Scanning Kodak Elite Chrome 100 and Ektachrome 100 Plus

I scanned a couple of hundred Elite Chrome 100 slides (plastic mounts) for #2 son. I had the Nikon LS-40 ED (Coolscan IV) handy and used the latest edition of Vuescan (9.4.40). The results were superb, some of the best non-Kodachrome scans I have seen. This film from the late 1990s though was very 'grainy' or 'dye-cloudy' especially in some underexposed areas and had a magenta cast (variable between individual films) that was easily corrected. A 36-exposure Ektachrome 100 Plus (early 1990s) had a much cooler cast (very Ektachrome) but again produced excellent results from the twenty-year old transparencies. For both I had the IR dust removal on. 

Scanning Minox Transparencies

For a short time in the 1960s my wife had a Minox A (AIIIs) camera with separate meter. As well as monochrome films, she tried some Agfacolor CT18 reversal film. The results from the first two films were originally mounted in Minox's own slide mounts. They were then shown, using a home-made adapter, in a projector made by one of the other manufacturer's of sub-miniature cameras, possibly Minolta. Then I made an adapter to hold the small mounts in a conventional 2 x 2 projector. The results were not good in that they would take little enlargement — an 8 x 11 mm film size with 'grainy' film was not a recipe for high definition.

When it came to scanning the slides, I realised they would not fit into my Nikon film scanner. So I bought some Gepe 2 x 2 slides with Minox masks in order to scan them in those. A few transparencies were destroyed in the process. They had become stuck to the glass of the mounts and the emulsion was left behind; a few others were damaged. However, 59 survived the move and were scanned. The results, as expected were not wonderful but at least we had a record. I have written in previous posts of the 'grain' and 'dye clouds' of CT18. On an 8 x 11 slide the grain really shows.

More recently, I have tried removing a few of the transparencies from the Gepe mounts and scanning them in the Epson V500, using a variety of masks to prevent newton rings. I did so in order to see if I could get better scans without interference from the glass of the mounts. In short, it made little difference and I stuck with the original scans.

We also had a film that had not been cut and mounted. It was in the three lengths that came back from Agfa. These I held in the film-strip scanning device for the Nikon, scanning each shot in turn and moving the strip occasionally to avoid the horizontal bars that marked the edge of a 24 x 36 mm frame.
However, the curl on the film from top to bottom (like a steel tape measure) was fairly marked. Again more recently, I have rescanned these lengths in the V500. Newton rings proved to be a problem because no matter how I tried to mask and anchor the strip, the non-emulsion side often touched the glass of the scanner. Eventually, I did get a scan of all 34 shots on the film without newton rings and a little better than my original efforts.

Neat Image again proved useful in removing some of the graininess but one film in particular was markedly worse than the others, again raising the question of whether Agfa had real problems with quality control at the film making or processing stages. The colour though has survived very well from 1966.

Here is a scanned Minox slide:

Dissatisfaction with the Minox (a good-size enlargement was only 5 x 7 cm) led to its postage back to UK and its theft (most likely at Heathrow airport) in transit.

At least I could say out loud (as I say silently to myself): 'if only you had stuck to 35 mm and Kodachrome, I would not have had all this trouble in scanning YOUR slides'. I should have known better. The riposte was instant: 'Well, YOU persuaded me to buy that Minox and it did fit in my handbag'.

All our slides (and negatives are scanned). I only hope that the occasional requests from friends and relations to scan transparencies are for 35 mm Kodachromes.

Scanning 35mm Slides...If Only They Were All Kodachromes

As well as the 4 x 4 cm Superslides I have written about previously, I have scanned thousands of 35 mm full frame (24 x 36) and half-frame (18 x 24) transparencies, dating from 1956 to 2002.

Whenever I read an account of slide scanning, the writer has concluded that Kodachromes had survived the passage of time in better condition than any other transparencies. I can only agree. But many of us were tempted by the home processing of Ferraniacolor or the marketing that promoted Agfacolor CT18, for example.

