Scanning Photographs

The appearance of paper copies made in red room vary a lot because of the different film materials and the plentity of variables affecting the process. Here is presented 6 samples of the many of copies we made which best show the typical characteristics of the different film materials. The paper of these copies was a high contrast one, and so the histograms show a high peak on the 'white' side where the background has been overexposured.

These paper copies were scanned using Mustek III flatbed scanner with 600dpi. The area of the sample text of the paper copies was 4.6x1.6cm, resulting in approximately 1100x380 pixel images. The scanned images can be seen in figures [7 - 12], and. their histograms in figures [13-16].

The differences in film materials can easily be detected. The Kodak's HiE has quite large grain, the contrast of Technical Pan is large (the image is almost pure black and white) and the Tmax image contains smoother set of grey scale values. The HiE and K750 are presented with pictures taken in normal (400-600) and in near-IR light (600-800nm).

There seems to be no significant difference between images taken in normal light and near-IR light. The IR images seem to be a little noisier. The differences in contrast are difficult to spot, as the manual work in a red room affects the results much more. The differences in negatives were also invisible.

Some details like the dark joint between the lower right-hand side stroke of 'K' and lower part of 'j' are different in these images. This joint is really a dark scratch, not a part of a character. In IR light, it is almost invisible (compare figures [9,10]). Also, in the TP image, it has vanished, but that is caused by the very high contrast of the film and the paper - the scratch has been thresholded out of the picture.


Figure 7: Scanned image of paper copy made from Kodak HiE negative, normal light.


Figure 8: Scanned image of paper copy made from Kodak HiE negative, IR light.


Figure 9: Scanned image of paper copy made from Konica 750 negative, normal light.


Figure 10: Scanned image of paper copy made from Konica 750 negative, IR light.


Figure 11: Scanned image of paper copy made from Kodak Technical Pan negative.


Figure 12: Scanned image of paper copy made from Kodak Tmax negative.


Figure 13: Histogram of HiE negative.


Figure 14: Histogram of K750 negative.


Figure 15: Histogram of Technical Pan negative.


Figure 16: Histogram of Tmax negative.


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Antti Nurminen, 34044T, andy@cs.hut.fi