Bean said:
Will any VueScan user share with us what kind of settings do you use when faced with negatives or slides that have no profiles? Will appreciate it lots!
Firstly, I would like to make clear that I am not using a Nikon film scanner but a Minolta Dual 3. I used both Vuescan and Minolta defecto software. Everytime I try to scan negative with Vuescan, the colour looks really pale and flat. Even the colour correct and film selector/filter options doesn't seem to help. On the other hand, when I tried scanning negative with Minolta's software, the colour turned too vivid which is not the actual replication of the "real thing". IMHO, Vuescan is really over-rated for effective for negative. The only thing Vuescan is good is the different profiles in the setting.
If you are really mission critical, you can actually shoot an ITC-8 target with the film/slide to "profile" your film and scanner. however, you also need to profile your scanner so that your film profile will be accurate. This is good if you have a large volume of the same batch and type of film else it will not be useful at all as there are always slight difference and randomness in films in different batches.
If there is no profile for the film I use, personally, I would rather use the default Minolta software to do the work. But later I still need to spend a lot of time to do post processing. THis is for negative only.
If slides, just use your default software. Colours in slides are suppose to be what it is and there is no critical need to "profile" slides unless you want remove the warm or cool characteristics and slight colour shift of your slides. These colour shift and saturations are the "strength" of slides and should be used to our advantage. If you "profile" it and remove away such characteristics, there really isn't any need to shoot with slides.
For instance, the ultimate goal is to use a slide projector to project slides. In such setup, there are no colour calibration or profile. The audience will see the slides as it is. There is what slide presentation is all about.
The most important thing about film or slide scanning is to choose the appropriate colour space, monitor and printer profile. Failure to do this typically results in lousy digital print. Prints looks dull not because your printer is lousy but the incompatible setting both parties are using. My advise is: no matter how beautiful your scan picture look in your monitor, no matter how good Adobe RGB space is, it is pointless if your printer use and assume SRGB space for printing. You will lose all the vivid and vibrant colours in your print.
No offence please. My 2 cents.
Regards.