Quick intro
Film scanning can be quite easy depending on the quality that is required. Many apps are out there that only requires a white backlight and your phone.
Originally, I wanted my lab to scan the films for me since it’s already there and they use drum film scanners.
However, two issues present themselves. I only get small JPEGs and I also pay €6 per roll of film regardless of length. So for a €10 roll of medium format, then €5 to develop, and another €6 to scan, I’m looking at €21 per roll or €1.75 per shot.
Me, being very technical, wanted upmost control with my scans and wanted to be able to control everything within my workspace. I looked after many different solutions from flat bed scanners to DIY kits. Originally I was working with a simple Arca Swiss rail and a film holder. This worked great for 35mm film, didn’t break the bank as the kit was less than €100.
However, this has two issues. Issue 1 was that I needed to always scan at night because any stray light from the room or outside can influence the colors and reflections of the film. Issue 2 was that there was no way for me to scan 6cm x 6cm film.
So off to research I go. Initially I wanted to get a Negative Supply setup. I wanted to be able to use my mirrorless camera and macro lens to get the best raw photos of my negatives.
Negative Supply was my first look into custom scanning solution. To get a setup that can scan 35mm, 65mm x 24mm, and 6cm x 6cm would have set me back a little over $800-$900. However, the same issue would present itself, the scanning workflow still exposed the film to ambient light which could affect the final scan.
I was also looking at a flat bed scanner, but the lack of raw and very slow scanning speeds didn’t really make this a viable solution if I had a lot of film scans to go through. Plus I would need to install additional software on top of my raw editor.
I’ve finally settled on Valoi easy120 after their success with the easy35. It checked all of my boxes, it was affordable, modular, and allowed me to quickly scan through all of my film formats. This setup costed me €770.
In the grand scheme of things, scanning my own film will allow me to break even after roughly 128 rolls of film. I bought this system January 2025, but so far I’ve ran through 65 rolls of film. This system looks like it’ll pay for itself in a little less than 2 years.
Software
- DxO Photolab 8
Gear list
- Nikon Z8
- Nikon 105mm f2.8 S
- Valoi easy120
Photo settings
I typically lock my exposure and white balance.
- 1/80 second
- A semi-fast exposure will prevent vibration as I hit the shutter button. This can be mitigated by using mirror lockup/shutter delay/remote shutter.
- f8
- The film is not usually flat, f8 is a good balance between a deep DoF and mitigating diffraction due to a small aperture.
- ISO 64
- Lowest native ISO for the Z8.
- 5500k
- The LED I’m using is 5500k and 95 CRI.
- Focus mode is center weighted
- The focusing screen on my film is in the center, I focus on the center of the film and to reduce out of focus areas.
Setting up initial post processing
- The first thing I want to do is to find the highest contrast photo for my chosen film emulsion.
- If you don’t have a high contrast photo, you can use multiple photos to make sure you’re getting the most dynamic range.
- For example a dark alleyway with a exposed sky satisfies this requirement.
- Next I do is to disable any automated adjustments, noise reduction, and lens profiles.
- It should look like this
- Next, I’m going to invert the histogram from this
to this
- Now it should look like this
- It looks better, but I still have the dreaded blue shade.
Capturing the Highlights
- I’m going to work on the highlights first.
- I’ll click on the highlight clipping tool
- I go to the tone curve editor and click on the red channel
- Below, there is a tone picker which helps me see where in the red histogram that pixel lives.
- In this example, I am on the highlight of my photo and seeing where the film highlight is clipping for the red channel.
- I move my red channel to the the highlight clipping so that it will be the new start of the red channel’s dynamic range.
- I take care to make sure that every highlight pixel is taken into account. For this example, the pixel I’m hovering over is maybe 5-7 values below 85. So I should be moving the red channel to start at 79. Pretty much, I keep wiggling the cursor until the indicator doesn’t go horizontal.
- I do the same with the green channel
- And finally with the blue. Since the orange film stock inverted is blue, blue really starts nearly at 0. So don’t be surprised if the highlights start less than 5.
- At this point there should be able to see all sorts of colors in the highlight clipping tool
- Next, I take this preset and apply it to all the other photos in this set. I double check to see if there are any other photos within the set that have brighter highlights than this photo.
- If there is another photo with brighter highlights, then I use that to capture the correct highlight pixel
- Using this technique I have now established the brightest value this film can capture.
- The results are a little underwhelming so far, but at least the highlights are set up properly.
- There is a bit more color and contrast in the brighter parts of the photo.
Capturing the Shadows
- This is a little easier because I can actually use the edges of the unexposed film to get the shadows. Unexposed parts of the film is the darkest it can ever go.
- I’m going to do the exact thing as I did with the highlights.
- I switch to the shadow clipping tool
- Then go red
- green
- And finally blue
- There should be a lot of colors just like the highlights
- Same tips apply with highlights. Apply the new highlights and shadow edits to a new profile and apply it to the photo series. If there are darker photos, use that as the new baseline for capturing the shadows.
- The photo now looks like this. Much better!
- Now the goal is to be able to apply this to all of the photos in the series without modification.
- However, as you can see, this photo was taken during golden hour. Where is all the gold?
Final adjustments
- Next thing I need to adjust are the curves of each channel. This is difficult because it’s quite subjective.
- I use a photo with a known white such as clouds during the mid day. If you have a calibrated photo, you can use that as well.
- As you can see (aside from my terrible framing), the clouds are really blue.
- I’m going to change the Gamma curve of each color until the clouds are close to white without ruining out the other parts of the photos.
- This is the end result of tweaking the gamma curves per channel.
- Red tends to be quite close to 1.00 unless you’re shooting a contrasty emulsion like Ektar 100 (That I think is closer to 0.80)
- Green tends to be around 1.2-1.5
- Blue tends to be a bit more extreme around 1.5-2.0 (Again with Ektar 100 it’s about 2.00)
- These values are close enough for you to tweak but not the defining values. Trust your eye and your feelings.
- I copy that profile to my original photo.
- With those values, the original photo now looks like this.
- It really looks like golden hour! (This seem a smidgen too red so I’ll adjust the red gamma before the next step)
Adjusting exposure and contrast
- As you can see, the contrast is a bit strong. Some people like this, some don’t. Remember analog to digital is never perfect. It’s better to scan and edit according to your preferences than being exact to your local lab.
- Obviously, film companies can evaluate labs according to their editing profiles, but ultimately photography is an art form.
- The only ways I adjust the exposure is through the RGB gamma curve. Adjusting the actual exposure can introduce color shifts that I’ve worked so hard to eliminate.
- If the preset can survive adjustments to the RGB gamma curve without major adjustments of the sub channels, then the preset is robust and can be applied to any photos of the same emulsion. (Assuming the exact same scanning environment)
- This is with an RGB gamma curve of 0.35
- This with an RGB gamma curve of 0.70
- The color shifts a little red this means that our red channel can be adjusted a little more. However, this is fairly normal behavior.
Cropping and lens profile
- After working on the curves, it’s time to put on the lens correction profiles. Since I’ve been correcting film colors, I don’t put on the camera color profile since that can derail the efforts.
- I crop the final photo and here it is.
