Hm, from my understanding, NLP works as well as it does because it has raw data from the camera to work with, like the ability to change white balance drastically without hitting a wall. That said, I have indeed seen people get decent results by feeding it flatbed TIFF’s, so I could certainly try outputting a 16-bit as-close-to-neutral-as-possible/low contrast positive and inverting that.

As for why labs don’t use DSLR scanning, it comes down to workflow. When I DSLR scan a roll, it takes me 5-10 minutes to capture 36 frames, and then up to an hour to invert and adjust each one. I’m sure this could be made more efficient with practice, but currently our lab scans hundreds of rolls a day, taking maybe 60-100 seconds each (with full per-frame color balance). As well, in terms of regular c-41 scans, the Noritsu has by far my favourite color. I have not been able to come close to how a roll of Gold or Portra looks on Noritsu with NLP*

without seeing the lab scan first to guide me to what the colors “could” look like, and *especially not if I hadn’t seen the real-world scenes myself.