My Nikon Coolscan 8000ED works well and gives me unbelievably high quality scans. Nikonscan has incredible ICE scratch removal on C41 negatives, and its inversion routines are superior to those of standalone tools like NLP or Grain2Pixel. That's all that matters to me. I don't own or need to own a digital camera but I can see how camera scanning might be an appealing option for those who already have a DSLR. To each their own!
The dust and scratch removal abilities of the Nikon scanners are a major benefit when scanning old photos. I think Epson also has a version of ICE, but I don't think it's as effective as the IR channel on the Nikon. The problem with Nikon scanners like my LS30 (aside purely age) is that it uses SCSI. I bought a SCSI to USB adapter, but the company which made it no longer exists and the most recent drivers are for Windows 2000. At some point Microsoft will alter the APIs in Windows to the point where it won't work anymore.
Steve - appreciate your views and the info. Still scanning my old film negatives with the Nikon Super CoolScan 4000 ED with Vue Scan software and it still works great.
“You get the picture.” Brilliant! Good observations too, although scanning volumes on the flatbed (V600 here) is quite usefull as I am scanning over 40 years of film (35 pos/neg). It quickly (scan low-res for web only) shows the images I forgot about and any gem will be marked for print in the darkroom or for hi-res scan later on. Good way of spending winter evenings 👍.
I bought an Essential Film Holder (EFH) and designed and 3d printed a camera stand to be put direcly on the film holder. Its height is adjusted exactly to the required distance of my Sigma 105 Macro and its width measured to take the hood of the lens. So I place the film holder with film on the lighttable, put the camera stand on top of the film holder, put the camera on the holder and can start shooting at once. No stray light, no adjustment of height and paralellity. All fine. An uncut roll is digitized in 5 minutes. And that includes setting the "scanner" up
I improved the output of my V700 by making a holder from anti reflection glass set at the correct height for best focus. Night and day difference to the OEM holder for medium format. For 35mm I use an old Canon film copy bellows system with a macro lens and a medium format digital camera and the results are amazing
I use the same Valoi-system as you Steve, and i've been very happy with it. I use it together with a Nikon D850 and an AF Micro Nikkor 60mm 2.8 and found it almost as fast as the Fujifilm SP3000, but with an astonishing increase in quality and tonality. Not to mention the absolute enormous files one can get by digitising 4x5 with the D850.
I tried digitizing color slides with Nikon DSLR and quickly dismissed that as an option because I could immediately tell that the camera was applying its color response (aka "color science") even with the "neutral" color setting to the images. I wanted the files to look like film, and they did not. Maybe other brand cameras have trully "neutral" setting that does not change color at all, but mine did not. I used plustek scanner with vuescan to scan slides instead with much closer color rendition to the original (but have to fix black point on each image afterwards and somewhat poor shadow detail).
It can take a long time to get the settings and hardware working just right (at which point they usually upgrade something in the background and break everything!).
@@FloridaMan02 both, raw just removes the smudging of noise reduction that is applied by jpeg engine. raw in nikon software gives same colors as in camera (green,blue,orange hues oversaturated, red shifted towards orange and undersaturated and made brighter amongst some of the things). raw in adobe software just makes different deviations depending on "camera calibration" and other settings. also the tone curves (contrast) change the gradations in shadows and highlights. this is talking about transparency film where i can see with my own eyes how it should look. with negatives it is up to your taste.
@valdezapg i thought it recorded un changed sensor data that was later rendered with selected settings...and raw seems like it would be more flexible with 12 or 14 bit color vs 8 in jpeg. Something to think about and experiment with.
@@FloridaMan02 The raw is digital negative, it has to be interpreted somehow. and this is where "camera calibration" which is like "film stock" comes in in adobe software, or "picture control" for nikon, or "picture style" for canon. for example both canon and nikon have "neutral" setting, but if you shoot the same scene with both cameras set to "neutral" you will see that they look quite different, as actually they are not really "neutral", they are just less exaggerated and more muted than the other presets. also the dyes used in "color filter array" for each digital camera sensor play part on how color is rendered (which makes even cameras from one make differ from one model to the next). complicated stuff. if you care about your transparency film scans to have the look of film, a good film scanner i think is the best option. for color negatives I like how silverfast negafix presets invert the color and have not tried negative lab pro or other similar things, so I don't know for sure. for black and white it might not matter much, but also i have not tested, so i might be wrong on that.
Plustek makes a good scanner for 35mm (OpticFilm 8300i) and one for 120 (OpticFilm 120 Pro). Both work especially well with SilverFast software, although it's pricey (Vuescan is a cheaper option), as is the 120 Pro scanner itself. It's slower than scanning with a digital camera, but I feel that I have more control over the scanning parameters. I don''t shoot a huge amount of film, so the time difference is not that great; in fact, I rather like the process. Still, it's nice to have a range of modern technical options for digitizing film, rather than having to depend on very old devices that are no longer compatible with modern computers and operating systems.
Chris - thanks for the nice comment, just one point worth making being that you can in fact run those old scanners without any issues on modern computers and operating systems. I run an old, but excellent Minolta Scan Elite 5400 on Win10 64bit via Vuescan. I also run a Nikon Coolscan 8000ED on the same PC via Nikonscan, without any issues whatsoever.
@@giuseppeg.8461 Hi Guiseppe - Thanks, but taking care of old cameras can be hard enough; I didn't really want to go that route with scanners as well, especially since Plustek scanners do a very good job and are still in manufacture. I had a Minolta 5400 a couple of decades ago in my microscopy lab; should probably have kept it!
Hi Steve, great video per usual! Quick suggestion - in your video editing software there should be a free EQ plugin you can use to get rid of the rumble from the table that is picked up by the mic. It's called a low shelf and if you set it around 50 or 60 Hz it should do the trick without affecting your voice 🙂 It can help with wind noise too - but that is obviously not a problem in this video!
@paulstillwell ah!! I can benefit from that tip as well Paul. Now I finally understand why that is suggested. I started using a long mic arm clamped onto another desk before I ever heard of EQ. I also appreciate how tactfully you made the suggestion.
I have a mountain of 35mm slides and negatives, very disorganized, a jumble of boxes and sheets in a box. My goal is to able to quickly get low or medium resolution "contact sheets" from all this, then decide afterward, which images to scan at higher resolution or send off to have done for me. It sounds like the best idea would be an inexpensive flatbed scanner, or try to adapt one of the combination printer/scanners that I have. Suggestions?
I would go the flatbed route, get one that has the holders you need (film strips, mounted slides etc) and let the scanner do the work over a longer period of time.
I started with a flatbed like you but found the process to be time intensive and laborious. I already had a Nikon D810 (36mp) so I acquired a macro lens, some extension tubes and slide holder attachment and voila! Captured RAW images from the D810 sensor allowed me to pull out every bit of shadow detail in the original. Yes, it is still a lot work to process the image and deal with dust spots, but the finished images are worth it.
It can be tricky is the debris has got into the surface during drying. I’d always start off with a soak in clean water first and avoid any wiping down unless I was sure the surface of the film was pretty clean.
Normally you first blow off the dust with a pear-shaped blower, brush off the remaining dust with a special brush made of very soft natural hairs. Keeping dust off the negs was a chore and an ongoing battle. If you brush too much the static electricity builds up on the surface of the film with attracts dust like a magnet. In the US in the 1980s you could get a brush with a cartridge containing polonium 210 (a radioactive material) that ionized the air and got rid of the static charge. It worked very well but for some unknown reason they stopped selling it. I started losing hair around that time but I'm sure it was a coincidence.
Thanks for your video. I am doing all my color negative scans with my Epson V600 + sotware. Good results, ICE successfully removes dust n scratches. B&W total disaster, I don't know why. Even better - or let's say more authentic - results with my old Rollei df-s 190. Btw, I use Kodak 6x6 app for a quick scan of prints... works well!
My 8000ED is an incredible bit of kit. One of my best film photography purchases ever. Would never put up with the faff of aligning and putting together a DSLR based scanning thingy. To each their own!
I built my own stand after seeing how much the commercial units cost. A wood base with rubber feet, pipe flange mounted on base, various length pipe nipples as risers, pipe elbow, shorter nipple extension over base with a simple sliding unit that the camera mounts to. No expensive gearing as my sliding unit works with friction and a lock. Cost me about $40 USD and works great.
I use a similar set up but i did find that the micro four third camera didn't have the dynamic range of slide film. I also found that the different form factors meant I wasn't getting an image that represented a full 20 megapixels.
I’m surprised at that, M4/3 has a lot more range than any slide film. That said, it can struggle to get get enough information from the deep shadows unless you have a good light source.
@SteveONions I found I had exposure for highlight or shadow (I chose to keep detail in the highlights). Then I found the camera had an exposure stacking mode.
I made the same move this year. I am using a Valoi setup with my old Nikon D800 and the 60mm f2.8G Nikkor lens. I leave the D800 permanently mounted on the copy stand. Now that I’ve come down the learning curve I find this method to be quite efficient. I still have my Epson V800. I plan to use it for 645 scans so I don’t have to re-level my setup. My 645 camera is an old 1930s Kodak folder, so I’m not terribly concerned about getting the absolute best scan.
Don't forget cleaning up dirty sensor artifacts (or cleaning the sensor) with a DSLR as well. And then, if you're crazy enough to shoot 6x17, the old Epson still has its place. I use both methods, and each has its place.
Currently building a rig for scanning my 120 films (and 35mm films) with my 61Mp Sigma fpL full frame camera, and this video pops up 🙂 Still going this route though. Will test if a Foveon sensor is better for this or not. Time is not a problem 🙂
Interesting ! I still use my Canon film scanner, plus Epson GT10000 A3 scanner, downside being I have to maintain a standalone Windows XP system to keep the SCSI interface going. I had some 1890 3.5" glass slides I needed to scan and used the Epson 10000 and an Epson flatbed/slide scanner. I was concerned the focus point on both was a few mm out due to the glass sandwich. I'll be trying the camera method.
Interesting video Steve. I've been considering trying the digital camera method for a while but can't see any advantage (for me) yet. Given the development of an efficient 'clean up' facility in Photoshop, I'd give it a go. At this time I'm a little way off packing up my Epson V850 scanner in favour of a camera scanning system. "Horses for courses" I think. I look forward to hearing your experience with the camera scanning method in future, I'm sure you'll keep us updated.
I've been engineering this for 6 years. At this point, I use a dedicated camera - a Pentax K70 in composite mode - because it does *perfect* grain structure in composite mode. For holders, Blackscale labs for medium format - perfectly level, for 35mm, the Valoi Easy35 which again, requires no leveling, so I can swap the camera between them very fast. FOR DUST, this is critical, the Kinetronics staticvac. I kept the v850 for large format. Software is also *critical*. I own... everything. I choose to use Filmlab Desktop 3.0 now for basic inversion, and and typically finish in DxO. I also will sometimes use Negmaster BR with Adobe Bridge, but rarely these days. I purged Adobe, even the free stuff, as I am not fond of subscriptions. I do not use NLP anymore, and I find these two newer products do a better job anyway. Cheers Steve, welcome to the club:)
@SteveONions I do wish for a medium format holder comparable to the Easy35😁 For me the Pentax is key, in particular for black and white conversions. I also used both an Olympus and Sony, regular and composite modes, and on 35mm I found they mess with the grain structure in a noticeable way. It's far more prominent if you are converting 1600 ISO or above. I ultimately concluded the Bayer color array must be at fault. The Pentax, they're doing some sort of magic with their compositing algorithm. I think because their algorithm focuses on fidelity and dynamic range instead of resolution, so it produces a far better conversion. Notably, I even found I prefer the results of the K-70 medium format conversions upscaled via Gigapixel AI over a Sony higher-resolution composite. This was great, since the K-70 an ugly condition from mpb was relatively cheap 😃 I am currently having serious issues, because my gas has targeted a Pentax monochrome camera...
