Scanning Film - Waste Of Time?

Several mentions of the Nikon Coolscans, I believe the difference between the 5000 and 4000 is that the 4000 was firewire?

Does either USB or Firewire offer any advantge other than convenience?

Have any of you modified the original low cost strip feeder to take full rolls, (supposed to be a simple bridging of two solder joints that resets the counter to take up to 38 ex)?

A used 4000 or 5000 coolscan with a modified strip feeder might offer a very reasonable approach to quality scans that do not eat so much time as you can set it up and go to dinner, to return to a job done? At the cost I have seen some of the 4000's, you might afford several, and have dualing scanners?

Nikon has supported these scanners, and I believe Vuescan offers an alternate software, I am not so tech savy as to have a sound opinion about which is better, but if all the conbinations fall in to place, or is someone here slips me the crib sheet, it might make it very convenient to scan rolls of film.

The Slide feeder is great when it works, but can take some fiddling and attention. I transferred most of my slides to a hard drive, and a back up, though I suspect a DVD might be another good backup?

My friend Zuzana loves her Coolscan 9000, have no idea if it does full rolls easily.

Regards, John
 
in the beginning I was finding scanning a boring activity, necessary but boring. After a while I realize it is a part of the process. I got used to it, put some music on and start to work, in relax. Of course as an amateur I do not nedd to finish a work on a fixed date and this helps in being relaxed. I'm satisfied from results from my 5000 ed.
robert
 
Dante_Stella-

First paragraph: "There are two reasons to scan film. One is that you have old negatives that you want to put on your computer to manipulate, put on facebook, email, print, etc. Another reason is that you might not want to admit to yourself that you have really disengaged from film photography but want to keep a bunch of negatives around "just in case.""

Um, how about because you want to share the shots you took last night with your friends? Or because it gives you another option besides wet printing?

Don't get me wrong, I read your site because I like your photography and I like to read what you have to say. I thought your recent post was odd, considering. I mean, you just posted scans from film. So were these old negatives or are you disengaging on us? 🙂

Like I said, you mention pros and cons, I just disagree with your conclusions. And so apparently do you. That's why I thought it was odd.

And this whole "film is disappearing" vibe gets real old. Some of us have been hearing it for a decade or more, yet haven't had any problem finding the stuff. At what point are people who use film going to stop with the "sky is falling" nonsense?
 
Film isn't disappearing; it's just going through a transition from mass-market to enthusiast-market, like LP records. That means "easy" film work (Frontier machines everywhere, an array of film types available at the drug store, etc) is going to be a thing of the past and soon. Costco just stopped selling Fuji Superia; that starts the countdown for the disappearance of their minilabs. "Easy" is going away. Committed film users will have no trouble getting what they need, but just like LPs there will be a period when costs and hassles will increase exponentially. So what? Are you in or are you out?
 
crappy machine proofs are fine for your shoebox... but even when someone is gone, having a few really superb enlargements means more than the shoebox... except maybe the procedure of going through the shoebox and the memories that go along with it...

I agree with Bob entirely.

david.elliott said:
Sometimes it is not the "good" photos that mean the most to me and my family.

And in the sad case where someone is lost, I would rather have 100+ less-than-good photos (from a technical / artistic standpoint) of them than only 10 good ones.

I save every photo I take that turns out reasonably well. So long as the composition is okay and the exposure is okay, I save it. That does not mean I share it with anybody, but I have it saved.

The number of photos I share with people is very small. But, "taking several steps back and thinking long term," I see no reason not to save the others.
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mh2000 said:
crappy machine proofs are fine for your shoebox... but even when someone is gone, having a few really superb enlargements means more than the shoebox... except maybe the procedure of going through the shoebox and the memories that go along with it...

I agree with Bob entirely.
Click to expand...

Who said anything about crappy machine proofs and shoeboxes?
 
5:00 PM said:
Film isn't disappearing; it's just going through a transition from mass-market to enthusiast-market, like LP records. That means "easy" film work (Frontier machines everywhere, an array of film types available at the drug store, etc) is going to be a thing of the past and soon. Costco just stopped selling Fuji Superia; that starts the countdown for the disappearance of their minilabs. "Easy" is going away. Committed film users will have no trouble getting what they need, but just like LPs there will be a period when costs and hassles will increase exponentially. So what? Are you in or are you out?
Click to expand...

Costco stopped selling multi-roll packs of a single cheap film - big deal. I'm not the only one who doesn't like Superia very much, apparently.

