Impossible to scan B/W without clipping?

Timmyjoe said:
Been scanning B&W with Nikon scanners and a Mac for almost 15 years now and this is what I've learned. High contrast negatives are going to give you clipping. My original Coolscan III clipped B&W negs pretty badly, negatives that I could print in the darkroom with no problem, clipped with the Coolscan III.

A Nikon tech gave me a good piece of advice: Everytime I open NikonScan, I first trash the .plist Nikon Maid preference and start over. He said there is this glitch in NikonScan where after a certain number of scans of B&W the software/scanner combination starts to go very high contrast. Which produces alot of clipping.

I then acquired a Coolscan 5000, and although it was better than the Coolscan III for B&W, it still clipped quite a bit if the negatives weren't lower contrast. Still kept using the "trash preferences" thing each time before I opened NikonScan.

Then I finally got a Coolscan 9000, and the difference between it and the 5000 was quite noticeable. Like the difference between a condenser enlarger (the 5000) and a diffusion enlarger (the 9000). I still trash the preferences before launching NikonScan each time, and I have a computer that will be stuck running Snow Leopard, because as noted above, Lion won't run NikonScan and Nikon refuses to update it. But I now get glorious B&W scans from my negatives and am quite happy with the set up.

Tried Vuescan a number of different times and never saw an improvement over NikonScan.

Best,
-Tim
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thank you thank you thank you
 
sanmich said:
My experience is that in some negs I get clipping in the shadows using Vuescan.
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Looked at your original thread (even commented on it I see). I guess I'm not seeing where you are getting clipping or why you think you have clipping in that example. Scanners should have NO problem not clipping the shadows of a negative since there's no density there, so if you are getting clipping problems, it must be the software. I can confidently say I don't get clipping in the shadows with Vuescan the way I have it set up.

Once again I'll say I avoid all the problems you guys seem to have by staying away from DNG and just editing my files in PS. While I do use raw scans for my color stuff, you have to know what you are doing and what all the different options pertaining to raw scans in Vuescan do, otherwise you are going to get some funky things happening. For example, the film types in Vuescan ALL modify the data in some way or another and after talking to Ed Hamrick, unless you really like the way one of them looks, I'd say avoid them all.
 
If the neg is "reasonably well" exposed, there is no way a Nikon scanner 4K, 5K, 8K or 9K, used with Vuescan (no real experience with Nikonscan), should clip either end of the scale. A B&W neg will only give you a density range of around 2.0~2.4 and that is way within what the range of what Nikon scanner can deliver. If you profile the film base and use that for exposure on the scan, you can basically set your black point in the scan without any clipping and the white point will be a way off from the other end of the histogram. I just "never" see clipped scans from negatives on the Nikon unless its representative of the negative itself - ie. there is a lot of blocked up shadows in the image or blown highlights.
 
If we're talking about Vuescan clipping things, why don't you post a raw scan and some of us can see if we can give you some help.
 
250swb said:
I asked a similar question to this is regard to a Plustek scanner, and the answer my be the same. And the answer is to make sure your preview scan is relatively high resolution if the main scan is using the preview to set exposure.
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Thank you--I think this hits at the solution. I have increased the preview resolution to 2000dpi, and now it appears that the clipping has gone away.

I have white and black points manually set to 0%, and have switched the film type to Color Generic.
 
With regard to the suggestions that some have made to scan B+W images in RGB, I don't think there is much to be gained by doing this. Vuescan has an option for B+W negatives called 'Make gray from', which allows you to choose which color channel it uses for the scan. It may be a worthwhile exercise to do a test scan in each setting. There are differences, but they are very subtle. It mainly affects the look of the grain. The Blue channel tends to give a harder sharp, while the Red and IR channels are a little softer. I settled on Green, as it is somewhere in between. The differences are pretty small though. In my opinion not worth fretting over. It is a useful feature if you are scanning stained negatives, as you can easily filter that out.
 
I second the method of scanning as a positive then later invert and adjust levels/curves.

Scanners will scan the largest range of tones possible when you can it as a positive, in all other cases, the scanner picks black and white point (you may be able to adjust).

For complete control, scan as positive.
 
The Silverfast solution.

The Silverfast solution.

I've achieved super results by using Silverfast software from Germany. Additionally I used the WET scanning process for astonishing clarity using my Nikon 9000. A full tonal range is possible. For a sample of the results, as seen in my recent book of B/W photos, please visit RoyShigleyPhotography.com We can talk, ok?
 
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