@@jw48335do you also digitize positive film? I have a Pentax K-1 and I struggle with its "color science". I fail to get good looking colors from any raw converter I have tried.
Great discussion. I use a similar setup: G9 + Negative Lab Pro. I've been really impressed with the results I've gotten over the past few years. My NLP has been running a little glitchy lately on LR, so I need to figure that out. But I can't deny the conversions are still really fantastic.
I’ve just bought an Epson V850 😬 To be honest I think you’re right on the DSLR set up for 35mm but the V850 is a blessing for my 6x17 and 5x4 plus my 6x6 work. I am currently testing out flatbed scanning techniques with the dedicated trays plus independent holders and fluid mount holders. It’s a minefield 😂
I scanned all my 40 years worth of slides last year using a high quality dedicated film scanner. Sure, the thing was slow, 1 to 2 minutes for each slide. But all I had to do is change out the slide cassettes every now and then, 100 slides at a time, and the device did the job all by itself. It took 3 weeks for all my slides, but I invested maybe an hour or two of my time altogether. The scanning software was also a dream, it automatically cleaned the images of dust and scratch marks. All that said, scanning slides is an old guys past time. It's for people who are old enough to have spent decades photographing onto film. Later generations won't need such scanners anymore.
That was indeed very useful, thanks Steve. I have stacks of old negatives and slides and am looking forward to digitizing them as a retirement project in a few months time. I've been wondering whether it's worth buying a film scanner (I only have 35mm stuff, nothing bigger) so your video is super useful. Would love to see a short demo of the process and references for the Valloy (?) neg holder and copy stand. Your little subtitles for V700 made be laugh 😅! Thanks!
Good information, thanks. I just went through the same thing, discarded my very expensive film/slide scanner and replaced it with a simple DIY rig using my digital camera and a macro lens. It will deliver a scan as good as the scanner and MUCH faster. I can do 6 slides a minute. A bit less for uncut 35 mm film. I put the 3D printed part on Thingiverse.
Interesting topic. Just a quick note about your video in regard to the sound. It might not be obvious to everyone, but every vibration is communicated to your mic. This results in a constant low pitch boomy noise. You can clearly hear it when you picked up the Valoi holder and place it back. If you want to fix this, you might want to find a way to isolate your mic from your table. There are some mic holders that mount the mic on elastic bands.
Very useful, thanks a lot. We had the same discussion in my local photo club. For my amount of films per year it‘s better not to develop and scan on my own, so I give this to a local lab. Some of my photo friends try out the different types of scanners as well as „scanning“ with a digital camera.
trouble generally in many local labs is that they don't do very good scan. You can go to a place that specializes in scanning but then the cost will be higher.
Just purchased a brand new PC. The screen resolution is 100% better than my old one. To me my images all look better with the latest technology. Other than printing the quality of the image depends on the quality of the viewing screen, correct?
Thanks Steve very informative! I have also been using flatbed scanners for years. I now use the V850 and an old HP model that can do 4x5 as well. I have used the camera scanning technique, but reverted back to flatbed scanning. I think camera scanning is great as long as one has the space to set up a dedicated camera scanning set-up, I just didn’t like doing the inversions in Lightroom. Everyone has their method. For me it’s flatbed scanning and dark room printing of black and white. I also concur with you, I have not been shooting much 4x5 lately.
My coolscan is a SCSI II version and those interfaces are no longer supported, so it's dead as a door nail. I also have a collection of 6x6 and 4x5 slides and negatives, sure wish I had spent more money on Kodachrome 64 in the 120 format when it was available because the slides I have are still wonderful. Because of this I spent a lot of time working with my Epson V800 to determine where to place the focusing tabs on each holder to get the best quality out of my scans. Also spent time figuring out how to use the infrared scan feature to get clean files to work with. It doubles the scan times but the payoff is well worth that extra time. Best balance between scan resolution has proven to be 4800 dpi for 120 and 35mm films and 2000 dpi for the 4x5. Tried 6400 dpi for the 4x5 scans and learned quickly that a 720 Mb file will crash some very modern editors. BTW those who complain about "awful noise" in a modern digital really should spend some time viewing the grain in 30 year old Kodacolor negatives. It's one reasons why when I was shooting B&W 35mm the only film I shot with was Panatomic-X.
I found the practical resolution of the Epson flatbeds to be 2400dpi, above that I just got larger file sizes. Kodachrome slides do age very well, far better than E6 but it’s a shame digital ICE doesn’t work with them 🙁
Thanks for sharing your experience. I was quite sceptical about using a camera for scanning, but got good results with a MFT camera and Lomography"s Digitalizer. The drawback of MFT is the native 4:3 format, so I end up getting about 12 MP files, which is ok, compared to my Epson V800, for 35mm film. (As I shoot mostly B/W the dust removal feature of the flatbed scanner doesn't work anyway.) Tip: As soon as the films have dried, I put them straight into a plastic bag (freezer bag), where they stay until being scanned. As the whole film is scanned, this minimizes the risk of dust getting onto the negatives.
I found a flatbed scanner, many years ago! Canonscan with most of needed bits except 6x6 nega holder. It only works on my XP! Yes it's off line! It is s l o w. But it does for me! I will soon use a Digital Camera. I mainly do BW so ice not relevant! I love my older cameras, but a scanned negative is now digital. Might as well use digital camera! Great Video. All the best!
I've sold all my digital cameras and lenses. I use an Epson flatbed scanner for my 35mm b&w negatives. Because I print on 5x7 paper, no need to spend more money.
Hey, I am scanning my film with m43 as well. Would you mind sharing what lens are you using? Lumix 30mm macro has very uneven flat-field. Went for 7artisans 60mm macro. Better results, but focusing throw is narrow, hard to catch the critical focus.
@@SteveONions Maybe I got an unlucky copy. Sharpness in on point. The issue I experience is most visible on 6x45 (as it is 4x3 ratio and uses whole lens coverage) color negative. It has slight vignetting even at f/5.6 resulting in orange corners after conversion. However I am rumbling, happy to hear that the setup works great for you!
Exactly the same set up as me, although I use the 90mm macro. I did try using the high Rez mode on one occasion, but as you said, on 35mm negatives there is no advantage. I ask my lab to leave the negatives in a roll as it speeds up the whole process.
I am using a V850 flat bed scanner and I am always thinking of changing to DSLR scanning, since that appears so much more convenient to me. But there is one argument I cannot get my head around: I am scanning all formats at 4800ppi (and even 9600ppi is a native resolution to this scanner). On a 35mm film this gives me a 24 mega pixels image, which has the same resolution like my Fuji Xt3 and which is totally sufficient for what these full format cameras (digital and analog) provide. Already, using the XT3 for scanning 35mm will result in significant lower resolution, since format of my camera has a different ratio than the picture on film. But...when I shoot 120 film and scan it with a DSLR, the resulting image is still a 24 mega pixel image with the same or even less resolution (6x9 ratio vs 3x4 ratio) like I get from 35mm film. So, what is the point here to shoot larger formats anyway ? Makes no sense for me in case of DSLR scanning. When I scan my films I shot on the GW690 with 4800ppi on my flatbed scanner, I get 150 megapixel images (same amount of resolution provided by modern digital medium format cams). And the difference in details and possibilities for crops on these scans are amazingly better than I have from 35mm scans. Using my flatbed for scanning I know why I spent so much money using a format where I get only 8 shots from one roll....
Unfortunately the true resolution of the Epson flatbeds does not exceed 2400dpi. I’d come to pretty much this conclusion years ago but had it confirmed by far smarter people than myself who confirmed my suspicions. That said, 2400 dpi isn’t bad for 120 film.
Interesting to read all these comments, but I can't see an easy solution for my 'problem'. Hundreds of individually cut 6x6 120 format b&w negatives. These were from the early 1950s to early 1960s. My dad was a keen photographer during this time and did all his own developing and enlarging. I'm looking for something that can hold single negatives flat enough to get a decent scan and see what's on them. All the scanners I read of are strip holders, regardless of whether scanners or cameras are used. So I dont know which way would work for me? Ideas welcome!
You can get a decent enough scan simply by laying the strips directly in the scanner glass and using a low red setting off say 1200 dpi. The Epson scanners work this way when digitising 8x10 negatives and the quality is very good.
Digital ICE dust and scratch removal using infra-red light is the big advantage of dedicated 35mm or medium format film scanners but of course this is only for colour negatives or colour slides. No good for black and white or Kodachrome slides. So for black and white films there is no advantage by using a dedicated film scanner.
One of the reasons I favoured XP2 Super was to get the full advantage out of my scanners, a lot of the dedicated models make a mess out of traditional B&W films.
I didn't have any luck with the ICE dust removal software on either Nikon or Epson scanners. The automatic removal looked acceptable in screen resolution pictures but not in high resolution intended for printing. The dots generated by the software were visible and had to be retouched manually. In many cases they were more visible than the original dust spots.
For me it was happy luck to end up using my digital camera for film scanning. I have a lot of 35mm film from all my earlier years shooting 35mm. I had been thinking of getting a dedicated scanner to scan them but the price of the scanners was always a bit prohibited. In the mean time I had really gotten into using Sony digital cameras. First the A6000 and then an A7III. In the use of those I started seeing videos of people touting using their cameras to scan film. As luck had it, I still had a copy stand that I had used years ago to snap copy negs of old family photos. So I ended up having a pretty nice setup ad was happy I had never got around to buying a scanner.
A few years ago I bought a Canon FL bellows with slide copier attachment (also does film strips) for £54 on ebay and already had a 50mm 3.5 FD macro lens. This combination can be adapted to anything and gives me really excellent results. It's not so quick to use, but I don't use it that often or for any volume of images.
A very reflective and fact based discussion Steve. Nicely done. The "V750" to "V700" corrections made me laugh, especially when you used the cringe emoji!! Classic. I use an Epson V550 and have done now for about 10 years. I've actually been considering trying to get a V850, but at around £1K, its a lot to lay out. I've kept my eye on this "taking a photo of a photo" technique (as I put it) for a while. I totally see how it would work well, but I am just a Luddite and it feels wrong to me to take a photo of a negative...ha ha. I cant help but think "why not just use the DSRL in the first place?". I know there is more to it than that, but I guess for now my flatbed scanning with VueScan gives me results that seem to please everyone. So I think I'll stick with it...for now.
If it’s working for you then no need to change at all. I just got tired with the speed and also the changes that occur to software from time to time. When Epson replaced the original scanning software some years back they dropped support for digital ICE and I never liked it much after that.
Recently bought the Epson V600 which came with Silverfast 9 software. Using it to successfully copy and scan my late father's slides, photos and negatives from 1940's onwards and very pleased with the results. I realise it's not acceptable by pure professional photographers but good enough to bring old and forgotten photos back to life for the family to enjoy..
