difficulty drum scanning negatives

Jytzel wrote:
Gordon Moat wrote in message ...

Jytzel wrote:


Thanks for all who responded. I got the scans from the office and they
look horrible. I don´t think it´s grain, ít´s noise, noise, noise!
Colors look posterised with no gradation observed. The histogram shows
no abnormalities however (?)

That comment makes me think you are viewing it on a monitor, and judging it as noise. A smooth
Histogram should indicate a smooth tonal transition. The reasoning behind drum scanning is to
eventually print the image. I think at this point, you should do a test print, proof print, or
match print, and then make a better judgement.


I don't believe the problem is the film,
it's the scan that it's bad. If anybody is interested I can send
portion of the image for viewing.

J

All monitors are such poor resolution in comparison to printing, especially commercial offset
printing. I have seen many image files that seemed noisy on a monitor, yet printed very
smoothly. You could easily be running into a limitation of viewing on a monitor.

If you can do a test print, then you would have a better item to judge scan quality. If it
still looks bad, then the original scan is at fault.

If you still find that after viewing printed results that things are not working, it is then
down to operator error, or a weird technical problem. I remember working on one workstation
that showed unusual results on most scans. What we finally traced that down to was an extra
monitor interfering with the SCSI cable of the scanner, and causing strange noise issues. The
reason that was so tough to track was that the monitor was a secondary monitor, and not always
used at that workstation. Routing the SCSI cable further from that monitor solved the unusual
noise problem. While I would be surprised if that is the problem you are having, if nothing
else is working, then investigate that direction. Best of luck.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com


Thanks Godon,
But why don´t all photos show noise then? The ones scanned from
positives are perfect. If it was just a monitor limitation then it
would affect all scanned images, right?


I think there has been some good information in this thread, some things
that need to be done as part of the process:

Print the scan at 8 x 10
Get a chemical print made, also at 8 x 10

anything that appears in the digital print, that isn't in the chemical
print, is noise introduced by scanning. Often it's easier for a scanner
operator working at a photo shop or service bureau to fault the
process, rather then take the time to adjust and repeat, until they get
it right.

Paul

Jytzel wrote:

. . . . .Thanks Godon,
But why don´t all photos show noise then? The ones scanned from
positives are perfect. If it was just a monitor limitation then it
would affect all scanned images, right?

J

Hard to give you a good answer without seeing the differences, but here is an attempt. I have
usually seen more problems with negatives than positives in scanning and viewing. The scanners do a
conversion of the negative issue, and are usually functionally better performing with positives. It
could be in the conversion, noise was introduced into the negative scan. Obviously, other factors
during the scan could still be issues.

Just another guess at this, but I have had better luck scanning B/W negative films as colour
positive, and then inverting in PhotoShop or LivePicture. It seems that the more subtle tonalities
get picked up better, compared to setting the scanner at the colour or monochrome negative
settings.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com