Transcripts
1. Intro to Digital Scanning: Have you ever wanted to scan your film using a
digital camera, but had absolutely no idea
where to get started? This process is
incredibly efficient. More importantly, provides you
some professional results. In this course, we will
teach you how to utilize a digital camera and how to
scan your film doing so. So at the end, you can
get an amazing photograph that you can post in your
home or even online. This process is incredibly
easy. It is fun. It is efficient, and
we'll be breaking down everything you need to know from the things
that you need, your settings, and, of course, on how to obtain that amazing
look in your final image. So let's get started, and I'll see you in class number one.
2. Things You Need: Now let's talk about
the different things that we'll need for this course, starting off with
a digital camera. This digital camera
does not have to be a brand new state of the
art Mirrorless camera. You can actually shoot
with an older DSLR, as long as your camera has the ability to go
in manual mode, to be able to
adjust your F Stop, your shutter speeds, and your ISO and also allows
you to shoot in raw. Shooting in raw
is very important in this method because
you want to obtain as much information in your overall photograph
of the negative. So the negative conversion
software can work efficiently and be
able to essentially add whatever settings are
needed without it causing your overall film to look kind of odd or strange in
that final conversion. Your camera should also allow
you to swap out lenses, meaning that you can swap out between different focal lengths. That way you can photograph different film formats like
35 and, of course, 120. Next up, let's talk
about the lenses that you'll need
for this course. I'm only going to be
utilizing one lens, which is a 100
millimeter prime lens. That is the key word
is a prime lens. Those lenses that come
with your camera, which are generally
the default ones or the ones that come in when
you buy your camera are not going to work because those
zoom lenses do not have the ability to go macro like
a 100 millimeter prime lens. So that's the one thing you
will need to keep in mind. Now, a 100 millimeter
prime lens is perfect for 35 millimeter film because it gets you to a
one to one ratio, which means that you're
going to be utilizing the entire camera sensor, allowing you to
take advantage of whatever megapixels your
camera has to be able to get very large scale files and also obtain a lot of information
in your final image. It also will work very well with 120 film with the downside
that you will need to take multiple photographs
of your 120 and stitch them together in your choice
of editing software. But it will work really well, and it still will generate
some beautiful file sizes, and it will generate a lot of information that you can
really take advantage of. Next up is a copy stand. Now, copy stands are where a lot of people may
run into issues. Unfortunately, copy
stands can run into the hundreds if not
thousands of dollars, depending on what brand
you end up going with. The one I have here
is, I believe, $140, and if you don't
have the budget for one of these, it's
completely understandable. I linked a YouTube video in
the things that you'll need for this course in
the PDF attached, where it takes you to
a YouTube video that I actually created
that will allow you to make your own DIY copy stand for a much more
reasonable price, and it'll require a cutting
board and some items you can find at your
local hardware store. But these are very efficient because they
allow you to move the camera up and
down via knobs, and it really, really overall
elevates your productivity, which is something that's very
important in this process. Your camera, you will
also need something known as a hot shoe
mound leveler. And what this will do
is allow your camera to be level and ensuring that
your camera remains level. One of the biggest issues
with digital scanning is your camera not being completely
leveled over the film, which can cause some
pretty significant issues, such as areas of
your film not being in focus or just having some strange effects happening with that not being completely
level above the film. So this will prevent
that from happening, and it will ensure that all
of your images are level and looking very good as you go through your entire
film as a whole. Now, let's talk about
the things that you're going to need below your camera, starting off with a light table. Now, light tables are
highly affordable, and these just produce light. So it will illuminate through your negative carrier and illuminate your film that will
be in the carrier itself, which we will talk about next. But make sure that
you do get one. You can find these
very cheap at a lot of retail online stores
and photo stores. Just make sure that
it's bright enough to be able to light the
negative itself. And of course, using iPads and iPhones will
not be suitable. Those have something known
as pixels within the frame, within the actual device itself, and those will actually
appear through the negative. And when you photograph it, you're going to have
softening, lack of contrast. And just some odd things
going on with the colors. So make sure that you
just get yourself a light table. I'll
save you a headache. Next thing you'll need
is a negative carrier. Now, these negative carriers, unfortunately, are generally
a little bit expensive. And the reason
behind that is there are not a lot of companies
that create these. The art of digital
scanning is not something that's relatively old. It's pretty new in the
last five or so years. And because of that, there are very few companies that are producing the parts to essentially hold
your film in place. Negative carriers
are really great because what they do
is allow you to hold, they allow your
negative to remain completely flat depending on the product you
end up going with. And that is very important, especially when you're
photographing your film. If your film is curved, concaved or anything like that, your final image may look incredibly out of focus
and it will not look good. So investing in a good negative carrier
is highly recommended. There are a ton out there
that you can go for but make sure you find one
