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Any thoughts on Silverfast 9, Epson Scan and other flatbed software solutions?

Why don’t use the best software. Negmaster? Without using Lightroom and super fast.

Fantastic summary! Thank you.

I tried smart convert but it wasn't my thing. Never quite happy with filmlab. Negative lab pro would probably work but I just don't want to deal with Adobe. So I used darktable with the built in negadoctor and it blew me away. At first it was a hassle to get anything out of but when I actually followed the step by step guide from the documentation page of the negadoctor module, it just works so incredibly well. I have a highly regarded local lab with a Noritsu and for color, theres only one image where I prefer their scan over my own. The rest was just all better with default settings. Black and white is also great except that I learned that I either need to feed it a monochrome raw file or I need to first apply a monochrome filter before converting. For those interested, here's my full process: I use my Plustek OpticFilm 8200i with Silverfast 9 SE. In silverfast I set it to scan as positive with either 16 bit hdr for black and white or 48 bit hdr for color and I scan at 3600 dpi DNG files. I don't use any of the extra fancy bits though I still have to experiment with the multi exposure thingy more because when I have time. Then I scan my negatives and I import them to darktable. (Note: I turned off as many of the automatically activated modules as I could) I choose a photo with a little bit of the negative visible and what looks like a good range of dark and light. If this is black and white and I accidentally scanned as color, I turn on the monochrome module. Then I activate negadoctor and select black and white or color negative and I click on the eyedropper for film base color and I select just a bit of that exposed negative. Next I click the eyedropper underneath that, select most of the image, leaving enough margin to be sure there's no unexposed area or scanner border included. Then I click on the eyedropper below that and do the same thing. This should look pretty good on most images. If it doesn't, you probably chose an image that didn't have a good balanced range of values in it or you've run into a problem that I haven't encountered before. From here, go back to the lighttable area (press L or just click the lighttable tab), make sure that the photo we just converted is selected and click selective copy on the right panel. Uncheck all except negadoctor (and monochrome if applicable) and click ok. Now select all images and paste. There you go, within a few seconds, you have your negatives and if you want, you can finetune it. The nice thing is that at this point, any edits you do are like working with a normal color raw file so it's quite intuitive. I like it a lot and darktable is free (not to mention, a great Lightroom alternative that doesn't support an evil corporation or require piracy). A few notes: 1) if you're using a digital camera to scan your negatives, I read that there's a few small tweaks you need to do before applying negadoctor. It's all explained in the documentation page of negadoctor so it's easy to find. 2) I've only really tried this with three color negative filmstocks (fuji c200, kodak gold and kodak ultramax), but a wide variety of black and white stocks (both expired and fresh). No idea how it would perform with 800T or more esoteric stuff like lomo turquoise.

Oof...unlistenable with the car drone/road noise in the background

The Smart convert advantage is using the keyboard commands to do your editing in seconds.

HeyHey ApplePerson👋, if you ever want to fine tune the crap out of a negativ scan, you could give RawTherapee a shot. The build in Film Negativ module in combination with other tools gives the control one could ever need. Probably to much control for many thou, but maybe worth a look. But has no smart convert, so we can't have everything. Cheers (FilmNegative module is found under the "color" menue, it has a lot of modules..)

This isn't called scanning but copying.. BTW, yall should stop shooting film if you still have the digital mindset.. the only difference between your film output and an equivalent digital version is your mind tells you it was taken on film. If yall goin' to shoot film stop all that automation if you cannot do ra-4 print. Invert it manually or use an app to invert without no preset.. the NLP basic preset is still a preset. You should have chosen "none" in all the options.. I will these film shots i see from you young folks these days pseudo film

