Black & White negative scanning

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tomm42

What is the best way to scan B&W negatives 16 bit b&w or 48 bit color.
I can talk myself into either one, so I just want to get other
opinions. I haven't liked the look of the color scans, so I have been
using b&w.

Thanks
Tom
 
tomm42 said:
What is the best way to scan B&W negatives 16 bit b&w or 48 bit color.
I can talk myself into either one, so I just want to get other
opinions. I haven't liked the look of the color scans, so I have been
using b&w.

Thanks
Tom
Click to expand...


Scan in colour then you can use all the functions in the edit programs.
Desaturate or what ever method to bring it back to B&W image.
 
Scan in colour then you can use all the functions in the edit programs.
Desaturate or what ever method to bring it back to B&W image.
Click to expand...

what are functions one really need to used on a RGB b&w image except
channal-mixer ? does one need to color balance the RGB image before
convert it to b&w? thanks.
 
what are functions one really need to used on a RGB b&w image except
channal-mixer ? does one need to color balance the RGB image before
convert it to b&w? thanks.
Click to expand...

You generally want to get the overall image brightness and contrast
right before conversion or you'll be using the converter to correct
for brightness and might end up leaning on one channel's information
too much.
 
What am I missing here? The title of the thread is "Black & White
negative scanning". I presume that means that the negative itself is
already B&W, not that we are trying to get a B&W image of a color
negative. If my assumption is correct, why would you possibly want to
scan in any form of color? I do such scanning in 8-bit (256 level)
Grayscale.
 
Barry said:
What am I missing here? The title of the thread is "Black & White
negative scanning". I presume that means that the negative itself is
already B&W, not that we are trying to get a B&W image of a color
negative. If my assumption is correct, why would you possibly want to
scan in any form of color? I do such scanning in 8-bit (256 level)
Grayscale.
Click to expand...

larger range and hence you can enhance the image more. Scanning
degregates the image anyway.
 
What am I missing here? The title of the thread is "Black & White
negative scanning". I presume that means that the negative itself is
already B&W, not that we are trying to get a B&W image of a color
negative. If my assumption is correct, why would you possibly want to
scan in any form of color? I do such scanning in 8-bit (256 level)
Grayscale.
Click to expand...


but that's about converting to b&w from color images. for b&w
negative, i don't understand why bother scanning in r/g/b then color
mix it. i think, there must be more or less 'color' cast on the r/g/b
image scaned in, so when done, i don't know if i should 'color'
correct before do a channel mix of 80% green + 20% red. and, i dount
a channel mix will yield any good comparing to scan in dirrectly in
b&w, scanner might already do a channel mix for you. any opinion?
 
I can understand scanning in 16-bit monochrome instead of 8-bit
monochrome, but I still don't understand scanning a B&W negative in
color. In fact, I think that doing so would add color tints where they
are not wanted. Not to mention making the file size about 3x larger.
 
What is the best way to scan B&W negatives 16 bit b&w or 48 bit color.
I can talk myself into either one, so I just want to get other
opinions. I haven't liked the look of the color scans, so I have been
using b&w.

Thanks
Tom
Click to expand...

Ran a test, the settings were.
B&W film scanned in 16bit greyscale
B&W film scanned in 48bit color
Color film scanned in 48bit color
6x7 TMax 400 neg, scanned at 2400 ppi. all were down sized to 12x16
and printed on my Canon iPF5000.
Not a heck of a lot of difference in the prints, POSSIBLY a slight bit
more dynamic range in the color scans but not obvious. I'm going to
try another neg and see if that produce any definative results.
I have resisted taking 1 color channel and printing that, because it
is the equivalent of using a filter, and I want the images unfiltered,
as I shot them (a couple may have had a 25red when shot), old negs so
I don't remember every detail.

Tom
 
I can understand scanning in 16-bit monochrome instead of 8-bit
monochrome, but I still don't understand scanning a B&W negative in
color. In fact, I think that doing so would add color tints where they
are not wanted. Not to mention making the file size about 3x larger.





- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

I settled on Vuescan for scanning my Tri-X, outputting Vuescan's "Raw
File": gamma 1.0, 16 bit with red, green and blue channels.
Essentially: all the information that the scanner received. I followed
up processing this file to 8 bit greyscale via Vuescan's scan-from-
disk function.
 
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