that is going to be fitting your
overall workflow. They come in 35 millimeter film. 120 film can be a
little bit more challenging because
some of these companies will
nickel and dime you, meaning that if you're shooting
in six by seven format, you may have to buy
a mask for that. If you're shooting in
six by six format, you might have to buy a mask for that and so on and so forth. So make sure the company
you're going with allows you to fluctuate between different settings
or different films. Up, you're going to need
a shutter release cable or a shutter release remote. If you don't want
to invest in one of these, completely
understandable. I know that there are some camera companies
that will charge an arm and a leg for a shutter
release cable or remote. And if that's the
case, you can always utilize the two second delay
that is on your camera, and that will do the
same exact thing. You just want to make
sure that you're not holding the
camera while you're doing that because it will
introduce microjitters, which will make your
overall final image look fuzzy or blurry. And lastly, is a negative
conversion software. This is where it gets really tricky because unfortunately, there are some that are tied to specific companies which will require you to have
a subscription, which is similar to the one that we're going to be
talking about now. We're going to be
using Negative Lab Pro in this particular course. It's one of my
favorite programs for the reason that it emulates
different scanners, like the frontier scanner
and the Nitsu scanner. These scanners are tens
and thousands of dollars, which are way outside
of the consumer budget. And it allows you to dial
in your settings very easily on top of the fact
that when I am scanning, I'm tethering my computer I'm tethering my camera
to my computer, which really makes my
workflow very efficient. But if you don't want to purchase one that is tied to a subscription
based service, you can get freestanding
software that does exist. There are some companies
that do create these, and I'll link those below in the things that you'll
need in this course. You can explore
those on your own. It's generally going to be a
one time, $160 investment. And then after that, you can have that on
your desktop and you can just scan without
utilizing any type of software, which is generally very great. So now that we've gone ahead and discussed
everything that we need, let's set everything
up so you get an understanding of what
this workflow looks like.
3. Setting Up : We've gone over all the
things that we need. Now we're going to go ahead and assemble everything so you can see how easy this
process is to set up. Now, the first thing
you're going to do is get your copy stand or
your DIY copy stand, whichever route
you decided to go. And the first step is to ensure that your camera
is also prepped, making sure that you have
the correct focal length on your actual camera. In this case, we're
going to be using a 100 millimeter lens. And what I actually like to do is I like to add the
lens hood to it. That way, it prevents
any external light from hitting the lens, which can create some flaring if you're doing 120 in particular. With 35 millimeter film,
you don't really see that, but in case you do, always attach the
lens hood on it, and that's going to help
you pretty significantly. On your DIY copy stand or
your legitimate copy stand, you're going to see a
knob with a thread on it, and you're going to match that to the bottom of your camera, which is generally
going to be used for tripod attachments
and things like that. So you'll go ahead and attach the camera to your copy stand, like, so and then
once you do this, you're going to go
ahead and add in your bubble level
that's going to go directly on the hot shoe mount, so this is going to help, so your camera is not two to the left, not two to the right, and just making sure that
it's perfectly centered right over your negative carrier
and your light table. Another very important thing is to make sure that you are on a stable and durable top that way if somebody
bumps into the table, or if you accidentally
bump into the table, it doesn't shake violently. So make sure that
you are scanning on something a
little bit stable. That way, you don't have
to run into that issue. Once you have this set up, you're going to go ahead
and get your light table, whether you have a smaller one or if you go with a larger one, if you are going to be going
with a larger light table, I always recommend
that you cut out kind of cut out the size of it. That way you can put your negative holder above it
with that specific cutout. The reason behind that is that you don't want to introduce any additional any
additional glare on to the lens itself. And this room itself,
believe it or not, is a little too bright
to be scanning in. I would definitely be scanning
in a room that's a little bit less lit and a
little bit more dark. That way, you don't have any
outstanding outside light hitting the lens
and causing issues. So generally when I'm scanning, it's in a much darker room
or in a less light room. Maybe I would close
the blinds that way. I can control the lighting
a little bit better. But you have that set once
you have your light table in, you're going to go ahead and
turn your light table on. And then once you do so, you're going to go ahead and add in your negative carrier. Now, these negative
carriers look very different depending on the
brand that you go with. They have the 35
millimeter and the 120. So in this particular case, you'll go ahead and add in your negative carrier
to the light table. And you can see with
this specific light, there is no external light
that is hitting the lens. The only light that is
actually reflecting onto the lens is what's coming directly from
underneath this light, nothing from the sides,
which is very important. Once this is all set and done, you'll have your shutter
release remote here, and then you can start
essentially taking photographs. It's really that simple. There's really going to be
no other aspects of this. If you do have a camera
that requires you to attach a control like so,
make sure you do that. But you're pretty much set. And this is pretty
much the setup process for your scanning system. Next, we'll talk about settings.
