Comparing Lab Scan to my Nikon Coolscan - Huge WB Shift?

[Alec246]

I Have, thanks to the incredible work of LincolnScan, now a perfectly functioning Nikon CoolScan 4000. This was purchased used, and long story short, it had a faulty PSU and needed the FireWire Chip replaced on the Motherboard. This took months, but Graeme from LincolnScan was the nicest guy, and does the most professional work on these old but still amazing machines. Recommended to anyone in Europe looking for Repairing their Nikon units.

I have just done my first scan. and I am shocked to see how much tint there appears to be on my Local Lab Scan? The Sky is greenish, while my Scan turned out blue. I always assumed that was something to do with the Portra160 rendition, but now I see it doesn't seem to be that way?

Lab Scan



Nikon Coolscan - Negative Lab Pro - Neutral Profile



Of course the clarity and detail is also much improved on the Nikon CoolScan, but I wasn't expecting such a WB shift between these two.

Would like to know your opinion on what could be going on?

--
You can find some of my Photos here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alec246_photography/

 

[marco1974]

I experienced the same (cyan skies with Portra on lab scans vs. more accurate blue skies when using my own Nikon Coolscan 9000ED).

I think it boils down to the lab operators not bothering to accurately fine tune the colour negative inversion settings that their scanner software happens to use by default.

I use VueScan with my Nikon scanner, and it gets it mostly right most of the time. But some minor tweaks to the "raw" TIFF scans still often improve the results further.

The core issue is that, unlike with colour positive (i.e., slide) film, there is no easy way to judge colour balance on negative film, and small tweaks to the "gamma" values of the R, G and B channels can significantly affect the end results.

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Marco
https://pbase.com/marcoraugei

 

[Overrank]

What scanner was used for the lab scans ? Noritsus supposedly have a problem with green tints.

I second your recommendation of LincolnScan btw, I’ve recently had my CoolScan 8000 fixed/serviced - a long time waiting but was actually done really quickly.

 

[Gesture]

Alec246, congrats on finding "old-school" repair. What software are you using for scanning and which system, PC, Windows or Linux.

Also, folks might consider profiling their scanners. There are 35mm transparency targets available. I have started to profile my flatbed scanners with my ColorMunki Photo. Might be interesting to do with film scanners? Wonder what folks think of that?

In the US, X-Rite sells targets. Amazingly, the 5x7 reflective target for flatbed scanners cost less than $20.

 

[Overrank]

In Germany Wolf Faust sells IT-8 calibration targets for slide film ( http://www.targets.coloraid.de ). I use the Ektachrome one of these for all my Ektachrome scans - I don’t use any other slide film now. For negative film you’re a bit stuck - if you take a photo of an Xrite target you can remove colour casts but it removes the character of the film too.

 

[Alec246]

I experienced the same (cyan skies with Portra on lab scans vs. more accurate blue skies when using my own Nikon Coolscan 9000ED).

I think it boils down to the lab operators not bothering to accurately fine tune the colour negative inversion settings that their scanner software happens to use by default.

Interesting you have experienced the same! This specific lab has had some issues in the past with artifacts in the image they delivered, so I wouldn't be surprised if their QA is just lower than my own.

What scanner was used for the lab scans ? Noritsus supposedly have a problem with green tints.

I second your recommendation of LincolnScan btw, I’ve recently had my CoolScan 8000 fixed/serviced - a long time waiting but was actually done really quickly.

I will ask them next time! I don't think they are using top of the line like Noritsu or Frontier, since I had other problems in the past that leads me to think their equipment isn't exactly the best.

Feels good to have these machines properly serviced and working 100% in 2024, doesnt it!

Alec246, congrats on finding "old-school" repair. What software are you using for scanning and which system, PC, Windows or Linux.

Also, folks might consider profiling their scanners. There are 35mm transparency targets available. I have started to profile my flatbed scanners with my ColorMunki Photo. Might be interesting to do with film scanners? Wonder what folks think of that?

Thanks! It was a matter of principle really. I purchased it as working unit, only to arrive home and see it wasn't giving any sign of life. But I found LincolnScan, and he really helped everyway he could, otherwise I might have given up on it. But now I am very pleased I didn't.

