Putting the 'S' in

The Epson V700's software produces what appear at a glance to be good 'exposures' when set on automatic, but on closer inspection have some serious problems. The highlights are very flat and often blown out and shadows compressed to oblivion. This means doing the A-D mapping from emulsion to bits by hand.

Without intervention, the scanner uses a logarithmic function for reading negatives. The result over emphasizes shadow and highlight detail while compressing the mid tones (see below).

Straight from the scanner

While all the information is here, the balance between the mid gradients and the ends (light and dark) doesn't look right so some tweaking of tone curve is needed. The mid tones need separating and this generally means squashing the highlights and the shadows, making an 'S' curve (or something like a cumulative normal distribution).     

In the first, the contrast in the sky is flattened and a little in the shadows too, while the the tree trunks are opened up.

    
Here's another interpretation of the image, a little more somber. The shadow detail is still preserved but the tree on the left in the sun is darker. The sky also retains slightly more contrast. This comes at the expense of the mid tone separation.

Whether the sky was or should be portrayed as that dramatic is a choice. The upper picture emphasizes the light on the tree on the right which was caught when the clouds opened temporarily. The lower one has more texture and a more threatening sky. I think my preference is for this last one.   

I'd probably crop some of the sky if I were printing this, (not least because of the streaking at the top which I think was from lack of agitation in processing). 6x7 is squarer than 8x10, and some cropping would be expected, but the slightly unusual squareness has an odd appeal. Perhaps that's just because it's late and I'm tired.