Underexposed Slide Scans using Multi-Exposure and 48 bit HDR

[mbrick]

I have an Epson V750 with Silverfast AI Studio ME, version 6.6.1r6, and all of my 35 mm Kodachrome slide scans are badly underexposed. I scan in 48 Bit HDR Color with the Multi-Exposure feature activated and an assigned scan resolution on 3200 dpi with a scale of 100%. I have not applied any other Silverfast features except the Multi-Exposure but my scans are much darker than the slides are when viewed in the Prescan window. What am I doing wrong?

[LSI_Morales]

Dear mbrick

Your pictures look darker not because of Multi-Exposure. They look darker because you are scanning in 48 bit HDR mode which creates unmodified raw files with a linear gamma value of 1.
The idea is to have a file which serves as a "digital negative" preserving all the information read by the scanner, this type of file should be later used for post processing in an editing program like SilverFast HDR Studio.

Cheers

[mbrick]

Thanks for the quick response.

I have been saving my HDR scans in TIFF format is that okay? I do not have Silverfast HDR Studio but, I do have Photoshop CS3 which I use for my photo retouching is there another file format I should be using to save my scans?

[LSI_Morales]

Dear mbrick,

It is OK, you can edit your files using photoshop but make sure you apply a gamma correction (some people call that tone mapping).

Cheers