@ yes they are very capable scanners indeed. My V550 is working for well even for some pro work - a 120 neg scanned at 3200 gives me a 250Mb TIFF! But I do accept that they don’t capture everything technically but not enough for me to have noticed
Just at the time I considering either the primefilm xe or use my digital camera..this video just came in at the nick of time.. thank you. For macro photography, a m43 is always a better choice than full frame
I find it strange that we take beautiful analog photos and then digitalize them with a digital camera. For digital images I use my digital camera and my analog cameras I use to make prints in the darkroom.
More flexibility, cheaper cost, larger print options. Lots of reasons to digitize. I don't do it exclusively cause I like printing in the darkroom as well but not everyone has that luxury.
I find the 80 MP hires mode of my m43 camera to be sufficient for 4x5 negatives. The biggest issues are even lighting and flatness at this size, but I finally fixed those. IR dust removal is not helpful for me, as I mainly shoot B&W ( and I had some bad experience when using a Plustek scanner and Silverfast - results were ugly.
@@vintagevic4593 which part? While I'm shooting, I have a notes app and a notebook that I keep settings info in. I get the film back, scan it on my coolscan 9000. NEF 16-bit fine(2x) and ice if it's not black and white. If it is black and white, I scan positive. Then I update a google sheet with all the info from my notebook. copy and paste the info into 2 different files. I run one script that using the info to rename the files. I then drop them into photoshop to edit in ACR. Do some slight adjustments and save out JPEGS. Then I run another script and it creates "HD" jpegs for instagram posts and inserts all the exif tag data into the files.
How many passes are you doing? With Nikonscan my 8000ED takes 3 minutes in fine mode for 6x8 frame. And yes, I fully agree, I will run my 8000ED until it exhales its last breath.
I built myself a copy stand by buying an old 35mm enlarger and stripping the head off it to replace it with a digital camera. Works really well and the old tech of the knobs to raise and lower the head impresses the odd client no end!
I use a flatbed to get a basic look at the negative. If a photo is a keeper I send it out for a drum scan. I don’t think even shooting them with my GFX 100s II gives as good an image as the drum. If I had a PhaseOne I’d probably use the camera.
Great video! I had to use a Nikon Coolscan to scan slides at work. Excellent results! I’m retired now and I use my Epson V600 for all my 35mm film scanning. I post edit in Photoshop. My philosophy. Although I do get excellent quality results from my Epson V600 that please me, I’m not interested in having my scans of my photographs looking pristine, perfect and razor sharp as my digital photography taken with my mirrorless cameras. My focus is vintage authenticity, with all of its grain and attributes from shooting with film from back in the day.
That’s a valid point Henry and I also dislike film images that look too clinical. After digitising the film I usually soften the image and try to remove some of the harshness that inevitably gets introduced.
Hello Steve ! happy new year. What resolution can you squeeze out of the DSLR method ? can you do 4000 dpi ? We are in the process of husbanding my Fathers Nikon Coolscan 8000ED, and the software keeps failing us every 6 months, living abroad this is less then ideal.
It’s really hard to come up with meaningful figures for true resolution with film as beyond a certain point there’s no practical gain. All I will say is that camera scans can produce images which to me look as detailed as anything I can get from my dedicated devices. That said, I’m sure that high end film scanners still provide a measurable advantage in most situations.
Nice informative video Steve, gave me some new perspectives on this subject. I work in an analog camera store and digitizing for many people seems like a scary/hard (read: learning curve) subject, but it isnt anymore really.
I totally get your point. I survived for a year and a half with an ancient 35mm Plustek Opticfilm and now I'm simply quitting film because of the complexity. Great solution indeed, Steve. Cheers!
A personal decision, of course. I shoot both film and digital mirrorless. As you already know, film is an entirely different ballgame with its own unique set of processes involved. For me, the difference is worth it. I enjoy it.
Interesting. A while ago I had loads of 35mm slides to scan so used a Nikon Coolscan with the batch feeder. Kodachrome was a nightmare with the card mounts. Plastic mounts tended to work better. I used a Microtek scanner for larger format negatives which was good, but sadly the transparency adapter packed up a while ago. If I need to rescan selected transparencies, I will give my APSC camera and macro a go based on your experiences :)
Interesting topic. I have a scanner, a V850 and a macro lens for my camera (and film holders) and occasionally camera scan. Currently I'm mostly scanning old BW where the IR in the V850 doesn't work so cleanup has to be done in post anyway. Still, I use the scanner mostly as it just sits beside the computer and it's easy to just fire it up and let it do its thing while I work on other stuff. Setup for camera scanning is much more time consuming as I don't have room for a permanent setup. What I'll do is to rescan some of the most important images where I feel a camera scan will improve on the "scan-quality".
I used to follow exactly the same approach as my scanner sat next to me. I’d do better quality scans as needed but now find the speed of doing uncut rolls with the camera so much quicker.
Might be helpful: LR now includes "Visualise Spots" under the "Remove" tool, which provides a really quick way to identify blemishes and nuke them quickly.
I'm using an old Minolta 50mm Macro Bellows with the slide / negative holder, and it's very quick at 35 with lots of detail. Only issue I've hit is moire when I've shot grid-like structures on film. Not found a good 120 film holder solution that doesn't require a lot of futzing, but I'd not heard of the Valloi? (sp?) holder - does someone here have a link?
I have been thinking about buying an Epson V850 scanner or a digital camera for scanning for a long time. What I care about most is medium format scanning. Thank you for your valuable experience and thoughts, best regards!
My old 35mm scanner is waiting for rescue. 👍 The FF digital camera I have been using to Copy film recently failed! It’s replacement should do for now. Film still has more to it than Resolution 🖖
Very informative but too late. I’ve already scanned 13700 family photos with my V600. While half are from prints, the other half include 128 large format going back to 1920 and 750 medium format from 1929. The rest are 35mm negatives and slides, a few 110 negatives and slides, and a few 126 negatives. The big thing for me early on was to adopt a scanning process. It included scan to tiff and a naming convention to manage all those photos.
Another negative (pun intended) of the Nikon CoolScan V scanner I had was that the ICE dust/scratch did NOT work with B&W negatives! As I recall, the reason was because the Infrared light could not penetrate the silver in B&W film. So I had to do manual cleanup with my software. I was to looking forward to scanning my dirty, dusty Tri-X negatives I developed back in high school and college and having nice clean images.. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
Its time to retire film scanners if you’re using a Nikon LS5000 and a V750 flatbed scanner. The flatbed works well on *perfectly exposed* negs, good luck w 135. The in-camera systems in their various iterations require a neg-to-pos conversion. Some examples are, are Negative Lab Pro, CaptureOne or Lightroom. NLP may or may not be updated, havent looked recently. There’s always a price-point as well. The Noritsu scanners used in film labs are expensive, but precise. The software may be 2006 at best, but running on a solid W7 box is your best bet. Noritsu advantage: speed, accuracy and timeliness. Be sure to have the dongle running the Noritsu s/w, otherwise you have a Maserati with a lawnmower engine running in demo mode.
Interesting about using a camera to 'scan'. I've been using a Minolta F-2800 for some time - has no dust removal but then I was only scanning B&W film and C41 I sent off for processing. But... the F-2800 has a scsi interface using an ISA card! That PC died 2-3 years ago... leaving me to source a scsi PCI card (or the very expensive PCIe cards) and get it all working again. Even Linux (my preferred OS for scanning and most things) I suspect has been dropping support for scsi. So.... new card and fight it into the system, or the valoi?
@@SteveONions Well, yes I think perhaps so. Having said that I'm still using Wordperfect 5.1 to write reports (running today in a DOS window in Linux) but then I find it faster for writing reports than WYSIWYG WPs and its easy to set up. SCSI, on the other hand, always seemed a dark art to me - think I tried 3 cards before I found one that worked well and that was 13 odd years ago. Think I'll investigate the Valoi and use my Canon 6D... life is too short these days to be bothering, as you say, with old hardware. Hate throwing things away though... never know when you may need something!
I only use 120 film these days and "scan" using my Olympus EM1 in hiRes mode. I do have a dedicated film scanner, sadly without IR noise removal(my mistake!), which I use for legacy slide conversion. But I haven't used it in over 2 years, so I may well get rid of it. I made my own film holder for 120 film and it takes about 20 minutes to convert a processed film to digital. To convert colour negs to digital I use the Hamrick VueScan software which can convert a negative TIFF to a digital positive (with a few film emulations too).
@@SteveONions Yeah, I just wish I'd spent the extra £50 for a film scanner with IR scratch removal! Every time I do a scan and have to spend half-an-hour spotting I curse my penny pinching!😞
Many thanks, Steve, for this timely video. I find myself in the same predicament. Should I move on or not? For 120 film I use the Epson V750 with self-constructed negative holders to ensure flatness. Not perfect, but good enough. For 35mm I find my Plustek Optifilm 8300i far better (and much faster). Some months ago I did test an alternative for 35mm: Sony A7 with bellows and a slide film copy holder. As to resolution I found no difference to the Plustek scans. But I was quite unhappy with the dynamic range of the negs taken with the A7.They reminded me of the results of internegative copying, back in the days. But I didn't use the apparently very capable LR module you mentioned for conversion. (I'm holding up LR 5.6, the last buy-version, as long as I can.) Still, good to know that someone who has an eye for image quality sees no problem in principle in using a digital camera set-up for the purpose. So, thanks again!
Glad you found it useful. The Epson flatbed scanners aren’t too bad but to me they do struggle with 35mm. The digital camera approach has the advantage of improving technology but in all honesty we have enough now to extract practically all the detail from the film. I would expect intelligent processing to be the next advance in digitisation, soon even a poor 35mm frame could be turned into a masterpiece.
I have a Polaroid 4000 dpi scanner that unfortunately is a SCSI interface. I still plan on booting up an ancient Mac someday, but I know it takes a long time to scan my hundreds of boxes of slides…. Not sure I got anything from this video other than making me remember I’ve got that project in the wings.
Thank you; I've been toying with the idea of getting a used high end scanner, but it seems that it makes more sense to just spend the money on getting a good holder for camera scanning. You note that you're scanning with micro 4/3; does that work well for scanning 120 film? Which lens(es) do you use; I assume you use different lenses for different film formats. Thank you in advance.
I’m very happy with doing 120 film on the 20mp Micro 4/3 camera. For this format I use the high res mode to get a little more from the film and of course you ideally need a good macro lens. I use the same 30mm Panasonic macro for all formats presently.
Plustek 120 with silverfast. Set it running and go and have a cup of tea. Having said that. If it breaks, it’s unlikely I’ll buy another dedicated scanner.
I'm holding dear life on my fleamarket find of just a few bucks:A Nikon LS2000. I found an Adaptec SCSI card for which some geeks made drivers that are compatible to Win10. I now made an external solution with an PCI to a PCIe for the card as modern PCs don't have classic PCI Ports anymore and I don't want to install the card permanently as boot up times are longer with an SCSI card. I agree, Digital Cameras deliver top notch digital scans of film. I'm doing this actually for my Medium Format films. As backlight I'm using a very old "scan light" which was originally intended to be used on flatbed scanners to scan large format film. I'm only using the Scanner nowadays because it somehow is convenient to use for me and digital ICE is working fine as well . But I agree, practically, there's no use for them anymore.
