I used a Nikon Coolscan V-ED with really great results.
Plustek scanner b&h photo software#
Any tips from anyone who's managed to nail the process of scanning slides (especially B&W ones) with a Plustek scanner and/or VueScan software would be hugely appreciated.I really need to get my scanning resumed and have decided I'm just going all new. Sorry for all this wordiness but I hope what I've written makes sense. Here's an example of a quite dark scan with no black or white point adjustments (whose histogram is the one above):Īnd here's the same image with the white point adjusted: Here's the histogram of the raw read-out after scanning with the exposure automatically set for a slide containing areas of clear film:įrustratingly, as I watch the second (supposedly overexposed) scan take place for Multiple Exposure, I think 'yes! that's how it should look', so I know the scanner is physically capable of scanning at the right exposure, and I'm sure I'm just doing something wrong. I do develop my slides on the dark side as I prefer this for projection, but the highlights (when they should be) are nevertheless clear so I should be getting much higher white values, surely? At the moment I'm keeping raw copies of the scans so that I don't have to go back and re-scan everything if I find some revolutionary change of settings that gives better results!Ĭlick to expand.Do you mean even before black and white points are set? Because however much I manually adjust the exposure (even up to maximum, '200', in VueScan), my highlights are only halfway up the range on the raw histogram in VueScan.
Any tips from anyone who's managed to nail the process of scanning slides (especially B&W ones) with a Plustek scanner and/or VueScan software would be hugely appreciated. I should also add that I have mainly been scanning Rollei Retro 80S and 400S, which are both contrasty films, especially the 400S – perhaps this is part of the issue? I am using the Lock Exposure and Multiple Exposure settings, by the way. Is it at all possible that the supposedly straight curve in VueScan is actually applying a certain amount of contrast, as might well be necessary for a satisfactory scan of a negative, or that the scanner is doing this? However, as I say, with the curve points set to 0.25 and 0.75, I am seeing scans that are darker and are more contrasty than they should be. However, because I like to know how and why I'm doing things, beyond just 'if it looks right then it is right' (valid though that is), I've been investigating further and have found that in fact the 0.25 and 0.75 settings for the curve is 'straight', and that adjusting them to their minimum values as that page suggests in fact expands the shadows and compresses the highlights. Doing this resulted in scans that I was much happier with and seemed much closer to how the slides look projected or in a slide viewer. One of the things it suggests doing is changing the default 'Curve low' and 'Curve high' settings from 0.25 and 0.75 respectively to 0.001 each, and also slightly raising the brightness from 1 to 1.06. I came across this page which says that for a flat scan in VueScan one should adjust various of the 'Color' settings (not all of which are to do with colour!) from their default settings. Of course some of the principles of the process are the same as for colour slides, or at least more similar to this than to scanning negatives.Īlthough I'm pleased with the detail captured by the scanner, I'd been finding that almost all my slides were being rendered too dark, with not nearly as much shadow detail as there should be. (Despite this, VueScan does actually have a setting for 'REVERSAL B&W' although I'm not sure what the specifics of this are). Since B&W slides are pretty niche, as you'd expect there's not a great deal of information about doing this. I'm quite happy with the results, but I know they can be improved and some aspects of the way it (and the scanner) render my slides are confusing me. I really didn't like the interface of the Silverfast software that was bundled with it, so decided to get VueScan (pro edition). I've recently acquired a Plustek OpticFilm 8200i and am trying to optimise my workflow with it. I like to be able to have digital copies and until now have been using a Panasonic Lumix bridge camera to do this, with, as you'd expect, OK but pretty mediocre results.
I shoot 35mm B&W which I process myself into slides using the reversal process. I've posted a few times in the analogue workflow forums but am new in this section.