Uncropped would also make the grain less prominant, not to mention the dings in the emulsion side, and the vertical scratches on both sides. Cleaning will help some, too.

The Tatooine scenes seem to have a lot of splotchyness, even dark streaks in places. Is that from dirty film, or is it the print? (Dirty negative?) Those scenes also leave me with a greater impression of grain, for some reason.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

And, although the color spread is not bad, getting a decent white balance is proving to be a challenge because the film has slightly faded in various ways depending on the brightness and hue of the scene.

That's kinda hard for me to wrap my head around. I've read it in reference to multiscanning for hdr, too. I guess it has to do with the response curves of CCDs.

Shows up in the pesky flesh tones, on the Tantive IV. (Which seem to give everyone problems).

I keep reading that the workprinters "save to DV". Is that DV codec? Does it leave room for playing with curves in software? (I had some luck matching color, by adjusting separately, according to brightness level (shadow/medium/highlight), even from dvd-sourced mpeg compression).

All in all, a pretty solid transfer!

I can pick at the flaws from the film's quality, and the limits of CCDs, but that workprinter (and it's operator) do a heck of a job. And it looks nicer in motion, than the stills.

I'm anxious to see the final capture!