For more depth of field with a full frame camera just stop the lens down. I hade a Nikon D800e with the 60mm D lens and it works very well. I have a higher resolution Canon 5Ds but for whatever reason I have never even tried it for scanning. I have a flatbed scanner and a couple digital scanners but I don't really use them very often.
Which macro lens do you use for camera scanning? I have been wondering about converting my slides to digital, I tossed up over buying a slide scanner epson or dedicated unit but seeing the price for quality I have mentally settled on using my M43 system. The only macro I have is the venerable 12-50mm Olympus which I purchased cheap to use on my backup GX8 as a small walk about. I also have an E-M1 but no other native macro lenses. I do have a Rokkor 50mm macro including the macro extension and SR to M43 adopter as I use Rokkor lenses with the M43 from time to time. Would that be OK for slide copy?
You can adapt all sorts of macro lenses to M43 but I went with the 30mm Panasonic to keep the working distance as short as possible. I ensure my lens is parallel with the film by using spacers to raise it above the target rather than fiddling around with a tripod.
The film scanner and light source are made by Valoi. The camera sits on top of multiple Cokin P series lens hoods that slot together and allow the camera to be position at the correct height.
I've definitely found using a camera for converting black and white negatives gives better results than my old v700 or Minolta scanners. The decollimated light gives a grain result more akin to an enlarger, not to mention the dust! That said, COLOR negatives have been a disaster, with very time consuming corrections needed in lightroom.
Unfortunately the cleanup only works with color film and not B&W. I agree that for 4X5 digital camera scanning is not useful. One has to stitch images and deal with any artifacts in that. Thanks for the discussion of this topic. When I want a really good scan for a 4x5 I'll pay for a drumscan. As you can imagine that isn't done very often. Indeed at this point only twice.
Interesting viewpoint Steve, but the sentiment fills me with a sense of alarm as I’ve got probably 10,000 or so 35mm negs which I plan (someday) to sort and scan! However, although I bought a dedicated Plustek Film Scanner - during Lockdown - I’ve yet to use it … what’s all that about?
If I had that many negatives I’d consider getting a flatbed just so I could do them in batches of 24 at a time. Even that will take over 400 runs to complete!
@ yeah you’re probably right. I’m pretty sure a lot of them won’t be worth scanning anyway, but I suppose the process of scanning ‘old film’ is a fairly laborious one it seems to me - however it’s done - which is why I guess I keep putting it off until tomorrow.
As technology moves on, extracting information, data, image quality from an old format, will be a Forth Bridge type operation. When printing 35mm film was a darkroom process, 16" was about the maximum print size that held detail at nose-end viewing distance. Perhaps a little more with low ASA film, fine grain developers and the best enlarging lenses. Now we expect old negatives and slides to blow up several times the size of our monitors. Hybrid workflows are a labour of love or an act of insanity, and I ask which every time I shoot another film.
I’ve been to a few exhibitions in recent years where old negatives (usually 35mm) have been digitised and printed to decent sizes. I’m amazed how good they can look and question whether I need anything else to achieve what I’m after. Even traditional prints have impressed me when looking at them in a gallery, most notable being Don McCullin’s work. His print of the shell shocked marine, life size if I recall correctly, sticks in my mind even 15 years later.
@@SteveONions The thorny issue of viewing distance is never far away. I recall seeing wall sized prints, typically in museum settings as background to an exhibit, that were probably taken on a box camera. No one ever said what a blurry mess. However if a shot is in a glass frame that invites the viewer to nose end the picture, they're probably looking at an abstraction. On a side issue, it's amazing how well some old lenses hold up at 20" print or less.
As an Epson V750 user, here's my concern about scanning via digital cameras. Does the latter compromise the classic "film look" we're all trying to achieve? Or does the Epson do that already? I find Silverfast software on the V750 gives very good film simulation.
Digital ICE is 90-95 % correct at best. You still have to check through every scan for the 5-10% remaining dust and scratches. There’s no time saved with it. My own experience in the last 30 years slide scanning. DSLR scans also save time where you can quick scan everything to have a library to choose wisely from for the ”real scans”.
You spend most of your time finding the remaining errors. Not fixing them. Also, the computational ”healers” are now doing a better job than ICE when fixing areas with film grain. My personal experience though.
You should look at big Topaz flatbed scanners which has highest denzity and pretty wide DOF. The deliver way better scannes than small table top prosumer scanner with way lower denzity.
If you can get an accurate scan using a digital camera, surely it must be possible to duplicate the film look from a digital image? Or am I missing something?
I wish my camera scans were as sharp as lab scans :( No matter what I do, my X-T5 + Laowa 65mm results are not as sharp as any noritsu/frontier scan. Colors are nice though. The only way to get close in detail is pixel shift, but 20 40mp files combined and turned into a .dng ends up at 850mb or so lol. Gigantic files!
the eternal question, why use film if you use your digital camera to digitize them? for me it's like driving a vintage car, modern cars are better but driving a vintage car is more fun.
As a youtube video watcher, I'll comment until a dedicated photographer answers. 1: Dynamic range. Digital cameras can't hold a candle to film. Curious Droid did an episode on old film footage and modern video of rocket launches. There was absolutely no comparison. Film for the win. 2: Color. Different films produce different outcomes because of the chemistry and it can be copied in digital but may not quite pull it off. 3: Resolution. I high quality film may have more info in it than a digital camera can capture. 4: Overall image quality. Every time you push a button on a film camera, it costs you dollars/pounds/ yen and you are much more thoughtful about what you are photographing and how you have your camera set up. Let the burns begin.
To me the result stills looks like a film image in the same way that photographing a painting still makes it look like a painting. The more perfect the digital capture stage is the better.
l'm in the middle of digitising my vast 25 year collection of manly 120 slides and negatives, the Epson 750 is not a dedicated film scanner, its a flatbed primarily aimed at prints with the secondary ability to also work with film, the plustek Opticfilm 120 which is the solution I went for (with vuescan software) is a dedicated 120 film scanner with infra red, the point is although it takes about 8 minutes to scan a slide its 8 minutes I'm doing something else on the computer. The optical (rather than the digital) resolution is much higher than the Epson and most importantly the dynamic range is better especially with multi exposure turned on. The effect the infra red scan has is not to be underestimated, the first film scanner I had I had didn't have it and it saves a hell a lot of time on post processing. The combination of the infra red scan and having a proper scanner suitable for 120 film that frees me up to do other work while it scans beats a digital camera setup hands down in my opinion
If you’ve a lot of old negatives to digitise, particularly C-41 and E6 then a scanner does make sense. I’m primarily working on new negatives, many being traditional B&W so no benefit to having the infrared clean up. I had a pile of old E6 slides passed to me 20 years ago, in pretty poor shape so the Epson did a great job of giving me usable files to make prints from.
I built a "Scanning frame" that holds my camera, film holders, light source etc perfectly level and even. Its rock solid but I bought a NIkon coolscan 5000 anyway because its more automated and the dust on the camera scan is just too much to deal with.
My Nikon film scanner is in a box somewhere...my current computers don't have the correct port, and I'm using an Epson V300/V350 (can't recall which). It's worth the time and effort in my book, to fix all the dirt and whatnot by hand. I don't trust any automated system to know the difference between dirt and image...I've tested a few, and none came anywhere near to being consistently accurate. Even tried Silverfast...and I'm not all that happy with those results.
I obviously don't produce as many 'keepers' as you do for any given roll of film, therefore flatbed and dedicated 35mm scanning is less time consuming and therefore, not a deterrent. In fact, I rather enjoy the slow, methodical process. Furthermore, the results are more than acceptable for uploading to my website etc. All printing is done in the darkroom. I never have and never will own a digital camera. So there!
If you have film, and if you want to digitize it ... then the BEST way to accomplish it is with a dedicated high resolution film scanner. It can be accomplished other ways, but not with much in the way of QUALITY -
My Nikon Coolscan 8000ED works well and gives me unbelievably high quality scans. Nikonscan has incredible ICE scratch removal on C41 negatives, and its inversion routines are superior to those of standalone tools like NLP or Grain2Pixel. That's all that matters to me.
I don't own or need to own a digital camera but I can see how camera scanning might be an appealing option for those who already have a DSLR. To each their own!
The dust and scratch removal abilities of the Nikon scanners are a major benefit when scanning old photos. I think Epson also has a version of ICE, but I don't think it's as effective as the IR channel on the Nikon. The problem with Nikon scanners like my LS30 (aside purely age) is that it uses SCSI. I bought a SCSI to USB adapter, but the company which made it no longer exists and the most recent drivers are for Windows 2000. At some point Microsoft will alter the APIs in Windows to the point where it won't work anymore.
Steve - appreciate your views and the info. Still scanning my old film negatives with the Nikon Super CoolScan 4000 ED with Vue Scan software and it still works great.
If it works then stick with it, it’s nice to get years of solid use out of the same equipment.
Same here. I love Vue Scan software. It's now available to linux!!!
“You get the picture.” Brilliant!
Good observations too, although scanning volumes on the flatbed (V600 here) is quite usefull as I am scanning over 40 years of film (35 pos/neg). It quickly (scan low-res for web only) shows the images I forgot about and any gem will be marked for print in the darkroom or for hi-res scan later on. Good way of spending winter evenings 👍.
If it works then stick with it Dave 👍
I bought an Essential Film Holder (EFH) and designed and 3d printed a camera stand to be put direcly on the film holder. Its height is adjusted exactly to the required distance of my Sigma 105 Macro and its width measured to take the hood of the lens.
So I place the film holder with film on the lighttable, put the camera stand on top of the film holder, put the camera on the holder and can start shooting at once.
No stray light, no adjustment of height and paralellity. All fine. An uncut roll is digitized in 5 minutes. And that includes setting the "scanner" up
I also prefer the camera to sit atop a stand (or in my case Cokin lens shades as spacers) to avoid any levelling issues.
I improved the output of my V700 by making a holder from anti reflection glass set at the correct height for best focus. Night and day difference to the OEM holder for medium format. For 35mm I use an old Canon film copy bellows system with a macro lens and a medium format digital camera and the results are amazing
I used a variety of film holders with my v700, the best being one with ANR glass and adjustable feet (from Betterscanning if I recall correctly).
I use the same Valoi-system as you Steve, and i've been very happy with it. I use it together with a Nikon D850 and an AF Micro Nikkor 60mm 2.8 and found it almost as fast as the Fujifilm SP3000, but with an astonishing increase in quality and tonality. Not to mention the absolute enormous files one can get by digitising 4x5 with the D850.
I think that should be Valoi, not Vallon.
@@DavidM2002 Very correct, my Swedish auto correct got em mixed up.
@@AREKU I only speak English and I often mess that up.
Excellent 👍
I tried digitizing color slides with Nikon DSLR and quickly dismissed that as an option because I could immediately tell that the camera was applying its color response (aka "color science") even with the "neutral" color setting to the images. I wanted the files to look like film, and they did not. Maybe other brand cameras have trully "neutral" setting that does not change color at all, but mine did not. I used plustek scanner with vuescan to scan slides instead with much closer color rendition to the original (but have to fix black point on each image afterwards and somewhat poor shadow detail).
It can take a long time to get the settings and hardware working just right (at which point they usually upgrade something in the background and break everything!).
Raw or jpeg?
