A big film scanner thread

Lomography Digitaliser

I have convinced myself to scan my negatives using my Fuji XT3, 18-55mm kit lens and extension tubes. Having studied up on how to process the RAW files in Photoshop, I am much happier with the results than from my Epson V550, Epsonscan software and a bit of Lightroom adjustment. All good so far. After seeing some positive reviews on the Lomography Digitaliser film holder, I bought both 35mm and 120 holders, and frankly, I am a bit disappointed with them. I don't really get the purpose of the metal base plate and magnetic top. I don't see how it actually flattens the film when you scan, because as soon as you take them off, the film will resume any curve it has in it. Is this user error or a case of clever marketing / over-engineering?

Any other, better solutions, possibly one using ANR glass to keep the film flat?
 
Thinking more on the problem, a solution came to me which makes me feel rather foolish for not having thought of this before. Try using my negative carrier from my enlarger. While the negatives will be flat, it may slow down the workflow prohibitively. Will try it out.
 
Definitely worth a try!
 
Well it works just fine. Negs are nice and flat. No effort just to lift the glass to move them along, and there is no limit on number of negs I can push through unlike the digitiser. Same amount of effort cleaning the negs beforehand. Wish I had thought of this before. Hopefully this will be of use to others considering buying negative holders.

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RichardH said:
Well it works just fine. Negs are nice and flat. No effort just to lift the glass to move them along, and there is no limit on number of negs I can push through unlike the digitiser. Same amount of effort cleaning the negs beforehand. Wish I had thought of this before. Hopefully this will be of use to others considering buying negative holders.

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Have you tethered the camera so you can view the image on the monitor Richard?
 
Peter B said:
Have you tethered the camera so you can view the image on the monitor Richard?
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No - I just wanted to show my general setup. Old fashioned SD card I'm afraid. That would be neat though, will consider paying for the required Fuji plug-in.
 
OK, tis is slightly OT, but my daughter has an ancient Mac (running 10.11 I think) and needs access to my Canon 6350 to scan the occasional document. She says she can print but not scn. If I'm around, I just use Vuescan Pro on my Mac... does anyone know a simple, free document scanning software package for Mac? Thanks
 
ChrisR said:
OK, tis is slightly OT, but my daughter has an ancient Mac (running 10.11 I think) and needs access to my Canon 6350 to scan the occasional document. She says she can print but not scn. If I'm around, I just use Vuescan Pro on my Mac... does anyone know a simple, free document scanning software package for Mac? Thanks
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Chris, it looks like there are both drivers and software here for OS10.11 el capitan for the 6350 Hope this helps.

PIXMA MG6350 - Support - Download drivers, software and manuals

Download drivers, software, firmware and manuals for your Canon product and get access to online technical support resources and troubleshooting.
www.canon.co.uk www.canon.co.uk
 
Apologies to Chris R - should this be another thread ?


This has probably come up before but I was curious to find out how people are actually dealing with the process of scanning loads of old negs e.g.

- are you just scanning mainly to archive ?
- do you just scan and finish some or all ( so that they are ready to print / display on devices ) ?
- do you send them out to a lab ?
- how quickly can you do a roll ( if 35mm ) ?
- have you given up upon realising that there are better things to do with your life ?

richard

FYI:

This started when I just needed to scan new negs when I returned to taking film about 6 years ago - just the odd few rolls I thought then......

I thought I would 'just' do a few of our old negs to see how they turned out then, when they turned out pretty well ........

I decided to do almost all of our OLD films and get them in a useable state in post. ( Its called addiction/obsession )

I am about 3/4 through our old negs and slides - all 35 or half frame. These are just "snaps". I tried a DSLR/macro with a Heath Robinson setup to start with then decided to go with a film scanner ( Proscan 10T ) + Vuescan ( after giving up with Silverfast ). I could have gone with a proper DSLR route using an es-1/2 lightbox etc etc and that would probably have been faster or would it ??

Anyway, after some fiddling around, I have got a method that needs about 90-120 mins per max 36 roll. This includes POST, storing and sending jpegs to amazon ( was google ) photos. I post process at the same time as other images are being scanned. I scan everything unless its obviously a duff from the look of the neg. Just do a roll or two usually early or late at night - still can be tedious.
 
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It took me an hour to scan a roll of 36 last night.

I tend to scan the whole roll (Plustek 8100) initially, then make a contact sheet jpeg (which goes into a book at the end of the year), then delete the crap (there's a *lot*), then pull the rest into their final resting place on the hard drive. Backup is automatic to Amazon and a NAS so no work needed there. Once the files are in LR they are worked on as/when I have the time and when they're finished (keywords + edit) they get a green label. The trick is to keep on top of it because as soon as I slip behind it becomes a bigger task to sort it out as more photos get added. Using labels helps me stay on top of where I'm at, and highlights what I need to work on if I have half an hour here or there.

