NikonGear'23
Gear Talk => Camera Talk => Topic started by: chambeshi on October 25, 2017, 19:23:50
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Test of slide scanner/digitizer on D850
https://petapixel.com/2017/10/24/review-nikon-d850s-negative-digitizer-isnt-ready-prime-time/
Firmware in need of upgrade to mitigate clipping in rendering the jpg: "The Nikon D850 is a great camera for conventional raw-workflow camera scanning. The sensor resolution, coupled with the absence of an anti-aliasing filter, produces an extremely detailed scan. But the in-camera conversion is not ready for prime time."
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Having read the article I agree: in camera D850 processing of negatives is not ready for prime time.
Dave
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I think the review is unduly negative. You can see why an archivist would see the D850 glass as half empty: for their needs it is not an advance over the D800, except in resolution. But expecting the D850 to do a good job scanning colour negatives is unrealistic. It takes a whole lot of skill and computer power to get good results scanning newly developed colour negatives. Why would anyone think that an algorithm using the limited computer power in a D850 would do a better or even adequate job? If you are talking about old colour negatives, the camera has no chance. Pretty much any colour negative that has been stored for a few years will have some colour shift because of cyan dye fading. The degree of fading depends on age and storage conditions, but any negative older than about 1980 is likely to be severely degraded. Any form of scanning of stored colour negatives will require a lot of post-processing to get an acceptable result.
For most people that fact that the camera did an excellent job with slides, and is clearly better than the D800 for that task, should be more important, because slides do not deteriorate as much in storage and were always a better and therefore a commoner choice for photographs intended for storage.
It is a pity that the in-camera conversions of negative film are not an advance, but anyone scanning either colour or B&W negatives now is using either out-of-camera RAW or scanner files that need a lot of adjustment in post-processing, so no one is worse off in any respect and everyone is better off in at least some respects - resolution, eg.
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But expecting the D850 to do a good job scanning colour negatives is unrealistic.
However expecting the D850 to have an option to deliver an NEF as an option is not unrealistic.
Wild guess: such an option would probably create a lot of telephone support so it's probably best for those wanting to scan color negatives to find their own work flow. Surely the cost of support is factored into the cost of the product. A dumb JPG slide scanner probably doesn't add much to the price of the D850.
Dave who is posting in his sleep.
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I think the review is unduly negative. ......
I don't think it is. I'm sure a better/easier method of reversal could have been defined/tweaked applied in camera.
.... But expecting the D850 to do a good job scanning colour negatives is unrealistic. ....
I don't see why. Smartphones can do this easily with an appropriate app .. just not as well captured in terms of final image quality(for the obvious reasons).
.... It takes a whole lot of skill and computer power to get good results scanning newly developed colour negatives. Why would anyone think that an algorithm using the limited computer power in a D850 would do a better or even adequate job? ....
I'm not quite sure what software you are used too, but if you use Nikon's software you would understand clearly how wrong this statement could be.
Had they(Nikon) done this in a better manner in camera(see my comments in the D850 review thread) .. there'd be no reason not to expect similar/same results in camera as you could achieve in software.
However expecting the D850 to have an option to deliver an NEF as an option is not unrealistic.....
And therein lies the crux of the problem ... a camera model directed at serious enthusiasts and dedicated professionals .. and a camera feature directed at the selfy type!
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like what was mentioned in another post, i felt that Nikon wanted to be first so they put this out half-cooked.
this happened with the D90 with the video feature :o :o :o
nobody remembered the D90 for that because the 5D2 stole the show ::)
I can ask the engineers when I see them if they are going to update this.
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I'm waffling a bit but without a NEF option this feature is not a feature intended for serious photographers.
If the camera can create a JPG it can also tag an NEF and generate a JPG preview so I don't think the reason for no NEF option is not technical.
Please pass the maple syrup...
Dave Hartman
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I'm not quite sure what software you are used too, but if you use Nikon's software you would understand clearly how wrong this statement could be.
Had they(Nikon) done this in a better manner in camera(see my comments in the D850 review thread) .. there'd be no reason not to expect similar/same results in camera as you could achieve in software.
Which software are you referring to? Nikon Scan 4? If so, it most certainly does not make scanning colour negatives easy or foolproof.
There are two problems specific to scanning colour negatives: the orange colour of the film base, and colour shifts caused by fading and staining.
Because of the orange colour of the film base, a straight colour inversion would produce a gross cyan cast, so you have to adjust for that in software. The problem is that the shade and intensity of the orange colour varies from film to film - and in many cases from batch to batch of the same film. Even if Nikon had a menu where you selected the film, that would not solve the problem because the camera does not know the colour of the light you are using (which a scanner does know). If your field of view went beyond the image area and included the sprocket holes, and the camera knew that, it might be able to work out the colour of the film base in the light you were using, but it does not know what the limits of your image are.
