Problems w/Negafix Auto Film Mask

[LECYNKAR]

I am scanning old 126 negative on a Epson V750-Pro in HDRi 64bit format to later process in HDR Studio.

When I make a scan in AI and use the Auto Film Mask setting in Negafix, the histogram is properly set. See image:

SilverfastGoodHisto.png (26.34 KiB) Viewed 1267 times

Now when I open the HDRi scan file in HDR Studio and set the Negafix film type and use the Auto setting this is what I get:

SilverfastBadHisto.png (27.46 KiB) Viewed 1267 times

There is a whole bunch of color information at the lower/left side of the histogram that the setting defaults to. The image is extremely washed out, and does not look right until these are moved to the right (just like they were in AI Studio) What am I doing wrong here. This looks to be a problem if I want to batch these images on an Auto setting, not to mention the Histo gram is small and its hard to find the right points on it. Also if AI Studio finds the right setting when making the original scan why doesn't HDR Studio find it off the HDRi file. How can I correct this?

Thanks for your help.
Leon.

[LSI_Morales]

Dear LECYNKAR,

It is hard to say from only watching the histograms, regularly the preview in the scanning software is not made at a full resolution, hence the difference between preview in SilverFast Ai and the RAW file in HDR.
Regularly such differences in the histogram are caused either by watermarks in the picture (SilverFast in demo mode embeds watermarks to the resulting picture hence you wont see it in the preview). Other possible cause for that are some cracks in the emulsion, they are not usually seen in preview mode (low res) but the resulting RAW File is in High resolution and will register those cracks and white spots at that side (cause you are working with negatives).

Are you actually scanning in Demo mode?

Cheers

[LECYNKAR]

Yes I was scanninng in demo mode because the version if AI that came with the scanner (epson v750-pro) does not support mutli pass scanning, and I wanted to evaluate if that was worth upgrading too. I will re-register the AI version I have and scan in single pass and see if that solves the problem. I think your right though, those marks could cause that problem. Thanks for your reply! I'll let you know if that clears up my problem.
Thanks

[LSI_Morales]

Dear LECYNKAR,

I understand, well actually Multi-Sampling is present in your bundled version of SilverFast, what is not present is Multi-Exposure, this tool will generally work better with slides than negatives.

Cheers