Scanned Velvia Slide Image

I am trying to construct a "digital path" for getting my old film images into my digital workflow when I realized I can't open a TIF file in Bibble!

Of course, the scanned image is in TIF so I have to convert it to JPG to get it into the same workflow in Bibble as most of my other images! However, this workflow is headed for the web, so the extra conversion is really not a big deal, but this missing feature caught me off guard.

Anyway, here is one example of an old slide, shot on Fuji Velvia (I think), with a Nikon N8008, probably a Nikkor 24mm 2.8!

This is a favorite of mine, I shot two rolls of film trying to catch the lightning and this was THE LAST FRAME on the second role! The light aberrations are from rain droplets collected by the lens over the course of the two rolls. I'd love to hear some comments:

Ed,

I'm so happy to see film.

There must be treasure troves in shoe boxes, slide cabinets and what not! Dig them out and let's see the style that film gives. It cannot be the same because the pace and the consequences are so different. This Ed is a real treat! The traingle leading edfge of the moteal sign points the same direction as the lightening giving a great sense of movement, may I say an electric moment!

That's one of the finest "Back to the Future" shots I've seen. I can just imagine a 3D-DeLorean thrusting out of the street!

So how did you scan it and was there a lot of dust to clone out? Why Bibble and not PS?
Anyway what software are you using? You should be able to specify RAW or DNG, not? Have you tried Vuescan?

I hope others will pick out some film and show us that too!

Asher

Edward Bussa said:

I am trying to construct a "digital path" for getting my old film images into my digital workflow when I realized I can't open a TIF file in Bibble!

Of course, the scanned image is in TIF so I have to convert it to JPG to get it into the same workflow in Bibble as most of my other images! However, this workflow is headed for the web, so the extra conversion is really not a big deal, but this missing feature caught me off guard....

Click to expand...

Hi Ed,

I'm glad to hear that there are others out there "struggling" with similar issues <smile>.
For the last 3 years, I've been gearing up towards scanning a few thousands of slides and negatives (color and b&w) and archiving them using a DAM system. I have made many starts only to discover that some steps of the workflow I was using were less than acceptable. So each time, I have suspended the work until such time I could gather some more energy and find some better suitable tools. Actually the real reason might have been procrastination, who knows? <smile>.

Anyway, here is where I am at right now:

Originally I wanted to handle each slide/negative only once, hence scan them at the highest quality using the RAW scan feature of VueScan, which I use. Due to the time it takes doing that, and the disk space used (about 160 MB per frame), I have been reconsidering this. Maybe it is a better idea using the light table first and finding out which slides require greater care/quality. But identifying focusing and shake/blur issues looking at a slide (even with a loupe) is not always possible. So I end up scanning many slides which were ripe for the bin to start with. The solution would be setting up the good old projector and looking at the pictures on the projection screen. But this introduces yet another step (load cartridges, setup projection room, sit and look at the slides, mark and remove rejects, unload cartridges, put away projector/screen, etc) , thus yet more reasons for me to postpone things. But I guess this is the only sensible way of doing it.

Another issue I came up against was the numbering of the scanned image. I wanted to syncronise the frame number of each photo roll with the number of the scan in the computer. This is a huge hassle. It only works well when the whole roll is scanned in one go without skipping any frames. But considering the fact that I don’t want to scan bad pictures, I then had to identify and input the numbers manually for each scan session. I guess I’ll stop doing this now. I am leaning towards identifying each roll uniquely and reflect this in the scanned images. Afterwards, if I need to find a particular slide physically, I just need to look at 36 slides at the most which makes much more sense to me right now.

OK, the works. I scan using a Canon FS4000US film scanner, which can scan at 4000 dpi. I prefer using the VueScan software above anything else (believe me, I have tried working with SilverFast but it was less flexible, delivered similar results while being much more expensive). I also compared the FS4000US with a borrowed Nikon 5000 side-by-side. The scans of Canon were just as good, if not better. So I stayed with Canon. The only advantage of working with a Nikon 5000/9000 would have been the availability of a batch scan module for slides.

The scan resolution I use is 4000 dpi, at a bit depth of 48-bits plus 16-bits for the infrared alpha layer. This IR layer is used by either VueScan or Photoshop to remove dust and scratches. I save the scanned image as a RAW tiff file, which is a file with the RGB layers plus the Alpha layer. There are no corrections applied such as gamma or exposure or sharpening, it contains the raw scan data only. I also save at the scan time a processed jpg and tiff version of the image, using medium dust/scratch reduction and white balance correction. The scan is actually done once, but the processing can be done many times based on the RAW file.

The tiff file then goes into the Lightroom and/or Lightzone, which can process it as if it were a camera RAW file.

Very recently, VueScan has added the possibility of saving the RAW image as a DNG file. This is rather nice since I can now also use the ACR 4.1. You could then use almost any other RAW converter out there.

Well to make a long story short, I can ramble indefinitely like this but I should stop now I guess. Please ask any questions if you want to hear more <smile>.

I’ll post some examples of my Velvia scans elsewhere since I don’t want to take away the attention from your beautiful picture <big smile>. It really is a very good picture and as Asher wrote, reminds me of the BTTF series, of which I am a fan coincidentally.

PS: The examples have now been posted in this thread.

Cheers,

A little more info

This was scanned using a Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dual III. I bought this scanner several years a go and have been pleased with the results. The software that comes with it is superb and has the tools to get the image right, but the only format it ouptuts (AFAIK) is TIF.

