Scanning Old 35 Mm Colour Negatives

Norman 1928 - 2018

Norman 1928 - 2018

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From some research that I have been carrying out there is more to successful scanning of old 35 mm colour negatives than meets the eye. Apparently, during the manufacture of the film, it is possible to entrap water which breaks up into myriads of small globules which not only happened with cheap films but could also occur with the more expensive brands. The problem arises in that the type of scanner used affects the final image and produces, in some cases, what appears to be grain.

It seems that scanners which have a strong concentrated light source such as the Nikon Coolscan for 35 mm size negatives produce an extremely marked effect whereas scanners with a more diffuse light source such as Nikon scanners for medium format film do not show the same effect.

The challenge is what to do about this problem which I have read referred to as the salt effect. If you look closely at the sky, for example, of a colour image at say 100%, scanned on a Coolscan, the sky looks as though it has a fine covering of white particles and those of you who have seen the image I recently posted, when the image is converted to black & white the result is not very pleasant. Presently, I intend to try various scanner settings to see if the effect can be minimised without affecting image sharpness and/or trying some noise reduction software to see if that is any use.

So, there I am between a rock and a hard place, I have a very good scanner which gives good, sharp images and is ideal for slides but is not the ideal piece of hardware for negatives. Perhaps you might have some suggestions on things that I could try with the equipment and software that I have which are the Nikon Coolscan IV and VueScan.
 
Norman i use a Coolscan V and i must say that a correctly exposed slide scans quite nicely. It is superb for B&W negatives and works very well with Vuescan.
If you look at the Vuescan bible and follow its recommendations as well as some of the youtube videos you should be ok,
Regards,
Alan
 
Alan, I agree with you about slides and B&W negatives but colour negatives are an entirely different matter. I have spent a few hours today trying different VueScan settings and have consulted the bible and Ed Hamrick but, so far, I have not found what is needed.

Norman
 
Norman, i scan Kodak Portra print film without any problems. If you want to do a comparison scan you could send me a negative and i would see if there was any difference.
Regards,
Alan
 
That is very kind of you Alan and if you would like to PM me with an address I would be very interested to see what you get.

Norman
 
I have now had the opportunity to examine the scans that Alan has carried out on a couple of my colour negatives and the first observation is, as you would expect, the quality is first class. However, when looked at, at 100% there is the same sort of effect that is to be seen in scans that I have made, lots of 'noise' for want of a better description. As Alan's scanner, I believe, works on the same principle as mine we are no nearer an answer to the question which is how or why does this 'noise' happen?

Until a solution is found I think my old colour negatives will stay in their packets or if only a small amount of denoise is needed for some particular image, then I will see what I am able to do.

Norman
 
Norman,
This is a very interesting subject for those of us who use the hybrid method of digitising our negatives.
One thing that I noticed was your film brand, "Agfa" it was known to be grainy and I suppose not too good at giving you the most latitude to work with. Fuji Velvia can yield the same results although the shadows usually block up alarmingly.
I think a well exposed negative is the answer. Unfortunately cameras in the main get it wrong most of the time when it comes to exposing for shadows and highlites, its somethings you have to be aware of when taking the shot and compensate accordingly.
For example if you spot meter a shadow area that you know will be full of grain when scanned remember that the meter has placed this area as a midtone grey, (Zone 5) so to place that are into zone 3 which will render some shadow detail you will have to reduce the exposure, if you are using a tripod you could also bracket to be on the safe side....no rear screen!!!
Have you tried any other scanning software? Maybe Silverfast is better for rendering shadow detail. You could download a trial version and see if there is an improvement.
Regards,
Alan
 
Because my interest is working with old negatives whatever their original exposure conditions and because the effect I am concerned about does not seem to be specific for any make of film I am continuing to try to find a work around. In theory, if the light source in the scanner could be modified and made diffuse, then the problem might disappear and it is for such a modification that I am seeking.

Norman
 
Ian on my scan there was a considerable amount of colour noise, could just be the film type or age, i am not too sure to be honest. I was able to remove an acceptable amount of the noise in LR, the remaining can be used to good effect in a B&W conversion. I think the image that i worked on is OK but i know what Norman means, it is a bit frustrating. One way of checking the noise issue would be to project the negative and see if its still present.
Regards,
Alan
 
Two possible solutions were mentioned which may be worth trying
  1. Wet scanning the negative
  2. Placing a pice of non reflecting glass over the negative
Option 2 may be the easiest and cheapest to try and i would suggest a piece of non reflecting glass from a picture framer. I use this type of glass all the time and it works fine for my workflow albeit not colour
 
I agree, Ian, the non reflecting or diffusing glass is probably the way to go. The negative holder does not allow for placing anything directly onto the negative but it might be possible to introduce something into the light path but first I need to find a drawing showing the guts of the scanner. Google, here I come.

Norman
 
I had similar problems scanning 35mm negatives, I found it easier to find a local company to do it for me, (i think i used one called supaphoto) it seemed pretty price efficient and they had it done without any problems, i'd recommend getting it done professionally if you keep encountering issues.
 
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