When scanning film negatives you really need to know the film manufacturer and type. The scanner software has presets for a large list of well-known film types saving a lot of faffing about to find the correct colour settings, ideal if colour interpretation isn't your strong point. This is easy enough to set up if it says Kodacolor Gold along the edge of your negative, but what do you do if it doesn't say something as obvious as that?
I had a film which had ISO200 and HL5431 printed on it. The ISO was fine but the HL5431 part meant nothing to me at all. A search for HL5431 just turned up a load of Hansard references... Would an MP help in these circumstances?
Would my MP, Nick Clegg, suddenly prove to be of some use after at least 4 years of ineptitude?
Of course he wouldn't be of any use.
Digging around in the user forum for the negative scanner software (Silverfast) turned up some references to a website with a Java app usable to interpret DX codes. DX codes are the markings on the side of film cans and also along the side of negatives. I'd noticed the strange markings on the negatives but they hadn't penetrated my consciousness enough for me to remember to try to discover what they meant.
But behold, they are of terrific use
Here's the output of my test exercise of reading the DX code. Read from the bottom upward.
This is a screenshot with my arrows and text to indicate the key areas.
Some clicky-clicky on the black bars on the simulator allows you to match those on your film negative.
Of course the real world isn't as simple as that. The film I had didn't match this exactly, it only had the bottom portion of the code, it didn't include the frame number. But this isn't a problem, I'm guessing there must be occasions where the frame number isn't printed along the negative edge in human readable form but I've never seen it.
Here's the offending film negative with the DX codes with added arrows and text description.
Sideways view of Tynwald Hill and St John's Chapel where the Isle of Man parliament does ceremonial bits
So that's another film scanned, with pretty reasonable colour correction.
It's a step closer to producing an image of the one true tower.
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