@@FloridaMan02 both, raw just removes the smudging of noise reduction that is applied by jpeg engine. raw in nikon software gives same colors as in camera (green,blue,orange hues oversaturated, red shifted towards orange and undersaturated and made brighter amongst some of the things). raw in adobe software just makes different deviations depending on "camera calibration" and other settings. also the tone curves (contrast) change the gradations in shadows and highlights. this is talking about transparency film where i can see with my own eyes how it should look. with negatives it is up to your taste.
@valdezapg i thought it recorded un changed sensor data that was later rendered with selected settings...and raw seems like it would be more flexible with 12 or 14 bit color vs 8 in jpeg. Something to think about and experiment with.
@@FloridaMan02 The raw is digital negative, it has to be interpreted somehow. and this is where "camera calibration" which is like "film stock" comes in in adobe software, or "picture control" for nikon, or "picture style" for canon. for example both canon and nikon have "neutral" setting, but if you shoot the same scene with both cameras set to "neutral" you will see that they look quite different, as actually they are not really "neutral", they are just less exaggerated and more muted than the other presets. also the dyes used in "color filter array" for each digital camera sensor play part on how color is rendered (which makes even cameras from one make differ from one model to the next). complicated stuff. if you care about your transparency film scans to have the look of film, a good film scanner i think is the best option. for color negatives I like how silverfast negafix presets invert the color and have not tried negative lab pro or other similar things, so I don't know for sure. for black and white it might not matter much, but also i have not tested, so i might be wrong on that.
Plustek makes a good scanner for 35mm (OpticFilm 8300i) and one for 120 (OpticFilm 120 Pro). Both work especially well with SilverFast software, although it's pricey (Vuescan is a cheaper option), as is the 120 Pro scanner itself. It's slower than scanning with a digital camera, but I feel that I have more control over the scanning parameters. I don''t shoot a huge amount of film, so the time difference is not that great; in fact, I rather like the process. Still, it's nice to have a range of modern technical options for digitizing film, rather than having to depend on very old devices that are no longer compatible with modern computers and operating systems.
I’ve used many scanners and found that the best can produce excellent results, just not as quickly as the digital camera method sadly.
Chris - thanks for the nice comment, just one point worth making being that you can in fact run those old scanners without any issues on modern computers and operating systems. I run an old, but excellent Minolta Scan Elite 5400 on Win10 64bit via Vuescan. I also run a Nikon Coolscan 8000ED on the same PC via Nikonscan, without any issues whatsoever.
@@giuseppeg.8461 Hi Guiseppe - Thanks, but taking care of old cameras can be hard enough; I didn't really want to go that route with scanners as well, especially since Plustek scanners do a very good job and are still in manufacture. I had a Minolta 5400 a couple of decades ago in my microscopy lab; should probably have kept it!
I have my Epson 850 pro and have enjoyed using it to get my scans and I am very satisfied with my results.
If it works then stick with it 👍
I have one of those and is great for scanning 5 inch glass negatives from the late 1890s. I find it hard to believe a camera can grab all the detail
Hi Steve, great video per usual! Quick suggestion - in your video editing software there should be a free EQ plugin you can use to get rid of the rumble from the table that is picked up by the mic. It's called a low shelf and if you set it around 50 or 60 Hz it should do the trick without affecting your voice 🙂 It can help with wind noise too - but that is obviously not a problem in this video!
Thanks for the advice Paul, I’ll try applying that on the next video 👍
@paulstillwell ah!! I can benefit from that tip as well Paul. Now I finally understand why that is suggested. I started using a long mic arm clamped onto another desk before I ever heard of EQ. I also appreciate how tactfully you made the suggestion.
I have a mountain of 35mm slides and negatives, very disorganized, a jumble of boxes and sheets in a box. My goal is to able to quickly get low or medium resolution "contact sheets" from all this, then decide afterward, which images to scan at higher resolution or send off to have done for me. It sounds like the best idea would be an inexpensive flatbed scanner, or try to adapt one of the combination printer/scanners that I have. Suggestions?
I would go the flatbed route, get one that has the holders you need (film strips, mounted slides etc) and let the scanner do the work over a longer period of time.
I started with a flatbed like you but found the process to be time intensive and laborious. I already had a Nikon D810 (36mp) so I acquired a macro lens, some extension tubes and slide holder attachment and voila! Captured RAW images from the D810 sensor allowed me to pull out every bit of shadow detail in the original. Yes, it is still a lot work to process the image and deal with dust spots, but the finished images are worth it.
Nice work, great to use something you already have.
How to clean dirty negatives full of debris? Compressed air? Bathing them in distilled water?
It can be tricky is the debris has got into the surface during drying. I’d always start off with a soak in clean water first and avoid any wiping down unless I was sure the surface of the film was pretty clean.
Normally you first blow off the dust with a pear-shaped blower, brush off the remaining dust with a special brush made of very soft natural hairs. Keeping dust off the negs was a chore and an ongoing battle. If you brush too much the static electricity builds up on the surface of the film with attracts dust like a magnet. In the US in the 1980s you could get a brush with a cartridge containing polonium 210 (a radioactive material) that ionized the air and got rid of the static charge. It worked very well but for some unknown reason they stopped selling it. I started losing hair around that time but I'm sure it was a coincidence.
Thanks for your video. I am doing all my color negative scans with my Epson V600 + sotware. Good results, ICE successfully removes dust n scratches. B&W total disaster, I don't know why. Even better - or let's say more authentic - results with my old Rollei df-s 190. Btw, I use Kodak 6x6 app for a quick scan of prints... works well!
I'm still using my Nikon LS9000 and am very satisfied with the results.
My 8000ED is an incredible bit of kit. One of my best film photography purchases ever. Would never put up with the faff of aligning and putting together a DSLR based scanning thingy. To each their own!
If it works then definitely do not mess with it 👍
I built my own stand after seeing how much the commercial units cost. A wood base with rubber feet, pipe flange mounted on base, various length pipe nipples as risers, pipe elbow, shorter nipple extension over base with a simple sliding unit that the camera mounts to. No expensive gearing as my sliding unit works with friction and a lock. Cost me about $40 USD and works great.
I used to use my own home built setup but I can’t deny the advantages of a well engineered commercial offering.
I use a similar set up but i did find that the micro four third camera didn't have the dynamic range of slide film. I also found that the different form factors meant I wasn't getting an image that represented a full 20 megapixels.
I’m surprised at that, M4/3 has a lot more range than any slide film. That said, it can struggle to get get enough information from the deep shadows unless you have a good light source.
@SteveONions I found I had exposure for highlight or shadow (I chose to keep detail in the highlights). Then I found the camera had an exposure stacking mode.
I made the same move this year. I am using a Valoi setup with my old Nikon D800 and the 60mm f2.8G Nikkor lens. I leave the D800 permanently mounted on the copy stand. Now that I’ve come down the learning curve I find this method to be quite efficient. I still have my Epson V800. I plan to use it for 645 scans so I don’t have to re-level my setup. My 645 camera is an old 1930s Kodak folder, so I’m not terribly concerned about getting the absolute best scan.
That seems like a good balance, the flatbed is more than adequate for old medium format negatives.
Interesting. I was not aware of the dedicated film scanner. Thank you for the ideas for scanning in my old 35mm negatives
Don't forget cleaning up dirty sensor artifacts (or cleaning the sensor) with a DSLR as well. And then, if you're crazy enough to shoot 6x17, the old Epson still has its place. I use both methods, and each has its place.
Fair point 👍
Currently building a rig for scanning my 120 films (and 35mm films) with my 61Mp Sigma fpL full frame camera, and this video pops up 🙂 Still going this route though. Will test if a Foveon sensor is better for this or not. Time is not a problem 🙂
Hope it works out well for you.
Interesting ! I still use my Canon film scanner, plus Epson GT10000 A3 scanner, downside being I have to maintain a standalone Windows XP system to keep the SCSI interface going. I had some 1890 3.5" glass slides I needed to scan and used the Epson 10000 and an Epson flatbed/slide scanner. I was concerned the focus point on both was a few mm out due to the glass sandwich. I'll be trying the camera method.
I hate maintaining old computer equipment, as soon as something is discontinued I move on to a new solution.
Interesting video Steve. I've been considering trying the digital camera method for a while but can't see any advantage (for me) yet. Given the development of an efficient 'clean up' facility in Photoshop, I'd give it a go. At this time I'm a little way off packing up my Epson V850 scanner in favour of a camera scanning system. "Horses for courses" I think. I look forward to hearing your experience with the camera scanning method in future, I'm sure you'll keep us updated.
Glad it was helpful!
Well reasoned and practical.
I've been engineering this for 6 years. At this point, I use a dedicated camera - a Pentax K70 in composite mode - because it does *perfect* grain structure in composite mode. For holders, Blackscale labs for medium format - perfectly level, for 35mm, the Valoi Easy35 which again, requires no leveling, so I can swap the camera between them very fast. FOR DUST, this is critical, the Kinetronics staticvac. I kept the v850 for large format.
Software is also *critical*. I own... everything. I choose to use Filmlab Desktop 3.0 now for basic inversion, and and typically finish in DxO. I also will sometimes use Negmaster BR with Adobe Bridge, but rarely these days. I purged Adobe, even the free stuff, as I am not fond of subscriptions. I do not use NLP anymore, and I find these two newer products do a better job anyway.
Cheers Steve, welcome to the club:)
Sounds like you’ve got to the perfect setup 👍
@SteveONions I do wish for a medium format holder comparable to the Easy35😁
For me the Pentax is key, in particular for black and white conversions. I also used both an Olympus and Sony, regular and composite modes, and on 35mm I found they mess with the grain structure in a noticeable way. It's far more prominent if you are converting 1600 ISO or above. I ultimately concluded the Bayer color array must be at fault. The Pentax, they're doing some sort of magic with their compositing algorithm. I think because their algorithm focuses on fidelity and dynamic range instead of resolution, so it produces a far better conversion.
Notably, I even found I prefer the results of the K-70 medium format conversions upscaled via Gigapixel AI over a Sony higher-resolution composite. This was great, since the K-70 an ugly condition from mpb was relatively cheap 😃
I am currently having serious issues, because my gas has targeted a Pentax monochrome camera...
@@jw48335do you also digitize positive film? I have a Pentax K-1 and I struggle with its "color science". I fail to get good looking colors from any raw converter I have tried.
Great discussion. I use a similar setup: G9 + Negative Lab Pro. I've been really impressed with the results I've gotten over the past few years. My NLP has been running a little glitchy lately on LR, so I need to figure that out. But I can't deny the conversions are still really fantastic.
I also used the G9 for years and found the results excellent.
I've had a Microtek i900 for a zillion years for MF & LF transparencies with excellent results. No need to change at this late date.
👍
I’ve just bought an Epson V850 😬 To be honest I think you’re right on the DSLR set up for 35mm but the V850 is a blessing for my 6x17 and 5x4 plus my 6x6 work. I am currently testing out flatbed scanning techniques with the dedicated trays plus independent holders and fluid mount holders. It’s a minefield 😂
A minefield indeed, I hate to think how long I’ve spent fiddling with holders and software over the years 🙁
@ I’m currently trying to revive some old 5x4 Velvia images wish me luck 😬
I scanned all my 40 years worth of slides last year using a high quality dedicated film scanner. Sure, the thing was slow, 1 to 2 minutes for each slide. But all I had to do is change out the slide cassettes every now and then, 100 slides at a time, and the device did the job all by itself. It took 3 weeks for all my slides, but I invested maybe an hour or two of my time altogether. The scanning software was also a dream, it automatically cleaned the images of dust and scratch marks.
