Looking to start developing and scanning my own film...scanner advice?

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guardado1213

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Hello all,

As many of you know, having a lab develop and scan your film can get expensive so while I'm sure these kind of post pop up all the time here, I want to ask the question anyway... which scanner would the community recommend to start off my endeavor in developing and scanning my own film. I'm starting off from scratch, so I have nothing invested so far.

I've been doing a bit of my own research and have been leaning heavily toward an Epson V700 or a Nikon Coolscan9000 but I'm not sure if i can scan pano's with this. I've recently gotten into shooting pano's with Hasselblad xpan so i figured a flatbed scanner would be easier to scan pano's with? Other than panoramas, I shoot mostly 35mm Black and white negatives. Every so often i shoot color or medium format.

I would love to hear your thoughts and advice on the matter. Thanks for reading!
 
Looking to start developing and scanning my own film...scanner advice?

Epsom V700. Or the newer V800. BetterScanning holders. Enjoy.

Wayne


Sent from somewhere around here.
 
The Epson V700 or V750 sounds well suited to your budget and your needs.
The Nikon CoolScan will give better results but will cost a LOT more.
I have a V750 for my primary 35mm scanner, and I have made 12"x18" prints from 3200dpi scans from it.
I have compared 3200dpi scans from the V750 and a Minolta Scan Dual IV, and I couldn't see a big enough difference to convince me to keep the Minolta.
The V700 will make scanning panoramic format images easy, and it will work with medium format.
 
One more vote for Epson as do it all, new, supported by all OS, plug&play, no special SW required scanner.
Obvious choice for MF and for wide 135 format it is ... even more obvious. 🙂
 
I have a Canon Canoscan 8800F, which does the job fine. Given the choice I'd take a flatbed Epson, but with medium format maximum the Canon does OK.
 
+1 for the Epson v700 / 800 series, I own a v700 and it's a great machine. Easy to use, and the quality is very good.

I used to own a Nikon 9000ED, and the scan quality was somewhat better than the Epson (better sharpness and dynamic range), but considering the price differential I sold the Nikon and kept the Epson.

I've also compared my Epson scans to scanned negs from my local C-41 lab using a Noritsu commercial machine, and the Epson is (subjectively) 90% as good the Noritsu, and with some tweaking I'm sure I could get my Epson scans even closer.

The Nikon 9000ED is a fantastic scanner, but the major issue is the complete lack of native software support from Nikon. They abandoned any software support several years ago. Personally, I found the Nikon software to be very cumbersome and difficult to use -- running on Mac OS, my Nikon would crash / freeze up ... by comparison the Epson software is much easier to learn and much more stable.

Many people still use and enjoy their 9000ED scanners, but operate them using SilverFast or other 3rd-party software ... in my experience the Epson scanners provide the best combination of ease-of-use and "bang for your buck".
 
I use an epson v800 scanner for 35 and MF, seems good to me but I haven't used others nor have I compared to lab scans. I have not tried the BetterScanning film holders yet.

For what it's worth, I found the bundled Silverfast software awful for a variety of reasons and ultimately lost patience. Luckily the V800 is very easy to use with Epson's own [bundled] software "Epson Scan", so it's quick to set up to scan a batch of pictures and come back when they're ready.
 
Just to give you an idea of the support provided by Epson:
I own an Epson 1680 scanner, vintage unknown. Suffice to say it's ancient by modern technology standards. To date, I have had no trouble running the scanner with Windows XP and Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.4. Try that with any other scanner a decade or longer out of production.
By the way, my Epson 1680 handles 35mm, 120/220 and 4x5 film with the factory film holders. I wouldn't even limit myself with a 35mm only scanner. You never know what film you may be using down the road. 😀 😎

One more thing: If I were starting a scanner quest, I would also be looking for a nice, clean, low mileage Epson 4990.

Wayne
 
The Plustek Optiscan 8100 is an excellent film scanner, especially coupled with Vuescan software, which allows for multi-pass scanning and creation of DNG (raw) files. I've been using one now for several months with black & white film, primarily Ilford Pan-F, shooting Leica M4 and Contax IIA rangefinders.

No need to scan at the full 7200 dpi rating. You realize very little extra resolution over the 3600 setting, at a cost of much longer scanning times and very large files for the little extra bit of resolution it actually captures. Multi-pass scanning and capturing a raw file allows for much more flexibility in processing.

M4 and 50mm f2 Summicron..



Contax IIA and 135mm f4 Sonnar..

 
mpaniagua said:
Just got a Plustek OpticFilm 8100 today. Planning of testing it this night once I get home. It goes for $300-350. Its supposed to get 7200 dpi optical resolution. Will post something tomorrow to let you know about it.
Click to expand...

Thanks i would appreciate your input! There are so many options i didn't know where to start so just picked the most popular which seems to have been the Epson V700
 
Those look great Greg, by any chance would you know if the Plustek Optiscan can do pano's?
Gregm61 said:
The Plustek Optiscan 8100 is an excellent film scanner, especially coupled with Vuescan software, which allows for multi-pass scanning and creation of DNG (raw) files. I've been using one now for several months with black & white film, primarily Ilford Pan-F, shooting Leica M4 and Contax IIA rangefinders.

No need to scan at the full 7200 dpi rating. You realize very little extra resolution over the 3600 setting, at a cost of much longer scanning times and very large files for the little extra bit of resolution it actually captures. Multi-pass scanning and capturing a raw file allows for much more flexibility in processing.

M4 and 50mm f2 Summicron..



Contax IIA and 135mm f4 Sonnar..

Click to expand...
 
The question you should have asked would be: given that I want to print good quality B&W prints of the size "XXX", which scanner do I need?
I will help: I print using Epson printers, which like to have the input defined as multiples or inverse multiples of 720. I tried to see if there was a discernible difference between 360 and 720 dpi, but even under a loupe it is difficult to distinguish, so I've settled on 360 dpi.
This means, that if your scanner actually resolves 3600 ppi, you can multiply the dimension of your negative in print by 10 times. E.G. a pano neg of about 1x3 inches will give you first rate print of 10x30 inches.
If I recall correctly, Epson V 700-800 resolves about 2200 ppi, so you can only enlarge (2200/360=6.1) 6 times, Imacon 848 0r X1,5 will give you almost 8000 ppi, so you can enlarge more than 20x. Most other decent scanners will fall in between.
Read this:
https://luminous-landscape.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/The-New-Epson-V850-Pro-Scanner-Final.pdf
 
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