
the software for my Elite, even using the option save to the negative image as
a 16 bit linear file didn't help much - because it removed the mask before
saving the file so it wasn't really a raw file at all!

I always got very much better results with Vuescan.  It has just been updated
to support the Elite 5400 and it does have some film profiles (and its free to
try).  I couldn't spot Superia 200 in the list but I would expect one of the 
listed
Fuji profiles to do the job.

If you do try Vuescan, given that support for your scanner is very recent (and
possibly not bug free yet), you still have the option of scanning the negative 
in
as a positive in the Minolta software and saving that as a 16 bit linear file.  
(I'm
assuming here that the software doesn't detect which film holder you are using
and stops you selecting positive when using negative film.)  Vuescan should
happily process the file.  This approach also leaves you with the option to use
ICE or the new Grain Dissolver, should you need them, when producing the
file.

I don't scan much negative film (I mainly use slides) and my very good
experiences of Vuescan were from an older version which had only built in
profiles for each supported scanner.  It may be that, for practical purposes,
this is all you need if there is a suitable negative film type in the Vuescan
lookup tables.

Having said that, now that IT8 calibration is supported in Vuescan, I've just
started to play around with producing my own profiles for my scanner.
Certainly, for slides, Vuescan's built in profile for my scanner was always too
dark and the profile I produced does give a better balance between highlights,
midtones and shadows.  Whether or not the IT8 calibration would improve
negative scans as well, I can't say (but it certainly shouldn't harm!).


Al Bond

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