Colour negatives deteriorate with time. They suffer from light fading of dyes, and from dark staining (caused by darkening of un-reacted magenta dye coupler). The result is a colour cast in the negative, often yellow but occasionally blue-green, and a straight conversion will result in an unacceptable complementary colour cast in the positive. Pretty much any colour negative stored at room temperature for more than ten years will have a colour cast, and since most colour negatives being scanned now will be at least 20 years old, they are not going to give a satisfactory result without a lot of post-processing. There is no way the camera can correct for this problem.
As far as clipping goes, as in the colour negative and B&W negative scans shown in the review, that is an inherent drawback of mapping the straight line response of a digital sensor onto the characteristic curve of film.
If the digital sensor is aligned with the straight portion of the characteristic curve, so that the mid-tones are reproduced accurately, there must be clipping of the highlights and shadows. If the highlights and shadows are preserved, there must be reduced mid-tone contrast. Nikon has, apparently, chosen to retain contrast and allow some clipping, which is what most scanning software does by default because that gives the best-looking positive without post-processing. That is a perfectly reasonable choice for non-critical use. If clipping is unacceptable in a particular image, you need to shoot RAW and adjust the black and white points and the contrast in post-processing. That generally gives better results anyway, but it has to be done image by image so there is no advantage to generating the positive in-camera. Sure, being able to take the RAW and the negative conversion JPEG with one shutter press instead of two is a great idea, but having to photograph each negative twice is not the end of the world.
The D850 negative conversion mode appeals to people who want to digitise negatives, but don't want to go to the trouble of shooting RAW and converting in post - otherwise, they would have already done it. Well, the bad news is, it won't provide the quality of RAW scanning without the work, and it was unreasonable to expect it would.
It may have been a marketing error (surprise) to link the ES-2 so closely to the negative conversion mode of the D850. The ES-2, unlike the ES-1, can be used with DX or FX cameras, allows modern macro lenses to be used, has a slide holder, which speeds up scanning, and has a holder for film negatives. Those things add up to a big advance for people like me, who will never own a D850 and would not bother with scanning to JPEG if they did.
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Which software are you referring to? Nikon Scan 4? If so, it most certainly does not make scanning colour negatives easy or foolproof.....
I was referring to the Nikon camera/raw file software.
My reply was in relation to the comment that the limited computing power of the D850 was a problem.
The tone curve can be set up on the computer using the Nikon Picture Control Editor(PC software) then uploaded to the Nikon camera.
But in order for this to work correctly you need to use Nikons' raw file software too(ie. the Capture NX2, CaptureNX-D and/or the ViewNX2 & ViewNXi.
Third party raw file software doesn't use or recognise Nikons' Picture Controls for the process to work on non Nikon software.
This is why I made my comments in the other thread(that richardHaw refers too) about why Nikon botched this feature, in the way it has been implemented in the D850.
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..... Colour negatives deteriorate with time. They suffer from light fading of dyes, and from dark staining (caused by darkening of un-reacted magenta dye coupler). The result is a colour cast in the negative, often yellow but occasionally blue-green, and a straight conversion will result in an unacceptable complementary colour cast in the positive. Pretty much any colour negative stored at room temperature for more than ten years will have a colour cast, and since most colour negatives being scanned now will be at least 20 years old, they are not going to give a satisfactory result without a lot of post-processing. There is no way the camera can correct for this problem.
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If the image has any black/grey/white elements in it, I found that 'correct' colour selection is simple and easy using the grey point feature in the whitebalance development tool. Of course in Nikon software this only means raw file capture.
I did try doing the same on a jpg via Lightroom, but because the WB correction is so extreme, it ends up a little posterised if high quality is important.
And if you're using a D850 for film digitisation, then the implication is that high quality is on the list of important aspects of the work.
To balance exposure differences without resorting to HDR/multiple exposures, I used various implements between film and light source. Grad filters for horizons, ice cream sticks, and small kids toys for more localised shading.
I suppose additional light could be added to the shadow areas if one really tried, but on 35mm film this is impractical. So it's easier to expose the film for the shadow tones and dodge the highlight areas.
I made a few test film shots where the sky was over exposed to see how effective this would work. The raw file definitely doesn't have the recovery latitude that the film is capable of, but using the various bits and pieces to dodge the highlight areas on the film brought back a lot of detail in those over exposed highlights.
A HDR workflow would be a much more simple approach tho.
I tried doing the same via scanning(although I only have Epsons scanning software to do this) and the end result compared to the raw file capture on camera wasn't as good with the scanner .. except for the de-speckle/de-dust tools.