I am using the original Nikon Scan software to Scan, and a trial of Negative Lab Pro to convert. What is interesting is that I didn't touch any slider, this is all default! Both Nikon and Negative Lab, surprised me how good it looks ,accurate too, while the Lab scan has all kind of issues with their colors.

I am not really going for a super accurate rendition, I want the film look that comes with each different brand and model of 35mm film. So I think profiling my scanner wouldn;t bring much value to me.

But I thought initially when I got that Lab Scans that Film had a look so strong that it made me consider maybe it wasn't for me, everything looked so off compared to my Digital Cameras. Now I am relieved that it wasn't the Film fault, my scan looks natural, beautiful, along the advantages that film brings.

I will do more scanning the next days for different rolls I have, and continue to compare with the Lab Scans I got, to see if this is a trend!

 

[Yarilo]

I experienced the same (cyan skies with Portra on lab scans vs. more accurate blue skies when using my own Nikon Coolscan 9000ED).

I think it boils down to the lab operators not bothering to accurately fine tune the colour negative inversion settings that their scanner software happens to use by default.

I use VueScan with my Nikon scanner, and it gets it mostly right most of the time. But some minor tweaks to the "raw" TIFF scans still often improve the results further.

The core issue is that, unlike with colour positive (i.e., slide) film, there is no easy way to judge colour balance on negative film, and small tweaks to the "gamma" values of the R, G and B channels can significantly affect the end results.

Or it could be the opposite: lab scan reproduces "portra colors" (including cyanish skies) more faithfully and ViewScan and NLP trying to "get colors right" and "closer to reality" instead of reproducing what was actually baked in the film.

That behavior of the inversion software is one of the main reasons why I mostly do manual inversions of the film instead of relying on third-party SW to do them. I scan on coolscans 4000 and 8000. Started with NikonScan inversion, then tried ViewScan, ColorPerfect, DT, NLP, FSC and not a single option was satisfying me enough to use it exclusively.

I find my manual inversions to be in the same ballpark color-wise as the available popular works. Couple of examples I can remember of the top of my head are:

1. Cover of The Beatles Abbey Road album - strong cyan sky.

2. Just watched "Challengers" movie on Sunday: opening scene, strong cyan sky. Movie was shot exclusively on Kodak Vision 500T stock and with an intention to be as faithful to the stock look as possible: Shooting on KODAK 35mm, DP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom served up an erotically charged game, set and match for Luca Guadagnino's 'Challengers'

Quotes from that blog post:

"On a practical level, the 500T is sensitive enough for shooting dark interiors and night-time exteriors, and you can film daylight exteriors by using ND filters. Sometimes I went super heavy on those, sometimes to an ND12. Also, using just one stock kept things simple for my camera crew and the team at the film lab. Most of the exposures were regular, but I did some push-processing at the lab, by one or sometimes two stops, for some of the night exteriors.

"While there were a lot of flashbacks, from the outset my approach was not to change anything in the look of the filmed image, but to let the haircuts, costume and props carry the idea about the story travelling between different time periods."

 

[Yarilo]

When I'm looking at that shot, for example, and at the same time at the cover of Abbey Road album I mentioned, I see similar color palette, wery close to each other, despite a huge difference in time between the shots, stock used and processing applied. Sky, foliage, skintones - all are in the same ballpark.

RCVB_00301_NS4_NLP_ACR

This one is from my first steps in adopting "scan in positive - invert later" approach, so was inverted in NLP. But I haven't used any LUTs with it, so hues have the twists I usually associate with Portra stock.

--

Yarilo

Explore Yarilo’s 278 photos on Flickr!

www.flickr.com

 

[Alec246]

Based on your reply, I decided to do some investigation by myself on this subject.

I had no idea about Manual Conversion being a possibility. I looked into it, done a few myself, lacking many qualities of the professional software of course, mostly by my inexperience in the process. What I Found interesting is that this is VERY open to interpretation by who is doing it. The whole color balance must be done by yourself, no scientific way to apply curves based on the film being used, it is all judged by the eye of the editor, so highly subjective.

Then I wanted to find a reliable reference, that I could use to understand what is the "Portra look", for example. What is it? Where does it come from? Then I remembered how Nikon's own software, Nikon Scan, is highly praised by some of it's owners as having legendary Nikon Color Science, the best conversion process, etc.

