slide v. color print: the scanning advantage?

[dreilly]

I post or two in Jorge's recent (and appreciated) elegy (not eulogy!) to film made me think of an issue that's been kicking around me head.

Generally people seem to appreciate slide film for its crisp color rendition and sharpness, or simply the "glow" of something projected or backlit as opposed to reflected on paper. I've never quite known what it was but my color print film always left me cold.

I've always believed that this was the paper's doing, and the reflected light issue that seemed to make color print film look dull or less detailed. But if we scan our color print negatives, does the fact that we are again looking at images where the light is filtered through the image (and not reflected) make up the difference?

In other words, since many of you have started scanning your negatives, are you happier with your color print film? Have you stopped using slide film because of this advantage?

[HAnkg]

The problem with color negatives and scanning is that color negatives are not supported by ICC color management. Since the advent of digital scanning 99.9% of the film delivered for CMYK reproduction for ads, catalogs and magazine editorial work are transparencies. Back in the days when CMYK seperations where done in a camera, dye transfer prints made from color negatives were the norm for high-end work.

[bmicklea]

I have largely stopped using chromes (and I was seriously addicted). The reasons are, in order of importance to me:

1. I've started to print some of my work for friends, family and myself and printing chromes is painfully expensive compared to negatives.
2. I've had trouble getting scans of chromes to come out looking "right" - from my reading it seems that the higher density of chromes is hard for scanners to handle although I'm not sure what that's about as I would have expected that negatives would have been harder to scan due to their larger tonal range.
3. Once the prints are scanned and shown the monitor they have more of the "chromey" glow.
4. Once scanned in I am then free to boost the contrast and saturation of a negative to achieve a more chromey look.

I'm looking to get a better film scanner and once I do I'll do more tests of chromes vs. print films before I completely walk away from chromes but for now my shooting is done in the following proportions:

75% B&W
20% Colour neg.
5% 'chrome

I'm new at all this stuff though so take this all with a mountain of salt!

[dreilly]

Originally Posted by bmicklea

I've had trouble getting scans of chromes to come out looking "right"

My experience exactly. My scans come out okay, but not great, and I've managed decent prints (I find that printing on matte art paper helps retain some of the velvety feel of the projected slide), but if I look back at the slide, I get very unhappy at what I've lost. My portfolio has been culled twice...once for images I like and once for images that print out well.

There are, I'm sure, all sorts of limitations here, what scanner I'm using, how I'm using it, how I process...

It all leads me back to my belief that reflected format isn't as brilliant as projected.

[Valder]

I've been scanning film for the last 5 years and I only like to scan chromes when I can have them unmounted and feed them into the Coolscan V in strips like negative film. They seem to come out better that way. Otherwise I mainly shoot 400UC and Reala and now all that BW400Cn that I bought.

I don't like scanning Kodachromes!


Darrin

[dmr]

I say it depends.

A poorly exposed negative is hard to get a good scan of, as is a poorly exposed slide. I've had both slides and negatives produce great scans. Negative film does seem to be a bit more forgiving of exposure errors.

From reading the boards, some people seem to have trouble getting good negative scans, while others seem to have trouble scanning slides.

Originally Posted by Valder

I don't like scanning Kodachromes!

I've had very good luck scanning Kodachrome. They produce very gorgeous and brilliant, but not particularly vivid scans. You do need to pay attention to detail when scanning Kodachrome and slides in general, such as setting levels and intervening if auto-focus does not get an optimum focus. Slides are not perfectly flat, and sometimes you need to specify the auto-focus point or manually focus.

Overall, I don't think it can be definitively said that any one type of film will always scan well while another will always scan poorly.

[DougK]

I agree with dmr, it depends. I've gotten great scans and poor scans from both types of film. That said, I prefer slides. I can pop a slide into a viewer and know instantly whether or not I want to spend the effort to scan it. I also love the way slide films render color.

[photogdave]

Since I began scanning about 6 years ago, I've only used chromes for color work. I find they scan much better in a dedicated film scanner than negs, the inkjet prints look great, and I can pop them in my slide projector. It's also cheaper than buying neg film and having the whole roll printed, although just having the negs developed only would probably be cheaper than that.
I've only shot color neg twice in the last six years - both times for weddings.

[Trius]

I think that scanning chromes comes down to the scanner technology and the operator. Duh. What I mean, really, is that in my limited and highly anecdotal experience, a chrome that is well exposed for viewing/projection gives a consumer/home scanner fits. My suspicion is that only a drum or Leaf scan can do it justice. I have seen some very good scans from the higher end Nikon and Minolta prosumer scanners, but not nearly as many as good scans from negatives. JMO, YMMV, TIWAGOS, etc.

EDIT: Others contributed positive statements on chrome scanning while I was writing this. Maybe adding tips to this or an existing thread on scanning technique would be helpful.

[Sparrow]

I think its possible that by each scanner is optimised, either by luck or design to different film or film type, my Minolta seems to like Fuji Superia and prefers it a bit overexposed, everything else needs more work “fiddling” with settings

Trius, what’s TIWAGOS?