Actually go to a record store and price the things compared to CD's, and *then* tell me about supposed exponential costs :/ Records and CD's cost roughly the same around here, and even Best Buy is selling records. There are rumblings in our local music industry about a plan to open a record-making plant locally due to the level of demand. LP's are certainly not dead or gone, and most definitely don't come with some huge price penalty.

Ritz Camera went into bankruptcy protection because they idiotically bought an upside-down competitor. Has nothing to do with film, and since most Ritz stores were in malls rather than neighborhoods, there will be little impact on a person's ability to get film processed. Drug stores all over the US do it every day, the closing of half the Ritz chain won't affect that.

What is this fetish with forecasting the end of the world? I ALREADY buy my film and supplies at a specialty camera shop. I shoot traditional B&W. You know, the stuff that was "obselete" in the 50's? It's been a long time since your corner druggist processed silver-based films, and yet somehow it is still cheap, easy to get, and easy to use. To read some people's comments, that isn't possible. Yet there it is.

Some of you need to take a look outside the window and realize that PopPhoto is not the whole world. It's an ad-driven magazine that sells cameras and gear for the manufacturers. They aren't serving photographers in any way nor are they reporting the state of the world of photography.
 
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"Fetish for forecasting the end of the world?"

You totally missed my point. What did new LPs cost in 1995-2000? And how available were they?

And I thought I was being reassuring.
 
I don't know how things are in the US, but in Europe new records are getting pretty expensive. I gave up collecting records for a year or two, because it is a seriously expensive hobby - my record collection is easily worth a noctilux but at £10 a time you don't notice it so much - and consumes a lot of time, but recently got a new hifi and started again.

Second hand is still the same as before, which is great because I mostly buy old stuff, but LPs from new bands are much more than they used to be. The CD will be €10-15, but the 'special edition' LP €25 and they press relatively few, so if you don't hear about some great new record straight away, it's a nightmare tracking a copy down.
 
€10-15 is what CD's cost here. I paid $18 brand new for a Rolling Stones CD from the early '70's last summer. If I bought a whole stack at a time, CD's would be quite expensive, despite being mainstream. The point is that despite not being mainstream, vinyl records are available and don't carry any exponential cost increases over CD's.

Just as film is available and doesn't carry any exponential cost increase despite not being as ubiquitous as it used to be. I guess if one is convinced the sky is falling, rational thought and facts won't matter. But I'm getting tired of hearing/reading the same BS over and over.
 
I frequent three or four record local stores here. Average price is about $25 for new LPs. I tend to pick up quite a few brand new pressing for under $20. There are some great special editions on 180g vinyl that often include free MP3 downloads for the entire album and sometimes even a full length CD for $30-40.
Relatively speaking, records have never been cheaper. Film prices haven't really increased all that much in the last 10 years either.
 
"The point is that despite not being mainstream, vinyl records are available and don't carry any exponential cost increases over CD's. "

I give up.
 
Hmm, depends, old stuff is still cheap, unless it is rare in which case it is superexpensive as it always has been. I got put off record collecting around the point that having a 7" I didn't already have would cost £10-20, which was exactly the same point at which it became possible to download even rare stuff for free.

But still there's something about records and old cameras that keeps me coming back...
 
A constant subtext here is "if you can't see the difference between wet prints and ink-jets, maybe you're a lousy photographer." I've been guilty of it myself.

The mirror image of this is, "if you can't see the difference between wet prints and ink-jets, maybe you don't know how to use an inkjet printer." Maybe I don't.

And in between the two is, "if you can't see the difference between wet prints and ink-jets, maybe it doesn't matter for your subjects and your style of photography."

But I'd certainly agree that most of us value our labour too cheap. Because there are no [marginal, out of pocket] expenses in scanning, there's a temptation to scan pics that really don't warrant keeping, no matter how you define 'warrant keeping'. Which I think may have been Dante Stella's point.

Tashi delek.

Roger
 
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I'm one of those insane people who paid $80 for the vinyl package of last year's Radiohead record that they were giving away the download of for free.

Something tells me that in forty years I'll be driving 200 miles to New York to spend twenty bucks a roll on Tri-X.
 
Ha, you and me too!

I look at pictures taken with a D700 or D3 and they seem just as good as mine taken with a Rolleiflex or Leica and scanned on a good scanner, but I would still rather have an old camera...

Same with vinyl.
 
JohnTF said:
...
Have any of you modified the original low cost strip feeder to take full rolls, (supposed to be a simple bridging of two solder joints that resets the counter to take up to 38 ex)?
...
Click to expand...

I modified mine. All I did was put a piece of thin gauge wire across the two contacts and then places a piece of tape over the wire to secure it. Works perfectly.
 
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