{"id":1142,"date":"2018-03-22T13:01:18","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T17:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jrileystewart.com\/blog\/?p=1142"},"modified":"2020-12-31T08:59:46","modified_gmt":"2020-12-31T13:59:46","slug":"unlocking-your-scanner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jrileystewart.com\/blog\/unlocking-your-scanner\/","title":{"rendered":"Unlocking Your Scanner to Get Great Scans from Film"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“A Moment on the Nez Perce” by J Riley Stewart<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

Why Scan Film? <\/span><\/h2>\r\n

This tutorial covers how I manage my film scanning to get every bit of tonal information from a negative and avoid clipped shadows and highlights, which ensures I get great scans from my film images.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Scanning film is a necessary evil if you shoot using film cameras and want to convert the film image into digital format for proofing, sharing to the web, making a digital negative for alternative processes, or for inkjet printing. Scanning film requires a special machine (a transparency scanner) that passes light through the film and to the scanner’s sensor, and records minute differences in density and color at millions of sampling points on the film, and records those differences in a digital file. <\/span><\/p>\r\n

For some images on film, we can relay on automatic settings in scanning software to adequately read and convert the film image to an acceptable digital image. But there will always be those film images that fail miserably during scanning; automatic settings and presets just can’t provide a digital image that we can process into a fine image for printing or sharing. For those film images, we need to learn how to force the scanner and scanner software to do the best job possible to get all the useful information from the film.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Software can make a big difference in user experience. I\u2019ve tried Epson Scan\u00ae, SilverFast\u00ae, and VueScan\u00ae. By far, I’ve found VueScan is the most flexible and effective, and what I say below relates to its use. VueScan, because it includes so many controls for so many scanners, can be frustrating to use sometimes, but if you follow my workflow, and refrain from experimenting too much, you\u2019ll be okay (I think). Try VueScan\u00ae here:<\/a> (I have no association with it). I have no doubt that if all your negatives (color or B&W) are perfectly exposed and developed, you won’t need the advanced tools built into VueScan (however, it will take care of those too) and so the basic scanning software like Epson Scan will work fine. But there are those times when things don’t go as planned, and you’re left with a great composition on a crappy negative. That’s when you need the tools and the skill to get every bit of useful information from the negative before you can make a great image. I’ve compared Epson Scan to VueScan in scanning B&W film here. Take a read if interested<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Take Home Points<\/span><\/h2>\r\n