[Valder]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I think its possible that by each scanner is optimised, either by luck or design to different film or film type, my Minolta seems to like Fuji Superia and prefers it a bit overexposed, everything else needs more work “fiddling” with settings

That is it, Fiddling, why I didn't like chromes let alone Kodachrome on my old Scan Elite II. I messed with the software plenty to get good scans of chromes on that scanner and it was tough.

Now I have not tried my old Kodachromes on my Coolscan V. Everything I feed that scanner is almost dummy proof. Maybe I'll have to hit the slide drawer tonight.



db

[dreilly]

Originally Posted by Valder

That is it, Fiddling, why I didn't like chromes let alone...

Best avatar I've seen in a while. I've got one of those hats, btw. Love it.

[Valder]

Originally Posted by dreilly

Best avatar I've seen in a while. I've got one of those hats, btw. Love it.

Hey you're out by me. (now that I read the post right....) where did you find one?



Darrin

[HAnkg]

On drum scanners and high end flat beds a color slide film mounted in oil and with a ICC profile correctly calibrated for that film type will give the best results. The chrome of course must be properly exposed for optimum results.

[Pherdinand]

projected format is also reflected, doug.

A good colour negative film like reala100 can give excellent printed colours and sharpness. Although some people could still prefer slides.
When scanning is the issue, there's the thing of the negative that the highlights are the dense regions not the shadows... Scanning shadows on a slide can get noisy, but not when scanning a negative.
However the colours of the negative are screwed up by the film base, you need serious manipulation (or very good calibration files) to get back to good colours.

[visiondr]

I can echo Pherdinand's comments. In my limited slide scanning work, I've found that the shadows tend to lose a lot of detail after a scan, vs the shadow detail found from print film. Once that detail's gone, no amount of post processing can get it back. Then again, I tend to use flat-ish film (Portra NC). It makes scanning very easy relative to chromes.

Ron

[dreilly]

Originally Posted by Pherdinand

projected format is also reflected, doug.

That's true. But there's also a difference...usually projected images are shown in a darkened room (and we often look at prints in any old light) and (more importantly) the light used to project the image is brilliant and very bright, and able to do the slide justice where the print might not.

[Oh Two]

I have MUCH better luck scanning slides, color negatives are full of noise in the shadowed areas. I do pretty well exposing negatives one half stop over but even then I can't get the detail necessary for a really large print. Negatives are very forgiving and the color often garish (Fuji).

Kodachrome is still king, for however long that will last, but I shoot color negatives instead black and white as a matter of habit. When I get my dark room back I'll probably go back to exclusively black and white.

[Trius]

TIWAGOS = Take It With A Grain of Salt. I just made that up.

[ffttklackdedeng]

I think it's all up to the contrast / brightness ranges:

chromes catch (while taking the picture) only a small contrast range compared to negative film. To watch (e.g. on your screen) you'll normalize this range to the range between the black and the white of your screen - thus the chrome scan will be raised in contrast while the neg picture nor necessarily will. If it was taken in a high contrast situation (direct sunlight, high scenery contrast) it might well be even duller than the real scene. If it was taken in a low contrast situation it might also be raised in contrast, thus getting more of the 'chrome effect'.

Same for watching projected chrome vs. prints from chrome: the projected one has a higher brightness (contrast) range than the printed one - thus you like the projection more. It seems to be more impressing to see more details than you would being there life when the picture was taken.

TIWAGOS

[DavidH]

I scan both negs and slides using a KM5400 and Silverfast software. The negs need more TLC in the scanning setup - careful adjustment to ensure best colors - but other than that there's no real difference...I feed it all into CS2 and finish there.

I don't bother getting prints done from my color negs any more - Peak offer a dev only option (and it's cheaper) - and by working on the scans I can get some really excellent results. I can then print from the digital files...if I want to...

The only downside is my lack of experience with a wide range of types of color print film...but I'm trying various 'models' and getting there...and print film is more tolerant of some of the shooting conditions I find myself under.

In answer to your original question...yes, I've dumped slide film in favor of print film when scanning for output. None of my professional clients accept slides any more - has to be digital file - so may as well enjoy the advantages of print film.

[aad]

If you really want to see the difference, check out Shutterflower's scanner comparison from a while back, if he still has it up. If you have the right scanner, slides scan waaay better than negatives.

[boilerdoc2]

Aad is right. A good scanner with a Dmax of ~4.0 is more important than the dpi count. Minolta, nikon, especially do well on slides. Negatives show more grain but still scann very well. Remember that negatives have a greater latitude for exposure than trannies and will look different (not better or worse) than slides.
Steve

[jmilkins]

Interesting discussion thanks folks. As an inexperienced scanner I have had more sucsess with my KM5400 with trannies than negs. The Gallery shots are almost all trannies. I seem to have grain & colour problems with my fav print film - Reala. Thoufgh I 've drecently discovered the remove or reduce grain option in Vuescan that helps...

[varjag]

I prefer to scan chromes. It is not that negs are worse/harder, but rather that with chromes there is no issue of color balance. Aside from that tansparencies seem to have better color fidelity and tonal nuances.