All that said, scanning slides is an old guys past time. It's for people who are old enough to have spent decades photographing onto film. Later generations won't need such scanners anymore.
Sounds like you have a good solution Mike, getting so many slides transferred can be a pain but with it doing 100 at a time that was a real bonus.
That was indeed very useful, thanks Steve. I have stacks of old negatives and slides and am looking forward to digitizing them as a retirement project in a few months time. I've been wondering whether it's worth buying a film scanner (I only have 35mm stuff, nothing bigger) so your video is super useful. Would love to see a short demo of the process and references for the Valloy (?) neg holder and copy stand. Your little subtitles for V700 made be laugh 😅! Thanks!
Thanks Alan. I’ll do a full video on my scanning process one day 👍
Good information, thanks. I just went through the same thing, discarded my very expensive film/slide scanner and replaced it with a simple DIY rig using my digital camera and a macro lens. It will deliver a scan as good as the scanner and MUCH faster. I can do 6 slides a minute. A bit less for uncut 35 mm film. I put the 3D printed part on Thingiverse.
Thanks for sharing
Interesting topic. Just a quick note about your video in regard to the sound. It might not be obvious to everyone, but every vibration is communicated to your mic. This results in a constant low pitch boomy noise. You can clearly hear it when you picked up the Valoi holder and place it back. If you want to fix this, you might want to find a way to isolate your mic from your table. There are some mic holders that mount the mic on elastic bands.
Thank you, I’ll try to fix this next time 👍
Very useful, thanks a lot. We had the same discussion in my local photo club.
For my amount of films per year it‘s better not to develop and scan on my own, so I give this to a local lab.
Some of my photo friends try out the different types of scanners as well as „scanning“ with a digital camera.
trouble generally in many local labs is that they don't do very good scan. You can go to a place that specializes in scanning but then the cost will be higher.
Glad it was helpful Joerg.
What happened to being satisfied with what came out of the camera and the lab ????
I was never satisfied with that!
Just purchased a brand new PC. The screen resolution is 100% better than my old one. To me my images all look better with the latest technology. Other than printing the quality of the image depends on the quality of the viewing screen, correct?
Largely yes, unless you do a lot of 35mm grainy B&W which doesn’t need anything special in the viewing department 🙂
Thanks Steve very informative! I have also been using flatbed scanners for years. I now use the V850 and an old HP model that can do 4x5 as well. I have used the camera scanning technique, but reverted back to flatbed scanning. I think camera scanning is great as long as one has the space to set up a dedicated camera scanning set-up, I just didn’t like doing the inversions in Lightroom. Everyone has their method. For me it’s flatbed scanning and dark room printing of black and white. I also concur with you, I have not been shooting much 4x5 lately.
What swung it for me was the new film holder setup, so easy to work through the roll before cutting it into strips of 6.
My coolscan is a SCSI II version and those interfaces are no longer supported, so it's dead as a door nail. I also have a collection of 6x6 and 4x5 slides and negatives, sure wish I had spent more money on Kodachrome 64 in the 120 format when it was available because the slides I have are still wonderful. Because of this I spent a lot of time working with my Epson V800 to determine where to place the focusing tabs on each holder to get the best quality out of my scans. Also spent time figuring out how to use the infrared scan feature to get clean files to work with. It doubles the scan times but the payoff is well worth that extra time. Best balance between scan resolution has proven to be 4800 dpi for 120 and 35mm films and 2000 dpi for the 4x5. Tried 6400 dpi for the 4x5 scans and learned quickly that a 720 Mb file will crash some very modern editors. BTW those who complain about "awful noise" in a modern digital really should spend some time viewing the grain in 30 year old Kodacolor negatives. It's one reasons why when I was shooting B&W 35mm the only film I shot with was Panatomic-X.
I found the practical resolution of the Epson flatbeds to be 2400dpi, above that I just got larger file sizes. Kodachrome slides do age very well, far better than E6 but it’s a shame digital ICE doesn’t work with them 🙁
I’m still using my 1999 SCSI Coolscan by using a stack of adapters: SCSI-FireWire, FireWire-thunderbolt, thunderbolt-USB-C. Amazingly, it works.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I was quite sceptical about using a camera for scanning, but got good results with a MFT camera and Lomography"s Digitalizer. The drawback of MFT is the native 4:3 format, so I end up getting about 12 MP files, which is ok, compared to my Epson V800, for 35mm film. (As I shoot mostly B/W the dust removal feature of the flatbed scanner doesn't work anyway.) Tip: As soon as the films have dried, I put them straight into a plastic bag (freezer bag), where they stay until being scanned. As the whole film is scanned, this minimizes the risk of dust getting onto the negatives.
Thanks for the tip, I hadn’t thought about that 👍
I found a flatbed scanner, many years ago! Canonscan with most of needed bits except 6x6 nega holder. It only works on my XP! Yes it's off line! It is s l o w. But it does for me! I will soon use a Digital Camera. I mainly do BW so ice not relevant! I love my older cameras, but a scanned negative is now digital. Might as well use digital camera! Great Video. All the best!
Scanning B&W is so much easier than colour 🙂
I've sold all my digital cameras and lenses. I use an Epson flatbed scanner for my 35mm b&w negatives. Because I print on 5x7 paper, no need to spend more money.
I've also sold all my digital camera and lenses. I don't miss them one bit. I do my photography using film cameras and a Nikon coolscan. Happy!
Hey, I am scanning my film with m43 as well. Would you mind sharing what lens are you using? Lumix 30mm macro has very uneven flat-field. Went for 7artisans 60mm macro. Better results, but focusing throw is narrow, hard to catch the critical focus.
I’ve not had any issues with my 30mm Panasonic, f/5.6 gives me very good results.
@@SteveONions Maybe I got an unlucky copy. Sharpness in on point. The issue I experience is most visible on 6x45 (as it is 4x3 ratio and uses whole lens coverage) color negative. It has slight vignetting even at f/5.6 resulting in orange corners after conversion. However I am rumbling, happy to hear that the setup works great for you!
I use an Olympus OM-1 with Olympus 90mm macro. Very happy with the results
Exactly the same set up as me, although I use the 90mm macro. I did try using the high Rez mode on one occasion, but as you said, on 35mm negatives there is no advantage. I ask my lab to leave the negatives in a roll as it speeds up the whole process.
I am using a V850 flat bed scanner and I am always thinking of changing to DSLR scanning, since that appears so much more convenient to me. But there is one argument I cannot get my head around: I am scanning all formats at 4800ppi (and even 9600ppi is a native resolution to this scanner). On a 35mm film this gives me a 24 mega pixels image, which has the same resolution like my Fuji Xt3 and which is totally sufficient for what these full format cameras (digital and analog) provide.
Already, using the XT3 for scanning 35mm will result in significant lower resolution, since format of my camera has a different ratio than the picture on film.
But...when I shoot 120 film and scan it with a DSLR, the resulting image is still a 24 mega pixel image with the same or even less resolution (6x9 ratio vs 3x4 ratio) like I get from 35mm film. So, what is the point here to shoot larger formats anyway ? Makes no sense for me in case of DSLR scanning.
When I scan my films I shot on the GW690 with 4800ppi on my flatbed scanner, I get 150 megapixel images (same amount of resolution provided by modern digital medium format cams). And the difference in details and possibilities for crops on these scans are amazingly better than I have from 35mm scans. Using my flatbed for scanning I know why I spent so much money using a format where I get only 8 shots from one roll....
Unfortunately the true resolution of the Epson flatbeds does not exceed 2400dpi. I’d come to pretty much this conclusion years ago but had it confirmed by far smarter people than myself who confirmed my suspicions. That said, 2400 dpi isn’t bad for 120 film.
Interesting to read all these comments, but I can't see an easy solution for my 'problem'. Hundreds of individually cut 6x6 120 format b&w negatives. These were from the early 1950s to early 1960s. My dad was a keen photographer during this time and did all his own developing and enlarging.
I'm looking for something that can hold single negatives flat enough to get a decent scan and see what's on them.
All the scanners I read of are strip holders, regardless of whether scanners or cameras are used.
So I dont know which way would work for me?
Ideas welcome!
You can get a decent enough scan simply by laying the strips directly in the scanner glass and using a low red setting off say 1200 dpi. The Epson scanners work this way when digitising 8x10 negatives and the quality is very good.
Digital ICE dust and scratch removal using infra-red light is the big advantage of dedicated 35mm or medium format film scanners but of course this is only for colour negatives or colour slides. No good for black and white or Kodachrome slides. So for black and white films there is no advantage by using a dedicated film scanner.
One of the reasons I favoured XP2 Super was to get the full advantage out of my scanners, a lot of the dedicated models make a mess out of traditional B&W films.
@jamesprivet dust and scratch can be removed without digital equipment
There are countless advantages to using a dedicated film scanner instead of a homemade DSLR scanning setup.
@@giuseppeg.8461 so what are they?
I didn't have any luck with the ICE dust removal software on either Nikon or Epson scanners. The automatic removal looked acceptable in screen resolution pictures but not in high resolution intended for printing. The dots generated by the software were visible and had to be retouched manually. In many cases they were more visible than the original dust spots.
Thanks Steve. Very informative.
Glad it was helpful William.
For me it was happy luck to end up using my digital camera for film scanning. I have a lot of 35mm film from all my earlier years shooting 35mm. I had been thinking of getting a dedicated scanner to scan them but the price of the scanners was always a bit prohibited. In the mean time I had really gotten into using Sony digital cameras. First the A6000 and then an A7III. In the use of those I started seeing videos of people touting using their cameras to scan film. As luck had it, I still had a copy stand that I had used years ago to snap copy negs of old family photos. So I ended up having a pretty nice setup ad was happy I had never got around to buying a scanner.
If I was starting out I’d never consider a dedicated scanner unless I was shooting large format.
A few years ago I bought a Canon FL bellows with slide copier attachment (also does film strips) for £54 on ebay and already had a 50mm 3.5 FD macro lens. This combination can be adapted to anything and gives me really excellent results.
It's not so quick to use, but I don't use it that often or for any volume of images.
Sounds like a good solution.
A very reflective and fact based discussion Steve. Nicely done. The "V750" to "V700" corrections made me laugh, especially when you used the cringe emoji!! Classic. I use an Epson V550 and have done now for about 10 years. I've actually been considering trying to get a V850, but at around £1K, its a lot to lay out. I've kept my eye on this "taking a photo of a photo" technique (as I put it) for a while. I totally see how it would work well, but I am just a Luddite and it feels wrong to me to take a photo of a negative...ha ha. I cant help but think "why not just use the DSRL in the first place?". I know there is more to it than that, but I guess for now my flatbed scanning with VueScan gives me results that seem to please everyone. So I think I'll stick with it...for now.
If it’s working for you then no need to change at all. I just got tired with the speed and also the changes that occur to software from time to time. When Epson replaced the original scanning software some years back they dropped support for digital ICE and I never liked it much after that.
Recently bought the Epson V600 which came with Silverfast 9 software.
