anthony_lane55•12d agoProlific Poster

People keep saying their scanned negatives look like they did in the darkroom, but they really don't

I see so many posts in film groups where someone scans a frame and says 'this is exactly how it looked when I printed it.' But I printed in a darkroom for about 8 years before going digital, and a scan from my V600 never matches what came out of the enlarger. The color is always flatter, the blacks are never as deep, and the grain looks totally different on screen. Last month I scanned a Portra 400 shot I'd printed in 2017 and the two were not even close. I think people forget that a backlit screen and reflected light from paper are completely different things. Has anyone else noticed this gap between their darkroom prints and their scans?

2 comments

2 Comments

barnes.morgan11d ago

I dialed in a custom scanner profile for my V600 that finally got my Portra scans close to my darkroom prints.

xena_taylor647d ago

The real trick with those custom profiles is calibrating for your specific monitor's color space, @barnes.morgan, not just the scanner's default gamut. Makes a huge difference in how those Portra greens and skin tones translate across the two mediums. Way easier to nail a wet print match when your screen and scanner are actually talking the same language.