I tend not to edit while scanning. I generally watch Netflix/Amazon/YouTube to make it less tedious

In all fairness, I don't do much editing (crop, sharpen and dust is about it) and tend to only edit the ones I share/print

With old scans (from neg or photo) I tend to pull them in and the only editing I do is dust/cracks/neg damage. Again, they'll get the "full treatment" if I'm printing but otherwise they stay as is. Keywording is generally kept very simple (usually people's names and place names) as I'm unlikely to be entering them in any comps, or using them in books/zines.
 
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greyowl said:
Apologies to Chris R - should this be another thread ?


This has probably come up before but I was curious to find out how people are actually dealing with the process of scanning loads of old negs e.g.

- are you just scanning mainly to archive ?
- do you just scan and finish some or all ( so that they are ready to print / display on devices ) ?
- do you send them out to a lab ?
- how quickly can you do a roll ( if 35mm ) ?
- have you given up upon realising that there are better things to do with your life ?

richard

FYI:

This started when I just needed to scan new negs when I returned to taking film about 6 years ago - just the odd few rolls I thought then......

I thought I would 'just' do a few of our old negs to see how they turned out then, when they turned out pretty well ........

I decided to do almost all of our OLD films and get them in a useable state in post. ( Its called addiction/obsession )

I am about 3/4 through our old negs and slides - all 35 or half frame. These are just "snaps". I tried a DSLR/macro with a Heath Robinson setup to start with then decided to go with a film scanner ( Proscan 10T ) + Vuescan ( after giving up with Silverfast ). I could have gone with a proper DSLR route using an es-1/2 lightbox etc etc and that would probably have been faster or would it ??

Anyway, after some fiddling around, I have got a method that needs about 90-120 mins per max 36 roll. This includes POST, storing and sending jpegs to amazon ( was google ) photos. I post process at the same time as other images are being scanned. I scan everything unless its obviously a duff from the look of the neg. Just do a roll or two usually early or late at night - still can be tedious.
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I started by scanning every slide I'd taken, mainly Kodachrome (so the Silverfast 6 SE that came with the scanner was useful). Then I started on negatives, from the beginning of film, as it were. I more or less stopped when the children arrived, as I couldn't easily tell which film envelopes were mine (very few) and which my wife's, taken with a carpy point and shoot. And about this time I started shooting film again, so my scanning time is taken up mostly with newly shot rolls.

With a Plustek 7500i and Vuescan Pro it probably takes 1-2 hours per roll. I usually both listen to music and browse twitter or on here while it happens, just checking back after each frame is scanned.

I've not sent any of the retro-scans to labs, but all my current C41 goes to labs for dev/scan (Filmdev), along with the occasional roll of black and white, when it doesn't look like I can find the time to dev & scan it myself.

On your last question... I do have a general intention to finish the retro-scan project for all those missing rolls, but somehow I never quite get round to it. I also have a box of my late father's 6x9 negatives that I'd really like to scan while my (much) older brother is still around to help identify them.
 
I'm having a bit of a tantrum.
I've been using Epson Scan 2 with no issues on my old (10.13) mac for ages.
Just treated myself to a newer mac with Big Sur on it and, though I can find a driver, it seems epson scan itself is not an option with this OS.
I remember seeing Epson and silverfast offering silverfast se for free for owners of the GT-X830, v550 and v600... and I have a V500 so thats not an option.

Am I right in thinking my options are buy vuescan or silverfast, or try to use photoshop to scan?
 
VirtualAdept said:
I'm having a bit of a tantrum.
I've been using Epson Scan 2 with no issues on my old (10.13) mac for ages.
Just treated myself to a newer mac with Big Sur on it and, though I can find a driver, it seems epson scan itself is not an option with this OS.
I remember seeing Epson and silverfast offering silverfast se for free for owners of the GT-X830, v550 and v600... and I have a V500 so thats not an option.

Am I right in thinking my options are buy vuescan or silverfast, or try to use photoshop to scan?
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It's a pain when an OS upgrade makes things not work!

Of your options, I don't know anything about using Photoshop to scan.

Silverfast looks like €49 for the basic SE version, and €99 for SE Plus (which I think I had at version 6). SE Plus adds things like multi-exposure etc; you'd have to check the detail to decide (multi-exposure is probably not important for a V500). Their website only goes to OSX 10.14, so I don't know whether it would work on Big Sur (sooner or later it would, I guess). SF would be licensed for only a single device at that price.

Vuescan Pro would currently be £70; all updates are free indefinitely (I've been getting free updates for about 6 years now, and it seems this will go on). Vuescan will also cover any device you have; I've used mine for a V500 and a 7500i, plus two Canon printer/scanners. As you may know, drivers for scanners also tend to stop working with OS upgrades (as the driver for my 7500i did); Hamrick provided an in-built driver in Vuescan, again for free.
 