My Ferraniacolors have actually survived well. The colour is maintained including the yellowish tinge they had originally. They now look better scanned with their colour corrected than they ever did projected when newly processed.

Two films stood out as poor. The first, the old film of the two, is Agfacolor CT18. A few slides have turned a purplish shade over the years but the main problem is ‘grain’. I have put ‘grain’ in inverted commas because the term seems to cover a multitude of sins. Scanning the films, I noticed a very great difference between films. In other words, the degree of ‘graininess’ was similar in slides of a similar subject taken on one film but different on a different film. Thus, ‘grain’ varied from acceptable to dreadful. Such a difference clearly indicates a difference in manufacture or in processing.

The effect was particularly noticeable in half-frame transparencies because the size of the grain was greater in proportion to the image.

In an attempt to get better scans, I searched for more information. What is the ‘grain’ and are there hardware/software solutions to getting better scans?

In colour film, ‘dye clouds’ rather than ‘grain’ is a better term for the final result of film development. Is the scanner, though, simply picking up what is there or is what is there being exaggerated by the optical scanning process? The latter is known as ‘grain aliasing’ and there has been some discussion of this phenomenon (see below for links to websites). I do not think the problem with the Agfacolor CT18 slides at the poor end of the apparent graininess spectrum lies with grain aliasing. There was no apparent change in structure or position at different scanning resolutions or in different scanners. There was no effect of changing the scan direction across the slide. Furthermore, the same structures could be seen in the transparency under a microscope. By now, I was convinced that the ‘grain’ had a physical presence that was not being increased by the scanning process.

I tried several standard grain-reducing bits of software including Nikon Scan (when Nikon supported the software for their scanners), VueScan and Epson Scan during the scanning process. There was a little improvement but not much. If the graininess apparent in the scans was really there, were there any software solutions to remove it. Because graininess is a form of noise in the image, I tried the standard noise reduction controls in Photoshop and Aperture with little effect.

Then I then came across an article by Norman Koren on Grain and Sharpness in Scans and Enlarger Prints (website address given below). He recommended Neat Image and showed some examples of grain reduction in scanned images. Within minutes, I had loaded the trial version, installed it as a plug-in in Aperture and tried it on a few scans. The result was that a few minutes afterwards I paid for it and had the software in operation. I can only describe the effect as amazing. Only the worst two films still show obvious graininess and they were really bad to start off with. Even with them there has been a significant improvement, the worst effects of graininess being apparent in areas of sky.

So far I have been dealing with Agfacolor CT18. The other poor but more modern film was a Fuji transparency film (not Velvia) I used in Botswana in 2001. That showed a similar problem. Again, there was considerable improvement using Neat Image.

With the Agfacolor CT18 scans, I have never been completely convinced that the problem was in the emulsion per se. The appearance I can best describe as a reticulation (not the old burst blister appearance of reticulated film but think of the pattern of a Reticulated Giraffe) could have been in the base layer. I even wondered if the films had been varnished after processing and rubbed one over with alcohol to see if any coating could be removed (there was no effect). Then I came across a 2002 article by Nick Rains on Fuji 'Pepper Grain' The Mystery Resolved (website address below). The problem, as Fuji apparently admitted, was in the film base, not the emulsion. The effect was not apparent with wet, drum scanning, only with dry. Since the effect could be removed with Digital ICE technology (mine could not) we clearly are not dealing with the same phenomenon but I don’t think we can eliminate the film base from consideration entirely with the 1960s CT18.

This following is a comparison of enlarged images of a scanned full-frame  35 mm transparency taken in 2001 on a Fuji transparency film before (A) and after treatment with Neat Image (B). You should be able to see the difference. Finally, the best I could get out of this slide and, really, you do not want to see the untreated version.

