Nikon Scanner with Black and White Film

Question

Nikon Scanner with Black and White Film

I have just purchased a Nikon Film Scanner with the intention of digitizing my Black and White photos for book publishing. The color negatives digitize fine especially with the ICE technology but the Black and White come out very grainy and scratched (apparently can't use ICE). The scanned negatives seem to digitize much worse than having prints created and scanning the prints.

Can anyone give me advice on what settings I should change to get a better result with the B&W scans or what I should do?

Thanks.

iMac4,1 Mac OS X (10.4.4) Nikon Coolscan V ED

Posted on Mar 1, 2006 1:05 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 2, 2006 4:38 AM in response to Paul L'Estrange

Try Vuescan -
http://www.hamrick.com/vsm.html

You will also likely need grain removing software. If your scanner uses Digital GEM then you should try that (although then you won't be using Vuescan). If it doesn't you can buy a Digital GEM photoshop plug-in or you can try the Noise Ninja and Neat Image noise/grain removers. All these programs have a try before you buy mode.

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Answer 2

Mar 5, 2006 12:37 AM in response to Paul L'Estrange

Thanks.

1 week later and 300+ B&W scans under my belt, I'm more experienced. The Nikon Scanner is fine. The images do look grainy using the Nikon viewer, but using any other application the images are fine. My only problem now is the scratches and dust on my negatives. Have started using some tools to fix the problems, but waiting for the new version of Aperture to be released.

Once I've scanned these "historical" negatives, I'm moving full speed to a Digital SLR camera (probably the Nikon D200) and leaving the perishable negative world.

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Answer 3

Mar 15, 2006 1:59 AM in response to Paul L'Estrange

Paul,
Could I be so bold as to ask your decision making process concerning purchasing a negative scanning machine vs using commercially available scanning technology (services). I am struggling with the decision. I can use the local pharamacy for about 19cent each but the best resolution I am getting is about 1500x1000. Are you getting better?

g5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

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Answer 4

Mar 15, 2006 10:07 AM in response to Captain Wally

Walter,

I struggled with the same decision for a few weeks.

Firstly, I am located in Switzerland and the scanning services are more difficult here. I do travel to the USA regularly and considered having the negatives scanned by a service. For the quality I was looking for they were charging between $1.50 and $6 per negative depending on the format and resolution.

I am very happy with the results especially with the color negatives using ICE technology for fixing scratches. I am scanning at 4000 dpi generating tiff format at 65Mbytes each. Probably an overkill for my private purposes but decided to get everything digital and forget the past.

The scanner costs around $600 in the USA ($750 in Europe) and I will probably try and sell it once I am finished in a couple of months. You have complete control over the quality of the process, but it takes time.

Hope this helps.

iMac Intel Core Duo 20", 2 GB RAM, iPOD Mini Mac OS X (10.4.4) Nikon Coolscan V ED

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Answer 5

Mar 16, 2006 2:42 PM in response to Paul L'Estrange

Paul,
I tried one of our many pharamacy photo labs for scanning this weekend. The did 350 negatives for $65US. They said the scanner would optimize the resolution but I think it had a governor because everyone had a resolution of about 1500x1000 JPG. That means any print larger than about 7x5 will begin to show grain.

I have not worked with TIFF files. My Canon only shoots jpg and raw. What is the pros and cons of Tiff?

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Answer 6

Mar 17, 2006 1:34 PM in response to Captain Wally

The main advantage of TIFF, or other uncompressed formats (like PSD), is there is no degradation of the imaage from the compression. With JPEG, there is additional image degradation each time you save the image (and reopen).

If you work with JPEGs, make sure you 1) do all your editing in TIFF (or PSD) and save ONCE as a JPEG when you are completely finished with your editing, and 2) save the original JPEG so you can start with the best possible image in case you want to do further editing later.

The main disadvantage of TIFF is the large file size (Hard disk space is cheap and getting cheaper!).

I would also add that scanning your own images is a pain, but you will have far greater control and improved quality. The Nikon film scanners are great!

Dave

G5 2.5 GHz Quad, 6.5 GB RAM, NVIDA 7800 GT Mac OS X (10.4.5) MacBook Pro 2.1 GHz

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Answer 7

Mar 18, 2006 5:29 PM in response to Paul L'Estrange

Hi Paul --

The Digital ICE software is actually hardware-based and built in to the scanner itself. Third party scanner drivers like VueScan and SilverFast have only software-based dust and scratch removal, so they are noticeably inferior when compared to the Digital ICE option with Nikon Scan. The reason your black and white film scans don't turn out is because you have the Digital ICE option checked and ICE doesn't work with traditional silver-based black and white film. ICE is based on infrared technology, and traditional silver-based B&W film can't be read that way, which is why your scans come out looking terrible. It has nothing to do with DPI or resolution or anything you're doing wrong. ICE simply doesn't work with black and white film. What I do is clean the **** out of my film before scanning and them turn the grain reduction (GEM) all the way up and that makes for very clean, if somewhat scratched, B&W scans. Then I just go in and retouch them individually in Photoshop, or use the "dust & scratch removal" filter in PS.

The one other work-around you can do in the future (if you still shoot black and white) is to shoot a C-41 process black-and-white film because this is a color/infrared B&W film. If you scan this type of film in color-mode in Nikon Scan, you can use ICE and remove the dust/scratches the same way you can with fulll color film. Kodak make s really, REALLY nice C-41 process B&W film that's got probably the finest grain on the market. It's 400 speed and it's even smoother than 100 speed films. It's called Kodak BW400CN.

Hope that helps.

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