4. Setting for Scanning: To the next portion
of the course. Now we're going to talk
about the fun part, which is going to be
actually scanning your film. And in this portion, we're going to be talking about
the settings. We're going to be talking
about histograms, and more importantly,
how to make sure that your images are always in focus. Let's start off
with the settings. We're going to be
talking about the FSTop, ISO and shutter speed. Two of these settings will
always remain consistent, and that will be your
ISO and your FSTop. Your shutter speed
will always vary depending on the type
of camera you have and what you will be shooting
with when it comes to your ISO and your FSOp. Let's get started with the
actual settings themselves. First, let's start
with the FSTop. Generally, you should
always be shooting between F eight and F 11. And the reason that
you want to stick with these two
settings is because this is generally
going to be the sharpest that your lens
will be able to produce, and it's also going
to ensure that your entire negative
is in focus. Next, let's talk about your ISO. ISO is always going
to remain consistent, but it's always going to vary depending on the camera
that you're using. For example, the camera
that I have here is going to be a Cannon
R six mark two. It's a much newer
Mirrorless camera. And when this is
shot at ISO 400, there is not much
visible difference from shooting at ISO 100. It's all going to depend
on the camera you have. If you do happen to have
an older DSLR camera, you may have to shoot
at a lower ISO. Just so you don't introduce any grain into your final image. When it comes to
scanning your negative, you always want to make sure
that we're actually getting the grain of the film and
not any digital noise. So this is where ISO
gets very tricky. My biggest recommendation
is that if you do have a much newer
Mirrorless camera, I would start at ISO 400
and then also do an example shot at ISO 100 to see if there's any
variating differences. Here is this exact example here. One of these images was shot at ISO 100 while the other
was shot at ISO 400. You can see that
there is visibly no difference between these two. And if we go ahead and
add in the results, you can see that it's very challenging to tell
which is which. And you're probably wondering, why would you want to shoot
at a much higher ISO? And that is because when you
shoot at a much higher ISO, it allows you to use much
higher shutter speeds, which will reduce
the shake that can occur when you are
scanning your film. So if you are having to shoot at a lower ISO, for example, if you have a much older DSLR, I would start at ISO 100
and then make your way up. And the reason that I
would do this is because a lot of the older
cameras will start introducing digital grain or noise into the image
at around ISO 400. The one downside of
shooting at much lower ISOs is that you are going
to have to utilize much lower shutter speeds. So keep in mind that
you will have to use either the two second
delay on your camera or you will need to utilize
a shutter release remote. And lastly, is your
shutter speed. This is always going to vary depending on the camera
that you're using, and the settings that I have
on my camera may be very different from the settings that you're going to be
using on your camera. So next, let's go ahead and
talk about histograms and understanding these
to make sure that you are getting an
accurate exposure. When it comes to histograms, it's very important that
you're able to read these to make sure you're
getting accurate exposures. You always want to make
sure that you're not over exposing or under
exposing your negative, as this will cause adverse
reactions when you put it into your negative
conversion software. So let's get started
let's get started on a well lit image,
which is this one here. You can tell by this by just
looking at the histogram. You can see that the
overall variables are slightly in the centered, but you can see that
there is no there are no variating differences too much to the left or
too much to the right. Doing so can create
either the issue of blowing out your highlights
or clipping your shadows, which you'll lose detail, which is something
that you don't want to do when it comes to
converting your negative. So always rely on
that histogram. This is a good example
of one that is lit well, and here are two that are
way too either highlights if we're overexposed or your shadows are
completely crushed. So these are things that you
do have to keep in mind. Now, if you are
not experienced in reading histograms or maybe this is the first time that
you're looking at these, you can always experiment
by just adjusting your shutter speed until you see an evenly lit negative and then taking example
shots like so. That way you can get
kind of an idea of what's a good exposure
and bad exposure. And this is also going to
teach you about the histogram, which is going to be very
important when it comes to photographing your
negative correctly. Lastly, if you are
going to be utilizing a negative converting software
like Negative Lab Pro, it is always advised that you shoot all of your images in raw. When you shoot in raw, it gathers all of the information from the
actual negative and image, and the file is uncompressed, which means that when you enter this into your editing software, it's going to be able to do
everything more accurately. If you do happen to
shoot in a JPEG, your camera does all the work of compressing the file,
adjusting things, and this may not work very well with some editing softwares, as it will mess with the
colors and not really give you an accurate representation
of the color of the film. Always make sure that you review the editing software
guidelines and follow those to make
sure that you get the best results when it
comes to scanning your film. Lastly, let's talk about focus. This is going to
be obviously one of the more critical aspects of digital scanning because you want to make sure that you're getting accurate
and sharp images. Now, because we're
going to be shooting at an F Stop eight or 11, the image itself is
already going to be sharp. We just need to now
focus in and dial in on the actual manual focus. I know that you're going
to be tempted to want to use the auto focus, and I know you're probably
going to be thinking, but the cameras
today are much more advanced. Can I just use that? The answer to that is no, you should not use
the auto focus. Although the technology
has gotten very advanced, you still may run into issues with the way
that it focuses. A lot of times it could focus
on the edges of the film, on dust, or it
could even focus on the actual base of the film
and not the actual grain. Which can cause a bit of an issue when it
comes to sharpness. The biggest tip that
I can recommend is just like this
camera is set up here. It is set up at the
appropriate angle. What you would do is essentially set your camera to the
appropriate angle, and on your camera, there's going to be a magnifying glass. You will go ahead and
