Thus far my approach to scanning color negatives has been to play with it until it looks reasonable. It was time to sit down and figure out a better method.
D2mr 1.14 d. The thing about color negatives is that there is no reference for what the image is “supposed” to look like: not only is the film a negative, it’s got the orange mask. But one thing that is certain is that I want to start with as faithful a representation of the film image as possible.
I seem to have worked out a method. I make no claim that this is the best of all possible approaches, or that I won’t figure out something better later, but it seems to work.
Nikon Coolscan 5000 Ed
I’m using a Nikon Coolscan 5000, with VueScan software to do the scanning. VueScan does a good job, but has one of the worst user interfaces I’ve ever used; figuring it out is difficult and scanning with it takes a few times longer than it should, so it’s my hope that this will help others trying to do the same thing.
The question is, Is that possible, using 'Nikon Scan, Silverfast or Vuescan for Coolscan 5000' which is what the OP is most interested in? And if so, how is it done? I hesitate to bring it up because I don't really understand how to make this work to my benefit, but VueScan does have an option to Output Raw File.
- Feb 17, 2021 My old but good Nikon Coolscan 5000 is no longer supported by Nikon. Their scanning software can't be used on today's Macs which forced me to check out 3rd party options years ago. I took on this same comparison and have used and appreciated VueScan since. Nice review guys.
- Nikon Scan software is slow and doesn't handle jams well. Negatives often are not framed properly. I got the Nikon Coolscan 5000 and used the SF-210 slide feeder attachment to scan about 14,000 slides over the course of 6 months. The quality of the scans is excellent.
Sky go premium. One thing I found scanning slides was that setting “Media” to “Slide film” in VueScan is never, ever what you want when scanning slide film. With this setting, VueScan adjusts your scan’s colors to “compensate” for the film’s characteristics, neatly defeating the purpose of scanning it in the first place. With negatives it’s much the same: choosing “Color negative” will make VueScan do terrible things to your pictures, based on “profiles” it has for various types of film.
Obviously we don’t want this, or any other behind-the-scenes adjustments, so the first thing to do is set VueScan’s “Media Type” to “Image,” same as we use for slide film. Of course, this means VueScan will no longer invert the negative or remove the orange mask, so I’ll be doing that myself later.
VueScan also doesn’t seem to be very good at finding the edges of the frames on a strip of color negative film, at least in “Image” mode. I found it necessary to preview a frame and adjust the offset until it lines up properly. Unfortunately, VueScan makes you guess at the adjustment and re-scan the preview until you get it right.
Next, we have to make sure VueScan doesn’t do anything to the scanned image that we don’t want. It supports saving of “Raw” files—and those files are actually just TIFF images that can be loaded into any image editor. (VueScan’s Raw mode should not be confused with digital camera RAW files, which are completely different and wholly unrelated.)
To get VueScan to save the Raw file, go to the Output tab and check the “Raw file” option. You can disable the saving of regular (processed) files, too, since those won’t be useful.
Setting the filename to “@.tif” (which is the default setting for the processed files) gives your Raw files the normal auto-generated filenames that VueScan normally uses. “48 bit RGB” gives you 16-bit-per-channel TIFF files. Another option is 64-bit RGBI, which saves the infrared channel as a fourth channel; this could be handy if some other program could do the infrared cleaning, but I’m not aware of any.
In order to get VueScan to apply its infrared cleaning (Digital ICE equivalent) to the Raw scan, you set “Raw output with” to “Save,” in a breathtaking example of user interface obscurity. (Setting this to “Scan” saves the image as it’s being scanned, before the cleaning takes place.) The “Raw save film” option apparently tells it to apply its color adjustments to the Raw output as well—good luck figuring that out without the manual—so we obviously want that turned off.
Now, what we’re getting is an image with none of the unwanted corrections, but with the infrared dust-and-scratch cleaning applied, in TIFF format, not gamma-corrected (gamma 1.0, or linear), and with no color profile attached.
I enable Multi-exposure mode in VueScan’s Input tab, to ensure that the full range of the negative is captured in the scan.
