Timmyjoe
Veteran
Just keeping my fingers crossed that my Nikon Coolscan 9000 keeps chugging out the scans. The quality is fine for me, and it covers the film formats I still shoot.
Best,
-Tim
Best,
-Tim
¨Shocked? Why? Film is not in use anymore by professionals where super high resolution is needed. You could scan 135 for decent prints with Plustek and MF, LF with Epson flatbed. For web even camera will do or cheap MiC scanner.
Resurgence, if any, happened among amateurs, those are happy with iPhone scanning gizmo, because it allows to dump their scans to their major place, Insta. This needs only 600x600 pixels to get hundreds of likes 🙂.
Shocked? Why? Film is not in use anymore by professionals where super high resolution is needed.
I am not surprised at all. Because
1) we have new scanners in the market, from ICG drum scanners to Noritsu minilab scanners to good Reflekta and Plustek amateur scanners to Epson flatbed scanners.
To me these choices reflect the low end and the high end. There isn`t something great at an affordable price that I know of...
¨
Plenty of artists still use film and I certainly see scanned film printed as ink jet prints in galleries.
It might not be mainstream, but there is more to photography than amateurs and commercial pros.
The professional demand for film is even increasing in the following market segments: Portrait, wedding, fashion.
The Reflekta RPS 10 M delivers a picture quality level even a bit higher compared to Coolscan V and 5000:
https://filmscanner.info/en/ReflectaRPS10M.html


At our PPA affiliate, TCPPA, we conducted monthly workshops to help professional photographers as we all were operating our businesses. There isn’t any discussion on film or film vs. digital. It’s all digital.
Info:
https://tcppa.org/
Around 2003 maybe 2004 a guest presented would ask folks in the audience how many captured with film? I would venture to say it was over half maybe even three quarters still used film. By 2008 a speaker would ask how many captured using digital and 90 to 95% were digital. Now it’s 100% digital.
For me, there were several challenges with film that digital answered.
How did I analyze what I was getting during the film days? I had to use a Polaroid back. PITA.
How could I show a client what I was capturing with film? Just try to get them back for a review!
How can I offer as an option a group of wedding day photos I could upload to their electronic device at their reception to look at while on their honeymoon?
How could I transmit to audience members using wifi photos as I make them using film?
How do I immediately determine a good portrait from one that’s great using film?
Get the idea?
That’s the way the business has gone, at least here.
Interesting that there's high demand for a "defective" scanner.
Looks like they have put the wrong picture online.
Because, quote from their test results:
"The reflecta RPS 10M boasts an effective resolution of 4300 ppi, thus reaching a solid 86% of its nominal 5000 ppi. Scanning at 10.000 ppi will not boost the effecitve resolution. With an effective resolution of 4300 ppi, the Reflecta RPS 10M trumps the long-standing frontrunner Nikon Super Coolscan 5000ED, which yields "only" 3900 ppi. Whilst the Reflecta RPS 10M reaches its 4300 ppi only at 5000 ppi, the Nikon 5000 does reach its 3900 ppi at a nominal setting of 4000 ppi. The actual difference in quality between the two devices - in terms of resolution, that is - lies in the difference of the percentage basis. They reach 98 - versus 86% of the nominal resultion."
A friend of mine has both, and he came to the same conclusion: Slightly higher resolution with the Reflekta. I have seen his scans.
And if you compare the price new of the RPS 10M to the used price of the Coolscan 5000, the price-performance ratio of the Reflekta is really good.
At our PPA affiliate, TCPPA, we conducted monthly workshops to help professional photographers as we all were operating our businesses. There isn’t any discussion on film or film vs. digital. It’s all digital.
Look at the last sentence from one of the biggest European scanner distributors:
https://filmscanner.info/en/PlustekOpticFilm120.html
"Since we and lots of our customers had many problems with the Plustek OpticFilm 120, we have taken that scanner out of our assortment."
Confirmed by a survey here on rff in which about 24% of users reported severe problems:
https://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=1589
Hilarious. Rip roaring hilarious. That page has listed that long before Plustek discontinued the OpticFilm 120. Further, that page has so many errors about the 120, that it is completely and totally discredited. Just one of many dozens of errors: "The Plustek OpticFilm 120 is a very slow film scanner. In order to scan medium format films in high quality a very powerful PC with much memory is needed."
Abject nonsense. I used my OpticFilm 120 hooked up to a simple MacBook (not Pro). The CPU was all of an Intel M3, with just 8 gb of RAM. The scanner worked just fine. I guess a MacBook is a powerful computer!
The survey here at RFF is nothing but anecdotal evidence. It provides no information at all. None. If you cannot understand why an uncontrolled survey is useless, then I cannot help you.
Plustek sold the OpticFilm 120 for well over 5 years. By ANY metric that's a successful product.
Speaking of anecdotal evidence, or none at all...you've been preaching that Fuji stopped film production years ago...only to have been proven incorrect there as well. You've been remarkably silent on that.
Don't demand hard evidence from others when you have made baseless claims made upon nothing but vacuous opinion.
Speaking of anecdotal evidence, or none at all...you've been preaching that Fuji stopped film production years ago...only to have been proven incorrect there as well. You've been remarkably silent on that.
Don't demand hard evidence from others when you have made baseless claims made upon nothing but vacuous opinion.
We'll see. As others have noted, Fujifilm's recent move is profoundly inexplicable. Some have suggested that Fujirilm will be rebranding some Ilford Film, as they did for their monochrome C41 film.
LOL.....
Seems there is a competition between all these conspiracy theory people who can made the most absurde theory.
Cheers, Jan