I did take a decision to hoot more film recently and have a bunch of film waiting to be scanned. I have a low end scanner and VueScan software. Scanning B&W is not that difficult but I have great trouble getting a scan from my slides that are close to the beautiful colors I see while looking at the film directly.
So I'm asking if you have tips for me regarding scanning (especially slide film like Velvia).
Pulling detail out of slide film with dark shadows like Velvia is very difficult because of the maximum density that most inexpensive scanners can scan through. Your options are to try multiple scanning (if your scanner/software supports it) where you scan the same frame multiple times and average it to remove noise from shadow areas, or maybe pay for a higher end scanning service like drum scanning.
And while this doesn't help you with this batch, in the future, shooting to overexpose by half a stop or a stop will make scanning easier by lowering the density a bit.
Has anyone tried using a macro lens? I did a simple test with using a 35/2 and extension tubes on my Canon 1Ds and the colors and "scan" looked a lot better than my test scans of the same image from my scanner. I however do not have bracket of any kind to hold the film in plane and shift it for stitching so that method would be rather tedious.
My suggestion is to get a cheap slide copying attachment off eBay or to upgrade your scanner. A cheap scanner simply won't deliver with high-contrast slide film like Velvia.
I can't find a slide copier on Ebay that does 67 slides. I'd like to see a stitched macro scan from a good camera compared to a good scanner like the Nikon 9000 to see if it's really worth the money. ;-)
...but primarily I'm interested in getting my scanner to work!
Well, since posting I did experiment a bit with VueScan settings and after setting White point to 0 the scans look better (using slides/Kodachrome/K14 as template). The colors are a bit difficult but I've stopped thinking about slide copiers.
