in short: plustek or Flextight X5 scanner

[Captain Kidd]

Hi,

I have a 35mm negative I would like to get printed in liquid acrylic. Im going to get it printed at 16 x 24 inches. I generally scan my negatives using my Plustek OpticFilm 8200iSE scanner, which I love, but I have never scanned anything to print this large, im kind of skeptic of the plusteks 7200dpi statement.

If I scan the 35mm negative at original size, at the 7200dpi, I can get it to the 16 x 24 at around 360dpi. The printer has a scanner and said they can scan the negative on their Flextight X5 scanner. Which I know is a superior scanner.

My question is, has anyone experience with the plustek at around the size 16 x 24.

And even though i know the Flextight X5 scanner is much better, at what point do you visibly see this quality, is it at much larger scales, ie a metre wide print.

Thanks everyone

 

[willie_901]

If the information content of your negative is high, the Flextight X5 will be worth it.

The detail of the subject matter as well as the exposure/development determine the information content. An underexposed negative of a landscape on a foggy day would be different than a perfectly exposed cityscape on a sunny day. Sub-optimal development leading to excess negative density will have less detail than optimal density.

To make full use of the superior Flextight X5 scan, the post-production rendering and printer hardware are important. For instance, output sharpening parameters must be optimized for the printer.

Another consideration is the print medium. Liquid acrylic is typically used for high detail images with strong colors. So DPI would be more important compared to a canvas print.

Upscaling a to increase DPI can be effective. In some cases using the post-producyion software to upscale is better than the printer firmware. In other cases the opposite is true.

According to reviews, my Plustek OpticFilm 7600 only delivers about 3300 PPI. The 7200 PPI is achieved by pixel doubling since the actual CCD resolution is lower than the maximum PPI output. The 8200 may be different.

Does the intended viewing distance and the negative itself justify the 8000 dpi Flextight X5 CCD? (I don't know why the Hasselblad specs describe the CCD sensor in DPI.)

 

[Captain Kidd]

Thanks Willie, I really appreciate the information. I hadn't thought of separate sofware, what I was intending was to ask them to scan the image and then send it to me so I can use lightroom to match it to the previous (smaller) print of the image that i made.

Do you think this would be ok or would working on a Flextight scan in lightroom be a problem?

 

[willie_901]

The Flextight 5 file size can be up to 580MB for a 48 bit color scan from 35mm media.

This may be too large for older computers with limited internal memory. Otherwise a flat TIFF file would work for LR. I would convert is to a lossless DNG to save disk space. Even for newer computers, rendering a 580 MB image file would be sluggish.

A high-quality JPEG would be much smaller. If the Flextight JPEG rendering was flat (minimum rendering optimization) and used a large color space (Adobe Pro), then LR could be more practical.

The value of TIFF vs JPEG would depend on the characteristics of the original negative. If the lighting involved mixed color temperatures, or if shadow region detail is critical there could be advantages to a TIFF.

The JPEG you create from LR may contain more information than some printers can use.

I would ask the lab with the Flextight 5 for specific advice.

 

[MartinN]

The Plustek's real resolution is about 3600ppi and that gives about 17inch (long side) prints at 300ppi or 28inch prints at 180ppi. The X5 could give about 5000ppi - 6000ppi at most, but I'm certain that no normal photographer uses such film that has so fine resolution (Kodak Techpan is the best BW, Fuji Velvia the other option but probably wont need 5000ppi). The X5 is certainly sharper.

 

[philipus]

One thing to add is that you unless the lab knows what it is doing you might not get a very flat and "malleable" scan back from the lab. In my experience Flexcolor's presets are quite contrasty and that may defeat the purpose of paying for using the X5.

Perhaps you could be there and help them set up Flexcolor so you get the scan you want? Otherwise scanning yourself will obviously give you much better control.

It may be possible to get a good print at 200 dpi, depending on the image, post-processing, viewing distance etc. I see very little difference between prints at 200d and 360 dpi in most cases. But it all depends.

 

[DominikDUK]

Seriously both are good enough for acrylic prints, they are rarely done at more than 150 to 200 Dpi so both should give you enough resolution for the size you want. Beneath the acrylic you still have a classic colorpaper like Fuji crystal archive or similar, the acrylic just adds some depth and gloss that's it.