I work with scanned film using a 30bit scanner, and routinely do a 8xmultipass RAW scan. This increases the psuedo bit depth by 2bits per channel. I then will make three outputs from the RAW scan for shadows, midtones and highlights, then composite them together in Photoshop using Channel Operations.
Doesn't really matter if it is chrome/col neg/B&W, I still get a lot more from this procedure than from a single pass. For extraction of detail from really dense emulsion, I can always turn up the analog gain on the LCD's. Of course, this blow out detail from the top-end, but then I can always turn the gain down. It makes sense to output in 48bit (even though the scanner is 30bit!) as I can then apply 16bit per channel Photoshop math - meaning I have 4bits of dynamic headroom to prevent the onset of posterisation. Hope this helps William Curwen http://www.william.ws =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
