It DOES work perfectly well on C-41 black and white films, like Ilford XP-2 and Kodak 400CN, so you can use it on them. Filters: Infrared cleaning does not work for traditional black and white negs the metallic silver in them interferes with it.
Use it for slides it improves dark tone noise in dense slides. Multisampling: Don't bother with multisampling, it does nothing for BW negs. I don't think this is needed for the last generation Nikon scanners, like the 9000ED and 5000ED. Fine mode increases scan time a bit, but eliminates the banding. Some Nikon scanners, such as the LS-8000ED, have a bug that produces banding in the final scan. Fine Mode: If you use a Nikon scanner use this. If you use autofocus only on the prescan, it may focus on an area without much texture and reduce image sharpness in the final scan. This should be a detailed area, not a flat tone. On the Nikon scanners, you can choose a pont on the image for the autofocus mechanism to lock on to. Auto Focus: Always (if you scanner offers this.flatbeds don't usually). You'll regret this deeply when you decide to make a larger print and have to rescan and redo ALL your post-processing, dodging and burning, retouching, etc. Don't scan lower thinking you'll make smaller prints. Scan Resolution: Whatever your scanner's highest is. The Prescan is just needed so you can set the cropping of the scan. It doesn't need to be high resolution, so scanning for screen resolution makes the preview scan faster.
The software makes the preview large enough to see on your screen. See my Vuescan Batch Scanning Tutorial for directions. Batch Scanning: This allows scanning more than one image at a time. Since BW negatives scan in flat, you need this ability. A 16 bit scan can take more curves and levels adjustments without losing quality than you can do with an 8 bit file. 16 bit gray Scanning BW negatives in a color mode just increases file size and does not increase tonal range or quality, no matter what anyone tries to tell you. It'll also be even flatter looking, but that is sometimes useful when scanning very contrasty images. You can use the transparency setting, but the scan will look like a negative, and will need inverted in Photoshop. I want to explain why I use some of the settings that may not be self-explanatory. I use Nikon's rotating glass carrier FH-869GR for all of my negatives.Ĭlick on the thumbnail to the left to see the settings in a larger image in a new window. These are the settings that I use for scanning black and white negatives. The controls are divided into several tabs. Vuescan is a very powerful program with a lot of settings.
Vuescan's Mac and Windows versions are identical, so these settings work on either OS.
My instructions below are for the Professional Version of Vuescan, using the advanced control set. It tends to be unstable on later versions of PowerPC OS-X and Windows, and may not work at all on the Intel Macs. I use Vuescan, rather than Nikon's scanner software, because Nikon stopped supporting Nikon Scan years ago. The information that I give below should work perfectly for any Nikon Scanner, and should be pretty close with other film scanners. I use a Nikon LS-8000ED scanner with Vuescan software. Vuescan with a prescan of a negative waiting to be cropped In addition to this tutorial, I also have a Film Scanning Demonstration video on YouTube. Most photographers use WAY too little contrast in thier scanned black and white images. My examples below show a few of my photographs with the unedited scan and the final edited version so that you can see just how much needs to be done. That couldn't be further from the truth.įilm scans need to be edited in Photoshop or whatever software you like to increase the contrast to normal, like a proper black and white image should have. Some think that it is how its supposed to be, others know how a black and white image should look, and they conclude that scanning sucks and that it is incapable of quality rendering. It seems that most photographers just accept the flat, lifeless, dull image that the raw scan provides.
A full range of tones on a BW negative will include some areas of clear or near clear film in the deepest blacks, but the brightest whites in a properly exposed and developed negative will not be near as dense as the blacks in a slide.įor that reason, negatives will always scan in very flat looking. A full range of tones on a color slide will include areas of totally clear film and areas of almost opaque black. I see a lot of images on the web that are scans from black and white negatives, and most of them look flat and dead.įilm scanners are designed primarily for scanning color transparencies, which have a much greater density range than a black and white negative.