utilize that to zoom in as far as you
can and then make microadjustments
until you're able to essentially focus in on the
grain of the film itself. This is a very similar
technique that you would use in a dark room if you were doing dark room printing,
using an enlarger, you would have a grain
focuser on the paper, and then you would essentially
do micro adjustments to the enlarger until you are fully focused in on
the grain itself. This is going to give you
the most accurate print and also the sharpest possible. So just keep that in mind. If you are shooting
much lower ISO films, and this is in black and white, for example, anything
lower than 50, and in color film, anything
lower than anything 100 and finding the overall grain may be a little bit more
challenging, but it is there. So just take your time
locating that so you get the best overall
and sharpest image. If you're wondering
if you have to do this for every exposure, this is all going
to be dependent on your negative holder that
you decided to purchase. Some negative holders
do an amazing job of keeping the film
consistently flat, while others may not do that. So my biggest recommendation
is what you can do is on the first negative
on the first frame, just have the grain focused
and then do another one, and then just kind of test to see if it's still
focused on there. If your film is concave, folded, curled, or just has
a lot of tension, this is where issues
start to build, so you will have to
more than likely audit every single frame just to make sure that
you're not getting things that are out of focus. And then for those of you
that do have cameras that have the focus peaking on it, where it shows you what's in focus and what is
not by showing red, you can also utilize that
to your advantage as well, especially if you're
having issues, finding the grain
on lower ISO film, so that can be very
helpful as well. But the end goal is
to always rely on the manual focus and
never the auto focus because doing so can actually impact the overall
sharpness of your negative. When you are scanning your film, it is very important
that depending on the software
that you're using, that you include a
little sections of the space between the frames
to be able to white balance. Lightroom Negative Lab
Pro does require this, and it's the best way
to make sure that the color algorithm when you put it into the software
works correctly. So make sure if you
are going to be using a program like
Negative Lab Pro that you do save a little bit of a space between the frames to be able to white
balance your negative. What you can technically do is just kind of do this
at the very beginning, take a photograph of the
frame between, save that. And then what you
can do is you can just copy and paste
the white balance that entire roll of film with the intent that it's
only for that role. Every single black
and white stock may have a different
white balance base, so make sure that you
keep that in mind. So, for example, with this
role that I have here, this is a role of
Kodak Trix 400. I would photograph the
space between the film, and then once I put this
into my editing software, I would select that role
only and then paste the white balance to make
things a little bit more efficient so you're not doing
it on every single frame, and then you can just focus on the conversion aspect of it. To start scanning your film, the next thing that you
are going to have to do is to get something
known as a rocket blow. These are really
critical for moving dust off of your
negative and will actually reduce the editing
time when you're actually converting and then exporting
your image into Photoshop. So you'll just simply dust
off the overall frame. And then once you
have everything set, what you're going to do is once you have everything
set up correctly, you'll essentially
align your film. And if you are utilizing
a 100 millimeter lens, this is where you're
going to try to fit the overall negative within the frame itself or within
the sensor to fill up as much as possible so you
take advantage of the sensor. So if you look here
on the screen, this is what it
should look like. You can include a little
bit of the edges. If you want to have that
creative black edge or the black frames around it. You can totally do that. If
you want to have it more, so it's just the frame only, you can always just
essentially adjust the Zoom to fix your
frame within it. And then, of course,
complete the overall. Dust removal, and then you will just continue to move frame by frame by frame until you
finish the overall role. Next up, let's go ahead and talk about stitching
film for those of you that are interested in that process and may
want to explore.
5. Stitching 120 Film : Part of the course is
actually not mandatory and more of a learning tool if you would like to
do this practice. We're going to be going
over something known as stitching in this
portion of the course. Now, stitching or merging is something that you
can do with 120 film, and it's a bit more of
an advanced practice, but it's always great to
know if you want to get more higher quality negative
scans or if you want to get larger files for printing
or maybe you go to a shop and you want to get a
very large print and they're asking for a
specific file size. This can be really
helpful in that aspect. This essentially
entails is dividing up your image and
photographing it separately. And then when you put this
into your editing software, you will either do something
known as emerge or panorama, and then it will stitch
the image together to make one large massive negative that you can easily put into
your conversion software. Will be very honest with you. This is not a practical
thing to do for websites or small prints. This is more of an
advanced technique for individuals that
are out trying to get very detailed and nitty
and gritty exposures of negative of your
overall negative, and you want to be able to
print massive or you want to be able to really hone
in on all the details. This is what you
would essentially do. So what you would do
in this situation is that you would essentially
have to figure out a way to divide
your negative into however many
photographs you want. And what you would have to do in this situation is on
the camera itself, you would turn on the
grids, and then from there, you would essentially use those grids to divide
the film up evenly. So when you stitch
up your negative, it essentially creates
a cohesive image that's not missing any portions. Generally, generally, the one that I will do
is a total of four. Since I am shooting six
by seven film at times, I will do one corner
each and then merge it together to make one
pretty decent size file. If I am, like in a mood where I want to
photograph, you know, a very if I want to photograph a negative that I want
to have a big file on, I can either do nine, which would be three, six, nine, divide the film into
three different planes, and then take three photographs across and then merge
those together. Just keep in mind
