Scanner, lightbox or print? A brief study

[sdotkling]

Hello All:
It being a rainy day in New York, I undertook an experiment in comparing the resolution from a 35mm neg (HP5 in Adonal, Leica M4, Summicron 35, v2) from a flatbed scanner (Canoscan 8600F, Canoscan 9000F), a lightbox-copy stand set-up (Panasonic GX7 with Canon Macro 50/3.5, with a sheet of 1/4" glass to hold the neg flat) and a very analog paper print (Ilford Multigrade FB Cooltone, scanned in the Canoscan 9000F.)

A bit of background: I've always had good results from my flatbed scanner(s), but have long read here and elsewhere how unsatisfactory they are compared to...oh, just about anything. Having a distinct distaste for digital cameras as objects of affection--though I admit they are very useful and amazingly proficient, handily doing things far beyond what a film camera can do--I regard my Leicas as man jewelry, talismans of machinery witchcraft and somewhat holy objects. Okay, I'll stop.

But the idea of having my film images stepped on and degraded drives me a little crazy. Surely there is a way to continue using my lovely M's and still participate in the digital zeitgeist? If I could only nail down the best possible way.

Still with me, dear reader? So I took a negative and created an image from it 3 ways. Here are the results.

First, a scan from my old Canoscan 8600F (which, incidentally, is no longer supported in OS X, so it's close to useless), followed by a detail of same photo. (Because I know you'll ask, all the pix you will see below have been processed according to my usual workflow: sharpened once in Photoshop, curves monkeyed with in my usual compressive way, and then reduced to about 2MB in size. The purpose here is not to look at the tonal ranges--which I tried to make as similar as I could--but the sharpness and overall gestalt.)

Lady Looks Left-Cano by sdotkling, on Flickr

Cano8600F-detail by sdotkling, on Flickr

Next up, the same neg, scanned in a more modern Canoscan 9000F:
Lade Looks Left-Cano9000F by sdotkling
Cano9000F-detail by sdotkling

Here's the result of the lightbox set-up with Panasonic GX7 and a Canon Macro 50/3.5 (which I've always considered as sharp a lens as I ever saw):
Lady Looks Left-lightbox by sdotkling
Lady Looks Left-lightbox-detail by sdotkling

And lastly, a fiber print:

Lady Looks Left-Print by sdotkling

Detail:
Lady Looks Left-Print-detail by sdotkling

Results:
Surprisingly, the Canoscans (both of 'em) were clearly sharper than the lightbox set-up with Lumix GX7. The lightbox set-up was also prone to moiré patterns.
While the paper print is a much more satisfying physical object, its charms can mostly be seen in the real world, not the virtual one. Considering the ease of editing a digital image (easier dust spot repairs, much more precise dodging and tonal control), one must ask why bother printing analog photos for an audience that's not in the same room.
Of course, the digital images are not nearly as much fun to produce, in my opinion. No smell of hypo, no cool little room downstairs to drag dinner guests into to hear them ooh and ahh.
In a moment, a less comprehensive version of this test using medium format negs.

 

[sdotkling]

Part II:

This study has only two comparators, if that's a real word. The aforementioned scanner compared to the lightbox set-up. Here the negs were the product of a Hasselblad 500C with the 105/5.6 running Fuji Acros 100.
Scanning 120 film has been discussed on this forum many times, usually with in terms of disappointment and general disrespect, but short of spending $1800 on a Plustek (which, I understand, has its own set of hair-tearing problems), there are few alternatives. So I was looking to the lightbox as a poor-man's solution to improved digitization of my medium format film.

Here's the Canoscan 9000F, followed by the lightbox, Lumix GX7 with Canon Macro 50/3.5:

Opa-Canoscan9000F by sdotkling

Detail:
Opa-Canoscan9000F-detail by sdotkling

The lightbox:
Opa-Lightbox by sdotkling
Opa-Lightbox-detail by sdotkling

Isn't this fun? The Canoscan 9000F blows the doors off the lightbox in resolution. Admittedly, we are only looking in the center of the frame, as there is no detail at the edges, and that is where one might expect distortion or soft focus. But still, now I feel better about my scanner.

Thanks. Now I gotta walk the dog in the picture.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Nice project for a rainy afternoon.

First, something really wrong with the lightbox scan of the lady, the stripes on her hair, face, and jacket. Newton rings? Or moire of camera pixels against the light pattern of the lightbox? Probably doesn't affect the realized sharpness.

As for the dog images, yes, the Canoscan looks better than the lightbox. Your camera capture is nominally 16MPx, and the scanner @1200ppi is probably only 5MPx. Wonder why the camera doesn't look better?? More sharpening in the scanner software? Different process used to resize the two images? I wonder if the camera shot didn't lose a lot of resolution in the downsizing process from 16MPx. Camera grab should be better than a 1200ppi scan.

All that said, I find that flatbeds do a pretty good job with MF.

 

[endoplas]

I have found that my copy stand mounted D800 Nikon (@100 ISO) with a 105 macro at f8 and LED lightbox produce better results (BW) then a V850. The other advantage is speed and far less of a dust issue. I have got rid of the V850 now.

 

[Chromacomaphoto]

I have found that my copy stand mounted D800 Nikon (@100 ISO) with a 105 macro at f8 and LED lightbox produce better results (BW) then a V850. The other advantage is speed and far less of a dust issue. I have got rid of the V850 now.

Must admit, when you look at the costs of a better scanner, it is sometimes halfway to a decent pro body DSLR and if you've already got the lenses for good film scanning potential it's tempting to use this as an excuse for the purchase. I imagine the workflow would be faster too. Yet, there's just something so 'off' or backwardly perverse about buying a DSLR to reshoot all my film shots that sits awkwardly with me. Can't explain why, maybe I need to get over it.

 

[Merlijn53]

Must admit, when you look at the costs of a better scanner, it is sometimes halfway to a decent pro body DSLR and if you've already got the lenses for good film scanning potential it's tempting to use this as an excuse for the purchase. I imagine the workflow would be faster too. Yet, there's just something so 'off' or backwardly perverse about buying a DSLR to reshoot all my film shots that sits awkwardly with me. Can't explain why, maybe I need to get over it.

Yes, I think it's a bit odd to do that. The only reason I can think of is when you use digital only for making a digital archive of your negatives and get some pictures online. If you do it for printing, you better print in the darkroom or go digital from the start.
Beside that a digital dslr copy is always better than a scan with a flatbed scanner. You don't have to test that.
Frank

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Poor woman, acts here as guinea pig.
To me prints is art, the rest is for gearheads.