What scanner?

What scanner do you use to get 35mm neg's into your computer. I need a new scanner so do I a.) get one that scans everything or B.) get a cheap one and invest in a dedicated film scanner?

Hmm difficult one to answer....

For ultimate quality you cannot go wrong with a dedicated film scanner, I have the Nikon Coolscan V ED and it's superb - but not cheap...

Minolta did make a 5400 dpi scanner before Sony came in and then suddenly all the available ones got snapped up....

If you can find a) the money and b) a good used Nikon/Canon/Minolta scanner then you'll get good quality scans.

I also have a HP desktop flatbed scanner with a transparency adaptor, while the quality is acceptable keeping the scanner glass clean is a very difficult task..

It will probably be a one-off purchase because as you shoot more digital you spend more time manipulating your DSLR pictures and more worryingly there are fewer and fewer places developing E6 film

Hmm. I've started shooting film again after a long lay off. My digital editing skills amount to cropping and adjusting colours occasionally, I'm interested in a scanner for film so that I can post better images on the web. My current Canon scanner is dying, the colours are a bit iffy! I don't want to have the prints digitized when the film is developed, you end up with too many CDs that way, so a new scanner seems the best way forward. So which one? Oh yes I forgot to mention I'm a cheapskate as well!

I'm not sure how this is going to work. When you get your images out of the scanner and into the computer, you will then just have to process them through Photoshop in exactly the same way as your digital images. How will shooting on film make the images better?

I really think it's much easier to use a digital camera for this, and I mention it because I'm pretty sure you will end up disappointed in your scanner if this is the only purpose you are buying it for.

Picking up on what JR has just said, I have a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual IV and scanning negs is a whole other art form on top of what you are going to have to do in PS; working with scanned negs is more than doubling your workflow and I can see no advantage in shooting 35mm film over digital. It would be far easier, if you shoot film, to just have the lab scan your film to CD at processing. I now only shoot film in MF and might only shoot 35mm if I wanted to use my Shift lens. I think the reality is that 35mm film is going the way of wet collodion and Daguerrotypes. If you are worried about having to many cds copy them onto your hard drive and then chuck them out.

I've been considering getting one of these (or, possibly its big brother, the Coolscan 5000, which has a bit more optical density range).

What I really need is, for a first pass, to be able to get decent scan quality, with minimum effort, since I have about 4000 negs to scan - all my film from 20 years or more.

I don't have the prints, and I'm sure most of it will be dross, but I won't know what I've got till I've scanned the whole lot.

So I want a workflow that consists of something as close as possible to "feed a strip, press the button, let digital ICE sort out the dust, contrast and colour, and save the images" - while I'm working at other stuff.

Then when I've been through them, I'll be in a position to go back and re-scan the 0.001% that are worth optimising.

With your experience of the V ED, is what I'm after anywhere near possible?

We use a Coolscan IV, almost identical apart from the resolution, and scanning 4000 negatives will take an eternity. Ther's no easy way to do this and i wouldn't even try.

How about just looking at the negs and scanning any you take a fancy to, one film at a time when you have a moment?

I was afraid of this.

So what does happen if you feed in a strip, all the digital ICE options on, and walk away for a while?


Yeah, I tried that. I am totally, totally rubbish at looking at negs and having the slightest idea of what's on them. I can just about see that a picture has people in it, but who they might be is a complete mystery.

I don't mind the actual time it would take to do its stuff - it could take 20 minutes a strip for all I care, just so long I can somehow avoid doing anything else to it between the feeding in, and saving the results to the hard disk.

If that was possible, I could do a film a day, no problem, and after a few months, they'd be done.

________

Edit: and before some bright spark points out that 0.001% of 4000 is a lot less than 1, so I should just bin the lot, that wouldn't help, ok?

You feed in a strip and if you use the motorised feed you still have to scan one at a time. If you use the manual feed you have to carefully mount the strip for every scan. The process is incredibly slow and excruciatingly slow if done with care to a higher standard.

We rarely scan these days - only if something special has to be resurrected from our film past.

Although you say you don't mind the time Chris, I wonder if it might not get a bit tedious anyway after a few nights spent doing a film a night?

When I did the PU article on Images of England I had to scan negatives and it was a real pain to do 20 or so shots. After that it was back to digital and it was a real relief to not have to look at scanning again.

I've not used my Coolscan V for anything other than slides. I find it takes about 2 hours to preview, scan and save the files from a roll of 36. If you can get a work flow organised, you can clean each slide with a blower to get rid of the dust and clag as the previous one is previewing, and load the last slide into an archive pouch. Strips of film probably won't be much quicker - I'd clean the film first as using the scanner to do so just adds to the time.

I use PEC-12 with a cotton bud for my cleaning - shifts most things but not the emulsion


Steve

I'm sensing you're saying it's not a quick process, John..


Well yes. Thing is, I'm not getting any younger, and there are a lot of my memories locked up in those negative folders. And a few half-decent pictures. A bit like Dumbledore's Pensieve, in Harry Potter.

I work at home, I'm at the computer anyway, so if it would just scan a strip of 6 and present me with 6 big files to save I think it would be worth biting the bullet. I'm not worth much before the coffee's kicked in of a morning, so I'd probably do it while I wasn't yet completely conscious.

It's if I have to muck about, fiddling with it for every frame, that maybe I should really give up the project.

Agreed I'll need to process the images once scanned, but I enjoy using 35MM cameras, the only options open are to scan the print or negative, or have a cd made at the developing stage.
Digital is easier, but you don't think the same about a shot.

When I used to scan stuff with the Coolscan IV I always used Ed Hamrick's Vuescan. It provided an automated way of scanning a strip.
But, it was much easier scanning slides I'd feed them in while doing other work and Vuescan would automatically scan and save. Even then I could only do three or four rolls of slide per day. Yawningly slow

Love digital
(And I'm getting far, far higher quality images out of the K20D than I ever got out of any film! Even the *ist-D gave me better quality. Now either my film technique was bad, or digital is better )
Matt

Or you had NO film technique to begin with..

LOL! I wasn't that bad
Matt