Scanning Negatives

[Foxman]

I have read a couple of threads discussing this but am curious.

I know most people probably just go buy a scanner, but realisticly I am not sure I would be happy with a $100 scanner and can't really afford one much better than that right now. I am considering having some of my stuff from the late 80's early 90's scanned (negatives & slides).

Whats the best place to go, Local or online and what type of money per scan is reasonable. I met a local shop owner today who suggested .35 per was what he charged, but I have no idea how good his scanner is.

I am new to this idea so am not real sure what I should be looking for.

I am hoping to be able to put together a portfolio book with some of my older stuff + my newer digital work. Thoughts?

If it matters 99.9% would be 35mm mostly negative's some slide's, some B&W mostly color and very few if any would be medium format.

 

[Big Mike]

I believe that you can actually get pretty decent results with a relatively innexpensive flatbed scanner, especially if it is actually made with the ability to scan film (with a film holder etc.)
Sure, the results won't be as good as a dedicated film scanner...but that's up to you to decide.

I haven't scanned any film (besides a few experiments, many years ago) so maybe someone with more experience can chime in.

 

[ChasK]

I scanned a 120 negative with a flatbed scanner and got good results. But it is slow. If you had one or two negatives and had a decent scanner ok, but even 5 or 6 would be too time consuming.

 

[Joves]

My friend made his own with a flatbed scanner. He took an old slide projector and, took out the scanners bulb. Then he set a sheet of paper on the scanner focused and, scanned all of his slides and, negatives. When I saw the setup I laughed but, it actually worked quite well.

 

[hossmaster]

Too bad the Nikon Cool Scan V is so expensive! It is an awesome slide/neg scanner. Good thing my work purchased one for "other" reasons.

 

[Crissybobissy]

One of my all time favorite websites has a negative scanner for 35mm negatives and slides. I'll post a link but I have a love/hate relationship with the site, I can't go there without taking a minute to look around and I almost always end up finding stuff to buy. :sillysmi:

ThinkGeek :: ImageLab Instant Slide Scanner

 

[Foxman]

One of my all time favorite websites has a negative scanner for 35mm negatives and slides. I'll post a link but I have a love/hate relationship with the site, I can't go there without taking a minute to look around and I almost always end up finding stuff to buy. :sillysmi:

ThinkGeek :: ImageLab Instant Slide Scanner

Interesting scanner. 3600 DPI, I am drawing a blank about how that compares to what I get when I shoot with my D80 today.

 

[Crissybobissy]

Meh, 3600 is a heck of a lot worse quality than what you produce with your D80, but for the price you should be able to print some 8x10's to show your work. It's only 5 megapixels which has me wondering if it's really a scanner or a camera?

*I just did quick research, it's a camera that takes a photo of your negative*

Canon has a scanner with a negative tray that has is 9600 DPI for about $120 on Amazon. It's plastic and cheap but apparently does a great job for the price.

Amazon.com: Canon CanoScan LiDE 700F Color Image Scanner (3297B002): Office Products

Sorry about my earlier post, I would have posted about the Canoscan if I had realized the Imagelab was essentially nothing more than a close-up camera. I've actually used one of these but thought it was more $$ than this. It does take a while to scan the negative, I think about 10 to 15 seconds?

 

[KenC]

I paid to have a few negatives scanned once when I was between film scanners and had to ask for them to be re-scanned because the guy used such a low resolution that I couldn't even make a good page-size. I think some places assume you are only interested in making proof-size, so be sure to specify resolution if you take this route.

 

[NateS]

I've been reading into this a lot lately. I'm planning on buying some film cameras...probably F100 and some vintage stuff. I want to be able to scan in quality stuff, tweak, and print at the same time.

I've seen a lot of really good quality scans being done by the Epson 4490 Scanner. It comes with film/negative holders and software for scanning. They don't make them anymore from what I understand so you might have to get it second hand or find somebody with some left over...but it could probably be had for the $100-150 range.