when you do this, it does make some pretty
massive file sizes. I think the record I have
right now is about a gigabyte, which is pretty massive
for one photograph. So make sure you have
the storage for this. And again, this is not a very practical thing to
do unless you are really trying to get a lot of information out
of the negative, and you need that
specific file size for something very
unique or specific. Generally, this type of file
size won't work on websites, and it probably won't
make your website crash. And even if you do
decide to use this, like in social media, it will probably compress
that file regardless. But I just wanted to
note that out there. So the way this
process would work, after you essentially have
your grid on your camera, you would essentially move your light table below it to match whatever
grid you have. And you would do this
until you have scanned the entire photograph or photographed the
entire negative. And then once this is complete, you would use your
editing software, merge it together, and that
would create the final image. Now, there is one thing
I do want to note about this process is
that this generally works very well with
black and white film. Because with black
and white film, we're only focusing on density
and not any color layers. When you do this
with color film, it does tend to be a little
bit more challenging. So I do want to throw
that out there. If you are planning on
merging and putting together a lot of different color images or if
you have a role of, you know, for
example, color film and you want to divide
it into multiple images. When you stitch
everything together, even though you're using
the same camera settings, you're using the
same light source and you're not
changing anything, those variating layers
of color will create shifts in some cases when you put that into your negative
conversion software. So this is where tricky things
really start to happen. So be really careful
with color film. And if you are planning on
doing this with color film, please have the patience to be able to ensure that you can color correct it because that is something that
I've come across. And this is a very
common thing that happens when you decide
to stitch like this because the overall software can't essentially determine the different variables
and average them out, and they're kind of left
kind of in this weird state. So when you do convert it or
use a conversion software, sometimes colors can look a
little bit oversaturated. So just something
to keep in mind. With black and white, very
simple, very seamless, you can make very
large file sizes and create a lot of detail. It's just with
color that requires a little bit more attention to detail and a little
bit more work in the editing aspect when you
get into your software. With that being said, let's jump in to the
computer and let's do some final color adjustments and finally convert
our first image.
6. Converting Black and White: Finally at the conversion
portion of the course. This is probably
my most exciting part where we're going
to be going over the negative conversion
software and go over the tips and tricks on how to get your negatives
looking accordingly. Now, what I went ahead
and did was actually separate out both color
and black and white. That way, you can review
those independently and you don't get overwhelmed. And also, if you're not a
black and white photographer, you can do color,
and if you're not a color photographer, you
can do black and white. So in this tool in this
portion of the course, we're going to be using
Negative Lab Pro, which is the primary
editing software that I use for
converting negatives. It is an extension that
works with Lightroom, so you will have to
buy Negative Lab Pro, and then it connects
to Lightroom, and then you can use
it within that system. I generally use
this system because I use Lightroom for
generally everything, and it just works
with my workflow. But that's generally how
this overall software works. I believe it's $99, and it comes with two
different licenses. I'm not sponsored by
them or anything. I just use this program a lot, and I generally like it, so
I like to let others know. So, also, I do want to
give a full disclosure. This is not going to be
a full depth tutorial on how to use Negative Lab Pro. It's going to be more
of the tools that I use and where to get
you to a good point and things that you
can use within it. I will touch base on different
things within the tool, but I'm not going to be going into, like, extensive detail. So you also don't get
overwhelmed with information. So with that, said,
let's jump right into Lightroom and start playing around with
Negative Lab Pro. And this is actually going to be converting a black
and white image. So, the first thing you're
going to see when you open up your editing software
or in this case, Lightroom is all of
your negatives that you have gone ahead
and photographed. The first thing that
you're going to do, and this is going to
be generally with Negative Lab Pro is you're
going to be shooting in raw. And when you get your
negative into the software, you're going to utilize the edge of the film
to wipe balance. This is why in the
settings portions, I always advise to make sure you save a little
bit of the edge. This is going to be
primarily used for essentially color white
balancing your film, like so. So this is going to be
very helpful to get you the correct colors when you essentially utilize
Negative Lab Pro. Now, when you don't do this, you may have a little
bit of a weird reaction where the colors may be wrong, especially with color negative. With black and white, it
can be a little forgiving, but just make sure that
you do do that regardless. After you go ahead and white balance your negative
you're going to go ahead and crop in to the
actual negative itself. You don't want to
include the edges unless you adjust the buffer
on the borders. But for the most part,
I usually will zoom in or just do only the negative because the edges
are going to be incorporated when the system does the work of converting it. So it will consider
those white edges, and it can either
brighten your image or make weird color shifts. So always make sure
that you're zooming in. Once you do that, you're
going to go ahead and open Negative Lab Pro by
using the shortcut or by going down under File plugins and then
selecting the program. And then once you do so,
it's going to bring up the Negative Lab Pro tool
bar that's going to be here. Now, since we're going to be
converting black and white, we're only going to be
using the B plus W. I know on here you have the
frontier and the Nitsu scanner. Those are going to be
primarily for color. And if you do accidentally
choose these, you may have some
strange color shifts that will happen
with your negative. So for black and white, just leave it under black and white. And here's where you can adjust your border buffer
if you want to include your border during the negative conversion process, you're more than welcome
to increase that. I just leave it at the 5%.
