Is a dedicated film scanner THAT much better than flatbed?

[djon]

X-Ray, this thread started with enthusiastic amateur photographers discussing the fun they've had with inexpensive scanners, the various successes they've experienced, and wondering if better scanners might be had for moderate prices...sadly, that became an opportunity for overt bragging about possessions. One person posted a handsome image and was abused for it, so he pulled the image.

However, you weren't involved in that, you simply shared interesting info about equipment that's unattainable to most of us, probably unheard of by most of us. Thanks.

Robert, Heisenberg didn't invent the idea that observation prevented objectivity. "Objectivity" is like beauty...but it's a paradox, it's only meaning is and always has been subjective.

The term "objective" is commonly used as a weapon, as it was here, to crush differences of opinion. Certain powerful American politicians, swiveling like weathervanes, say they're "objective." "Objective" means "wrong" in this kind of context.

Higher Dmax, higher resolution, faster times, less noise...these aren't "better," they're simply dimensions. "Objectivity" is bunk.

 

[anselwannab]

Anyway....

I have a SDIV and really like it. If I were going to be doing non silver based film, I'd go with an ICE eqipped model. Dust sucks. It kind of dissappears on web posts, but get to about 8x10 prints and it seems everyframe is a snow storm.

Scanned at 3200dpi and with minimal cropping I've gotten good looking 11x14 (Epson 2200 on Enhanced Matte paper). By that I mean, better than I could have made with my Besslar PrintMaker 35. (And that is mainly due to my lack of darkroom skills.)

The way I see it the SDIV gives me my 12mp Full Frame camera out of my CL and Canon F1 negatives.

It just takes a lot of massaging in the scanning software and PS to get everything out of a negative, especially getting the highlights and shadows right. All or my gallery were done with the SDIV, but what the heck does that show you, all the jpgs are less than 170k or something. I've actually totally changed my workflow since I did those too.


Heisenberg, Schrodenger wave function. P-chem nightmares. I once totally FUBAR'd some simple electon orbital question and got something like 2.8x10 to the 3 meters for an answer. Obviously, I had inverted or garbled something, I just didn't have the time to go back and straighten it out, so I just wrote next to it, "A little big, eh?". That's why I'm in Chemical Sales and my R&D guys groan when I come in the lab.

For a little over $200 bucks, its tough to beat the SD IV for B&W.

Mark

 

[RObert Budding]

Yes, back on topic. Digital ICE really is worth the extra expense for non silver based films. But my challenge is that I shoot medium format so the scanners are a bit pricey. The Epson 4990 is pretty good, but I'll be adding a Nikon Coolscan 9000 eventually. Adding, not replacing, because I will dabble in large format during the spring.

As for P-chem - that's what I studied in graduate school. Interesting, but I decided to get an MBA instead of writing my dissertation (photoconductivity of organic semiconductors).

Robert

 

[djon]

Digital Ice (or the same Ice-enabled scanner using Vuescan's infared) is absolutely wonderful...

I agree that Minolta IV is the best buy if one is only doing 35mm B&W, though Ice/infared do work beautifully with C41 B&W.

Film flatness is something else to consider... I'm preoccupied with curled ends of film strips on my Nikon V and a Photo.net friend, Mendel Leisk, is preoccupied with comparable issues in Minolta 5400 midframe. These two fine scanners deserve aluminum and, possibly, anti-newton glass carriers, and I'm about to explore both with mine and Nikon's FH3 carrier (when it arrives). If I still owned a Minolta and had a little loose cash I'd build a custom carrier for it, modifying the Minolta plastic carrier by adding a custom machined aircraft aluminum film sandwich.

 

[Nick R.]

Film curl is the bane of my Epson scanner. I have to sandwich my negatives between books for a day before I can scan them. For a pricey scanner, the 35mm negative holder is subpar.