With all that set up, scan the image. The result will be a negative image that still needs to be corrected before you can work with it. You can batch-scan a series of images this way before moving on to the next step.
Nikon Coolscan 5000 Driver
Load the image into Photoshop. (You can do equivalent steps in any reasonable image editor, of course.) First, because our raw scan uses linear gamma, we need to apply a gamma correction. You can do this by assigning a linear (gamma 1.0) profile and converting to Adobe RGB or some other working space. If you don’t know what that means, follow the instructions in the next paragraph instead.
Assign the Adobe RGB profile (Edit → Assign Profile), regardless of VueScan’s output color space (the output color space doesn’t apply to Raw output). Now open the Levels adjustment and change the gamma. The middle of the three numbers is the gamma setting. What value to enter is a matter of taste; 2.2 is standard, but the result may be too bright in the shadows. 2.6 gives reasonable results. Unfortunately you can’t see what it will look like until you complete the next few steps, but you can revert the file and start over if it’s not right.
Now, select Image → Adjustments → Auto Levels. This will remove the orange mask by “stretching” the color channels to both ends of the light/dark scale. You can accomplish the same thing manually in Curves or Levels, by moving the black and white points in each color channel to the end points of the histogram. If you want the purest result, you can set the white point using the unexposed film base (you’ll have to scan something that has clear film) and the black point to the darkest part of the exposed film. That’s a more complex method and I don’t think it’s necessary, but some people prefer it.
Finally, Image → Adjustments → Invert will invert the image into a positive. At this point we have a corrected, positive image, but it probably won’t look exactly “right.” Use Curves to apply a contrast curve to taste—the shadow tones in particular may need substantial darkening to restore normal contrast to the image. Negatives have a lot of dynamic range.
Save the image and you’re done. Further adjustments—color correction, sharpening, etc.—can be done in Lightroom, or right in an image editor like Photoshop (I prefer using Lightroom because it edits non-destructively). You can automate everything above using Photoshop’s Actions, once you determine an appropriate gamma value to set.
I haven’t applied any further color correction to the above image. I think this is a decent example image because any automatic color correction is unlikely to adjust it in a way I’d want, given the weird nighttime street lighting.
Scanned images prepared this way look much better than the normal, processed output from VueScan. Ideally, the scanning program would do exactly the above steps, no more and no less, automatically, but we don’t have ideal software.
Removing SA-21 (or SA30) stuck inside Nikon Super Coolscan LS-5000 and LS-4000.
I found this procedure here.
There is a locking hook (see below, red arrow pointing to it) inside SA-21 (and SA-30) adapters which prevents you from removing these adapters from Nikon LS-5000 (and LS-4000) scanners while the film strip is still inside.
During the normal operation this hook engages when you insert the film and disengages (see below) when the film is ejected.
If something goes wrong and that hook gets stuck in engaged position, you cannot remove the SA-21 (and SA-30) adapter from the scanner. Usually closing the application and turning the power OFF and then back ON helps. If not, follow this procedure. As always, YOU ARE DOING THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK!
The steps 1), 2) and 3) posted here are for LS-5000 (and LS-50) scanner. For LS-40 and LS-4000 first perform steps 1) and 2) from LS-4000 disassembly procedure, then proceed to step 4) below.
1) Unplug the power & USB (Firewire) cable and remove adaptors. Set the scanner on a clean area (you do not need to set the scanner upside down).
2) Remove these 6 screws on the back of the unit.
3) Pull out the rubber pads as shown by a red arrow above. There are 4 pads in the corners on the bottom of the scanner, and they cover 4 screws. Remove these 4 screws and slide the cover off. Turn the scanner top side up (normal position).
4) Manually turn the white plastic gear (my finger on it in the above photo) until you can see the retaining hook inside SA-21 the opening in the optical head (indicated by a red arrow in the photo above).
5) Push the retaining hook IN using a small flat screwdriver. This should take very little force. You should be able to remove the adapter out of the scanner now.
6) Put everything back together in reverse order. (You may consider checking the mirror while the scanner is open).