You can easily get away with 180 dpi at final size on an Epson 7800. While 360 dpi is the "native" resolution of the printer, you don't really need all that to have great prints. I have both a 9800 and a 9900 and have made many large prints at 180-200 dpi and have never been dissatisfied, even at close examination. The problem here is, of course, is that your film doesn't hold more than 1600-2000 dpi worth of information, so scanning it higher just accentuates the grain. Did you say what kind of scanner you're using that can actually give you 7000 dpi or is that an interpolated number? If it's any sort of CCD scanner, where you don't have aperture control, you may indeed have better results scanning at the aforementioned 1600-2000 and then rezzing up as needed. The other thing we haven't discussed is using something like Noise Ninja on film, which actually works pretty well and was the reason I first bought that product six or seven years ago.
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Reala VS. Astia. Scanning etc
- Thread starter tjv
- Start date
Here is a scan and crop.
Details:
Nikon 8000ED scanner, Fuji Reala, Vuescan, using glass film carrier, 4000dpi, no sharpening or grain reduction, digital ICE set to 'light', 2x sampling, downsized using bicubic sharper to 18x22.5" @ 360dpi.
I like the results here a lot more than what I've been getting when outsourcing!
Details:
Nikon 8000ED scanner, Fuji Reala, Vuescan, using glass film carrier, 4000dpi, no sharpening or grain reduction, digital ICE set to 'light', 2x sampling, downsized using bicubic sharper to 18x22.5" @ 360dpi.
I like the results here a lot more than what I've been getting when outsourcing!
Last edited:
I forgot to mention that the scanner used for my drum scans is supposedly a Howtek 7500 and / or a 4500. I've had Imacon 848 scans done before and they were comparable but it seemed that some kind of sharpening had been applied at the scanning stage as they seemed to display halo kind of effects in places. They were raw scans, so were very flat out of scanner, but once edited they looked marginally better than what I would have gotten had I scanned myself using the Nikon at work.You can easily get away with 180 dpi at final size on an Epson 7800. While 360 dpi is the "native" resolution of the printer, you don't really need all that to have great prints. I have both a 9800 and a 9900 and have made many large prints at 180-200 dpi and have never been dissatisfied, even at close examination. The problem here is, of course, is that your film doesn't hold more than 1600-2000 dpi worth of information, so scanning it higher just accentuates the grain. Did you say what kind of scanner you're using that can actually give you 7000 dpi or is that an interpolated number? If it's any sort of CCD scanner, where you don't have aperture control, you may indeed have better results scanning at the aforementioned 1600-2000 and then rezzing up as needed. The other thing we haven't discussed is using something like Noise Ninja on film, which actually works pretty well and was the reason I first bought that product six or seven years ago.
Although I quite like the Reala results from the one lot I've shot, I still prefer the way slide scans with regard to the look of shadow area grain. It seems to hold more detail with less blotchyness in the blacks. Would that be right?
With regard to Noise Ninja - I also bought it a while back to deal with film scans to help make them easier to apply creative and output sharpening to. I should give it another try. At some stage I gave up on it because I was feeling it took something away from the organic grain structure that, when it's scanned correctly, makes film scans look something special. I'm a walking contradiction!!!
There are three different software packages for the Howtek - Silverfast, Trident and DPL. Trident is by far the best for scanning negs, but operator skill is paramount in getting the most out of the scanner. I remember a few years ago when a photographer flew out to L.A. from Memphis so I could give him an hour long demo of neg scanning. Seven hours later.... The most exhausting Mother's Day I've ever had. Both the 7500 and 4500 are more limited in their choice of apertures. I know the 4500 has a 16 micron but I can't remember off the top of my head about the 7500, and I have one in the studio as well.
The last Nikon scan you posted looked pretty good for a Nikon, but the math doesn't work out for your stated resolution. Assuming that your 18 x 22.5 is the full height of the horizontal neg, 360 ppi at that size translates to about 6500 ppi, not 4000, so I'm not sure how you're getting DOWN to that size from the original scan. Also, I'd stay away from Bicubic Sharper and instead use standard Bicubic with a dose of USM applied selectively as needed. I find those results are much better than what "sharper" has to offer.
I love Noise Ninja, but the default settings have always been way too aggressive for me, turning everything into mush. I use the standalone program, which is better than the plugin and run a custom profile on every image, then I usually back off both the Luminance and Color noise reduction anywhere from minus 5 to minus ten or more depending on the image. I save it out as a tiff and then layer back on top of my original and look carefully to see if there are any areas that I want to reduce or eliminate the NR with a layer mask. This is a bit more work than a lot of people like to do, but it's very very effective and I find results in the best images overall.
I wish you weren't half a world away. It'd cool to have you over for a demo.
Peter
The last Nikon scan you posted looked pretty good for a Nikon, but the math doesn't work out for your stated resolution. Assuming that your 18 x 22.5 is the full height of the horizontal neg, 360 ppi at that size translates to about 6500 ppi, not 4000, so I'm not sure how you're getting DOWN to that size from the original scan. Also, I'd stay away from Bicubic Sharper and instead use standard Bicubic with a dose of USM applied selectively as needed. I find those results are much better than what "sharper" has to offer.
I love Noise Ninja, but the default settings have always been way too aggressive for me, turning everything into mush. I use the standalone program, which is better than the plugin and run a custom profile on every image, then I usually back off both the Luminance and Color noise reduction anywhere from minus 5 to minus ten or more depending on the image. I save it out as a tiff and then layer back on top of my original and look carefully to see if there are any areas that I want to reduce or eliminate the NR with a layer mask. This is a bit more work than a lot of people like to do, but it's very very effective and I find results in the best images overall.
I wish you weren't half a world away. It'd cool to have you over for a demo.
Peter
It's scanned from a 6x7cm neg, so 4000dpi gives a massive file that I then downsize. I hear what you're saying about bicubic sharper. It can really emphasize the grain when downsizing huge files.The last Nikon scan you posted looked pretty good for a Nikon, but the math doesn't work out for your stated resolution. Assuming that your 18 x 22.5 is the full height of the horizontal neg, 360 ppi at that size translates to about 6500 ppi, not 4000, so I'm not sure how you're getting DOWN to that size from the original scan. Also, I'd stay away from Bicubic Sharper and instead use standard Bicubic with a dose of USM applied selectively as needed. I find those results are much better than what "sharper" has to offer.
I wish you weren't half a world away. It'd cool to have you over for a demo.
Peter
Yes, it would be great to have a hands on demo. Thanks again for all your comments and help. I have no idea how I'll get the most out my negs without expert help from someone like yourself - someone who actually cares about the finer points of the scanning process.