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It is hard to believe that the density range of developed color neg film would require HDR. Contrasty side film(Kodachrome) may come close to taxing the luminance recording capacity of D850 raw files, and overdeveloped black and white definitely would.
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Nikon postponed the release of ES-2. According to the official announcement, at the last stage of the development, they found that it needed to be redesigned including the choice of the material. This is the announcement in Japanese:
http://www.nikon-image.com/products/info/2017/1026_02.html
Nikon doesn't mention what is the problem of the design. I've wondered if the draw tube could really keep the film holder and the sensor parallel.
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Nikon postponed the release of ES-2. According to the official announcement, at the last stage of the development, they found that it needed to be redesigned including the choice of the material. This is the announcement in Japanese: http://www.nikon-image.com/products/info/2017/1026_02.html Nikon doesn't mention what is the problem of the design. I've wondered if the draw tube could really keep the film holder and the sensor parallel.
WOW.
Did they postpone the delivery of the D850 or the MB-D18 too?
I had the MB-D18 on pre-order for 7 September but only got the D850 then. My brick & mortar has only received one more D850 since then and no MB-D18. Backorder ist HUGE!
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It is hard to believe that the density range of developed color neg film would require HDR. Contrasty side film(Kodachrome) may come close to taxing the luminance recording capacity of D850 raw files, and overdeveloped black and white definitely would.
I'll have to think about this... color negatives can capture a huge dynamic range. The DR is far more than can be printed on color paper without heroic dodging and burning and a little help from the devil. If memory serves me the image is very compressed in the negative and expanded when printed.
I'm wondering if LDR isn't what's needed. I haven't printed color negatives in about thirty years (that's a disclaimer :) )
Dave Hartman
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WOW.
Did they postpone the delivery of the D850 or the MB-D18 too?
I had the MB-D18 on pre-order for 7 September but only got the D850 then. My brick & mortar has only received one more D850 since then and no MB-D18. Backorder ist HUGE!
Nikon just apologized officially for the belated delivery of D850. I'm not sure of the delivery of the battery grip, but I wouldn't be surprised by the delay of its delivery.
By the way, the users of Panasonic GH5 has been suffering from the shortage of the battery since the release of the camera. I was lucky to get the second battery for free as part of the camera's release campaign.
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The tone curve can be set up on the computer using the Nikon Picture Control Editor(PC software) then uploaded to the Nikon camera.
Unless you were exporting direct from the camera, I don't see that loading a custom tone curve into the camera is an advance over using the same tone curve in a pre-set in the computer. Sure, Nikon could have offered a choice of pre-set tone curves - "no shadow clipping", "high contrast" etc which would have reduced but not eliminated the problem.
The reaction to the D850 negative conversion tool is being driven by people - like the reviewer in the original link - who are already scanning negatives with a RAW workflow, who find the D850 negative conversion tool does not meet their needs. But instead of saying that Nikon botched the tool because it does not do what people who are already scanning negatives want, what if we try to make sense of Nikon's choices by asking who they would work well for?
Nikon's choices would work well for people who have never scanned a negative in their lives, but have a whole lot of negatives in a box that they would like to get a look at, quickly and without a lot of work. They do not intend to make fine art prints, maybe just a book of old family photographs for their grandchildren. Old colour negatives will need a lot of post-processing to look good, but because the degree of fading and staining is so variable it is hard to see how the camera could do a better job, and the tool will allow you to see who or what is in the photograph and decide whether you want to take the trouble needed to make it look good - and yes, having a RAW + JPEG option for the negative conversion mode would save photographing some negatives twice - at the expense of massive files, most of which the intended user will not post-process.
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Nikon's choices would work well for people who have never scanned a negative in their lives, but have a whole lot of negatives in a box that they would like to get a look at, quickly and without a lot of work. They do not intend to make fine art prints, maybe just a book of old family photographs for their grandchildren.
Are these people going to be buying D850's though?
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Are these people going to be buying D850's though?
Everybody else is. :)
But, yes, point taken. The feature as implemented might fit better in, say a D3xxx or D5xxx, with a more flexible version in the D500/D850/D5. But that is not how Nikon works. Film negative digitisation is a somewhat eccentric thing to develop and emphasise. After all, no one expected a negative digitising mode in the D850 and no one would have been complaining if it had not appeared. My take is that you have to see this like the FM3 or the Df:a left field idea that got up because an individual in the organisation pushed it and management, in the context of a project where you are looking for new features, said, "Yeah, whatever". Nikon has postponed the ES-2 because it turns out not to be ready, so this project did not get a lot of resources. Not surprisingly: I am a film user, so I pay attention to discussions about scanning negatives, and I can tell you nothing suggests there was a huge pent-up demand for dSLR-based negative scanning.
And suddenly people are writing reviews entirely devoted to this feature and customers want to know when the ES-2 will ship. Where did this come from?