Using it to successfully copy and scan my late father's slides, photos and negatives from 1940's onwards and very pleased with the results.
I realise it's not acceptable by pure professional photographers but good enough to bring old and forgotten photos back to life for the family to enjoy..
@ yes they are very capable scanners indeed. My V550 is working for well even for some pro work - a 120 neg scanned at 3200 gives me a 250Mb TIFF! But I do accept that they don’t capture everything technically but not enough for me to have noticed
Just at the time I considering either the primefilm xe or use my digital camera..this video just came in at the nick of time.. thank you. For macro photography, a m43 is always a better choice than full frame
Glad you found it useful Josh.
I find it strange that we take beautiful analog photos and then digitalize them with a digital camera. For digital images I use my digital camera and my analog cameras I use to make prints in the darkroom.
I also like the darkroom but for most people it isn’t an option, particularly for colour.
Luminosity is the advantage of digital from pigment to light
More flexibility, cheaper cost, larger print options. Lots of reasons to digitize. I don't do it exclusively cause I like printing in the darkroom as well but not everyone has that luxury.
I find the 80 MP hires mode of my m43 camera to be sufficient for 4x5 negatives. The biggest issues are even lighting and flatness at this size, but I finally fixed those. IR dust removal is not helpful for me, as I mainly shoot B&W ( and I had some bad experience when using a Plustek scanner and Silverfast - results were ugly.
I have done a few 4x5 scans with the camera but just prefer the look I get from the old flatbed.
Yes it's 30 minutes for one 6x7 scans, but you will have to pry my Nikon Coolscan 9000 out of my cold dead hands.
I have an excellent work flow with the Nikon Coolscan that took me a decade to get all in place. Not going back!
Please tell us about the it, I would love to know!
If it works then definitely stick with it 👍
@@vintagevic4593 which part? While I'm shooting, I have a notes app and a notebook that I keep settings info in. I get the film back, scan it on my coolscan 9000. NEF 16-bit fine(2x) and ice if it's not black and white. If it is black and white, I scan positive.
Then I update a google sheet with all the info from my notebook. copy and paste the info into 2 different files. I run one script that using the info to rename the files. I then drop them into photoshop to edit in ACR. Do some slight adjustments and save out JPEGS. Then I run another script and it creates "HD" jpegs for instagram posts and inserts all the exif tag data into the files.
How many passes are you doing? With Nikonscan my 8000ED takes 3 minutes in fine mode for 6x8 frame. And yes, I fully agree, I will run my 8000ED until it exhales its last breath.
I built myself a copy stand by buying an old 35mm enlarger and stripping the head off it to replace it with a digital camera. Works really well and the old tech of the knobs to raise and lower the head impresses the odd client no end!
Nice use of old for something new 👍
I use a flatbed to get a basic look at the negative. If a photo is a keeper I send it out for a drum scan. I don’t think even shooting them with my GFX 100s II gives as good an image as the drum.
If I had a PhaseOne I’d probably use the camera.
Great video! I had to use a Nikon Coolscan to scan slides at work. Excellent results! I’m retired now and I use my Epson V600 for all my 35mm film scanning. I post edit in Photoshop. My philosophy. Although I do get excellent quality results from my Epson V600 that please me, I’m not interested in having my scans of my photographs looking pristine, perfect and razor sharp as my digital photography taken with my mirrorless cameras. My focus is vintage authenticity, with all of its grain and attributes from shooting with film from back in the day.
That’s a valid point Henry and I also dislike film images that look too clinical. After digitising the film I usually soften the image and try to remove some of the harshness that inevitably gets introduced.
@@SteveONions I feel the same way. Agreed 100%
Hello Steve ! happy new year. What resolution can you squeeze out of the DSLR method ? can you do 4000 dpi ? We are in the process of husbanding my Fathers Nikon Coolscan 8000ED, and the software keeps failing us every 6 months, living abroad this is less then ideal.
It’s really hard to come up with meaningful figures for true resolution with film as beyond a certain point there’s no practical gain. All I will say is that camera scans can produce images which to me look as detailed as anything I can get from my dedicated devices. That said, I’m sure that high end film scanners still provide a measurable advantage in most situations.
@SteveONions Have you had to print a 1m² ? Thats quite easy for a nikon coolscan with mediam format.
hi steve i use an Epson v700 for my scanning works for me don't print really big photos and i don't scan all the photos i take.
If it works then don’t change anything 👍
Nice informative video Steve, gave me some new perspectives on this subject. I work in an analog camera store and digitizing for many people seems like a scary/hard (read: learning curve) subject, but it isnt anymore really.
Thanks Thom.
I totally get your point. I survived for a year and a half with an ancient 35mm Plustek Opticfilm and now I'm simply quitting film because of the complexity. Great solution indeed, Steve. Cheers!
A personal decision, of course. I shoot both film and digital mirrorless. As you already know, film is an entirely different ballgame with its own unique set of processes involved. For me, the difference is worth it. I enjoy it.
Very insightful - thank you Steve!!!
Thanks Stanley.
HI i had a brisk business in film scanning using a 35 mm and a 9000 back in the 90s but hey it was too time consuming thanks
There was that brief period when film and scanning were very popular, inevitably digital put a stop to it.
Interesting. A while ago I had loads of 35mm slides to scan so used a Nikon Coolscan with the batch feeder. Kodachrome was a nightmare with the card mounts. Plastic mounts tended to work better. I used a Microtek scanner for larger format negatives which was good, but sadly the transparency adapter packed up a while ago.
If I need to rescan selected transparencies, I will give my APSC camera and macro a go based on your experiences :)
Given the age of the scanners I think it’s wise not to plough a load of money into them now.
Interesting topic. I have a scanner, a V850 and a macro lens for my camera (and film holders) and occasionally camera scan. Currently I'm mostly scanning old BW where the IR in the V850 doesn't work so cleanup has to be done in post anyway. Still, I use the scanner mostly as it just sits beside the computer and it's easy to just fire it up and let it do its thing while I work on other stuff. Setup for camera scanning is much more time consuming as I don't have room for a permanent setup. What I'll do is to rescan some of the most important images where I feel a camera scan will improve on the "scan-quality".
I used to follow exactly the same approach as my scanner sat next to me. I’d do better quality scans as needed but now find the speed of doing uncut rolls with the camera so much quicker.
Might be helpful: LR now includes "Visualise Spots" under the "Remove" tool, which provides a really quick way to identify blemishes and nuke them quickly.
I wasn’t aware of that feature Matthew, thanks for letting me know 👍
I'm using an old Minolta 50mm Macro Bellows with the slide / negative holder, and it's very quick at 35 with lots of detail. Only issue I've hit is moire when I've shot grid-like structures on film. Not found a good 120 film holder solution that doesn't require a lot of futzing, but I'd not heard of the Valloi? (sp?) holder - does someone here have a link?
You can find them here www.valoi.co/
I have been thinking about buying an Epson V850 scanner or a digital camera for scanning for a long time. What I care about most is medium format scanning. Thank you for your valuable experience and thoughts, best regards!
Glad you found it useful.
My old 35mm scanner is waiting for rescue. 👍
The FF digital camera I have been using to Copy film recently failed!
It’s replacement should do for now.
Film still has more to it than Resolution 🖖
Totally agree Stuart.
Very informative but too late. I’ve already scanned 13700 family photos with my V600. While half are from prints, the other half include 128 large format going back to 1920 and 750 medium format from 1929. The rest are 35mm negatives and slides, a few 110 negatives and slides, and a few 126 negatives. The big thing for me early on was to adopt a scanning process. It included scan to tiff and a naming convention to manage all those photos.
Sound like a good job well done 👍
Another negative (pun intended) of the Nikon CoolScan V scanner I had was that the ICE dust/scratch did NOT work with B&W negatives!
As I recall, the reason was because the Infrared light could not penetrate the silver in B&W film. So I had to do manual cleanup with my software.
I was to looking forward to scanning my dirty, dusty Tri-X negatives I developed back in high school and college and having nice clean images..
Can anyone confirm or deny this?
I found the Coolscan V produced ugly B&W scans thanks to the cool LED light source, I even preferred the Epson flatbed output here.
It's time to switch to Phase One. Prices gave us a mercy finally.
Its time to retire film scanners if you’re using a Nikon LS5000 and a V750 flatbed scanner. The flatbed works well on *perfectly exposed* negs, good luck w 135. The in-camera systems in their various iterations require a neg-to-pos conversion. Some examples are, are Negative Lab Pro, CaptureOne or Lightroom. NLP may or may not be updated, havent looked recently. There’s always a price-point as well. The Noritsu scanners used in film labs are expensive, but precise. The software may be 2006 at best, but running on a solid W7 box is your best bet. Noritsu advantage: speed, accuracy and timeliness. Be sure to have the dongle running the Noritsu s/w, otherwise you have a Maserati with a lawnmower engine running in demo mode.
Interesting about using a camera to 'scan'. I've been using a Minolta F-2800 for some time - has no dust removal but then I was only scanning B&W film and C41 I sent off for processing. But... the F-2800 has a scsi interface using an ISA card! That PC died 2-3 years ago... leaving me to source a scsi PCI card (or the very expensive PCIe cards) and get it all working again. Even Linux (my preferred OS for scanning and most things) I suspect has been dropping support for scsi. So.... new card and fight it into the system, or the valoi?
After 40 years in IT I avoid old hardware and software like the plague, get a digital camera and film holder instead 😀
@@SteveONions Well, yes I think perhaps so. Having said that I'm still using Wordperfect 5.1 to write reports (running today in a DOS window in Linux) but then I find it faster for writing reports than WYSIWYG WPs and its easy to set up. SCSI, on the other hand, always seemed a dark art to me - think I tried 3 cards before I found one that worked well and that was 13 odd years ago. Think I'll investigate the Valoi and use my Canon 6D... life is too short these days to be bothering, as you say, with old hardware. Hate throwing things away though... never know when you may need something!
I only use 120 film these days and "scan" using my Olympus EM1 in hiRes mode. I do have a dedicated film scanner, sadly without IR noise removal(my mistake!), which I use for legacy slide conversion. But I haven't used it in over 2 years, so I may well get rid of it. I made my own film holder for 120 film and it takes about 20 minutes to convert a processed film to digital. To convert colour negs to digital I use the Hamrick VueScan software which can convert a negative TIFF to a digital positive (with a few film emulations too).
Sounds like you’ve got a workflow that suits you well Alan, no need to change anything 👍
@@SteveONions Yeah, I just wish I'd spent the extra £50 for a film scanner with IR scratch removal! Every time I do a scan and have to spend half-an-hour spotting I curse my penny pinching!😞
Many thanks, Steve, for this timely video. I find myself in the same predicament. Should I move on or not? For 120 film I use the Epson V750 with self-constructed negative holders to ensure flatness. Not perfect, but good enough. For 35mm I find my Plustek Optifilm 8300i far better (and much faster). Some months ago I did test an alternative for 35mm: Sony A7 with bellows and a slide film copy holder. As to resolution I found no difference to the Plustek scans. But I was quite unhappy with the dynamic range of the negs taken with the A7.They reminded me of the results of internegative copying, back in the days. But I didn't use the apparently very capable LR module you mentioned for conversion. (I'm holding up LR 5.6, the last buy-version, as long as I can.) Still, good to know that someone who has an eye for image quality sees no problem in principle in using a digital camera set-up for the purpose. So, thanks again!
