Velvia scans are in

I'm not real happy with the quality of these scans but I wanted to share my first slide with you anyway. These were scanned on an Epson Expression 1640XL flatbed scanner. They guy who scanned them had a special tray that the slides fit in, but the quality is not what I was hoping for. The verticle shot looks much sharper on the slide and I had to bump up the saturation on all of them get them to resemble the slides. Is this pretty common when scanning slides? I desaturated the car photo just for something different. I didn't post these in critique because they were only experiments, but your thoughts and comments are always welcome.

Very nice. My personal favourite is the photo of the old junk car.

I love those colors..
Especially the blues.
I recently picked a few rolls of 400 Provia, first time Fuji user, I hate to admit..
I am a big Kodak fan.
Scans do look good.
I am doing some shooting this weekend.
Thanks for showing us Mike.
Brian

I have one IMPORTANT piece of advice to give you regarding scanning slides. When you scan a slide, it's CRITICAL to scan at a proper exposure level in order to get the best possible quality. If you scan too dark, the colors muddy up. If you scan too light, the colors flatten out and you lose important details. When you scan just right, everything looks SOOO much better. Post processing will still be required even with a perfect scan.

For important scans, don't use any of the "auto" features that will set levels, curves, color balance, hue saturation, etc. You will find that getting a properly exposed scan takes practice and effort. But when done right it's well worth it in my opinion.

Some software doesn't let you turn off any of the auto features.

It's normal for the scans to be soft....usm should clear that up. But make sure that you're not unnecessarily applying grain or dust removal tools that also soften up the image when you don't actually need them.

Setting the proper exposure in a scan is just as important as getting a proper exposure when you took the photo.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Trevor Ash

When you scan a slide, it's CRITICAL to scan at a proper exposure level in order to get the best possible quality.

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Absolutely. If someone else does it, it's hard to know what they did but unless it's a good lab (which wouldn't use a scanner like this) they probably don't take any more time than necessary to get "good enough" results. At some point, if you get a scanner you'll be able to do a preview and look at the histogram of the scan. Leave some room at both ends of the histogram, do a final scan in the highest bit depth (16 bit, not 8 bit) and adjust the levels in Photoshop. Slides do take a fair amount of time to get right, so I don't do too many of them - but the results can be excellent.

I really had no idea how much went into getting a good scan from the slides, or any photo for that matter. I talked to the guy at the local photo shop and he said when he scans them, he just puts them in and lets the scanner do the rest. He said that he has the color profiles for Velvia to get a good scan, but he doesn't take the time to do all the manual stuff because he will end correcting it in PS later anyway. I know this wasn't a top quality scan job, but I was expecting something a little closer to the actual slide itself. I will have to give a pro lab a try and see how they look like. Here are the original unedited (resized) scans just as they came off of the CD for comparison.

Hey Trevor,

Good advice. I am still tweaking my Velvia scans to get the proper exposure on each shot. Now, I just do a proof scan and when I get to the printing phase I will tweak and fine tune each individual scan.

Your scans from the past were always excellent and I'm glad you still can help me and other apply your hours of hard work.

Loren

Hi,

I'm sure you read Trevor's advice, but I wanted to offer you a one time solution. Send me one of your slides, and I will scan it with my Nikon 8000 scanner. Free of charge.

I will scan it at full resolution and tweak it to the best of my ability. I will send a photo-cd with that copy, and your slide back. It will make you appreciate your slides. Velvia scans are extremely hard due to the contrast of the film. A mass copy scanner like those at Wolf or Ritz won't do the slide justice and overall waste money.

Another point to offer is to invest in a loupe so you can verify that the detail is sharp, and then invest in scanning from there. No use wasting time on a non-sharp slide.

Email me for the address if you are interested. Also, Walterick aka Ricky you can send me a slide too!

Loren

I hope you don't mind that I moved this thread. I thought that it was a better fit for the Digital Imaging forum. There's good information in the diiscussion and it will have a better home here.

Now for a little bit of my experience on the subject. Scanning is a dark science. It's not at all the case that you can just make a scan and have it come out looking exactly like your slide. If you did your own scans, always used the same film, and had consistent exposures, then you could set up a system that could deliver what you wanted pretty consistently. But it's too much to ask for your friend to give you scans that match your slides. And a flatbed scanner just isn't the right tool for the job. The newest Epsons are excellent. But they don't have the dynamic range of a good film scanner, and they aren't so great for getting sharp scans from mounted slides. I encourage you to take Loren up on his offer to do a scan for you. His scanner kicks ass and he's got a lot of experience scanning Velvia.

Nice New Hollands.