Scanning E6 film
Discussion
I have an epson perfection 3200, in the scan dialogue it offers three film types.
Positive film
Colour Negative
B&W Nevative
Here's my problem - the film I'm trying to scan is chrome colour reversal E6 film rather than colour negative. My scans seem to be coming out with an odd colour cast which I don't get with "normal" negative film.
Can anyone advise, should my scanner see E6 film as the same as C41 film?
Ta!

Positive film
Colour Negative
B&W Nevative
Here's my problem - the film I'm trying to scan is chrome colour reversal E6 film rather than colour negative. My scans seem to be coming out with an odd colour cast which I don't get with "normal" negative film.
Can anyone advise, should my scanner see E6 film as the same as C41 film?
Ta!

Does it show that I don't know what I'm on about? I thought colour reversal and slide film were different, but they done be the same! Durrrr. My bwain hurts.
Scanning wise, clearly either I'm being a moron or something is going wrong here, I think I'll revisit this tomorrow when I'm more with it!
On the plus side, some of them are looking good in B&W so it's not a dead loss!
Scanning wise, clearly either I'm being a moron or something is going wrong here, I think I'll revisit this tomorrow when I'm more with it!
On the plus side, some of them are looking good in B&W so it's not a dead loss!

Edited by _dobbo_ on Wednesday 27th February 00:00
Sorry - got sidetracked a bit there!
And, back to the original question...
E6 is the process for "slide" film (e.g. Velvia or Kodachrome-type films (although Kodachrome had a K-14 process at one stage))
C-41 is the standard process for colour negative film (i.e. the stuff you normally make prints out of like Kodacolor or Superia)
So, E6 should be a positive film image.
C41 should be a negative film image.
And, back to the original question...
_dobbo_ said:
...should my scanner see E6 film as the same as C41 film?
No, your scanner will not - E6 and C-41 are different.E6 is the process for "slide" film (e.g. Velvia or Kodachrome-type films (although Kodachrome had a K-14 process at one stage))
C-41 is the standard process for colour negative film (i.e. the stuff you normally make prints out of like Kodacolor or Superia)
So, E6 should be a positive film image.
C41 should be a negative film image.
So it seems the E6 film was cross processed as C41, which is why I got the crazy colour casts.
I appear to have purchased 30 odd rolls of slide film, which my local lab can't develop for me! Oh dear...
Just to lift the mood, here's a B&W conversion from one of the E6 scans - it's a cheery scene and no mistake:

Ingmar Bergman would be proud
I appear to have purchased 30 odd rolls of slide film, which my local lab can't develop for me! Oh dear...
Just to lift the mood, here's a B&W conversion from one of the E6 scans - it's a cheery scene and no mistake:

Ingmar Bergman would be proud

Just wanted to resurrect this in case anyone has any advice. Having looked around at crossed processed E6 film, it seems to me the results I got are not what I would expect. Cross processing in other cases seems to result in groovy colours, and very strong contrast.
In this case the whole roll came back green, with no other colours present at all - for example (please ignore the sellotape!)

Does anyone have any ideas? I really like the cross processed look, but if my local lab is going to make everything look like this, I wont bother!

In this case the whole roll came back green, with no other colours present at all - for example (please ignore the sellotape!)

Does anyone have any ideas? I really like the cross processed look, but if my local lab is going to make everything look like this, I wont bother!

_dobbo_ said:
Just wanted to resurrect this in case anyone has any advice. Having looked around at crossed processed E6 film, it seems to me the results I got are not what I would expect. Cross processing in other cases seems to result in groovy colours, and very strong contrast.
In this case the whole roll came back green, with no other colours present at all - for example (please ignore the sellotape!)

Does anyone have any ideas? I really like the cross processed look, but if my local lab is going to make everything look like this, I wont bother!

Are you sure they're cross-processed? Are they negative or positive images? There's no fundamental difference between slide and neg film, just different processing chemicals, so if you have a positive image on the film, with a strong green cast, it's just duff E6 processing. If it's a negative image you're scanning, you could try sandwiching a sheet of unexposed, processed negative film when you scan your images, to get the orange masking that neg film has. Cross-processing is not an exact science until you're familiar with it - many people push the film a couple of stopsto boost the contrast IIRC and it required pretty strong filtration when printing it too. (It's a long time since I did cross-processing at art college!)In this case the whole roll came back green, with no other colours present at all - for example (please ignore the sellotape!)

Does anyone have any ideas? I really like the cross processed look, but if my local lab is going to make everything look like this, I wont bother!

I think whats happening is as that your positive film - RDP (Provia) - has been cross processed in C-41 resulting in negatives. However unlike a true colour negative yours won't have the orange cast, so when you scan them as a negative the scanner tries to compensate for the mask and hence you get the green cast. To fix this you can either do as tog says and scan as a negative with a mask, or simply scan as a positive and invert in Photoshop.
Oh and next time send them to peak-imaging who know which machine to bung them in
Oh and next time send them to peak-imaging who know which machine to bung them in

Trouble is Peak Imagine want £3.50 processing per roll, plus postage of £2.75 per order - for a single roll that's simply not worth it for me.
I tried scanning as positive then inverting, it came out exactly the same. Shoving a blank negative behind it seems to have helped a lot though;

It's still a bit flat, but I think that's the subject matter rather than the processing. I'm back in business at £3 per roll!

I tried scanning as positive then inverting, it came out exactly the same. Shoving a blank negative behind it seems to have helped a lot though;

It's still a bit flat, but I think that's the subject matter rather than the processing. I'm back in business at £3 per roll!

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