Giorgio,
Assuming you mean exclusively negative film (as opposed to slides), I
would second Roger's suggestion to try out Vuescan's Advanced Workflow
Suggestions. If you are not familiar with that you can follow the
link right from Vuescan - click on Help | User's Guide..., then on the
page that comes up go to Advance Workflow Suggestions. The procedures
outlined there are intended to optimize the exposure and color
settings for that particular roll of film, so that you don't have to
tweak each image. For the part that says "Insert film with most
transparent area", you might want to use the film leader from the roll
if it is available, i.e., the very beginning or end of the roll which
has been exposed but doesn't have an image.
You still have some settings to make when following this workflow.
Under Negative Vendor on the Color tab, I always use Generic. For me
this usually gives better results than any of the canned choices (if
my film is even on the list to begin with!). Another key setting is
Color balance (on the Color tab). If you truly want to minimize (or
eliminate) any post processing, then White balance is probably your
best bet. In that case, preview one of the images and visually adjust
the white point until the image looks best (i.e., bright enough,
without too much clipping of the highlights). Black point seems less
important. If you are willing to (or want to) make basic levels
adjustments (setting white/black point) and contrast adjustments in
post processing, then Neutral or even None will be better settings.
The image directly from the scanner will be darker and lower contrast,
but then at least when you do your own adjustments in Photoshop (or
image processor of your choice), you can keep from blowing out any
highlights. This is important if you are picky about such things.
In any event, once you have settings you like, save them. Under File,
select Save settings and then give the .ini file a descriptive name
which includes the film type. You can call up this file again, any
time you are using that same type and version of film and those
settings should work well. Provided that is, that significant fading
hasn't occured. Personally, fading has never been much of an issue
for me, even with film from that era. But if you do suspect you have
some faded negatives, you might want to experiment with the Restore
fading and/or Restore colors options on the Filter tab. For me those
options only makes things worse.
If all else fails, don't be afraid to reset everything to default
settings (go to File|Default options). I've always been impressed at
how good a job this can do.
Hope that helps.
Jeff
