Is Medium Format the best for Film Scanners under $1K?

[Johnmcd]

The Pakon will be much faster than the Nikon or Minolta, but I believe (haven't owned either) they can squeeze a little more detail out. The Pakon isn't great for slide film if that's your thing, but it excels at colour negative film and works fine for B&W. If you have a 36 frame roll of film, you're likely to need five hours+ to scan it with a non Pakon scanner. In that time I bet I could scan twelve rolls and have the images sorted and filed in Lightroom!

I would disagree with 5+ hours to scan 36 shots, at least not with the Plustek 8100.

• 15 seconds to load strip of 6 into the holder and load
• 10 seconds for a preview which is done only once, using that for all the negs (in Vuescan)
• 40 seconds for 3600 dpi scan which loads automatically into PS
• 2 seconds to push the holder to the next frame & repeat.

The actual scanning takes 36 x 52 sec. or let's round it up to 36 minutes total. As with any scanning process, the time you take in PS is up to you. For me a quick invert (I scan negs as slides), crop to inside frame edge if required, then levels and resize to around 1000 pixels long and they're ready for sharing or as proofs for wet printing. If I'm in the zone, this process adds another 60 sec per frame.

I actually have the whole process running on my other monitor while I surf the net or read some RFF posts.

Cheers - John

 

[Huss]

If you already have a decent digital camera use that to 'scan' your images. No need to mess w more hardware and possibly flaky software. You can see results online better than that from dedicated amateur film scanners. And much quicker to use.

There is something to be said about using a decent lab and getting your film and scans back together. For me it is a much more efficient use of my time but I get wanting to do it yourself.

This is one of those things where maybe the first question you should ask is how much are you going to actually shoot in a month? It really needs to be a substantial amount for a scanner purchase to make financial sense. Financial, not creative!

 

[JChrome]

If you have a 36 frame roll of film, you're likely to need five hours+ to scan it with a non Pakon scanner. In that time I bet I could scan twelve rolls and have the images sorted and filed in Lightroom!

Yea I'm also going to cast some skepticism on this figure. I can load 4 strips of 6 frames into my v700 and it will automatically scan them all in about 30 minutes or less. I've migrated to the flatbeds with larger real estate for this reason.

Of course tweaking each would take time and my own philosophy of "make crappy scans until you need something better" makes it quicker.



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[WJJ3]

another vote for using a DSLR and macro lens to scan film. When set up correctly its relatively painless and works great for B&W negs or color positives.

For scanning 35mm color negative there is only one good option: Pakon

 

[kb244]

Back when I worked in the Camera Center LLC, we had a customer come in with roughly 700 slides that he wanted to digitize. When we were trying to figure out the best way to get the cost down per slide as much as possible we found that using a DSLR on a copy stand was the best route.

The stand already had a slide holder with an under light. So all we had to do was pre-focus on one, set everything manually, and just start stacking them with a remote shutter foot-cable. So that I would just slip the slide in, pop off the shutter, put the next slide in, over and over.

Negatives would course taken longer using that method since they're not mounted.

The only scanner I bother with at home is my old Canoscan FS4000, which to my knowledge only VueScan works with with today's operating systems. It can be a bit slower to do each frame at 4,000 DPI, since it's 6 frames per loading. But not nearly as slow as some of the epson software on the flatbed scanner on OSX at school.

I wish I had a dedicated MF Scanner though. But I guess a camera to shoot a negative and convert can work as long as you're selective about what you want to shoot and long as you have a very well diffused light table.

 

[FujiLove]

Yea I'm also going to cast some skepticism on this figure. I can load 4 strips of 6 frames into my v700 and it will automatically scan them all in about 30 minutes or less. I've migrated to the flatbeds with larger real estate for this reason.

Of course tweaking each would take time and my own philosophy of "make crappy scans until you need something better" makes it quicker.



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To be clear: I was talking about cleaning the film, loading it into the scanner, scanning, removing the strips, processing the files in Photoshop, ColorPerfect etc. to balance the colour, dust spotting the files and finally importing them to Lightroom.

In my experience with a flatbed that can take three to five hours with a 36 exposure roll of film, depending on how fussy you are about your colour balance. About 6 to 10 minutes per frame.

Realistically, I can do that same roll in 30 to 45 minutes with the Pakon because the scanning is so quick and the colour rarely needs tweaking.

 

[Johnmcd]

To be clear: I was talking about cleaning the film, loading it into the scanner, scanning, removing the strips, processing the files in Photoshop, ColorPerfect etc. to balance the colour, dust spotting the files and finally importing them to Lightroom.

In my experience with a flatbed that can take three to five hours with a 36 exposure roll of film, depending on how fussy you are about your colour balance. About 6 to 10 minutes per frame.

Realistically, I can do that same roll in 30 to 45 minutes with the Pakon because the scanning is so quick and the colour rarely needs tweaking.