Epson | Perfection 4490 Photo Scanner | B11B176011 | B&H Photo

Search Flickr for Epson 4490 and you'll see a bunch of photos tagged that were scanned in using that scanner....that's what I did and it kind of sold me on the cheap solution.

 

[djacobox372]

Meh, 3600 is a heck of a lot worse quality than what you produce with your D80, but for the price you should be able to print some 8x10's to show your work. It's only 5 megapixels which has me wondering if it's really a scanner or a camera?

*I just did quick research, it's a camera that takes a photo of your negative*

Canon has a scanner with a negative tray that has is 9600 DPI for about $120 on Amazon. It's plastic and cheap but apparently does a great job for the price.

Amazon.com: Canon CanoScan LiDE 700F Color Image Scanner (3297B002): Office Products

Sorry about my earlier post, I would have posted about the Canoscan if I had realized the Imagelab was essentially nothing more than a close-up camera. I've actually used one of these but thought it was more $$ than this. It does take a while to scan the negative, I think about 10 to 15 seconds?

Not true at all, 3600dpi is actually significantly higher resolution than a d90.

35mm at 3600dpi = 5040 x 3402 or 17.4 megapixels in digital terms

And those pixels aren't bayer interpolated which increases resolution even further.

I scan all my negatives at 3200dpi because anything higher exceeds the resolution quality of the film.

 

[Millie.T.Cook]

Hi there.

I love a great photo when I see it. I was curious what format is the best to store my photos in? RAW or Jpeg or any others?

MC


________________________________
Everyone needs an internet fax service.

 

[thoughtcryme]

You can actually just backlight the negatives and use a macro lens to photograph them with a digital camera.
I do it.
I dont have a macro lens though so I made one from a loupe.
If you have a good camera and do it right, the results are about as good as having them scanned.
There's a way to avoid the orange cast that turns blue when you invert the image.
I've done it by accident, but now am unable to reproduce it.
I'm not using good equipment though, all my stuff is DIY.
With a good camera, a macro lens, the proper light, shot in RAW mode, you can get an incredible image for nothing(provided you've already invested in a macro lens).

 

[thoughtcryme]

I've done alot of research on scanners because I have over 20 years of negatives I intend to scan.
The problem with flatbed scanners is that they really only have 1 native resolution.
On the high end today, it's 2400dpi, everything above that is interpolated.
Meaning it isn't really scanning at 3600-4000dpi, it's doing 2400 and "guessing" at everything above.
So if the D80 is producing images at upwards of 4000dpi, then photographing negatives with a good macro lens will actually produce images of higher quality than any flatbed scanner even with a transparency adapter.
Outside that, then the only other option is a dedicated film scanner.
If anyone has information to the contrary, I would really love to know it.

Because what's actually in a film scanner?
A backlight, a camera tube and a stepping motor.
The software does the rest.

 

[Dwig]

I...
On the high end today, it's 2400dpi, everything above that is interpolated....
So if the D80 is producing images at upwards of 4000dpi, ...

Both false. 2400ppi is not the maximum optical resolution of all high end scanners; some reach as high a 6400ppi. Also, the D80 produces the equivalent of slightly less than a 2600ppi scan of a 35mm full frame negative, which is nowhere near 4000ppi.

The major limitation in duping film with a digital camera, compared to using a decent scanner, is the rather limited dynamic range. Scanners like the EPSON v700 produce substantially greater highlight and shadow detail than what can be achieved with a DSLR dupe. To come close to the results of a good scanner you would need to use HDR techniques ("straight" techniques and not the grunge style) combining several dupes of the same original.

I've done some dupes with a digital camera. They can be fine for most web display. When printed and compared to prints from quality scans (I use a v700, scanning at 48bit directly into PS instead of to disk in the limited 24bit JPEG file format) they are rather inferior at best.