My film scanner died!

[zenza]

If you only shoot 135, you just need to get a Nikon ES-2. No need for fiddling with a copy stand.

 

[charjohncarter]

When I was using a digital camera to 'scan' my negatives, I found two factors that were important. First, use a macro lens there is no curvature of focus plain. Second, I used a old slide copier with a bellows, this shut down room light from reaching or piping into the field.

This is my old set up:

Untitled by John Carter, on Flickr

I've thought about going back to it, because the images were better (in detail). I quit because I was running from room to room to shoot and down load. Now I have a ff digital which will even I guess improve the quality (mine has focus peaking which will also help), and I guess I could set it up for wireless transfer.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

My camera scanning experiments continue!

This is one of the last photos I scanned with my Nikon LS-8000ED before it died. Below are 100% crops of the images scanned with the Nikon and with the Olympus Pen-F to compare image quality.

This is from the Nikon scanner.

This is from the Olympus Pen-F, 20mp sensor in normal resolution mode.

This is from the Olympus Pen-F using the cameras 'sensor-shift' hi-resolution mode, resized down to the same size as the image from the scanner. The reason I did that is the Olympus hi-res mode makes images that look very soft unless sized down some. If you shoot JPEGs in this mode, the camera saves it as a 50mp file, but if you shoot RAW you get an 80m file. The JPEGs look sharp and the RAW files are not, and I think the need to resize it down a bit is why Olympus only gives a 50mp JPEG.


I shot these in RAW because I needed a 16bit file to allow me to adjust the tonality of the final image. As with scanning with a scanner, the camera scans are way too low in contrast and need tonal manipulation in Photoshop to make good B&W images.


As the examples show, the normal resolution camera mode has a little less detail and more noise than the image from the Nikon scanner. The hi-res camera mode image is slightly better in resolution than the image from the scanner, and has no noise (film grain is visible, of course, but no sensor noise).


So, it looks like the hi-res mode will give the best image quality, and actually slightly surpasses the Nikon scanner!

 

[Dogman]

I think you're onto something.🙂

 

[qbrt]

My camera scanning experiments continue!

Hey I'm not sure if anyone else mentioned the Lightroom plugin Negative Lab Pro, but if you're venturing into digital camera scanning this plugin is incredibly good at converting dng/raw files from negatives to positives. Their forum is also really active and helpful.


You get 10 conversions in the trial i believe, and if you want to continue to play with it for a while without using up all of your conversions, just don't apply the change at the end. I highly recommend it, though.


The most important thing is keeping the negatives perfectly flat. Someone mentioned the Skier copy-box. I have a friend that also really recommends that piece of kit. I eventually went with the Negative Supply MK1. Pricey but that baby is heavy-duty and keeps the film really flat. Wonderfully built.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Hey I'm not sure if anyone else mentioned the Lightroom plugin Negative Lab Pro, but if you're venturing into digital camera scanning this plugin is incredibly good at converting dng/raw files from negatives to positives. Their forum is also really active and helpful.


You get 10 conversions in the trial i believe, and if you want to continue to play with it for a while without using up all of your conversions, just don't apply the change at the end. I highly recommend it, though.


The most important thing is keeping the negatives perfectly flat. Someone mentioned the Skier copy-box. I have a friend that also really recommends that piece of kit. I eventually went with the Negative Supply MK1. Pricey but that baby is heavy-duty and keeps the film really flat. Wonderfully built.

I tried Negative Lab Pro and found it gave results no different than what I could do myself in Photoshop without buying software I cannot afford at the moment. I suspect that its real value is in working with color negs, but I have not shot color neg film in 20 years. I'm doing strictly B&W film here.


I'm using the glass negative carrier from my Nikon scanner. It holds the film even flatter than the Skier device. I think the Skier is another one of those things marketed to photographers that is revoltingly overpriced for what it is. If I didn't have the Nikon glass carrier, I would use one of the metal carriers from my Beseler enlarger,which I suspect would work as well as the Skier (it worked perfectly when I had a darkroom!). I may try the enlarger's carrier anyway since using a glass carrier is a pain.

 

[Archlich]

This is from the Nikon scanner.

This is from the Olympus Pen-F, 20mp sensor in normal resolution mode.

This is from the Olympus Pen-F using the cameras 'sensor-shift' hi-resolution mode, resized down to the same size as the image from the scanner.

Is there something wrong with the order here? I find the second image supposedly by the Pen-F in normal mode the sharpest.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Is there something wrong with the order here? I find the second image supposedly by the Pen-F in normal mode the sharpest.

It looks sharper because the grain looks sharper but the actual detail resolution is less.

 

[Archlich]

It looks sharper because the grain looks sharper but the actual detail resolution is less.

Oh, yes. You're right. Thanks man.