Thanks Matt, informative video as always. As one of the early adopters of camera scanning film, I’ve been using NLP since version 1.61 circa 2017. I still see a lot of resistance to camera scanning. My advice for what it’s worth: look at the results, without prejudice. You might be in for a shock. My Nikon LS-50 sits collecting dust now. I can’t go back to listening to stepper motors ever again. So: I had an LS-50. Why did I dive into camera scanning? Because in 2007 when I bought the LS-50, I could not justify the added cost for one of Nikon’s medium format scanners. And because the choices for new, high quality negative scanners that work with medium format film are pretty much gone now. Flatbeds? That’s a joke. None have the optical resolution needed to do film justice. The quality isn’t there. Dedicated scanners? The Prime Film 120 is slow, breaks a lot, and costs nearly $2000. The Plustek Optic film 120 has been a problem child since it came out in 2014. I wanted it to be good, but reports from users said stay away. A “pro” version is mentioned on the Plustek site but appears to be vaporware. No one has it in stock. But it will cost $2300 if they ever make any. That leaves all the circa early 2000s pro lab machines where you spend your cash and take your chances dealing with outdated interfaces, operating systems, lack of spare parts. Yep. Another dead end. I solve these problems all the time at my day job. I refuse to deal with antique computers as part of something I do for the sheer joy of watching developed film emerge from the tanks! That leaves what, drum scanners? Sorry. I can’t spend half a day for one single scan, not to mention all the hardware, spare parts, and software issues. Not that camera scanning is easy. There are plenty of traps. Mostly involving stray light control. Make sure the camera only sees light that has passed through the film. And watch out for reflections from the ceiling hitting the film, it will trip you up hard. But also know you can make your own light source/copy table with some mail order acrylic sheet, Home Depot led bulbs, some generic Arca Swiss sliders and some scrap engineered laminated wood commonly sold to make bookshelves. You probably already have a camera “good enough” to get started. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Is camera scanning good enough? Well, it’s good enough for me and that is what matters. I can resolve grain in Velvia 50 120 with an A7Riv and Sony 90 macro. And the capture takes seconds rather than minutes. If I want more, I can use my GFX100S and adapted 645 Mamiya 120 macro, but once you start resolving grain, going in deeper is kinda pointless. At least for my work, which includes printing to a Canon Pro 2000 at 24 inches on the short side, I’m hard pressed to see a difference between Sony and Fuji camera scans. Matt, keep abreast of the upcoming NLP 3.1, Nate is doing some interesting things regarding color accuracy, even for positives like slides! He has the basics down, his fixes take care of some weird edge cases. Check his forums for more info. Like you, I tried the newest alternatives and found NLP is still the best, although Smart Convert is useful on some difficult negatives that I grossly over-developed when experimenting with a water rinse between developer and bleach/fix. (Bottom line don’t do the water bath between developer and bleach or blix, North Texas alkali tap water does not stop C41, ask me how I know)

Only problem with this video I don't use Lightroom.

I love photography, not editing. My Epson scanner with either Epson or Silverfast software works just fine for 120. For 135, I digitise with Valoi and convert with Filmlab. Works fine. For individual images, I can later use an editor. So what’s this video for?

I'd recommend trying Negmaster BR.

Thanks for this! Is there something I'm missing by just inverting the curve and cropping/adjusting, without the use of one of these tools? I might add, one problem with FilmLab Pro is that I prefer to keep my DNG files rather than TIFF or JPEG to give me more leeway to edit.

Great Channel. Really enjoy watching. Keep the good work coming.

I tried the Film Lab app. It does an awful job on B&W conversions, clipping the highlights badly unless you go in to every single frame and tweak the settings. I convert in batch. I need my scanning software to provide decent scans in batch mode with no clipping. With NLP I get that. I fine tune photos in LR and only on photos that I rate 3 stars or higher. I really wanted to like Film Lab, because I am a LR user, not LRC, but I just couldn’t live with the results. So I will have to keep going into LRC for my negative conversions. It’s a minor annoyance.

I definitely share your experience with NLP, sometimes it just gets a bit funky. That being said. I’ve tried it against every conversation software that I’m aware of on the market and NLP always wins on average. Also when I find NLP doing something goofy it’s really easy to correct with the built in controls. I usually find it has to do with the black/white point being wrong and creating too much contrast and saturation in an image that doesn’t necessarily have pure white/black. I’ll back off the black clip sometimes to -20 or so. Also set the clip algorithm to Linear when setting clipping to negative values. Weird color things happen when you do it with the “preserve color balance” clip setting.

Well, if you change the film stock in Negative Lab App, you have to hit "auto" option again.

I thought these were for scanners, no cameras. I see camera shooting film more as a macro photo shoot than a scanning process - I use a dedicated film scanner, that's why I was attracted to this video. Thanks, anyway.

I wander - why do you call the mentioned SW applications as "film scanning software"? They are not used to scan film - they are used to convert the already scanned film from negative to positive. The actual "film scanning software" what I know of is VueScan and SilverFast. There are also app on linux - but it is not that used as these two. So you need to be more educated on what film scanning is before doing the video.

if you like speed, Filmlab plugin for photoshop by TheDude is incredible. you select a whole roll of and it lets you select an area (Just like the crop you did for conversion) applies that to the whole roll and converts everything. on top of that i automatically saves all your conversions neatly in a subfolder located in the file location of the imported files (or anywhere you want you can change it) in either a jpeg or a (i believe 24bit )TIFF file for further tweaking if you want. results seem to be pretty much on par with negative lab pro (From my testing) and its quite fast doing pretty much everything for you

Do I assume the negatives were scanned with a digital camera?

