It was a big mistake to take this photo. Koreans are very suspicious of having their photo taken; candid moments are included. She heard the shutter noise and let loose a stream of what I image was some serious Korean profanity, chasing me off the street and into another part of town.
If you are like me, you have more than a few negatives sitting in a box. It has been a long time since I even thought about having any of them sent out for printing, owning more to the simple fact they were subject to all sorts of degradation and mistreatment over the years. Send out a bad negative and you get back a bad image.
I took the plunge and got myself an updated flatbed scanner which included a transparency capability. I went with the Epson Perfection V550 Photo, based on both the spec’s and user experience. There is a newer version, but the only difference I could tell was the inclusion of Photoshop Elements and $50 more in cost.
It took a few scans of some transparencies to get the settings I was looking for. YouTube has a couple good videos on settings for optimal quality. The first thing any serious person should do is make sure you are in Professional Mode. This opens up all sorts of options concerning the color depth and treatment of your image.
In this screen capture is the Professional Mode menu for scanning color negatives. You can see I have chosen a color depth of 48 bit and a resolution of 9600 dpi. Unsharpened mask is selected by default. Then I hit Preview and let the scanner find the images automatically and show me a low resolution of the negatives in the holder.
Double clicking on one of the previews brings up a larger version of the image for inspection. Here you can use the included tools to fix problems with color, fading, some scratches and grain. I did a medium grain reduction on this image, but left the dust and scratches for Photoshop. You can also adjust the Histogram for a lighter or darker image as well as increase mid-tones on high contrast images.
In the gallery above, there is the original condition of the negative, the color corrected imaged using the scanning software and the final image cleaned up and saturated further in Photoshop CC.
At first I thought this photograph was going to be so faded I would be lucky to get even a proper color representation useful in Photoshop. The big difference is in choosing 48 bit color depth. There are literally billions of colors in 48 bit and I needed the scanner to find every one of them. The additional professional mode scanning software cut down on the time and effort in Photoshop and Lightroom by hours.
Even still, I was trying for a specific look. Back in the 1970’s, any kid worth a roll of Ilford HP5 or Kodak Kodachrome had a copy of The Best of LIFE. It was almost a religious experience to see the images LIFE photographers captured around the world. I wanted to try and find that retro look of black and white in tone and content.
I easily spent more time creating the proper black and white dynamic range consistent with what I saw in LIFE than I did with color correcting and cleaning this image. I kept glancing back and forth between the pages of the book and the image on my screen, before I declared victory. LIFE really liked high contrast images.
Scanning black and white negatives is just as simple with the exception of choosing the proper transparency and bit depth. 16 bits will produce over 65,000 shades of grey. You have the same tools available for adjusting the dynamic range and mid-tones in black and white as you do in color. Some have suggested scanning a black and white negative in color for a greater tonal range, but I have found that leads to more noise and emphasis on film grain. It’s a judgment call, but an option you can try. It’s only time and there is no cost in chemicals and film stock to worry about.
Hey, you all have a great day.
The Digital Lens 
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