scanning film question

[danir]

I am thinking of starting to scan some of my pre-digital images.
How do you scan film? Do you scan the negatives or the prints? Do home scanners do a reasonable job or should I just let a store do it for me?

Thanks.
Dani

 

[manaheim]

You can get flatbed scanners that can do it.
You can also buy negative scanners. Lookup the Nikon Coolscans (they rock.. I have one, but not cheap!)
You can also send the negatives out and have someone else do it professionally.

 

[Battou]

No don't let the store do it for you, I've heard of High end labs having ****y results and consumer labs that is garenteed, if you want it done right you have to do it your self.

Scan the negitives. Scaning prints you have to not only rely on your ability to take the photo correctly you then have to rely on the processing lab to process it right, and cheap labs and some of the more expencive labs fail regularly in this effort. Your digitized image will not be the photo you took and may be unfixable. I can provide ample evidence of that.

Get your self either a Film enabled flatbed, or a dedicated film scanner. Do not ever just stick your negitives in a standard issue flatbed, It don't work, I can provide ample evidence of that.

I use a Canon Canoscan 2710 dedicated scaner I bought reasonably cheap on E-bay (I paid less for that than I did my primary film camera).It does have some short commings and I do have some post work to do with it but, it is worth recomending to anyone who is looking to start digitizing their film photography.

 

[Bifurcator]

I like the flatbeds best! There's even one that scans in 14 bpp. An HP model. I like flatbeds because you can put your film-strips (or slides) on and the software will scan, crop, and separate the frames for you in one quick go. Usually 6 or 12 at a time for film strips and 4 or 8 at a time for mounded slides. Makes digitizing a roll (or 10 ) really easy.

 

[Battou]

Scan the negitives. Scaning prints you have to not only rely on your ability to take the photo correctly you then have to rely on the processing lab to process it right, and cheap labs and some of the more expencive labs fail regularly in this effort. Your digitized image will not be the photo you took and may be unfixable. I can provide ample evidence of that.

I use a Canon Canoscan 2710 dedicated scaner I bought reasonably cheap on E-bay (I paid less for that than I did my primary film camera).It does have some short commings and I do have some post work to do with it but, it is worth recomending to anyone who is looking to start digitizing their film photography.

Neg scan scanned at default settings VS flatbed scanned print

...

But as promised here is the picture I said I would bring.

One was scanned with a Canon dedicated film scanner and the other the print placed in my HP all in one and scanned. Both images have been left as they came out of the scanner with the exception of the resize, That was done by PB's autoresizer (in other words I never opened them in editing software).

Film scan

Print scan

Digital pic of print

These demonstrate the difference between the two types of scanning, as you can see there is no way for me to make this one hundred percent accurate to what I actually captured but I can try to get it very close to the print itself with some saturation and maybe some unsharp masking, atleast for the subject.

This image also shows something you are going to want to know, commercial print labs tend to print to a medium grey instead of black at times, thoroughly blowing out the sky, but not always, it depends on who is running the machine.


...

Get your self either a Film enabled flatbed, or a dedicated film scanner. Do not ever just stick your negitives in a standard issue flatbed, It don't work, I can provide ample evidence of that.

The results from a standard non-film enabled flatbed scanner. I did everything I could to get them right....It can't be done this way. If you are going to go with a flatbed make sure it's film enabled.

 

[manaheim]

I like the flatbeds best! There's even one that scans in 14 bpp. An HP model. I like flatbeds because you can put your film-strips (or slides) on and the software will scan, crop, and separate the frames for you in one quick go. Usually 6 or 12 at a time for film strips and 4 or 8 at a time for mounded slides. Makes digitizing a roll (or 10 ) really easy.

Ohhh that's nice. My Nikon Coolscan just scans a strip at a time... so you're always sticking in a run of 4... waiting 10 mins, sticking in the next one, etc. ZZZzzz....

 

[Battou]

Ohhh that's nice. My Nikon Coolscan just scans a strip at a time... so you're always sticking in a run of 4... waiting 10 mins, sticking in the next one, etc. ZZZzzz....

My Canon is one frame at a time, but it's friggen quick. It only takes me about ten to fifteen minuets to scan an entire roll of film despite one frame at a time.

