Epson V750 vs Imacon 949

[timparkin]

I think I'll stick to B&W.

That's a shame, I like the colour shots I've seen of yours.. even the ones with the colour casts on the garlic flowers (e.g. bottom left)

[Patrick Dixon]

Yeah, but I just chuck mine in an unprofiled 4990 and see what comes out.

And the film's out of date E100VS ...

[AbsolutelyN]

All very interesting. Scanner profiling is an area Tim knows that I've not really got around to yet, I'm keen to look into it at some point however. It is certainly very impressive that Tim and Ian can both reproduce the images so consistently.

To me it all depends on your point of view and what you intend to do with the images. I'm not scanning other peoples negatives, or creating colour separations for publication and I have no need to ensure if this neg was scanned on another scanner they would get the same results.

For me personally it is just not critical - as long I can control the colour and make it look as I intend on screen and in print - that's what's important to me personally at the moment. And no I don't yet always get it right (due to lack of profiling!). Yes profiling is ideally needed for those things but you can still get extremely good results without it. I guess it 's a whole new area to look into when needs, time and finance allows.

[timparkin]

Yeah, but I just chuck mine in an unprofiled 4990 and see what comes out.

And the film's out of date EV100VS ...

I know - proves that if you're happy with the results it doesn't matter.. I imagine this looks pretty close to the transparency from what I know of E100VS

Tim

[timparkin]

All very interesting. Scanner profiling is an area Tim knows that I've not really got around to yet, I'm keen to look into it at some point however. It is certainly very impressive that Tim and Ian can both reproduce the images so consistently.

To me it all depends on your point of view and what you intend to do with the images. I'm not scanning other peoples negatives, or creating colour separations for publication and I have no need to ensure if this neg was scanned on another scanner they would get the same results.

For me personally it is just not critical - as long I can control the colour and make it look as I intend on screen and in print - that's what's important to me personally at the moment. And no I don't yet always get it right Yes profiling is ideally needed for those things but you can still get extremely good results without it. I guess it 's a whole new area to look into when needs, time and finance allows.

I started getting annoyed with some edge cases in scanning and this pushed me into looking into profiling (I didn't need much of a push being a complete geek though). Things like colour response in the shadows was annoying me, as was some colour shifts in very high toned areas of scans. I obviously had an extra need in that I'm going to offer my drum scanning services to people and they will expect to get what they see on a light box.

I'm not some sort of "must look like the transparency" jobsworth either. If I'm not happy with the look, the transparency gets a lot of work. However, sometimes having a well profiled transparency helps when you are post processing. e.g. If you have an areas of foliage that is being vignetted and you want to balance things again, the colour in the vignette had better be consistent with the colour in the main area otherwise you end up with some odd gradations.

I have to say that I was really impressed with the Hutch target that DJ loaned me - it really helped in the colour response in the shadows and using profile maker for the profiles was a great help too.

I've found something interesting in the last few days as well - capture one pro allows you to tweak icc profiles. Load a profile, make some selective colour edits and then you can save the resulting profile!! Very useful for print profiles as well..

Tim

[AbsolutelyN]

How about profiling for colour negatives though? I have my own methods of processing them which I'm very happy with but getting an accurate colour match between a series of negs can be very difficult unless they were taken on the same film at the same time, same processing and scanned together. Not that I need to do that often.

[Patrick Dixon]

I tried some colour neg stuff and gave up very quickly. Apart from the negatives looking absolutely horrid in their own right, it seemed you could very easily get every colour 'look' under the sun - except one that you could be happy with. I imagine if you can work out how to control the process it would be great, but for struggling amateurs like me, life is just too short.

[timparkin]

How about profiling for colour negatives though? I have my own methods of processing them which I'm very happy with but getting an accurate colour match between a series of negs can be very difficult unless they were taken on the same film at the same time, same processing and scanned together. Not that I need to do that often.

I use profiling just to make sure I get a base level clean negative scan. I've found I get better results out of colorneg if I scan my negatives as if they were a transparency and then invert using colorneg. Small colour shifts in the negative can create massive shifts in the final result.

I'm still nowhere near an expert in negative conversion though - I'm really trying though must pick your brain one day.

I realise it's as much interpretation as anything with negatives though, probably because of this amplification of sensitivity.

I might start a new topic asking how people invert their negatives..

Tim

[timparkin]

I tried some colour neg stuff and gave up very quickly. Apart from the negatives looking absolutely horrid in their own right, it seemed you could very easily get every colour 'look' under the sun - except one that you could be happy with. I imagine if you can work out how to control the process it would be great, but for struggling amateurs like me, life is just too short.

Hi Patrick - if I get anywhere with my research I'll be publishing my - "How the **** to scan negative film!" (I'm currently comparing all the colour negative and positive sheet film available for sheet film with the help of Digital Lab)

[AbsolutelyN]

Yes, I've many a time scanned as a transparency and worked backwards from there. Rarely do that these days though. In fact my 7500 scan in this comparison used that technique- it was a transparency scanned as a negative and colour corrected from there... only ever scanned about 5 transparencies and three of them were Ian's so it seemed a good starting point from my perspective.

[Paul Mitchell]

I might start a new topic asking how people invert their negatives..

Tim

Tim, Ben Anderson (flits in and out of the forum sometimes) has just blogged about some of his recent experiences with Colorneg, or ColorPerfect as it's known now.

http://benneh.net/blog/index.php/2010/0 ... t-a-guide/

Paul

[timparkin]

I might start a new topic asking how people invert their negatives..

Tim

Tim, Ben Anderson (flits in and out of the forum sometimes) has just blogged about some of his recent experiences with Colorneg, or ColorPerfect as it's known now.

http://benneh.net/blog/index.php/2010/0 ... t-a-guide/

Paul

Thanks Paul - just going to read now..

In the meantime, a couple more comparisons

http://static.timparkin.co.uk/static/castle-full.jpg
http://static.timparkin.co.uk/static/castle-pier.jpg

Bear in mind that this is Velvia 100 and a setting sun

Tim

[scovell001]

As the owner of the transparencies:
In terms of colour balance on the Wild Garlic:
1-Ian
2-Tim -Howtek
3 - Tim - Epson
4 - Tristan
5 - Joanna

Interms of shadow detail on the Wild Garlic:
1 - Tim Howtek (by about 5%)
2 - Ian
3 - Tristan
4 - Tim Epson
5 - Joanna

There are 2 other transparencies 1 of Appley Tower (the Castle) the other a close up of a fern. In terms of colour balance, my own are the most accurate, which reiterates the old adage that 'you' know your own images the best.

I'm going to send these trans back to Tim as he's asked to scan them again.

Overall, all the scans are generally acceptable, with the exception of Joanna's where I believe the speckled colour noise will manifest itself in a print (the next stage in this process).

If anyone would like to view the full res tiff files, please send a self addressed envelope & 2 dvd-r's through to myself or I'm sure Tim will also be happy to oblige

[Patrick Dixon]

On the castle/pier shots above, the middle one looks noticeably sharper to me. But I've lost track of which is which.

[scovell001]

I'm pretty sure, its from left to right:

Tristan 7500
Tim 4500
Ian Imacon
Tim V750
Joanna V750