hatidua
Established
Can anyone advise as to what the cheapest scanner is that will allow me to place a page of negatives on it and create my own contact sheets? I don't really care about the technical quality of the scans as I have drum scans made from the ones I eventually select.
whitecat
Lone Range(find)er
I lay my plastic sleeved negs right on the glass and place another glass on top of that.
Works great. Here is a small sample.
Works great. Here is a small sample.
hatidua
Established
Is this on ANY scanner or one that has a light source in the lid?
whitecat
Lone Range(find)er
This is a regular flatbed scanner. I really don't know about many of them. Look into the Epson line for more info.
Haigh
Gary Haigh
These look good. I'll try this on my V700. Thanks for posting.
venchka
Veteran
I have never had any luck scanning a negative on a document scanner. The kind without a light in the top.
Epson scanners that work for 8x10 film will scan an area large enough for a contact sheet. 1680, 4990, V700, V750. Otherwise, you'll have to do it in sections.
Epson scanners that work for 8x10 film will scan an area large enough for a contact sheet. 1680, 4990, V700, V750. Otherwise, you'll have to do it in sections.
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damien.murphy
Damien
Do you need to replicate a darkroom-style contact sheet?
I currently use a Canon 8800F, which takes 2 strips of negatives at a time, and take 1 1200dpi scan of the area that encompasses the 2 strips. From here, I take the file into lightroom, crop out the individual frames, and use photo-editing software to auto-level and sharpen each frame.
This leaves me with a 1650x 1100 pixel scan of each frame, perfect for web use, and image evaluation.
I've just started to do this, but I needed to do something, as I only get to my darkroom every 3 or 4 weeks, and to be honest am not overly fond of spending my limited darkroom time making 35mm contact sheets.
I feel differently about 120 6x6 contact sheets which I consider a thing of beauty, and more like 12 small prints, than just a contact sheet. Thus I will continue to make wet-printed 120 contact sheets.
hatidua
Established
Not necessarily, more of a way of evaluating images in determining which ones I'll have drum scanned.
I'll look into some of the options listed in various replies here.
thank you all!
v3cron
Well-known
I use the multicrop function in Vuescan along with an Epson V500. It gives you a separate file for each image, with not too much fiddling around in the software. I lay the sheet down under the light source two strips at a time. Goes a lot faster than it sounds, and you can flip through and tag your images in Lightroom or whatever afterwards. I find it much easier to evaluate them that way. I scan the picks on an Imacon or just wet print them.
damien.murphy
Damien
Should note the reason I make one scan of the area comprising the two strips is mainly speed. I find it a lot faster to make just one scan like this, than to set the multi-crop options in the software and then wait for the scanner to make 12 individual scans. The trade-off is additional time required in image editing software to crop, level and sharpen the frames, but on my 8800F with Vuesan, it works out faster than going the multi-crop route, even at 1200dpi, with the difference becoming only greater with the use of higher dpi's (and thus longer scanning times).
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