A Scanned 35 mm Fuji transparency before and B after application of Neat Image.
The full frame version of B is shown below

Returning to where I started, why did we not take everything on Kodachrome? Well, Kodachrome was more expensive and it was slower. In the mid-1950s and using film speeds published in the BJ Almanac, Kodachrome was only 10 ASA. To put that figure into perspective, the ‘standard’ ASA setting on my Nikon D700 is 200 or more than 4 stops faster than the old Kodachrome. Ferraniacolor was 1 stop faster at 20 ASA and Agfacolor CT18 (18° DIN) was 50 ASA — more than 2 stops faster than Kodachrome. The next version of Kodachrome at 25 ASA brought that difference down to 1 stop.

For half-frame films, processing by Kodak was a hassle, whereas other processors, like Agfa, offered mounting in card or plastic after processing. My wife with her Olympus Pen FT avoided Kodak for that reason.

I think I have now finished with trying to get the best possible scans from my old slides. There will be one more article in this series but that’s it for 35 mm and 127 film Superslides. Somebody asked me the other day whether I would like to go back to colour film from digital capture. The answer is: NO! Only the luddites (and the real luddites at least had the excuse that their livelihoods were at stake) don’t realise that we have never had it so good. That’s my view on colour; to monochrome I shall return another day.

Website Addresses

Norman Koren Website (follow links there to earlier studies on grain aliasing): 

http://bit.ly/15vRclv

Fuji ‘Pepper Grain’ on The Luminous Landscape

http://bit.ly/ZfG2Nx

Neat Image Website†
http://www.neatimage.com

†I had an unexpected benefit from using this software which I will cover in a future post.

Slide Scanning: Nikon LS-40 vs Epson V500

After I bought my Nikon LS-40 ED (Coolscan IV ED) I scanned all our 24 x 36 and 24 x 18 (half-frame) slides using the Nikon Scan software. When Nikon disgracefully stopped supporting its software and when I switched to Mac, I changed to the excellent VueScan software in order to use the LS-40.

The LS-40's gate size is approximately 24 x 36. I could only scan the central slice of a superslide. Anything larger, I scanned in the office SCSI-interfaced HP scanner. After I retired I decided to scan all my old 6 x 6 cm negatives and bought an Epson V500 running it either with Epson Scan software or with VueScan.

Originally I had scanned all my slides as they came - some in cardboard, some in glassless plastic and some in glazed mounts. Recently, I decided to remove the glass and remount the 24 x 36 slides in glassless plastic (Reflecta) in order to scan them free of the anti-newton rings glass.

Scanning transparencies in the V500 is less time consuming than in the LS-40. However, reading the various comments in discussion fora, I should have been discouraged from using the V500 instead of the LS-40: 'dedicated film scanners are always better' blah blah. Well, having done extensive trials using both for the same slides, I can say that I have found that the LS-40 is no better for 35 mm slides than the V500. Indeed the higher resolution from the V500 to me gives it the edge. I find it easier to get a good scan using the V500 with Epson Scan in 'Professional' mode than using the LS-40 with VueScan. I can get there with the latter but it takes longer to get the settings right.

Having scanned all my slides, my LS-40 has been relegated to a box at the back of a cupboard. When the inevitable request comes to scan a few slides for somebody, I shall use the V500. The LS-40 is not on the 'to be disposed of' list though. The filmstrip and the APS attachments could still prove useful in the future.

Scanning Old 4 x 4 Super Slides — Part 2

Following on from the last post on 4 x 4 cm superslides, I scanned those in glassless plastic mounts in the Epson V500’s frame for 5 x 5 m (2” x 2”). For the transparencies I removed from edge-bound glass mounts, I left the thin paper or foil mask around them. For those I removed from the glazed plastic mounts, I simple dropped them onto the bed of the scanner, fully expecting to see Newton rings. But I didn’t and so carried on.

