Slide and negative scanning

chorleyjeff · Dec 5, 2006

I need a film scanner and have the chance to get an Epson 4180 cheap. Has anyone any experience of using this scanner for film scanning with an opinion about the quality of scans at,say, 2400ppi ?
Thanks

Jeff

fmw · Dec 5, 2006

Here's one at 1600 dpi of a 35mm transparency.

This one should be a black and white scan at 1600 dpi of a medium format b&w negative.

The jpegs you are viewing on the computer monitor, of course, are only 72 ppi.

hammy · Dec 6, 2006

I'd say the quality is fine. I scan film usually at 1200-1600 dpi and it looks fine to me. I say it looks fine if you're not real picky or if you intend to just use it for internet viewing. I've made digital prints from some of them and they turned out great.

mysteryscribe · Dec 6, 2006

I don't know how cheap cheap is but I bought a new plustec scanner for up to 5x7 for a hundred bucks and it seems to work fine. I haven't had it long enough to know as much about it as I would like, but it seems to work quite well.

SaSi · Dec 11, 2006

Film is rated at more than 4800dpi resolution. Anything more than trivial scanning of the odd negative (i.e. systematic digitizing your negative archive) would benefit from a descent film scanner.

Until very recently, only dedicated film scanners rated at 4000dpi optical resolution did fairness to the film.

Epson V700 is a flatbed scanner, fully equipped with several different film holders and a dual lens design boasting a much better optical resolution for film. Seen reviews and seen it in action. Check it out.

fmw · Dec 12, 2006

Don't get hung up on the resolution. Printing is done at 300 dpi so most of the resolution these scanners can produce is unnecessary. I print 8 1/2 X 11 from 1200 dpi scans all the time and more resolution doesn't really improve things. Anything beyond 1600 dpi is too time consuming for me and creates overly large files. 1600 dpi is about the equivalent of a 6 mp digital camera. That's all you need.

Hair Bear · Dec 12, 2006

Resolution at 300dpi is OK if you are printing at around 1:1 of the file size.

But if you want to enlarge files then you will be needing the extra 'real' res to do it.

FMW, you may not notice the extra because your output device can't show it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't scan at a larger res, it just means you have found 'your' best resluts v time to scan v file size.

If you intended to do larger prints you may need a higher resolution file.

SaSi · Dec 22, 2006

Hair Bear said:
Resolution at 300dpi is OK if you are printing at around 1:1 of the file size.

But if you want to enlarge files then you will be needing the extra 'real' res to do it.

FMW, you may not notice the extra because your output device can't show it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't scan at a larger res, it just means you have found 'your' best resluts v time to scan v file size.

If you intended to do larger prints you may need a higher resolution file.

I totally agree with you. I might add here that the image resolution should better be scaled in a way that matches the printer's native resolution. For example, if the printer prints at 300dpi or 600dpi or 1200dpi, the 300dpi picture is fine. For a 360/720/1440dpi printer, I would scale the image at 360dpi for best results.

Now, on to scanning resolution. And bear in mind, we are scanning films, not paper.

The 3,6mm width of the film frame certainly needs to be enlarged. Otherwise, we can only print thumbnails.

Hence, to be able to print a 10x15 picture, we need a 4,2x enlargement. Therefore, the scanning resolution needs to be at least 1200dpi.

If one wants to print a 20x30cm picture, then the enlargement needs to be about 8,3x. This means we need to scan at 2490dpi (or close to that).

This means that in general, a 2700dpi scanner is more than enough.

If we want to be able to crop part of a picture, we need to be able to scan at even higher a resolution.

My suggestion reflects just that, and an additional thought. Scanning and color correcting the negatives is a tedious process, one that you should not want to repeat. Scanning your negatives and preserving on backed-up DVDRs is - for me - preservation and archival. For this purpose, and since 4000dpi scanners are affordable, I would do this job only once, at this resolution and get done with the negatives (well, not throw them away, but not worry whether the colours will fade after some years - and they will do).