ChrisR said:
It's a pain when an OS upgrade makes things not work!

Of your options, I don't know anything about using Photoshop to scan.

Silverfast looks like €49 for the basic SE version, and €99 for SE Plus (which I think I had at version 6). SE Plus adds things like multi-exposure etc; you'd have to check the detail to decide (multi-exposure is probably not important for a V500). Their website only goes to OSX 10.14, so I don't know whether it would work on Big Sur (sooner or later it would, I guess). SF would be licensed for only a single device at that price.

Vuescan Pro would currently be £70; all updates are free indefinitely (I've been getting free updates for about 6 years now, and it seems this will go on). Vuescan will also cover any device you have; I've used mine for a V500 and a 7500i, plus two Canon printer/scanners. As you may know, drivers for scanners also tend to stop working with OS upgrades (as the driver for my 7500i did); Hamrick provided an in-built driver in Vuescan, again for free.
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Both Vuescan and Silverfast have OS 11 compatibility, thankfully. Multi exposure I don't see I'd need since I've never had it with Epson scan and was more or less happy with what I was getting from that.

I suppose its going to come down to which is the better to use, since I'm definitely not a power user of any kind
 
VirtualAdept said:
Both Vuescan and Silverfast have OS 11 compatibility, thankfully. Multi exposure I don't see I'd need since I've never had it with Epson scan and was more or less happy with what I was getting from that.

I suppose its going to come down to which is the better to use, since I'm definitely not a power user of any kind
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There are a couple of folk on here who really like SilverFast, but I think the majority either use Vuescan or Epson Scan. I started with SF 6 and found the interface hellish but the software quite powerful. Eventually it stopped working on an OSX upgrade, and I switched to Vuescan Pro. I did try a trial version of SF 8 (even reported it here somewhere, I think), but I couldn't get on with it. Why not try a trial of each?
 
ChrisR said:
There are a couple of folk on here who really like SilverFast, but I think the majority either use Vuescan or Epson Scan. I started with SF 6 and found the interface hellish but the software quite powerful. Eventually it stopped working on an OSX upgrade, and I switched to Vuescan Pro. I did try a trial version of SF 8 (even reported it here somewhere, I think), but I couldn't get on with it. Why not try a trial of each?
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I've got trials for both installed now, though for some reason silverfast is convinced my trial has run out after installing it last night.
From what I remember, though, the interface was godawful.
 
Slight update to the "Software Supporting Scanning" post, referencing the approach from @FishyFish . I can see I ought to have a good read through this, fill in the gaps and link some of the later comments into the main text at the front.
 
Just a quick tip for anyone considering investing in an Epson fluid mount for compatible flat beds, Don't Bother.
In short, I have been scanning 6X6 velvia for a while using the fluid mount. The pictures looked different in comparison to using the film holders and not in a good way.
After days of head scratching I realised that either the fluid mount glass or the acetate sheet was producing CA's in the usual high contrast areas.

To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement given all the hype surrounding fluid mounting.

Not to mention the cash I've wasted on fluid, acetate sheet, cleaning cloths..........................
 
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For those of you using a copy stand is there any benefit to using an angled copy stand over a standard vertical column?

1641483559770.png 1641483655999.png
 
Not a copy stand user, but by analogy to enlargers, an angled column moves the lens further away from the column as you increase the lens to baseboard distance. This is typically done for large enlargements (or large originals) and keeps the lens centrally positioned.
 
Thanks Stephen, I think bearing in mind Ill be digitising mostly 120 film and wont be re-framing that often there's probably not much benefit to either.
 
RaglanSurf said:
Thanks Stephen, I think bearing in mind Ill be digitising mostly 120 film and wont be re-framing that often there's probably not much benefit to either.
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Looking at the displacement of the camera from the column, I think you'd have to be digitising negs bigger than 8X10" for the vertical column to be an issue? I think you'd want the centreline of the lens to be exactly above the centre of the frame being digitised.
 
It shouldn't matter either way for your purposes. The point with enlargers is that (when you think about it) the maximum size of enlargement on the baseboard will be fixed at twice the amount of lens to column distance. LPL make (made?) two 5x4 enlargers of which I have the cheaper. The difference was for the extra money you got a brighter light source and what amounted to an extension to move the lens even further from the column to allow bigger enlargements. An angled column can be a convenience with an enlarger, and I assume a copy stand if you're going to copy A2 size documents. For digitising 120 or 5x4 film, it wouldn't matter as you can position the negative or slide easily within the space.
 
