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Author Topic: A piece of pitch black slide  (Read 628 times)
SLIU
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« on: October 14, 2006, 10:19:28 AM »

So I shot another four sheets of Astia 100F with my "new" Speed Graphic. This time I wasn't so lucky. One sheet came out pitch black viewed on the light table in Manhattan Color Labs. (Jorn is my witness. Smiley ) When I came home and held it against the strongest light source, I could barely see something like a sleeve. Since I am not a rich professional who shoots a box of film to keep one sheet, I decided to do something about it.

So I scanned the film on my Epson 4990 at 16x20@300 as 16-bit tiff file. Then I loaded the 175 MB file in my ancient Photoshop 6.0 running in Classic Environment on OS X in my four year old PowerBook G4. (It took a few minutes  to open the file.) After some simple levels in each channel (RGB) and then a little bit curves, this is what I got:



I am sure with a better computer, latest Photoshop and better Photoshop skill (and enough time), I could get much better results. But I don't have time.

Then I deleted Green and Blue channel and save it as grayscale, here is what I got:



I am very glad that I didn't throw that piece of black slide into the trash. Smiley
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Wimpler
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« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2006, 11:06:34 AM »

Printing black and white in the darkroom might give you even better results, but that looks pretty ok!
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SLIU
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« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2006, 12:55:30 PM »

Good idea!

Perhaps I can make a transneg from this extremely dense slide using contact print and high contrast filter. This could be a good question for the traditional darkroom forum. Let me ask Alan Chin next time when I see him.
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ImageMaker
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« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2006, 02:05:47 PM »

FWIW, if you can contact that to a piece of RC paper, you can then put that paper in your enlarger and project it just like a film negative.  However, you'd want to go *low* contrast for that, so as to be sure you don't clip the image range once you do finally manage to expose enough to get something on the negative; given 4x5 sheets of paper are pretty cheap, you can always punch up the contrast a bit if needed.

The bad news with this method is that with VC paper you'll get only the green and blue channels (the ones you discarded to get the above B&W image), and they'll have wildly different contrast -- IOW, you'll get an image with a really wonky curve (technical term, there) as well as lacking all red information.

I'd suggest sandwiching the negative in front of a piece of B&W panchro film in a film holder and then exposing in camera against a flatly lit white screen.  You might have to bracket a few attempts, but I'd start with five stops off your usual EI for the film in question, metering the lit screen at Zone V (i.e. don't open up from the reading).  Shouldn't take more than four iterations, at most, to get an acceptable negative that can then be printed the old fashioned way...  Wink

Alternately, if you know a *really patient* pro lab, a cibachrome from this frame would probably come out almost normal...
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Kin Lau
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« Reply #4 on: October 14, 2006, 03:29:43 PM »

A better scan, would probably get you most of the way.

I know that Vuescan can be set to "go deep" for very dense negs or slides, see if your 4990 software has a similar setting.

The other option, is to use your DSLR. Put the slide against your bright lightsource (white bond paper against the window) and shoot the slide with the 30D on ISO 100. A tripod here will be recommended.
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SLIU
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« Reply #5 on: October 14, 2006, 05:06:52 PM »

I agree that with better scan, lot of imformation can be recovered. But I double the DSLR could do a better job. Since the slide is so dense that I can't see much detail even against the light bulb, it would be very hard to find evenly distributed light source that covers the 4x5 area.

Do you guy think this picture itself is good enough for the treatment better than my quick scan and Photoshop?  (I know it doesn't belong to a trash can.)


Quote from: Kin Lau;58413
A better scan, would probably get you most of the way.

I know that Vuescan can be set to "go deep" for very dense negs or slides, see if your 4990 software has a similar setting.

The other option, is to use your DSLR. Put the slide against your bright lightsource (white bond paper against the window) and shoot the slide with the 30D on ISO 100. A tripod here will be recommended.
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SLIU
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« Reply #6 on: October 14, 2006, 05:09:47 PM »

BTW, I have another experience with C41 film (NPS?) that is also heavily underexposed, in that case, the film is so transparent that I can't see any detail at all. But it is what I've rescued from the Red channel:

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Kin Lau
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« Reply #7 on: October 14, 2006, 05:40:47 PM »

Quote from: SLIU;58438
I agree that with better scan, lot of imformation can be recovered. But I double the DSLR could do a better job. Since the slide is so dense that I can't see much detail even against the light bulb, it would be very hard to find evenly distributed light source that covers the 4x5 area.


How about the light-lid on your 4990?

The dslr idea is because you can easily set it to a multi-second exposure, and won't cost you a dime. Worth a try anyhow. I think the dslr's sensor is more sensitive and less noisy than the scanners.

The other shot is great btw.
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ImageMaker
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« Reply #8 on: October 14, 2006, 07:21:54 PM »

Quote from: Kin Lau;58441
How about the light-lid on your 4990?


Can't say for certain on the 4990, but the transparency lids I have seen have a light source that scans with the scanner head, rather than an all-over light.  MUCH cheaper to put a duplicate of the scanner bulb and traverse mechanism up there than to try to light the whole lid, evenly to 1/10 stop, to that same brightness.
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Kin Lau
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« Reply #9 on: October 14, 2006, 08:51:47 PM »

I had one like that, an AGFA with a full tube that scan with the entire length (8x10) of the bed, but I have not seen anything like that recently.

My Microtek has a 4x5 area that's fully lit. I've just checked the Epson, and it looks like a moving light source.

Mind you, you can still use it the same way. As long as the exposure on the 30D is set to be longer than the time it takes for the light to traverse the lid, you're okay.

Probably easier just to download Vuescan and see what it can do.
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