One problem I did have early on with the V500 was sometimes getting purplish-pink vertical lines on the scans. A quick Google search showed this problem is caused by dirt on the first few inches of the scanner bed. A good clean of this area was the answer; cleaning the area to be scanned was not sufficient.

At the outset I set out what I was trying to achieve. I did not want to have to scan these transparencies ever again. Therefore, I decided to scan at a resolution that would yield a reasonable-sized print in the unlikely event that I would want a print. Most of my old photographs are viewed either on the iMac screen, iPad, or on the television either as HD video or DVD.

I decided to scan at 3200 dpi. Printing at 300 dpi would give me a 15” x 15” (38 x 38 cm) print from these superslides.

Incidentally, I have found a lot of utter rubbish written about the scanning capabilities of the Epson V500 on internet fora. Some people have claimed (without providing any evidence, visual or historic) that the maximum ‘optical’ or ‘hardware’ (i.e. non-interpolated) resolution is about 2400 dpi and that anything above that is interpolated. However, the Epson website clearly states that the optical resolution of the V500 is 6400 dpi.

I did actually check that I was getting better resolution at higher dpis by enlarging in Photoshop the scans at 1200, 2400 and 3200 dpi to the same size (in cm) as that reached at 4800 dpi, with all set to 300 dpi. I then cropped a small area of detail from each, copied them to an A4 sheet and printed them on glossy paper. Resampling for the enlargements was kept at bicubic throughout. My argument for doing this check was that if 2400 were the maximum optical resolution, then scans at 3200 and 4800 should appear no better since they would have been resampled in scanner. In fact, at this enormous final size (nearly 2 feet or 60 cm square) there was a discernible difference on the printed output. 1200 dpi, not surprisingly, gave the poorest resolution since interpolation to the final size was greatest. Both 3200 and 4800 dpi were sharper than 2400 dpi but I really could not separate 3200 and 4800. Clearly though, 2400 is not the maximum optical resolution in this scanner.

I should stress that these comparisons were made on a print at 300 dpi. Unfortunately, at screen resolution the small differences cannot be seen and so it is not worth trying to show the print in the space available in a blog post.

I scanned using Epson Scan software in ‘Professional’ mode. I compared in trials 24- and 48-bit but found no difference in output. So I settled on 24-bit, with a considerable saving in file size. I also tried various settings for unsharp mask, grain reduction, dust removal or digital ICE. Here is one comparison:

Slices of scans of the same slide scanned in the Epson V500 (Epson Scan software)

A. No additions

B. + Unsharp Mask - Medium; Grain Reduction - Medium; Dust Removal

C. + Unsharp Mask - Medium; Grain Reduction - Medium; Digital ICE

D. + Unsharp Mask - Medium; Grain Reduction - Medium; Digital ICE; Colour Restoration

For these old slides, I eventually settled on: Unsharp Mask - Medium; Grain Reduction - Medium; Colour Restoration and Digital ICE (Quality or Speed, depending on condition).

The .tif files generated (63+ MB) were imported into Aperture for final tweaking.

I said in the earlier post that my Superslides were either Agfacolor CT18 or Ektrachrome X. I shall return to CT18 in another post but there is no doubt that the Ektachrome X slides have been the better survivors overall. However, CT18 slides survived either extremely well or fared badly in relation to the development of a purple cast. There was nothing in between. By contrast, the Ektachrome X slides seemed to have survived with little or no colour degradation. I was not that keen on the colour rendition of Ektachrome X in the 1960s (a cold, blue film). The irony is that they look better after scanning and with some colour correction than they ever did in a viewer or projected on a screen.

I have been able to improve on the originals by using gentle manipulations in Aperture or Photoshop. Details have appeared from shadows, for example, while highlights can (sometimes) be held in check.

Finally, two scans of superslides taken with a Rolleiflex 4 x 4 in Macau in March 1966.