I then put my Portra 160 roll through it, no curves, no adjustment, just pure Nikon Scan Color Negative Conversion, to see if I could use is as reference for the "Portra look".

The output images were very dull honestly. Lacking completely contrast, saturation, pop. Some looks like very old faded film. If this is what I got from a Lab, I would be highly disappointed.

But more interesting, I got some shots that have some wild variations in color balance in the same roll.




This one has a very cool white balance overall




Very Magenta cast in here?



So, this is something that the Scanner own software is not able to render neutrally either it seems.

A Lab with Frontier or Noritsu also can't do this interpretation without the someone in charge for the process own interpretations.

From what I read online, the only way to get this neutral look would be in a darkroom print direct to paper? So, I don't really think I would go much for the Look of a certain film, if there is no way digitally you can get that look, that isn't actually the interpretation of the look made by a human.

 

[Overrank]

Based on your reply, I decided to do some investigation by myself on this subject.

I had no idea about Manual Conversion being a possibility. I looked into it, done a few myself, lacking many qualities of the professional software of course, mostly by my inexperience in the process. What I Found interesting is that this is VERY open to interpretation by who is doing it. The whole color balance must be done by yourself, no scientific way to apply curves based on the film being used, it is all judged by the eye of the editor, so highly subjective.

You might want to read this https://negmaster.com , in particular the section “True Film Colors” and also pages 24 and 25 of the Fuji patent - https://negmaster.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/US6100924.pdf

I use SilverFast with my CoolScan V and am happy with the conversions from negatives. For positives (slides) I use a IT8 calibrated workflow so get pretty accurate colours.

Personally I’ve ever been very taken with the idea of inverting negatives in PhotoShop or whatever by eye. I have looked at ways of getting consistency in inversions by calibrating for a particular film stock using a Macbeth chart but have not been very successful

Then I wanted to find a reliable reference, that I could use to understand what is the "Portra look", for example. What is it? Where does it come from? Then I remembered how Nikon's own software, Nikon Scan, is highly praised by some of it's owners as having legendary Nikon Color Science, the best conversion process, etc.

I then put my Portra 160 roll through it, no curves, no adjustment, just pure Nikon Scan Color Negative Conversion, to see if I could use is as reference for the "Portra look".

The output images were very dull honestly. Lacking completely contrast, saturation, pop. Some looks like very old faded film. If this is what I got from a Lab, I would be highly disappointed.

But more interesting, I got some shots that have some wild variations in color balance in the same roll.


This one has a very cool white balance overall


Very Magenta cast in here?

So, this is something that the Scanner own software is not able to render neutrally either it seems.

A Lab with Frontier or Noritsu also can't do this interpretation without the someone in charge for the process own interpretations.

From what I read online, the only way to get this neutral look would be in a darkroom print direct to paper? So, I don't really think I would go much for the Look of a certain film, if there is no way digitally you can get that look, that isn't actually the interpretation of the look made by a human.

 

[Yarilo]

Based on your reply, I decided to do some investigation by myself on this subject.

I started with NikonScan's inversions and they puzzled me right from the start. They were hit-or-miss, same as you describing it, adjacent frames from the same location could lead to wastly different rendering and lots of other issues.

Manual inversion is very complicated thing, I started my film journy in 2021 and still learning, so this definitely not an easy task.

My most useful "inversion-buddy" is now Filmomat SmartConvert, it's logic is based on wet print ideology and contain limited set of controls. But the film look in it is most film-like and to my liking from all the inversion software I tried. Having something as an example helps with checking whether manual inversion went wrong or not. It has own quirks and not so useful for final versions, but for "first glance" it quite good.

As for wet print to be "the film look", this process is just as subjective as the manual inversion, since print machine operator is to make choices of color filter settings, time of the exposure, preflash, etc.

As for profiles for different film stocks, my take on this is that RA-4 paper doesn't care about film stock loaded to enlarger, so the digital inversion process should do the same.

I also see charts-calibration steps in the inversion process as potentially defeating the purpose of shooting film, skewing film colors (whatever they may be) towards neutral life-like palette. But I may lack knowledge here and if the scanner can be calibrated on it's own, without linkage to the actual stock, it is definitely a positive thing.

 

[Overrank]

Based on your reply, I decided to do some investigation by myself on this subject.