That's generally fine. Once you have
everything set, you'll go ahead and click
Convert Negative, and then that's
going to essentially convert your negative
into a working image. Now, with black and white, it is the easiest
kind of process because you're only working
with density versus color, you're working with
different layers, and that can be pretty
tricky in some situations. So with black and
white negatives, it's a very easy process. And around 99% of the time, you're always going to have
a pretty decent looking negative that you
don't really need to do any adjustments to. And this one looks like
it's saved adjustments from a previous setting
that I put in here. But I think I selected one
of these tone profiles, which I'll talk about
in just a minute. So, generally, when it
comes to black and white, the only three sliders
I generally will mess with is the exposure,
brightness and contrast. Once you get a little bit more situated and feel a little bit
more on the advanced side, you can create your own presets, which you can save up here. This is very helpful,
for example, if you're shooting a
specific film stock. Like, for example, if
you're going to be shooting Ilford HP five
plus at box speed, and you're able to figure out some cool little recipe that is going to make your
work look consistent, you can actually
save those profiles by messing around with the
sliders, coming in here, and then creating a new preset, and then you can name it and
select it in the future. So very helpful. But
for the most part, when it comes to black
and white negatives, I don't generally
like to over process, and I generally
like to make sure that things look intentional. So that's generally where I'll mess with the tone profiles. Now, these tone profiles can do a variety of different
things to your negative. So this is where you'll
take some time to just kind of look through these and see which one looks best for you. I generally will always
select just the lab standard, and then from here, just make any minor adjustments
is needed, like, increasing a little bit of the contrast or
things like that, just to kind of brighten
the image a little bit, especially if I accidentally
underexposed or something. So very helpful to
have that here. And then you also
have the option up here to select different, even more unique profiles, like if you want to
match it to a specific, you know, color, if you're
going to be printing on these types of printers
or satin pure, I just generally will leave it on the black and white standard. But you're more than welcome to explore all of these options. And this is exactly why
I'm not going to be doing a full length tutorial
on this program. There is just so much in here that you can utilize
and explore and really make the negative your negative and kind of
adjust your style. Down here is the white
balance section. This is going to be more
for, like, color negative. So if you do happen to come
in here and select something or accidentally
select automix or, you know, this Kodak, you might get these weird
color shifts that can occur. So I usually don't mess around with that
and usually leave it at none and just work with
the top sliders here. As a beginner, these are the top three you're probably
going to work with, but this is the aspect of
negative of black and white. There's really not too
much complexity to it, which makes it a
very easy stock to start with and scan with
and get confident with. But with that being
said, let's jump into the world of
color negative.
7. Converting Color: Welcome to the color
negative portion of the conversion process. Now, before we jump in to converting your
first color negative, I do want to just give a
little bit of disclosure. If this is your first time ever editing negative color
film and converting it, it is a bit of a different
process from black and white, because with black
and white film, you're only dealing with
density with color, we're going to be balancing
different color tones within the actual negative
or the different layers. And this is where things
get really tricky. With color negative film, you are essentially
battling a lot of different things from
the actual film stock, which has its own general
shifts, different lighting, and you can't forget the miracle of the chemical process
that it goes through. So all of these different things you're
going to be fighting, and there are a lot
of possibilities that when you convert
your negative, you're going to see what's
known as color shifts. Things that don't
look right, and this is where you have
to make sure that you're giving yourself a lot of patience and really
just taking this as a learning opportunity
because this process can be a bit intensive and it
can be a bit intimidating. But I'm hoping that after
I go over this with you, you'll feel confident enough
to be able to go in and essentially be able to
convert your first negative, you know, with confidence
and more importantly, get the results that you need. So if you do happen to scan your film and you're wondering, Oh, my God, these
colors look really bad. What's going on, generally, it's because it needs a little
bit of either adjusting. This is where color negative has a little bit more work as far as editing and
color correction. It's very important that
you don't skip this part. When you drop off your
negatives at a laboratory, they will do the
work of, you know, making sure the temperature
looks accurate and everybody has their
own unique styles of essentially editing. So make sure that you're
always aiming for a natural look and
more importantly, a not too processed look. You still want to be able to
essentially see all of the, all of the different
unique colors and the different things that color negatives can provide to you. So with that being
said, let's jump right into our editing software, which in this case, is
going to be Lightroom, and we're going to essentially start converting our
first color negative. Now, when you first open up Negative Lab Pro
in this situation, we're going to do the same
exact thing we did previously. We're going to grab our
white balance tool, and then we're going
to go ahead and select the outer edge to white
balance your negative. With color, you do
the same exact thing. Go ahead and crop in to
make sure you do not include the sides in your
negative in your process, because if you do this, it can mess with the way that it's
going to get converted. So always make sure that
you're cropping in. After you do this,
you'll go ahead and open up the Negative
Lab Pro software. Once it opens, now
you're going to have the option to go through
different scanners. So now you're going
to have the option to choose the Nuritsu and
the frontier scanner. The Nuritsu scanner does
really well with skin tones. So if you're doing photographs of people or groups of people, the Nitsu scanners
going to shine because it gives you very
realistic skin tones, and it just gives you
a very, very vivid colors which are very
good for that situation. Frontier scanner
has a little bit more of a punchy,