 

[Nikon Bob]

On the Minolta 5400 I leave the machine on auto focus and if the pre scan is not sharp enough I then select a spot for it to focus on and do another scan. The spot selected is slightly off to one side of the long axis of the neg. This seems to take care of any film curl. I assume that that is because there is some DOF in the scanner. I could be wrong but it works well for me. Better carries may work help even more.

Bob

 

[doubs43]

Walker, there is no question the flatbed technology is there to produce good output (I have repeatedly said the Linotype Hell-Heidelberg machines are capable of astounding output). Instead, what has been the case is that consumer grade flatbeds have never been able to match dedicated film scanners. <Part of message snipped> Tom

ETA: I just went and read some reviews and commentary on this scanner. The "Happy Day" ain't here yet. 😉

Tom, no argument from me. My problem is that I now have literally thousands of negatives to scan. They represent 60 years of my father's life and work. Many are MF and 4x5. Considering the cost of a 35mm-only dedicated scanner, I doubt that I can afford one that will do MF & LF too. Therefore, I'm likely to look very hard at the Micrtek i900 as my best alternative.

This is an interesting discussion and has given me a lot to consider.

Walker

 

[djon]

Bob, yes, off-center autofocus works fine for most Nikon scans...grain sharp just by guessing where the focus should be in fast, very low resolution previews...EXCEPT for frames at ends of strips. I want grain sharp in corners of end frames and there's just not enough DOF to accomplish that with color neg film that's typically very curvy. End frames are my only reason for thinking about anti-newton glass.

One partial workaround is to cut film into 12 frames, rather than 6, then scan from each end (possible with Nikon's standard carrier). But I then do want to cut shorter for filing, so to reduce favorites near ends I wind up with 12 turning into 4/3/5 etc.

 

[djon]

Nick, you can get a custom carrier for your Epson that optionally uses anti-newton glass. It's better than the standard carrier, with or without.

Many enlargers were better with custom carriers and AN glass as well, the reality isn't unique to Epson.

You'd use the 120 carrier for 35, masked. 4X5 may be available.

Here's the expert/source: http://home.earthlink.net/~dougfisher/holder/mfholderintro.html

Anti-newton glass, sometimes found in dusty old camera stores for AN negative carriers (Omega/Durst/Beseler),works very well all by itself with big negs: lay the emulsion side on the flatbed glass, lay the AN glass over it, mask appropriately in the scanner software (and with paper if you want), and you'll get handsome results with big negs. There's a lot of DOF in flatbeds.

 

[T_om]

Tom, no argument from me. My problem is that I now have literally thousands of negatives to scan. They represent 60 years of my father's life and work. Many are MF and 4x5. Considering the cost of a 35mm-only dedicated scanner, I doubt that I can afford one that will do MF & LF too. Therefore, I'm likely to look very hard at the Micrtek i900 as my best alternative.

This is an interesting discussion and has given me a lot to consider.

Walker

It is a dilemma, for sure.

I understand that this collection is important to you... I had the same problem, but thankfully (or not, depends upon your point of view), I did not have many LF negatives left to scan.

Almost ALL my LF work was done for Auburn University 40 years ago and they probably STILL have those old negatives filed away somewhere, but WHERE is anyone's guess... I'll never see them again.

But I had a LOT of MF stuff and I was not a happy camper when I saw what flatbeds were doing to the quality I knew was there. Those thousands of negatives meant a lot to me and I was not going to waste all that effort to digitize them using sub-par technology. So I bought a LS8000 almost the first day they hit the market. That made all the difference in the world.

Were I in your place now, I would hold off a bit on scanning the LF stuff and buy a descent 35mm/MF scanner. As I pointed out earlier, used LS8000's are on the market for right at $1,000.00

If finances were tight, I would buy the Nikon, do the scanning work a fast as possible and then sell the machine.

Tom

 

[Nikon Bob]

djon

I have not noticed a particular problem with frames at the end of the film strips but then again I have a good enough is good enough attitude to most things.