They used to make a version with the ICE software included, but that was significantly more money and I decided I could blow the dust off myself! I used a foot pump blower and was surprised at how little dust was on the captured image. The last time I did this, I remember dust being more of a pain.

Cem, the only method I worked out for plowing through my slides (and I didn't get very far either) was to do what you concluded, and sort first. No sense in scanning something you don't want (very time costly).

My labeling method was to organize my slides into little white slide boxes and slap a label on the box. This becomes the folder on my hard drive where the scanned image will reside.

Then, after scanning each tray of slides, I would grab the date/time and slide number off the frame of each one and use that as the file name, so when I was going through the box, I could visually scan for the stamp, and would not have to look at the content of any slides!

I wish there was an easier way! Well, there is, but I guess I have more time than money at this point! =D

Thanks Asher! Yes, Film is a different experience and yields different results! I remember being pleased with one competent frame on each roll. Thats when I knew I was improving! =D

BACK TO THE FUTURE
I hadn't thought of it that way, but looking back, heh, it makes sense! Especially with this being a digitized slide! =D

SOFTWARE
I primarily use Bibble (and not PS) because of the interface, noise reduction, and cost.

INTERFACE
Bibbles interface is more consistent in that there are no modal dialog boxes. The photoshop tools that pop up in front of my image where I have to cancel out to go do something else first drives me a little nuts!

NOISE REDUCTION
The noise ninja support in Bibble is arguably the best there is.

COST
Bibble Lite is a bargain, but I ultimately upgraded for the asset management/workflow benefits in Pro.

I don't know what Vuescan is, but I have a friend with this funny name (sounds like giggle) that I can ask. =D

Edward Bussa said:

This was scanned using a Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dual III. I bought this scanner several years a go and have been pleased with the results. The software that comes with it is superb and has the tools to get the image right, but the only format it ouptuts (AFAIK) is TIF.

They used to make a version with the ICE software included, but that was significantly more money and I decided I could blow the dust off myself! I used a foot pump blower and was surprised at how little dust was on the captured image. The last time I did this, I remember dust being more of a pain....

Click to expand...

Hi Ed,

That is a great scanner. Since you seem to have the time (LOL), why don't you download a trial copy of VueScan and see how it works with your scanner? Even the IR cleaning might function, who knows. Mind you, the default scanning results of VueScan may look a litte flat, since it keeps all the image data intact and does not do excessive contrast enhancements like many other scanning software. Have a go at it, I'm sure it might surprise you, hopefully in a positive way. See here: http://www.hamrick.com/

Edward Bussa said:

....Cem, the only method I worked out for plowing through my slides (and I didn't get very far either) was to do what you concluded, and sort first. No sense in scanning something you don't want (very time costly).

My labeling method was to organize my slides into little white slide boxes and slap a label on the box. This becomes the folder on my hard drive where the scanned image will reside.

Then, after scanning each tray of slides, I would grab the date/time and slide number off the frame of each one and use that as the file name, so when I was going through the box, I could visually scan for the stamp, and would not have to look at the content of any slides!

I wish there was an easier way! Well, there is, but I guess I have more time than money at this point! =D

Click to expand...

I am glad you confirm my suspicions re. the workflow. I must admit you have lost me there with your sentence starting with "Then, after scanning...". Can you explain it a bit more since I did not understand you correctly I'm afraid.

Cheers,

Cem Usakligil said:

Hi Ed,
"Then, after scanning...". Can you explain it a bit more since I did not understand you correctly I'm afraid.

Click to expand...

Simply, each slide has a date/time stamp and a slide number on the frame. I use that as the file name. This makes it easy to find the slide when I want to rescan for whatever reason. Also, this is not terribly time consuming because I have to wait for the next tray of slides to scan anyway, so I keep myself busy renaming slides.

If that still doesn't make sense, try me again! We'll get it straight

Edward Bussa said:

Simply, each slide has a date/time stamp and a slide number on the frame. I use that as the file name. This makes it easy to find the slide when I want to rescan for whatever reason. Also, this is not terribly time consuming because I have to wait for the next tray of slides to scan anyway, so I keep myself busy renaming slides.

If that still doesn't make sense, try me again! We'll get it straight

Click to expand...

OK, thx for the explanation. It seems that I understood you well, after all. But not all my slides have a date stamp on them. I send them out to various labs for development and framing and they mostly lack a date stamp. I have tried using the dates and frame numbers as part of the image name, as I've explained in my initial post. Automating the date for the whole roll is in fact rather easy, just make it a static part of the file name and make the frame numbers variable. But then again, some rolls are taken on different dates and finding out the correct dates for each frame is hassle. So in your case, you might stick to using the "development date"of the whole roll which is stamped on the slide frames, I guess.

Re. the frame numbers, the best way is to do it manually as you've described, since you are waiting for the next batch to be scanned anyway. I am also considering the option of using a unique number which is sequentially increased accross all the rolls. Similar to the 4 digit part of the image name/number from a digital camera. I could delegate this task to VueScan and then manually write the resulting number with a marker on the slide. Some more pondering to be done <smile>.

Cheers.

If it's a problem identifying the slides/relating to the scanned image, maybe turn the problem inside out. Name the image and print out a small sticky label for the slide. All reference numbers should carry no information, be meaningless, other than being unique. It only acts a tag to other information.

Best wishes,

Ray

Who knows the Avery label type that is suitable and the MS Word Template for printing this out, or is there a program that can do it directly from the naming image software? If this can be worked out or exists already, it would seem perfect!

Asher