Peter B said:
The new Photgraphy Online episode compares scanning with a digicam, with an Epson V750 and with a drum scanner. The piece starts at minute 23:45 and lasts about 10 minutes.

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Well thats just confused me even more, I was expecting better results from the digital camera compared with the flatbed.
 
I had some Kodachromes to scan for an exhibition a few years back (you've seen some in the Old Film challenge chat thread recently). I tried using a macro lens on a Sony 7rii, a dedicated (but cheap!) slide duplicator attachment with its own lens, and an Epson v800 flatbed. I went with the Epson after seeing the results - the macro lens/Sony a7rii results were far inferior.

Note - I haven't watched the video yet...
 
Colour, sharpness, definition, resolution. And, yes, I do know that these can be dismissed as "subjective" qualities. And that not everyone wants them. I do, and therefore the scanner output was what I preferred. I would actually not have been prepared to display the others under my name.
 
StephenM said:
I had some Kodachromes to scan for an exhibition a few years back (you've seen some in the Old Film challenge chat thread recently). I tried using a macro lens on a Sony 7rii, a dedicated (but cheap!) slide duplicator attachment with its own lens, and an Epson v800 flatbed. I went with the Epson after seeing the results - the macro lens/Sony a7rii results were far inferior.

Note - I haven't watched the video yet...
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Damn! I've got a slide copier and adapter winging their way to me!
 
RaglanSurf said:
Well thats just confused me even more, I was expecting better results from the digital camera compared with the flatbed.
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I'm not sure that I've ever photographed a transparency with a digicam, but I've certainly tried with a negative and was disappointed, but that was without any tweaking to refine the technique. There's certainly scope for improving the Epson flatbeds with the adjustable feet on the film holders, but I have a suspicion that not all of the examples of the same type of flatbeds reach the same standards. I've used the anti-newton MF filmholder for my V700 and it definitely helps, but that could mainly be down to holding the film really flat. I've never had a neg worthy of drum scanning. :oops: :$
 
RaglanSurf said:
Well thats just confused me even more, I was expecting better results from the digital camera compared with the flatbed.
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I think what this, and other negative 'DSLR scanning' videos exemplify rather well, is that the standard deviation on the quality of DSRL scanning results is huge.

If done well, with an extremely well thought-out and continuously calibrated set-up, including an excellent lens, excellent light source, good system to keep the negative flat, well designed negative inversion tools - then potentially the results can be very good.

I've seen a few 35mm scans that almost compete with those one can get with a dedicated 35mm film scanner (Nikon, Minolta made some excellent ones). Though those I've seen were obtained with setups 10x the price of a film scanner (if one doesn't own the DSLR/mirrorless camera already).

Most often though, I think the sources of error are so many (many more than with a factory-built and tested scanner operating according to specs) that DSLR scanning results can be shockingly mediocre. If you quickly check out flickr or a number of blogs, you'll find a bit of everything, including some DSRLs scans that pale in comparison with what could have been obtained with a humble £150 Epson V500 used correctly.
 
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My frustration with fluid mount scanning continues.
Having found a way of overcoming the CA caused by (something) I am now trying to find an alternative to Kami scanning fluid.

I finished the internet last night and the only options I've found are white spirit or lighter fluid, none of which have I tried.
Some commenters expressed concern about flammability of the above but, given Kami fluid is also combustible, it seems a moot point.

If anyone has any tried and tested options, please let me know?
 
A twitter contact reminded me of the Filmlab software, a stand-alone app for smartphones, Mac and Windows that does inversions from negative to positive. See https://www.filmlabapp.com . Any experience of using it here?

I'll add it to the Software section earlier in this thread.
 
Found a site about the Essential Film Holder (EFH), addressing a similar problem to the pixl-latr and other negative-holding kits. Slightly more expensive than pixl-latr, way cheaper than Negative Supply, or whatever they're called.

With all of these things, the ergonomics for processing a batch of negatives can't easily be worked out from the web site.
 
ChrisR said:
There's a really interesting post by @Kevin Allan on his blog at:

filmphotography.blog/2020/11/05/converting-scans-from-colour-negative-film/

on converting scans from colour negatives to positive images, comparing ColorPerfect with Grain2Pixel via some interesting slider comparisons.

(I tried to leave a comment on the blog, Kevin, asking about posting here, but somehow Wordpress ate my comment while it was making me login, and I thought it must have gone to moderation!)

EDIT: The link above did not work, as it appears Kevin has re-hosted his blog. There are in fact 3 interesting comparison articles on his newer blog, the last of which is https://kevinthephotographer.wordpress.com/2020/11/11/colorperfect-vs-negative-lab-pro/ and which references the earlier posts, plus an interesting article on 35MMC.
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An earlier post by me pointed to an article by Kevin Allan that has been re-hosted, see above for further articles that are also interesting...
 
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