contrasty look, which works really well with landscapes and different types
of environments like that. So explore between the both. Check out which one
is better for you. I always use Noritsu. I'm going to use
it right now, even though this is a landscape, but feel free to explore
both of those to see which ones generate a look
that you generally like. So with that said, let's go ahead and
convert the negative. And once the software
does its work, this is the exact thing that you may see with color negatives. You can see that this picture
does not look right at all. It looks like it's a little
bit too on the blue side, maybe a little bit
too much green. And this is generally
something that can happen with color film. The other thing to keep
in mind is that this is actually a 120 negative that
has been stitched together. So more than likely
that might be another issue on why the
colors look a little strange. Regardless, we're going
to teach you how to fix this and kind of get you
into that confident groove. Of essentially getting
a good negative. Now, the first thing that I generally will do
when it comes to Negative Lab Pro
is that you'll see there are a ton of
different things on here. For this part of the course, I want you to focus down here on the
temperature and tint. And then we're
going to talk about the mid tones and the highlights as well to kind of go over the different
things you can do. And you can also
adjust the shadows in here as well if that's
something you'd like to do, but I generally don't
really do that. I generally just work
with the white balance, the mid tones, and
the highlights. There are some cool
things that you can do on here and that
you can explore once you get more confident and once you get a little more
confident in the tool. And that is these different
white balance options here that you can utilize
and scroll through. These are designed to get you
to a specific point where you can make some
minor tweaks and then your overall
negative looks good. But for this situation, we're just going to do it
a little manually so you get an idea of how
easy and simple this can be. Now, you will go down
here to the temperature, and this is where
you're going to start messing around with some things. And as you start converting
color negatives, you're going to quickly
start to realize that, Oh, this specific type of negative needs a little bit more yellow, a little bit more magenta, or, oh, it needs a little bit more blue or a little
bit more green. So you'll get more
confident in this process. But for this situation, we're
going to edit the negative, similar to what it looked
like when I shot it. And that's what I always
recommend you do. Always edit your film to the
day that you remembered it. That way, it entices a bit
of an emotion with you, and it also can generate some pretty emotional
and powerful work. So in this situation
here, this was a very sunny day in
the Nevada desert. This grass here was very yellow. The sky was very blue, and I remember this
cavern being kind of a very brown and rundown color. So in this situation, I'm
going to go ahead and maybe move this slider
just a little bit. Now, these sliders should be moved very carefully and slowly. A little bit goes a long way. And then just start making some minor color adjustments here, oops. I gonna look crazy. Can't grab it. You can already see just by sliding these
around a little bit, you're already getting
to a really good place. And this is exactly
what I mean by just taking your time and just
exploring the tool as a whole. Don't feel discouraged
and just kind of work through the different color
shifts that you might see. Now, on here, you can go
ahead and start making some minor adjustments and just trying to get it to
how you remembered it. Now, realistically speaking, this already looks pretty good, maybe a little bit more
magenta like that. And then then I would go here to the midtones and start making some minor
adjustments here, and then just
trying to get it to a place where I
generally remember. It actually looks pretty
decent. I kind of like this. I would probably spend
a lot more time on it, just making some minor fixes, adjusting the
highlights, and just getting it to a place that
looks relatively good. So I feel like that kind of
healed the mood there, huh? So, this looks
pretty good for now. Still looks a little
bit too yellow for me, but we'll work through that as we start
editing the negative, as I start editing the
negative a little bit later. So back to the
White Balance tool. So here you do have
the option to select these different types of
options that are here. And these are really great to get you to a specific point, so you can just make
some minor adjustments and get to where you need to be, which is the most important
thing about color negative. You still have access
to all of these tones. So if you want to utilize these, you can definitely utilize
these to your heart's content. You can find different
things that you like in here or different types of
profiles that you like. And you can also create your own presets with color as well. Also have the option to select these other types of
emulators that are here, like Kodak gold if
you're shooting that. This, I believe, was Sinsyl. So these can actually be used to get you to a decent
place and you're editing in your overall style and trying to get you to
where you need to get to. But for the most part, I usually don't mess with those very much. So once you have figured out everything you like,
you will select apply. If you do happen to see little scratches or dust like this, you'll have to export this to your editing software to clean
it up like in Photoshop. Or something like
that, or you can utilize the tools within
your editing software to remove some of
these dust or specs or things that can occur
during the scanning process. Once it's done,
you'll select apply, and then it will essentially
apply all the things. There's a lot of things on
here you can check through including the different lab
things you can put on here. So it's definitely a
very comprehensive tool, which is exactly why I'm not going to really do a
full tutorial on this, maybe later, but not right now. So once it's all said and
done, you click Apply. And if you need to
make any adjustments, you do have to bring up the
Negative Lab Pro window, making adjustments
in the light room. Sliders here can make a pretty dramatic the slightest
little changes can make a big change. So just make sure
that you're utilizing the actual slider in the tool just to know
what you've done. Gets a little bit messy when you start messing with these, so just keep that in mind. That is essentially the world of converting color negative, just patience and messing with
the temperature and tint, as well as your midtones
and highlights to create a really wonderful
balanced looking image. With that being said, let's go ahead and talk about
other softwares that are not connected to
subscription based services, so you get an idea
of how those work.
