Peaks or plateaus – Light sources for DSLR scanning color negatives

Many people like to shoot film, but enjoy their images in the digital domain and the possibilities it warrants for post-processing, printing, etc. This means that the film images need to be scanned, and using a DSLR to do this has become very popular in recent years. But it does bring up some questions – mainly: what’s the best way to do this? And in particular, if you photograph a backlit negative, what kind of backlight would be preferable? I’m going to reflect on this for a bit on a theoretical basis.

Continue reading “Peaks or plateaus – Light sources for DSLR scanning color negatives”

Aching, flaking – A persistent problem with carbon DAS highlights

The problem that just won’t go away: disappearing highlights on DAS carbon prints. Twice so far I’ve declared this problem solved on my blog, only to have to revoke my ‘eureka’ shortly afterwards. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been systematically testing the process to find a cure. So far, to very little avail, I’m afraid. But perhaps that this writeup will (1) help me re-think the problem and (2) it’ll give some hints to anyone else struggling with DAS carbon problems by listing factors that can/should be evaluated.

Continue reading “Aching, flaking – A persistent problem with carbon DAS highlights”