Why Not DSLR Scan?

Thanks to the collapse of film photography as a mass-market phenomenon, development of new film scanner technology has essentially ceased (outside of the motion picture industry where development continues but the products are professional tools priced like cars and houses). Since many photographers own capable DSLRs with modern sensors it has become popular to use one’s existing digital camera in preference to a dedicated film scanner. Whilst this sounds sensible results are often disheartentingly disappointing. Why should this be and what can be done?

The Science and Pseudoscience of ICC Profiles and Scanning Colour Negative Film

Take 2 On Disentangling Colour Negative Film and ICC Profiles

Or, the longest titled blog post I have yet made.

In my previous post Scanning Colour Negative Film Using ICC Profiles I discussed my experiences in using ICC profiles in conjunction with negative film scanning. This lead to a lot of questions and much more research.

In this episode we will embark on a journey into the depths of colour management and go where no colour negative film-shooting photographer has gone before. Well, I bet they have but I can’t find anything else like it on the internet…

 

Scanning Colour Negative Film Using ICC Profiles

Consistent Colour For Negative Film Scans

Not happy with all-over-the-map colour from negative film scans? If you have not already familiarised yourself with my introduction to scanning colour negative film I am more than happy to wait until you have read Scanning Colour Negative Film 101, Scanning Colour Negative Film 102 and Scanning Colour Negative Film 103?

All done? Then read on…

Scanning Colour Negative Film 103

Advanced Negative Film Inversion

So you want a little more control? So you have been through Scanning Colour Negative Film 101 and Scanning Colour Negative Film 102? Read on.

Scanning Colour Negative Film 102

In Scanning Colour Negative Film 101 we learned how to scan a piece of colour negative film in Nikon Scan using the standard negative mode as well as how to get a full range gamma 1.0 positive scan that we can use to do our own positive inversion with. Continue reading to start exploring how to do this in three progressively more complex but powerful ways. Because we are dealing only with processing the inversion of the positive scan the techniques discussed here are equally applicable for positive scans obtained via any scanner or software, even so-called “DSLR” scans. For DSLR scans, however, there are some special considerations that we will touch on in the third installment.