Disappointed with film scanning. Do I have realistic expectations?

[Gabriel Altman]

I had a number of super 8 films scanned by a company that uses a RetroScan Universal with the 2k camera. The results were disappointing: Highlights blown out, shadows extremely dark, and a large amount of cropping of the frame. Are my expectations for the results from this machine unrealistic, or could better results be obtained with a different operator?

I don't have a negative scanner, so I backlit a piece of the film using the flashlight on my iPhone and a piece of paper as a diffuser, and took a photograph using a macro lens. It's not perfectly focused, I know. Below are two pictures of the same frame, one from the video file I received, and one from my camera. I'd love some feedback and advice!

Thanks!

[Gabriel Altman]

Here is the entire video:

https://vimeo.com/477729269

[Gregory Oliver]

IMHO, it's the gunner, not the gun. The operator has a lot of brightness and contrast options both in the capture phase and post processing that they could have adjusted.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Definitely - this is probably due to color grading process. Besides blown out highlights & crushed blacks, the overall color balance seems slightly off also.
(I'm so inclined to at least try re-balancing the color, if it can be downloaded.)


If it's me I'd like to have a talk with that company, asking for a re-scan. This time have it scanned "flat" preserving as much highlights&shadows as possible, maybe even with no color correction applied too. Then playing around color grading myself. At least even if I screwed up there's still the original file to start over.

[Brian Fretwell]

Even massive admittedly quick correction on that frame, though it can sort out the shadows and colour balance, can't deal well with the highlight burnout. Here's my try.

[Evan Samaras]

What you and others have said appears right to me. High contrast... blown highlights, crushed blacks.
Have the company re-scan it and provide it to you Flat, without any color grading. Some tinkering around with Davinci Resolve (free program) can do wonders with color grading!
Also, if this was scanned at 2k they did some serious cropping on your image. This is not the full 2k scan! Depending on your level of experience and interest, I would recommend playing around with Davinci Resolve. You could crop the frames as you like, and grade each scene individually.

[Gabriel Altman]

I’ve played with the color using VirtualDub (via Film9) and had decent results, but there’s nothing that I can do to fix the blown out highlights or cropping. I’ll definitely try Davinci Resolve, thanks!

When I sent the films in for scanning, I requested my scans in 4:3 aspect ratio at 2k (2048x1536). I was surprised that they were delivered in 720p and with so much cropping. I thought that using the RetroScan Universal would let me have the frame right up to the edge of the sprocket holes.

I contacted the shop, and the owner offered to rescan any of the film scans I found unsatisfactory, which is good news. He seems committed to making things right. Unfortunately he can’t do it until after the holidays, which is disappointing. I read the directions for the retroscan, and it looks like doing a flat scan is not a problem. Are there any specific file formats or settings I should ask for so I can get the most from these films, information wise?

In hindsight, I probably should have sent him a handful of films at first, to see how they would come out, before sending 53 rolls of Super 8.

Here are the rest of the films (link at bottom of post). Some of them look pretty good (but I am assuming they all were heavily cropped), but many of them have high contrast with loss of detail in the highlights and shadows. Obviously, some of them were shot indoors without enough light and were originally poorly exposed and would be very challenging to work with. But some were shot on clear sunny days, and still look...off.

I hate to ask, but maybe these were done on a few different machines? Thoughts?


All the films can be seen here:
https://1drv.ms/f/s!AnrCkbUsmKsAhuwwna_CorpiKMWBFw

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Haven't had time to go through all videos yet, but judging from the thumbnails I can confidently assume that they sort of "set it and forget it" - set it once, and run all films through without any further tweaking. No individual reel color correction whatsoever.

And whatever "lossy" compression they use, it is unnecessary LARGE to my liking. Almost 2 Gigabytes for 3 mins of 720p 17fps video? Tried playing around re-encoding one clip using Avidemux (h.264, visually identical setting - sort of). The file size substantially reduced from 1.81 Gigabytes to 161 Megabytes, hmmmmmm.

And 17 fps speed...what's that for??

OK too much criticism already. This should give some idea about their service.