Macau. March 1966. Agfacolor CT18. Rolleiflex 4 x 4
A photograph extending from deep shadow to direct, sub-tropical sunlight
on the wall

Macau. March 1966. Agfacolor CT18. Rolleiflex 4 x 4

Scanning Old 4 x 4 Super Slides

A Superslide, projected in a run of 35 mm transparencies, could make a 1950s or 1960s audience gasp. Square at 40 x 40 mm, rather than 24 x 36, a good superslide showed better gradation, sharpness and vibrancy than its counterpart from a 35 mm film camera. Compared with a 6 x 6 transparency from what is now called a medium format camera using 120 film (then along with 35 mm classified as ‘miniature’) the superslide offered one great advantage: it could be shown in the same projectors as 35 mm 24 x 36 mm transparencies rather than the extremely expensive machines made for the larger film size.

But then, as now, a good big one (whether film size or sensor) beats a good little one.

Superslides were from 127 size rollfilm, each spool producing 12 transparencies. The major camera producing superslides was the Rolleiflex 4 x 4 — the grey baby. Its f3.5 Xenar lens produced excellent results.

There were disadvantages. Kodachrome was not made in 127 size (with hindsight a major disadvantage) and films had to be changed more frequently, a nuisance when travelling.

A disadvantage certainly not apparent at the time is scanning. Although the superslide mount is the same size as the standard 35 mm mount, conventional 35 mm slide scanners, like my Nikon Coolscan IV, only cover an aperture of 24 x 36 mm. One can scan the central part of the superslide in either direction but it is not possible to cover the 40 x 40 mm.

The Epson V500 seemed to offer the best chance of getting a good scan from superslides at a modest cost.

I had used three sorts of slide mount. Firstly, ones made from the basic components (two glass plates, a cardboard mask and tape); secondly, commercial plastic mounts with anti-newton ring glass on both sides; thirdly I had some in plastic mounts without glass.

My 4 x 4 transparencies were in glass sealed mounts (left), plastic unglazed
mounts (right) or plastic mounts with glass (see below)

The glassless mounts were easy to scan. However, a number of transparencies in them had wrinkled especially round the edges so they were no longer flat and straight walls, for example, were no longer straight.

Plastic slide mount without glass (as received from the processor)
showing the wrinkling

When trying to scan some equally old Minox transparencies I had damaged two by removing them from their mounts. The emulsion had stuck to the glass and remained there. Therefore, I was very reluctant to risk the superslides and scanned them in the V500 through the anti-newton rings glass. The results were good but not so good as with slides scanned without glass.

Since scanning them a few years ago, it has irked me that they had not been scanned to their full potential. So, a few weeks ago, I took the bull by the horns and decided to remove all the other superslides from their mounts and scan them again.

At this stage I hit a problem. I could remount those in plastic mounts with glass easily enough, but those in the bound-edged glass I could not. Easy, I thought, I will buy some new superslide mounts for those bound fully in glass. Not so easy, as it turned out because superslide mounts are no longer in production by the likes of Gepe. So I had to find a stop-gap measure and a long-term solution to storing those re-scanned transparencies.

I opened the glass-bound slides by slitting the tape along the edge of three sides and removing the inner mask and transparency. After scanning, the slide was reassembled and closed along the bottom edge only using a piece of self-adhesive black tape of the same width as the old tape over the old tape. The slide was no longer flat because of the extra thickness so this was a stop-gap measure. The only reliable source of Superslide mounts is eBay and when they appear they are not cheap. However, I have been able to obtain sufficient to remount all my superslides originally mounted in glass and not plastic.

The transparencies from the edge-bound glass mounts are now in GEPE
glazed mounts (left). Others were returned to their 1960s F&P colour
glazed mounts (right)

Before going on to how I scanned these slides, I should say that they were either Agfacolor CT18 (not Agfachrome — Agfa did not then use chrome to denote a reversal film) or Ektachrome X.

How I scanned these Superslides will be the subject of my next post.