Glad you found it useful. The Epson flatbed scanners aren’t too bad but to me they do struggle with 35mm. The digital camera approach has the advantage of improving technology but in all honesty we have enough now to extract practically all the detail from the film. I would expect intelligent processing to be the next advance in digitisation, soon even a poor 35mm frame could be turned into a masterpiece.
Been using my olympus 60mm macro lens and homemade cardboard tube and a window light for slides for over a decade.
Nice 👍
I have a Polaroid 4000 dpi scanner that unfortunately is a SCSI interface. I still plan on booting up an ancient Mac someday, but I know it takes a long time to scan my hundreds of boxes of slides…. Not sure I got anything from this video other than making me remember I’ve got that project in the wings.
Good luck with the old Mac, solution 👍
Thank you; I've been toying with the idea of getting a used high end scanner, but it seems that it makes more sense to just spend the money on getting a good holder for camera scanning. You note that you're scanning with micro 4/3; does that work well for scanning 120 film? Which lens(es) do you use; I assume you use different lenses for different film formats. Thank you in advance.
I’m very happy with doing 120 film on the 20mp Micro 4/3 camera. For this format I use the high res mode to get a little more from the film and of course you ideally need a good macro lens. I use the same 30mm Panasonic macro for all formats presently.
I worked at a retouching house in the 2008 -2015 range. We sold our drum scanner for £500
Quite a drop from the original price I’m sure.
You are ok with the color shift and manipulation that different cameras and lenses introduce?
Very happy with my results 👍
Plustek 120 with silverfast. Set it running and go and have a cup of tea.
Having said that. If it breaks, it’s unlikely I’ll buy another dedicated scanner.
I'm holding dear life on my fleamarket find of just a few bucks:A Nikon LS2000. I found an Adaptec SCSI card for which some geeks made drivers that are compatible to Win10. I now made an external solution with an PCI to a PCIe for the card as modern PCs don't have classic PCI Ports anymore and I don't want to install the card permanently as boot up times are longer with an SCSI card. I agree, Digital Cameras deliver top notch digital scans of film. I'm doing this actually for my Medium Format films. As backlight I'm using a very old "scan light" which was originally intended to be used on flatbed scanners to scan large format film. I'm only using the Scanner nowadays because it somehow is convenient to use for me and digital ICE is working fine as well . But I agree, practically, there's no use for them anymore.
I’m not a fan of maintaining old computer gear/software, as soon as something is deprecated I move on (probably due to 40 years working in IT!).
For more depth of field with a full frame camera just stop the lens down. I hade a Nikon D800e with the 60mm D lens and it works very well. I have a higher resolution Canon 5Ds but for whatever reason I have never even tried it for scanning. I have a flatbed scanner and a couple digital scanners but I don't really use them very often.
I think my preference for M43 stems from the ease of use to be honest, it is so light it sits nicely on top of the Valoi with no vibrations.
Which macro lens do you use for camera scanning? I have been wondering about converting my slides to digital, I tossed up over buying a slide scanner epson or dedicated unit but seeing the price for quality I have mentally settled on using my M43 system. The only macro I have is the venerable 12-50mm Olympus which I purchased cheap to use on my backup GX8 as a small walk about. I also have an E-M1 but no other native macro lenses. I do have a Rokkor 50mm macro including the macro extension and SR to M43 adopter as I use Rokkor lenses with the M43 from time to time. Would that be OK for slide copy?
You can adapt all sorts of macro lenses to M43 but I went with the 30mm Panasonic to keep the working distance as short as possible. I ensure my lens is parallel with the film by using spacers to raise it above the target rather than fiddling around with a tripod.
Hi Steve, could you please tell me from which manufacturer the camera stand is produced? Thanks a lot for your help.
The film scanner and light source are made by Valoi. The camera sits on top of multiple Cokin P series lens hoods that slot together and allow the camera to be position at the correct height.
I've definitely found using a camera for converting black and white negatives gives better results than my old v700 or Minolta scanners. The decollimated light gives a grain result more akin to an enlarger, not to mention the dust! That said, COLOR negatives have been a disaster, with very time consuming corrections needed in lightroom.
I agree that colour negative is harder than B&W, especially Ektar.
Unfortunately the cleanup only works with color film and not B&W. I agree that for 4X5 digital camera scanning is not useful. One has to stitch images and deal with any artifacts in that. Thanks for the discussion of this topic. When I want a really good scan for a 4x5 I'll pay for a drumscan. As you can imagine that isn't done very often. Indeed at this point only twice.
Interesting viewpoint Steve, but the sentiment fills me with a sense of alarm as I’ve got probably 10,000 or so 35mm negs which I plan (someday) to sort and scan! However, although I bought a dedicated Plustek Film Scanner - during Lockdown - I’ve yet to use it … what’s all that about?
If I had that many negatives I’d consider getting a flatbed just so I could do them in batches of 24 at a time. Even that will take over 400 runs to complete!
@ yeah you’re probably right. I’m pretty sure a lot of them won’t be worth scanning anyway, but I suppose the process of scanning ‘old film’ is a fairly laborious one it seems to me - however it’s done - which is why I guess I keep putting it off until tomorrow.
As technology moves on, extracting information, data, image quality from an old format, will be a Forth Bridge type operation. When printing 35mm film was a darkroom process, 16" was about the maximum print size that held detail at nose-end viewing distance. Perhaps a little more with low ASA film, fine grain developers and the best enlarging lenses. Now we expect old negatives and slides to blow up several times the size of our monitors. Hybrid workflows are a labour of love or an act of insanity, and I ask which every time I shoot another film.
I’ve been to a few exhibitions in recent years where old negatives (usually 35mm) have been digitised and printed to decent sizes. I’m amazed how good they can look and question whether I need anything else to achieve what I’m after.
Even traditional prints have impressed me when looking at them in a gallery, most notable being Don McCullin’s work. His print of the shell shocked marine, life size if I recall correctly, sticks in my mind even 15 years later.
@@SteveONions The thorny issue of viewing distance is never far away. I recall seeing wall sized prints, typically in museum settings as background to an exhibit, that were probably taken on a box camera. No one ever said what a blurry mess. However if a shot is in a glass frame that invites the viewer to nose end the picture, they're probably looking at an abstraction. On a side issue, it's amazing how well some old lenses hold up at 20" print or less.
As an Epson V750 user, here's my concern about scanning via digital cameras. Does the latter compromise the classic "film look" we're all trying to achieve? Or does the Epson do that already? I find Silverfast software on the V750 gives very good film simulation.
I would concede that the digital camera approach has a more ‘ digital’ look initially until I soften it down in Lightroom.
Digital ICE is 90-95 % correct at best. You still have to check through every scan for the 5-10% remaining dust and scratches. There’s no time saved with it. My own experience in the last 30 years slide scanning. DSLR scans also save time where you can quick scan everything to have a library to choose wisely from for the ”real scans”.
Surely if it removes 90-95% of dust and scratches automatically then it definitely saves time?
You spend most of your time finding the remaining errors. Not fixing them. Also, the computational ”healers” are now doing a better job than ICE when fixing areas with film grain. My personal experience though.
You should look at big Topaz flatbed scanners which has highest denzity and pretty wide DOF. The deliver way better scannes than small table top prosumer scanner with way lower denzity.
I like some of the older scanners but their sheer age and lack of support puts me off.
I use an old Micro-Nikkor 55mm with a PK-13 ring for a 1:1 ratio on a D7500 Nikon against a JJC light source.
If you can get an accurate scan using a digital camera, surely it must be possible to duplicate the film look from a digital image? Or am I missing something?
You can get very good results by post processing digital originals to look like film, just checkout my recent video on this subject 😊
I wish my camera scans were as sharp as lab scans :(
No matter what I do, my X-T5 + Laowa 65mm results are not as sharp as any noritsu/frontier scan. Colors are nice though. The only way to get close in detail is pixel shift, but 20 40mp files combined and turned into a .dng ends up at 850mb or so lol. Gigantic files!
That’s a shame, I can get results pretty much on a par with lab scans these days.
the eternal question, why use film if you use your digital camera to digitize them? for me it's like driving a vintage car, modern cars are better but driving a vintage car is more fun.
This has always been my question, might as well just use digital to shoot the image. I’m sure there are a bunch of reasons but I’m not a purist.
As a youtube video watcher, I'll comment until a dedicated photographer answers.
1: Dynamic range. Digital cameras can't hold a candle to film. Curious Droid did an episode on old film footage and modern video of rocket launches. There was absolutely no comparison. Film for the win.
2: Color. Different films produce different outcomes because of the chemistry and it can be copied in digital but may not quite pull it off.
3: Resolution. I high quality film may have more info in it than a digital camera can capture.
4: Overall image quality. Every time you push a button on a film camera, it costs you dollars/pounds/ yen and you are much more thoughtful about what you are photographing and how you have your camera set up.
Let the burns begin.
To me the result stills looks like a film image in the same way that photographing a painting still makes it look like a painting. The more perfect the digital capture stage is the better.
l'm in the middle of digitising my vast 25 year collection of manly 120 slides and negatives, the Epson 750 is not a dedicated film scanner, its a flatbed primarily aimed at prints with the secondary ability to also work with film, the plustek Opticfilm 120 which is the solution I went for (with vuescan software) is a dedicated 120 film scanner with infra red, the point is although it takes about 8 minutes to scan a slide its 8 minutes I'm doing something else on the computer. The optical (rather than the digital) resolution is much higher than the Epson and most importantly the dynamic range is better especially with multi exposure turned on. The effect the infra red scan has is not to be underestimated, the first film scanner I had I had didn't have it and it saves a hell a lot of time on post processing. The combination of the infra red scan and having a proper scanner suitable for 120 film that frees me up to do other work while it scans beats a digital camera setup hands down in my opinion
If you’ve a lot of old negatives to digitise, particularly C-41 and E6 then a scanner does make sense. I’m primarily working on new negatives, many being traditional B&W so no benefit to having the infrared clean up.
I had a pile of old E6 slides passed to me 20 years ago, in pretty poor shape so the Epson did a great job of giving me usable files to make prints from.
I built a "Scanning frame" that holds my camera, film holders, light source etc perfectly level and even. Its rock solid but I bought a NIkon coolscan 5000 anyway because its more automated and the dust on the camera scan is just too much to deal with.
Fair point 👍
My Nikon film scanner is in a box somewhere...my current computers don't have the correct port, and I'm using an Epson V300/V350 (can't recall which). It's worth the time and effort in my book, to fix all the dirt and whatnot by hand. I don't trust any automated system to know the difference between dirt and image...I've tested a few, and none came anywhere near to being consistently accurate. Even tried Silverfast...and I'm not all that happy with those results.
I obviously don't produce as many 'keepers' as you do for any given roll of film, therefore flatbed and dedicated 35mm scanning is less time consuming and therefore, not a deterrent. In fact, I rather enjoy the slow, methodical process. Furthermore, the results are more than acceptable for uploading to my website etc. All printing is done in the darkroom. I never have and never will own a digital camera. So there!
Glad you’ve got a process that works well for you 😊
If you have film, and if you want to digitize it ...
then the BEST way to accomplish it is with a dedicated high resolution film scanner.
It can be accomplished other ways, but not with much in the way of QUALITY -
If that works for you then stick with it.