 

[Bifurcator]

Ohhh that's nice. My Nikon Coolscan just scans a strip at a time... so you're always sticking in a run of 4... waiting 10 mins, sticking in the next one, etc. ZZZzzz....

But it's automated? That's not bad then if it is. At least better than having to frame each one, white balancing each, scan it in (Twain import etc.) as a single image, and repeat endlessly. I have a few older cool-scans from horse trading but they looked like all they could do were mounted singles - so i never really played much with them.

What do you guys think of using a slide duplicator on a nice digital camera? I recently made one while the scanner was down and played a little with it. I haven't really tried to put it through its paces yet.

I might put an image of it up or make a how-to toot if anyone thinks it could be useful.

 

[manaheim]

My Canon is one frame at a time, but it's friggen quick. It only takes me about ten to fifteen minuets to scan an entire roll of film despite one frame at a time.

That's nice. I think mine takes about 30 minutes per roll, but that's probably in part just because I wind up wandering off while its working and forget to toss the next strip in.

Mine is REALLY old though... It's a Coolscan IV ED I believe... I bought it new for about $1000 back in... 1999? Awesome device though. 2800 dpi with some incredible scratch and dust removal mechanisms.

But it's automated? That's not bad then if it is. At least better than having to frame each one, white balancing each, scan it in (Twain import etc.) as a single image, and repeat endlessly. I have a few older cool-scans from horse trading but they looked like all they could do were mounted singles - so i never really played much with them.

What do you think of using a slide duplicator on a nice digital camera? I recently made one while scanner was down and played a little with it. I haven't really tried to put it through its paces yet.

I might put an image of it up or make a how-to toot if anyone thinks it could be useful.

Yeah, it is automated. The software that comes with it is horrific, but I learned early on that there is a product called Vuescan which REALLY takes the pain and guesswork out of the batching process. It's a super cheap piece of software and you get perpetual updates to it as well. The interface is a hair on the clunky side, but its AMAZING once you get the hang of it.

I've heard of people using the slide duplicator thing- never tried it. To be honest, most of my negatives are snapshots taken from a point and shoot... pictures of ex-girlfriends from high-school in bikinis and stuff. Certainly something I'd like to keep, but that dead-on flash didn't do great things for the quality of the image beyond the "ooo... hawt" factor.

 

[danir]

Thanks for that info guys and the demonstrations battou. I guess until I'll wan't to go back to film I'll let some good store do the scanning.

Dani

 

[Battou]

Thanks for that info guys and the demonstrations battou. I guess until I'll wan't to go back to film I'll let some good store do the scanning.

Dani

Just make sure you take into account that most modern print labs digitize and then print as procedure wether the customer is getting a disk or not, so what you get in print will be what comes on disk.

 

[Hawaii Five-O]

I just ordered the Epson Perfection V500 Photo scanner. Its rated as editors choice by PC world for scanning photos. I bought mine refurbished off the Epson site. Its about a hundred dollars cheaper that way over retail. Free shipping too.

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=63076139


http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2213394,00.asp

 

[jvgig]

I am in the process of doing the same thing. Currently I am just scanning the prints as I can scan 4 prints in about 20sec at 600dpi. I have an epson 3170 flatbed scanner and in order to scan the negatives at 2-3000dpi, it took about 45min to scan 6 images and during that time, my computer was rendered almost useless as it took so much computing power. I have already scanned in over 20,000 images and am only half done so you can see that the negatives just would not have worked. Currently, many negatives have been lost so I figure it is better to scan in the prints and run the files though a few scripts to clean them up. Maybe later I will get a nice negative scanner, but currently I do not have the money and my 20 year old pictures are starting to show their age. I am even considering just forgetting about the negatives as the images are mainly just family photos and will likely never be printed or even looked at for many years to come, so your purpose may be different and give more merit to spending over 1000 for a scanner that will not be used after the initial digitizing.

 

[usayit]

I just ordered the Epson Perfection V500 Photo scanner.

If the V500 is anything close to my V700, I'm all for it. Other than the V700, all other scanners on my short list are dedicated. I posted my "evaluation" of the V700 a while back.

 

[Bifurcator]

I'm using an MX-850 that cost $300. The 14bit (16bit?? I forget now) HP I mentioned earlier on costs $200, before this MX-850 I was using the MP-810 which also costs about $300