Super horrendously dark Kodachrome scans

[Herbert]

Hello,

I just bought a OpticFilm 8100 to scan a bunch of Kodachrome slides from different decades. These slides were taken by different people, different cameras, etc.

Some of the scans I have done (shot by one person) are not fantastic, but good. However slides I have tried (from another shooter) are all consistently unusable because of how dark they are. Yet when holding up these "dark" slides to light, they are brighter by orders of magnitude than the scans.



I did these scans back to back. Yes, the left photo was taken in brighter / more direct light. But the photo on the right was also taken during the day. When looking at the physical slide on the right I can see details and colors - the grass is green, his skin is tan, etc. It's a nice rich picture. However, the scan looks as if it only received red channel information.

Any thoughts?

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear Herbert,

Please make sure the red scan frame is set tightly around the image content.

Do yet the highlights and shadows manually or do you use the image auto adjustment?
In case the standard image automatic does not deliver the desired effect SilverFast 8 shows additional ones when you hold the auto adjustment button pressed for about a second.

Kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.