This was a super interesting video. I currently use NLP and haven't tried anything else yet, except from manual conversion in PS and letting scanner software do the job. Seems like continuing with NLP is the best current option based on your results. I'd love to see a version of NLP that could be used with Bridge/ACR/PS as I've only LR on my main PC. A completely stand alone version would of course be even better. Btw, from the title I expected a test of scanning software like VueScan, Silverfast and maybe Epson Scan and not negative conversion software.

Good review, than you for making it. The title is a bit confusing, though. The software reviewed is not scanning software. That would be programs like Vuescan or Silver Fast. The programs that you tested are negative converters. Cheers.

Taking photos of a negative is not scanning. The title is misleading since the workflow is done on a negative image taken with a digital camera. Taking that out of the way, nice comparison and thank you for sharing.

If you do not want that blue in CineStill Tungsten film shot under daylight, try an 85C filter on your lens

SmartConvert is easier to use via its keyboard shortcuts, the UI is extremely minimal. The program itself is a bit slow to export. It's all actually written in Python (not a compiled language) so it is interpreting the code on the fly Edit: Yeah, it is slow and not using your machine *at all* as you saw. Very not "optimized" for performance. It's just Python code calling LibRAW then doing some processing using OpenCV. I thought about coding something like this myself in the past...

In FilmLab I’ve had better results if you click the little auto option at the top after you’ve changed the film stock. Otherwise the colours seem off.

You forgot Darktable and the module negadoctor

Great test, thanks.

Love saucy fisherman Matt!

No my monitor has always been set to minimum brightness and the prints are too dark.

May your creative journey continue to feed your soul. Good luck with the next steps.

Going to miss you guys and Moose! Flagstaff Camera will be in good hands though, super exciting for Taylor!

I grew up in SE Wisconsin which is pretty much the same as where you’re moving. Spring and Fall Rock, Summer’s a crap shoot and Winter’s suck! I’m in Phoenix now where the Summers suck. It’s like reverse of the Midwest. But I agree, I miss being near water. Lake kayaks are a great way to slow down and experience the world in a different way. Just grab a sixer and a bag of chips and go float in the middle of a lake.

Great viddy! I’m trying some crazy shit right now in trying to create my negatives with a large format camera and struggling a bit with dialing in the contrast. This was a great help in understanding what the controls are for contrast. Now it’s just a matter of getting a negative with a good density and nice contrast to work with. As a first attempt I developed a sheet of Delta 100 in HC110 which seemed to produce an overly contrasty negative. I read Pyro would be a better option. Any thoughts on how to produce a good neg with Delta 100?

I’m curious, how does low humidity affect your printing process? I live in Minnesota, which also has lots of water and humidity (except in winter when it becomes bone dry).

I personally would love to see how you move all the printers. I have a couple printers to move (including a 7600 with a custom ink set in it). Not sure of the steps to move them.

Happy new year must’ve been very difficult during the time of Covid and I can understand you making a decision to dial down and focusing on things that are a little bit more important in your world I wish you great success ,

All the best for 2025.

Do you also sell liquor ? 🤣

I have shot film most of my life with the Nikon F2. Recently acquired a Leica MD 262. The main reason for the switch was the cost of optical prints, shipping, cost of film, developing, flash drives and the long wait. Question, why would anyone want their digital images to look like film anyway? The digital images coming from the MD 262 look way better than (35mm) film...!

Outrageous. No one should be talking about Film v Digital unless prints from both cameras are compared. Anything else is unacceptable. Film must be hand printed in the darkroom like it was meant to be. Image from digital must be printed to the same size then compared side by side NOT on a computer screen. Only an imbecile does not know that when you scan film you are comparing scanner technology which is out dated by decades. It is fake news to publish a comparison between a scan of a film against a digital image. RUclips has duty to ban fake news

Sometimes multi tasking confuses the brain. It is very important to concentrate on one thing, I am sure you will produce better and more prints in 2025. As your videos are more important to me, I always followed your videos to improve my Pt-Pd prints living in another side of the world. Best of luck.

Brilliant

New lab🎉🎉

Just wondering how many people wander around the country with a 10x8 on their back🙄🙄 5 x 4 yes.....

Best wishes to all of you in your future endeavors, and thanks for all the videos as well as vintage cameras, two of which are going out with me right now to chase neon!

It’s so sad when someone from the community leaves West Yorkshire Cameras in Leeds, the UK is closing at the end of this month, forever. It was such a great source of some great analogue photography equipment if you hurry they are selling everything with a whopping 50% discount online hurry while stocks last.