Bob

 

[anselwannab]

I've thought about putting my negatives into slide mounts. Would that keep the 35mm flatter? Maybe easier to clean and I can load the scanner with the frames I want. Of course I suffer from having rarely one frame on a six strip worth working on, maybe ya'll have a better hit rate.

 

[Nick R.]

AWB,
I've tried putting B&W neg's into slide mounts and it's true that it does hold them flatter, but mounting a 36 exposure roll into slides gets tedious really fast. Why 36? It's hard to tell which frames are keepers from a negative.

Djon,
Putting 35mm neg's into Doug Fisher's 120 glass negative carrier was something I hadn't thought of . With a cardboard mask, it could work very well.

 

[RObert Budding]

Tom - I'm looking at a lot of my Father's negatives and slides. It's a big project, and I hesitate to scan even the MF negs on my Epson 4990. I'm waiting until I have enough pennies saved for the Nikon 9000. After all, the cost of my time is much greater than the cost of a good scanner. And I don't want to rescan if I buy a better scanner next year!

Robert

 

[djon]

Skills do count, it's not all a matter of dollars.

There are things that can be done with 4990 that greatly increase its performance.

And there are plenty of challenges with 8000/9000, which is why glass carrier, anti-newton modifications, and wet mount carrier (Kami) are available for them.

http://largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/503676.html

Incidentally, Gittings is a highly accomplished architectural photographer.

 

[djon]

Bob, I don't have that flatness issue with my own film, just with C41.

 

[Nikon Bob]

Bob, I don't have that flatness issue with my own film, just with C41.

I do not roll my own, all I use is C41 processed at a mini lab.

Bob

 

[anselwannab]

I've seen a lot of ads for the Microtek i800. It says it has a new medium and large format holder that uses tension to keep the film flat(er?).

How do Microtek's hold up versus the other flatbeds?
Anyone try an i800?

Equipment wise what am I going to need to get nice scans from 6x8s to make 16x20 prints?

 

[neelin]

I've seen a lot of ads for the Microtek i800. It says it has a new medium and large format holder that uses tension to keep the film flat(er?).

How do Microtek's hold up versus the other flatbeds?
Anyone try an i800?

Equipment wise what am I going to need to get nice scans from 6x8s to make 16x20 prints?

On the main topic, I have a Nikon dedicated 35mm scanner, it's way better than my i800 for 35mm. OTOH when you want to scan offbeat neg sizes, the i800 works just fine. Check out a few samples from the i800 on 110 negs & 6x7cm negs.

http://www.pbase.com/neelin/test

If you thought dedicated 35mm scanners are slow, try scanning on an i800 at finer than 1200dpi. Although, I am very happy with the results archiving old family photos/negs

http://www.pbase.com/neelin/favourite

I would lay out the negs over the platen & then put (myown) piece of glass overtop to flatten it all down & scan the platten at 1200dpi (80 megs) & then open with CS2 & crop into individual negs.

I found my naming convention was good for the purpose, archiving boxes of family negs, because the film type helped me date the photos because of the era's different film sizes were used predominantly (check out wikipaedia for pinning down film sizes/eras), also even because of the subjects in the photos, I could eventually "picture" who was taking the pictures because of the film size indicating a specific camera.

Far more can be gleaned from pictures, consider the following:

http://www.pbase.com/neelin/image/54910432

I know the street, used to calculate the compass orientation, then the time of day from the shadows.

I know my dad's height (& geographic position) so I can calculate the day of the year calculated based upon the length of his shadow, and resolve it to spring or fall based upon the foliage.

I know the film type, his approx. age, the obsolete bus sign, store sign, hydro pole now underground & use it to help resolve the year range the photo was taken.

More information that you would probably want can be figured out from old family photos. BTW the smile on his face outside my grandma's house probably means he was still courting my mother 😉

Robert