8. Other Film Converting Software : I wanted to take a
moment now to talk about what's known as stand
alone software. This is software that is
not tied to any type of subscription based service
and instead just kind of lives on your desktop and you can open it up
whenever you need. The product that I'm
going to be going over is called filmoMat. Now, this is one of these stand alone softwares that
you can purchase. I believe Cinna Still makes one, and there are a few others that have similar standalone
software is like this. Unlike Negative Lab Pro, where you have to have
it tied to Lightroom. These programs, you make
a one time purchase. Filmomat I believe
is 167 pounds, which translates to
just to around $196. But once you download it,
you get access to all of their updates and
all of that good stuff. And this is pretty much what
this software looks like. So it's fairly clean in
the way that it works. And once you drop
in your negative, it will automatically
convert it for you, and it will even be able
to essentially auto crop all of your negatives as
well by removing the edges. So it's a very useful product, and it's also very easy to use. I wanted to go over this one specifically because of
how beginner friendly it also is and the fact that it's also just a
standalone software. So it's a pretty comprehensive overall system in the
way that it works. Now, for this particular one
here, this is only the demo. I never bought this product, but I remember when
it first came out, I did use it for a little bit, and I really did like it, so that's why I want
to recommend it. So this is what it looks
like with the color aspect, fairly simple, fairly
straightforward. And then once you
finish it, you can export them as a JPEG and, you know, essentially be able to do whatever you
need with them. But the overall concept pretty much remains
the exact same. Here, you'll make
minor adjustments by selecting these
little aspects here, and I believe you can program
these on your keyboard, as well, and you can you adjust the Magenta add
some scion Magenta. And be able to really make
some minor adjustments. This is a very, very
user friendly tool. You can also include
increase contrast, density, saturation. So a very useful product. I'm not going to do a
full tutorial on this, but I just wanted to show you editing or other converting softwares that you can
take a look at, as well. That way, as a
film photographer, you can kind of make a
good guess on what's going to work for you
and more importantly, what direction you're
going to steer in. So these ones, you can
mirror it so you can flip it around if you accidentally scanned
it incorrectly. Or if you scan your
film a reverse. So it has a very
pretty good interface. You can also, you know, clear your settings and
things like that. So it's very useful. So that's film a map. So I did want to go over the last method that you can definitely explore on your own, which is going to be
using the tone curves in your editing software
to get a working image. So let me show you
what that looks like now by going into an
editing software. That we're in our
editing software, you can also use
the tone curve here to essentially be able to
convert your negatives. I don't really want to
teach this because it is very non beginner friendly, and it's a very intensive part. It's a very intensive workflow, and it also creates very inconsistent work,
which I don't really like. But if you want to explore this, you can if you're
very familiar with the tone curves and have a lot of experience in this
and understand color, this is definitely a thing
that you can do on your own. This requires you to
essentially balance out all of the colors in order for you to get a
good working image. And to give you an idea of
how challenging this is, I'm going to go ahead and try to do this here really quickly. But you can see right
off the bat that, yeah, you can probably
get a decent image, but you have to do a lot of
work to get to that point. So you will have to essentially be able to understand all of these different aspects and be able to essentially
balance everything out. And that's where
things become very, very challenging
because this will take an excessive amount
of time because you will have to add every
color on your own. And it just creates
inconsistent work. And realistically speaking,
this is very unsustainable. So even if you
were, for example, to be able to get to
a place where things are okay and you created
your own preset, it's still quite a bit of work to get to where
you need to get to. That's why I always recommend a negative converting software
because it gets you to a point where you feel confident enough to make the adjustments and feel good about your work. Doing it this way does
have that challenge of essentially it does have
that unnecessary challenge, I feel, where it can
really be discouraging, which is why I don't normally want to I didn't want
to go over this, but I knew someone
probably asked. So, yes, you could do this. And if you are going
to do it this way, just make sure that
you have the patience to go between every single color and be able to apply that to every single
one of your negatives. So you may see a bit of a bump in how long things
generally take to do. But that option is there. With that said, let's go ahead and go to
the final project now that we've gone
over everything that we need to know about
negative conversion.
9. Final : Welcome to the final
portion of this course. Before I provide
the final project, I do want to say
thank you so much for sticking around and
reviewing the entire course. I'm hoping that you
now have the skill and the ability to scan your
own film at home using a digital camera
and applying all of the different skills
that we learned in the negative
conversion portion. For this project, I wanted
to keep it really fun. So in the My Project section, please be sure to upload an image that you
converted and photographed yourself and just describe why you chose this image
and where it was taken. So once again, thank you so
much for taking this course. Say creative, and I will see you in the next class. See you.
Eric Cabrera