Probably, getting pedantic now, but I think to be fair...

My times are for B/W, so no colour 'tweaking'. I don't know how accurate the 8100 is for (or the Vuescan for that matter)). That said I rarely need any dust treatment other than a quick blow with a squeeze blower prior to loading. That will depend on how each persons ability to produce clean negs (another rabbit hole to descend into). Therefore for me at least, the quick cloning of one or two specks is no more than a couple of seconds.

To include post processing time, regardless of which scanning method, is problematic as each person will vary greatly in this area and therefore should be applied equally across all comparisons.

Link some scanned images with some rough times and the OP can decide what suits their workflow.

 

[FujiLove]

Probably, getting pedantic now, but I think to be fair...

My times are for B/W, so no colour 'tweaking'. I don't know how accurate the 8100 is for (or the Vuescan for that matter)). That said I rarely need any dust treatment other than a quick blow with a squeeze blower prior to loading. That will depend on how each persons ability to produce clean negs (another rabbit hole to descend into). Therefore for me at least, the quick cloning of one or two specks is no more than a couple of seconds.

To include post processing time, regardless of which scanning method, is problematic as each person will vary greatly in this area and therefore should be applied equally across all comparisons.

Link some scanned images with some rough times and the OP can decide what suits their workflow.

The Pakon is basically a drug store scanner, so it's forte is C41. In my experience it's colour negative film that's the real pain with flatbeds due to the colour balancing and orange mask removal. Here are a few Pakon scans. They were shot a while ago as I don't use much 35mm, but I've tried to remember what I did to the file post-scan.

Fuji Eterna 250D movie stock. I tweaked the colours in Lightroom to remove a cyan cast as it was processed in C41. Maybe 2 or 3 minutes work? And I applied the same correction to the full roll, so that was 38 frames done.

Another from the same roll.

Kodak 250D shot straight from the Pakon + a small contrast boost in Lightroom.

Straight from the Pakon.

 

[Johnmcd]

The Pakon is basically a drug store scanner, so it's forte is C41. In my experience it's colour negative film that's the real pain with flatbeds due to the colour balancing and orange mask removal. Here are a few Pakon scans. They were shot a while ago as I don't use much 35mm, but I've tried to remember what I did to the file post-scan.

Fuji Eterna 250D movie stock. I tweaked the colours in Lightroom to remove a cyan cast as it was processed in C41. Maybe 2 or 3 minutes work? And I applied the same correction to the full roll, so that was 38 frames done.

Nice scans. Looks great for C-41.

Cheers - John

 

[splitimageview]

I've owned all the Coolscans over about a 20 year period, two Minolta Dimage, a Noritsu lab scanner, various flat beds, a BEOON digitizing setup using a Sony A7-II, and a Pakon.

Hands down the winner for newly shot negs is Pakon. It has Kodak color smarts that no other scanner can match. It does use an obsolete OS but it's very cheap to set up a dedicated PC or it can be operated using a virtual PC.

5 minutes to scan a 36 roll and a couple of minutes for batch adjustments is all that is necessary for the majority of rolls.

It can handle Xpan negs and other situations with more work.

B &W is easier with any solution. Camera digitizing solutions are the most difficult and time consuming for color balance. It's difficult to develop a consistent workflow and is time consuming on each individual neg.

I use a Minolta for legacy slides, I don't shoot transparencies any longer.

Flatbeds I found tedious and of insufficient res for 35mm.

If there were no Pakon option I'd use a Minolta, Nikon, or Plustek or just have a pro lab do the work.

Hope this helps.

 

[Jockos]

Soon there will be a new sheriff in town!

http://rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151076

 

[nbagno]

I currently use a variety of scanners depending on the film format. For 35mm, nothing beats the Pakon 135 (I have the plus) for speed and convenience IMO. Colors are great and uses digital ice. If I need to scan a frame larger because I found a super awesome image that must be printed large I can use one of my other scanners. (Haven't yet).

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[brennanphotoguy]

I had a Pakon for 5 years. It was awesome. The colors are great, the b/w files are killer, the speed was nice and it was relatively easy to use. That scanner single handedly saved shooting film for me. I sold it a few weeks ago. I started looking into other scanners because I didn't need full rolls of film scanned. I get a lot of keepers but most of the time I don't do much with them all so I wanted to be more selective and print more. I settled on the Pacific Image PrimeFilm XA and it's been awesome. The level of detail is so much higher than anything I got from the Pakon. The Pakon is great and I still recommend it to people if you have tons of rolls you need to digitize but if you want a quality, fine art scan the new dedicated 35mm scanners are the way to go. This weird fascination people have with "but can it scan full rolls" needs to stop. Using VueScan isn't that bad either. The workflow in general is not too bad. Pull out a tablet or look at your negs up to some light, pick the ones you wanna do, preview them and then scan them. It's not hard. Oh, and if you REALLY want to have full rolls then the XA can do that too.

