joecrumley2

I'm sorting through forty years of negatives getting ready for my first display book. After having a few negs scanned in jpg it looks like I should have requested the RAW extension. Would that be reasonable to control the highlight area's.

Joe

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

I'm not sure that's even possible. I usually save scans as TIFFs. Then I run them through LR as normal.

bw79st Loc: New York City

I scan my negatives as DNG files but it's probably just as good to save as TIFFs. I use Vuescan which is capable of saving the output of the scanner as a DNG.

DebAnn Loc: Toronto

The file from your scanner is probably in (RGB) and you can usually pick a JPEG or a TIFF. The only way you can get a raw file is from a shot taken by a camera with a Bayer sensor.

You would have to rephotograph the film to produce a raw file. I would rescan the image and choose TIFF which will give you more options when processing the file in your chosen post-processing program.

joecrumley2

Thanks for the heads up on the scanning extension. You're probably correct as I haven't options for RAW scans. What I may do is send on set of negatives to three scanning services in order to evaluate the results.

Tiff's would be rather large. But that may be the way to go.

Joe

Larryshuman

I use a Nikon Coolscan 5000 and I scan B&W, color neg and save in NEF format. I open them thru Adobe Bridge and the acr screen. Works great.

joecrumley2

Larry,

I'm sure you have a great process but I'm not interested with purchasing the equipment of spending the time. What I'm looking for is a service.

Thinking it over, a Tiff will have sufficient latitude so that's what I'll proceed with. Gees I love this forum.

Joe

Larryshuman

In 2010 I scanned 3,517 rolls of B/W, color neg and slides. If I had used a service and at the variety of DPI's the cost might have been over $1700. I believe you might be able to purchase either a used Coolscan 4000 or 5000 for far less than I paid for mine in 2010. A service scan might cost $.25 to .50 per scan. Also a tiff is a rather large file which can impact your storage to. Check out scanning services and their costs.

joecrumley2

Larry,

Nope, even if I had all the equipment, for free, I wouldn't go through the process.
I'm happy for you though.

therwol Loc: USA

Just curious to know which scanner you are using. The scanner may be the issue with quality. I'm going through the same process now with an Epson V800 flatbed scanner. I'm mass scanning my rolls of film at 4800 dpi and saving the images as .tif files. Some of the older negatives have shifted in color toward green (when reversed), and there is the inevitable dust in spite of my best efforts to clean the negatives. .tif is more forgiving of editing such as color correction and spot cleaning in post processing without loss of quality. The important ones I want to share will be converted to .jpeg in the end for the sake of size when sharing them with my family. I haven't gotten that far yet.

My scanner gives very good results, but I'm photographing my most special negatives with my Nikon D810 and 55mm f/2.8 micro lens. I get better results, particularly more detail, and those are captured RAW. I convert the RAW images to linear 16 bit .tiff files with something called MakeTiff and then reverse them in Photoshop with a plug in called Color Perfect. (Both come from the same web site.) I'm left with 100 megabyte files in the end, but after editing, I am converting them to .jpegs.

Vuescan can work with files, including RAW, but I find it useless for mass scanning because it doesn't properly outline the pictures on the strips of negatives. Doing it manually on the preview images is a time consuming pain. The Epson software that came with the scanner finds the negatives perfectly, saving a lot of time.

therwol Loc: USA

Here is just one example of what I'm getting out of my scanner. This picture is from 1978 on some flavor of Kodacolor film. Scanned at 4800 dpi as a .tif file (45 megabytes), cleaned up a bit of dust spots, but no color correction or enhancement. No sharpening etc. Converted to jpeg.

If you want to know, Nikon FTn, 50mm f/1.4 lens.

(Download)

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Scanning is so-called RAW isn't possible. I scan mine so they are saved as tiff files. That works very well.
--Bob

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

That was my first thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2buwklEqvmU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yLUvYoMUYI

Resolution -
https://www.scanyourentirelife.com/qa-whats-best-dpi-or-resolution-scan-your-film-negatives/
http://www.digitalmemoriesonline.net/scan/scan_processing/resolving_scanning_resolution.htm

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

Joe, I’m hoping you are going to safely archive your film.

Stan

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Raw is a digital camera format, unique to every single camera brand and model that allows saving raw data files. Scanners do not make raw files... The driver controls the output format, and it varies from 8-bit (per color channel) JPEG to 16-bit (per color channel) TIFF, to occasionally DNG.

Either 16-bit TIFF or DNG is what you want to retain the maximum information. Process in that format, in a wide gamut color space such as ProPhoto RGB, then convert it to 8 bits in sRGB for JPEGs, or export in the color space, bit depth, and file format you need, or print directly.

OH, yes it is possible to REPHOTOGRAPH your slides and negatives with a digital camera and a macro lens, in which case you should ALWAYS save and process raw files.