panos.v wrote:
To answer to the original question, the scanner will record whatever information the film has.
Unfortunately this just isn\'t true. I don\'t want to sound like one of those all analog or nothing guys, cause I\'m not, but scanners fail in a couple ways.
1- dmax, only the very best scanners can manage the dmax of dense films like Velvia.
2- range between dMax and dMin. The latter Nikon scanners give you the ability to increase the lamp brightness to penetrate the dMax, but you\'ll quickly clip off the highlights if you try to take this too far.
3- color shifts. Scan enough and you\'ll recognize that some films tend to shift color between what the scanner sees and what you see when viewing the film on the light table.
#4- resolution. Unfortunately, most scanners can\'t optically match their stated resolutions.
Drum scanners can almost always address #1. The PMT technology has a big advantage with shadow details. They also help with #2 because many provide the ability to control the amplification, giving the ability to keep different dMax to dMin ranges at the top and bottom of the scale with the bit between linear and using the full bit range of the scanner. But item #3 is tricky. You can use profiling software to level this out with film specific targets, but you might lose some of the character of the film in the process and the profile still might not account for certain situations.
I do recognize your point though. Different films have different characters, and this does come through in the scan. With a good enough scanner, so does all the resolution/detail.
Dec 29, 2010 at 10:26 AM
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