Re: digital proofing of negatives
I make my digital proofs with an Epson Perfection V700, a film-quality flatbed scanner, without removing the films out of the sleeves. I use clear polyethylene pages (PrintFile) and scan half page at a time. Use Vuescan or any other decent scanner software, adjust exposure and everything (make a profile), and make good use of the button on the scanner to make the process efficient. The resolution isn't that great because of the plastic pages and also imperfect contact/flatness, but why bother. I think I use 800-1200dpi range for scanning. Also, if you do color negatives or slides, the color is almost guaranteed to be wrong and there is no good way to correct it. It works well enough for b&w, at least just as good as sandwitching on a piece of photographic paper to make contact proof, but you'll get more details. If any of the tabloid scanners could scan transparent material of about 8x12 inches or larger, you could speed up the process at twice the cost of the scanner. (But I doubt any of then would do that...) More of a problem is how to manage the proof images thus obtained. Lightroom is a wrong tool... but don't know what's a better option for this. -- Ryuji Suzuki "Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content." (Bob Dylan, Brownsville Girl, 1986)
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