correcting colour on a scanned film negative?

[cpoc]

Ok so I've shot the first reel of film from my new (second hand) Pentax K1000 and I took it to the developers only to hear "there's nothing on it" fortunately as she was about to bin the negatives I asked if I could have them... took them home and sure enough, in amongst the unexposed frames (I was fiddling with the camera a bit before finding out that it had film in it)... were some astrophotos that I had taken. So for zero $ I now have something to fiddle with. The only problem is that when I scan them... they appear in negative (exactly as you see when you look at the film negative... funnily enough)... so my question is... how do I get them to show the true colour?

I scanned the negative on a Canon MP180 (probably not ideal... but it's all I have access to). I am using Adobe Photoshop CS V8, if that helps... but I'm happy to try other (free) software if it will make it easier.

Obviously it is easier to have the developer make prints next time... but I was seriously not expecting much if anything on this roll of film because I had fiddled so much with the camera before learning it had film in it that I figured most of the exposures would be ruined from light exposure... some were but there is still some stuff there to fiddle with.

So... any suggestions? Thanks.

P.S. This is one of the shots I scanned... I think this one may have been when I saw a plane over head and thought I'd take a long exposure with it in shot for the trail it would leave

[erick (Eric)]

A couple of suggestions. Have you shot a roll of film on day to day objects to check the camera shutter etc. seem to be all working well? Shoot a frame or two during daylight at the start of the film, and maybe a frame or two at the end. This allows you and the processor to work out where the frames are on the film strip and, since they always insist on printing one set of prints, it gives them a couple of frames to try and set up exposure, colour balance whatever before banging through the rest. Also remember, no matter how much you tell them, they will let the machine decide whether to print a frame and it will nearly always decide astrophotos are too dark.

I take it your scanner doesn't have an ability to do film (negative and transparencies). Best it you locate one that does. You need a scanner that shines light through the film.

What lens are you using? What exposures? What f setting? What ASA is the film?

Next roll will be better!

[cpoc]

Thanks for the tip Erick... I'll try that with the next roll (my first roll of proper film in my mind... as I didn't know that first one was in there when I got the camera).

I did however have some luck with converting the negative... my printer can only do 1200dpi... but it gave quite acceptable results (quite interesting to see my finger prints blown up to screen size).

I also found a handy website with a small downloadable algorithm that takes most of the work out of the inverting/colour correcting for you.

http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/technique...film/index.htm

The results of my conversion should be below... bare in mind that my original snap would have been of very poor quality as at the time I did not use a tripod and I currently don't have a shutter release cable (about to check eBay for one)... but at least it is a "proof of concept" for the "normal" scanner negative film processing.

[erick (Eric)]

Well there are some consistent streaks on there. I don't recognise the constellation

Good luck! Yes tripod and shutter release cable next! We want a "star trails"!

Stop your lens down a couple of stops from fully open. That normally improves your image across the frame (into the corners) though you sacrifice a bit of light.

[cpoc]

Erick, again thanks for that tip... I'll have to read the manual for stopping down but shall certainly try that to improve the overall look ... shame about the clouds rolling in... oh well.