I started with NikonScan's inversions and they puzzled me right from the start. They were hit-or-miss, same as you describing it, adjacent frames from the same location could lead to wastly different rendering and lots of other issues.

Manual inversion is very complicated thing, I started my film journy in 2021 and still learning, so this definitely not an easy task.

My most useful "inversion-buddy" is now Filmomat SmartConvert, it's logic is based on wet print ideology and contain limited set of controls. But the film look in it is most film-like and to my liking from all the inversion software I tried. Having something as an example helps with checking whether manual inversion went wrong or not. It has own quirks and not so useful for final versions, but for "first glance" it quite good.

I second SmartConvert - for the odd time I don’t like how SilverFast has done it I use SmartConvert. It’s very good on maskless films like Harman Phoenix too - the lack of a mask doesn’t bother it

As for wet print to be "the film look", this process is just as subjective as the manual inversion, since print machine operator is to make choices of color filter settings, time of the exposure, preflash, etc.

As for profiles for different film stocks, my take on this is that RA-4 paper doesn't care about film stock loaded to enlarger, so the digital inversion process should do the same.

I also see charts-calibration steps in the inversion process as potentially defeating the purpose of shooting film, skewing film colors (whatever they may be) towards neutral life-like palette. But I may lack knowledge here and if the scanner can be calibrated on its own, without linkage to the actual stock, it is definitely a positive thing.

For slides I think that using a profiled workflow is by far the best way of getting an accurate copy of the slide (I don’t mean “the best photo”, I mean the best copy of the slide) You need a slide calibration for the film stock you’re scanning (and just hope you don’t need to do Kodachrome - the targets as €1000).

My efforts using the Macbeth target with negative film were not very successful I wanted to photograph the target in daylight and then use that as as an exemplar for other photos when using DarkTable, but there was too much difference between the images If you used the Macbeth how you’re supposed to then it would produce very flat images

Conversely, my understanding of Vision3 is that the films are meant to all produce very flat images (irrespective of tungsten or daylight when lit correctly) so that different speed films can be mixed within a single movie and then all colour graded in one process .

 

[Yarilo]

Conversely, my understanding of Vision3 is that the films are meant to all produce very flat images (irrespective of tungsten or daylight when lit correctly) so that different speed films can be mixed within a single movie and then all colour graded in one process .

I've heard different descriptions of Vision3 films contrast characteristics. Ones were as you described, others were that Vision3 50D is meant to be shot on strong light and therefore has low contrast and 250D is for less lit scenes and therefore very contrasty. I have experience only with 250D, but I have no problems using it on sunny days and find that it's colors and contrast aren't that different with Portra 400.

Vision3 250D:

F100_001833_NS4_MI

Portra 400:

RCVB_002804_NS4_MI

On the other hand, given that I was able to pull the sky on the Vision3 250D shot from one scan and on Portra 400 sky is much lighter from single scan, maybe 250D is indeed less contrasty. Or maybe I just exposed Portra 400 a bit more than Vision3 250D. Lots of variables.

--

Yarilo

Explore Yarilo’s 278 photos on Flickr!

www.flickr.com

 

[Alec246]

You might want to read this https://negmaster.com , in particular the section “True Film Colors” and also pages 24 and 25 of the Fuji patent - https://negmaster.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/US6100924.pdf

I use SilverFast with my CoolScan V and am happy with the conversions from negatives. For positives (slides) I use a IT8 calibrated workflow so get pretty accurate colours.

Thank you for the article. I looked into negmaster software, but unless I have access to some sort of trial, I won't put money into a software, which unfortunately they don't provide.

Filmomat SmartConvert on the other hand does provide a trial. I gave it a few spin with my originals from the Scanner. I liked a lot of conversions that came from it, it does have a look that doesn't seem "artificial", like it could easily happen with Negative Lab Pro. In NLP, some photos looked like it came straight from my Digital Camera, it lost a lot of the Analog feeling, if I let it do it's WB Neutral processing. But I can make it look back like Film with a bit of tweaking.

What I didn't like of Filmomat SmartConverter is that it seems to always apply strong Sharpening, which I want to have full control in Post, and not done in the conversion process.

Another issue happened in a certain photo, dark concrete with deep shadows, where it introduced some color artifacts?

This is a very deep hole to go in!!