On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 20:02:37 -0700 (PDT), John
wrote:

On Oct 29, 6:32*am, Thiophilus wrote:

When you print negs, the prints all have the same gamma. But when you
scan a neg, the software goes about setting black and white points,
and so every scan has a different gamma. Well, this is how it seems
anyway the way I do it. Several quite similar pics on the same roll
will come out with different contrast because the white and black
points are always a bit different.

Color balancing seems to depend on which tones are clipped by the
white point setting. Depending on the range of tones of your neg, you
may clip more or less. Usually there are specular highlights or other
highlights which might as well be clipped. But this affects the
resulting color. So similar pics on the same roll come out with
different color.

It is annoying and time consuming to tune the pics to have similar
color and contrast.

You can decide not to clip and to capture all the tones in the
original. But then the scan will (depending on tonal range) have low
contrast and will require more post-processing.

If the Canon software will allow setting the gamma, that is something
I should look into. But just about everybody says VueScan is way
better than Canon software or the software that came with the scanner.

I have been reading a few more posts on the web and people seem to be
suggesting that scanning at 48-bit and with 2400dpi gets pretty good
results with the 8800F for scanning colour negatives and leaving all
other settings switched off.

I will have to check into the VueScan software and see how much it is
costing. I also have the Arcsoft Photostudio software and Lasersoft
Silverfast which has the iSRD hardware dust removal.

I always use IR dust removal when this is possible.

Sharpening needs to be done with end-use in mind. You need different
sharpening depending on whether you will print the image or view on a
monitor. Therefore save a TIF or RAW without any sharpening and then
sharpen prior to using the image. I don't have specific advice about
settings. I just let Lightroom decide. (I use LR for post-processing.)

Most of the scanning I am doing is just to digitise old photos so will
be viewed on a monitor.

I wonder if you and I are the only ones on this NG.

It seems to be pretty quiet at the moment. A few years ago it was
quite a busy group full or posts. I guess a lot of people may have
moved onto web based forums now?

Using the Canon software (scangear) when I switch everything off it
still always turns the Auto Tone adjustment back on when I restart. I
need to try and figure out how to save my own settings or overwrite
the default.

I'm just wondering what setting you would use for Gamma if its
something you would change? The default seems to be 2.2 on the Canon
software. What setting is the best to use in your experience for
negative film colour and b&w and also for prints?

Have you used or tried Silverfast and the iSRD hardware dust removal
or equivolent in VueScan? If so what’s your experience of this and
what setting do you use in this? I hear that hardware dust removal is
pretty good so was thinking of using Silverfast with everything switch
off except that. I seem to recal reading posts in the past that
suggest to have hardware dust removal on low settings for best
results?

I have no experience setting gamma in scanning... if I was using
software where I could do that, then it would be fun to experiment
with different gammas. Negs are low contrast originals, so you would
want to crank up the gamma. But the gamma that you would select would
also depend on your output -- lower for prints and higher for screen
display.

Not sure what you mean by hardware dust removal.

Th