F*** flat bed scanning 35mm. That's the worst. I imagine that hell for me is Satan forcing me to color correct and scan all of his 35mm negs with a V600 using Silverfast.

 

[SaveKodak]

Another vote here from the Pacific Image XA. It's been a game changer for my 35mm. It has AUTOFOCUS GLORY BE
Hallelujah! and when using vuescan you can take advantage of the extensive multi-exposure and multisampling tools. It's not a fast scanner, but I keep trying to remind people...

The darkroom was not fast either!

Sometimes you just gotta look at your negs on a light table and cull a bit. The fine-art quality scans are worth it. I have scanned with the Coolscan V and 9000, and I'm getting comparable results from the XA. The other caveat of course is that scanning is not a user-friendly affair in general. I think the mixed reviews people frequently give scanners often derive from that fact. But I can safely say the XA (and I also own the fabulous PF120 for medium format) are not at all a limiting factor in my work currently.

 

[splitimageview]

This weird fascination people have with "but can it scan full rolls" needs to stop.

"This weird fascination" is what keeps me shooting 35mm... 🙂

i set up one of my previous Nikons to scan an entire roll (with the published hack) and although it worked, it look far longer and STILL required lots of color tweaking (per image.)

The Pakon is not just for scanning entire rolls, it's for

(a) superior color right out of the scanner
(b) batch adjustments (usually for brightness, contrast)

If you only need to scan an image here and there, there are other options, but if you shoot an entire roll (most people do) and want to actually SEE the entire roll without a lot of time and effort without having to imagine what a neg will look like as a positive, nothing beats the Pakon. In the amount of time it takes to scan the entire roll, one could instead scan a single frame on another scanner, only to realize the neg wasn't as it was first imagined; has happened to me many times!

Resolution isn't everything either. I bought a Noritsu lab scanner and did a side-by-side with the Pakon (6000x4000 vs 3000x2000) and preferred the Pakon for overall quality and color. If I were to ever need higher resolution (to print wall-size) then I'd send out for a drum scan. But I've never needed anything that large.

 

[SaveKodak]

"This weird fascination" is what keeps me shooting 35mm... 🙂

i set up one of my previous Nikons to scan an entire roll (with the published hack) and although it worked, it look far longer and STILL required lots of color tweaking (per image.)

The Pakon is not just for scanning entire rolls, it's for

(a) superior color right out of the scanner
(b) batch adjustments (usually for brightness, contrast)

If you only need to scan an image here and there, there are other options, but if you shoot an entire roll (most people do) and want to actually SEE the entire roll without a lot of time and effort, nothing beats the Pakon.

Resolution isn't everything either. I bought a Noritsu lab scanner and did a side-by-side with the Pakon (6000x4000 vs 3000x2000) and preferred the Pakon for overall quality and color. If I were to ever need higher resolution (to print wall-size) then I'd send out for a drum scan. But I've never needed anything that large.

When I look at Pakon, Noritsu, Frontier scans of 35mm now, I just see the surface noise that covers up all the grain. You get jaggy edges from the baked in sharpening, and it throws out detail in the highlights and shadows. Sure, maybe these lab scanners get reasonably close to decent color faster than a desktop unit, but for me the difference is night and day. I haven't had an issue color balancing my scans personally.

These are all from the Primefilm XA, set to batch scan full rolls (which I no longer do because I agree with Brennan, full roll scanning is workflow mistake when compared to just culling and doing a more hands-on scan of single images), with multi exposure. http://sperryphoto.com/an-american-mill The color was very close SooS, I did only basic edits in LR to get these right.

 

[splitimageview]

Over sharpening can happen with any scanner. Change the settings if you're getting those results.

Full-roll scanning is exactly what the Pakon is designed to do, as a minilab scanner; not so with other scanners. It's a workflow FEATURE, not a mistake. 😉

There are lots of scanners that can provide excellent results, no doubt. It's just a matter of how much time and effort is required of the operator.

Are there scanners that can provide superior results to the Pakon? Of course. Any scanner + time + skill + the right software can do that.

 

[nbagno]

Pakon is also awesome as a proofing scanner so you can really check out images in detail for higher resolution scanning.

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[brennanphotoguy]

So what you're saying is that you MUST have entire 35mm rolls scanned? It's too difficult to preview 2-3 images from a set and pick one?

 

[splitimageview]

Nope. Scan strips if you want. If you have more than one strip, it will prompt you to insert the next one.

But why do this with a newly developed roll? That's what the topic is about, going back to shooting 35mm. Best not to cut such a roll into strips if you have a Pakon. If it's another scanner, yes, the roll will need to be cut unless it's one of the Nikons that can handle an entire roll (but it will take 90 minutes to finish...)

I only scan strips of rolls that were developed and cut in previous years; newly shot rolls are left as single strips.