I need some advise. I am going to be cataloging some inherited black and white film, mostly 35mm, slides and a fair amount of medium and large format negatives. I'm talking 10,000+ negatives to process and digitize. These photos range from the 1930's up thru the 70's. I am looking for a professional grade film scanner. I had been reading about the Plustek OpticFilm 120. The specs look promising but the fact that it hasn't been released yet ismaking me a little skeptic.
I know the old Nikon Coolscan film scanners are very good but they are very expensive and I can not do medium and large format film scans.
Any advise would be greatly appreciated. I plan on making prints for a future business for vintage photos etc. It's my 3 year plan!
Comments
The Nikon scanners (and others most likely as well) have got a scratch and dust removal option that works fine on color images. But it does not work at all on silver based b&w film. They use an additional infrared scan to detect dust and scratches. As the silver in traditional b&w films is not transparant for IR this technique foes not work here. You probably knew that already but I still wanted to mention it.
B&W film is a much bigger challenge for scanners than color negatives as they got a much higher density. If you have the chance to do some tests do it and take some really dark negatives with you as well to test how they are handeled.
framer
I recently got started back scanning slides I have, remember those?
Well they don't make a driver for Win 7 unless you have Win7 Pro and use emulation back to XP.
So I just set it up with my laptop that is XP.
Then as I often do, I was concerned if something happened to it I would have to find something else. I reviewed a bunch and they did not impress me.
I found a mint condition and box with everything on Ebay that I won for $150. New these were $500 back in the day and new ones on Ebay can go as high as $800.
It will adjust to accept 35mm slides which I scan at 2400 dpi with good results. It changes slot size to accept 35 mm film strips or up to 5x7 prints.
You might research these.
So from a magnification point of view using this setup for a DSLR will work as well, but I am quite sure that using a dedicated scanner will give you better results (color and contrast) in the end. But I have to admit that I did not try it yet.
DaveyJ
2. it's incredibly time-consuming
3. it's boring, because it keeps you away from new pictures and this can be poison for each motivation.
That was meant as preparation
My 135 slides I reproduced by using a Kodak carousel without lens, a 20 Watt Halogen bulb with a diffusor-plate and a plate-mounted Pentax K-m with an old enlarger lens and some distance ring. These were looking into the projector, I removed it's lens. Selfmade, but very good for an overview to put in iPhoto. The better slides I wanted to do afterwards. The transport is fast and for 80 slides in 10MP I needed 3-5 minutes.
The few 120 slides I reproduced with a friend's DSLR, a Nikon D2 with a 105 macro. It was the reason to buy a DSLR, a Pentax. I just wanted to get a quick overview of all the slides and the very few "better" ones I wanted to scan again.
Meanwhile the first Epson was no longer enough and I changed it for an Epson V750. It can scan 4 rows of 135 film or 2 rows of 120. Together with VueScan I made RAW-scans and separated the huge, 16 Bit 1/2 GB lateron in single frames. Reason for that: To scan each frame, there's a lot of mechanical movement. The scanner-rail must be moved to each picture. I didn't make it to color negatives, I stopped half way through with B/W, which must be a good thousand of films. I am bored to go through all that failures and bad ideas again, with few good ideas in between.
Now, the downsides. Learning what DSLR can do kept me away from scanning / reproducing old stuff with lots of pictures I should've thrown away long ago. Improving in processes, handling files and post-production let me come to the conclusion I should redo most of the scans with better technique. But the older you get, the more vaiuable your time gets. I never really finished the work, it was just too much for me.
I don't see myself scanning anything but 35mm film; I highly doubt I would start MF or LF, my current equipment takes up enough room. Most of the scanners today are flatbed scanners unless you look for stuff that is not made any more. There are only a few quality dedicated film scanners that I am aware of which most are made by Plustek, if you go the used route then a Minolta 5400 or Nikon coolscan are options but they are no longer made and probably don't have any more support for. This did not include drum scanners but these are in another ball park for price. I briefly thought about getting a drum scanner but just can't justify it unless I started a business that is already shrinking (not a smart move). Canon just came out with a flatbed scanner that has 9600x9600 dpi but its still a flatbed scanner (CanoScan 9000F). It would be nice if more dedicated film scanners popped up for more options but I just don't see the market for them so I don't blame them.
At this moment I see myself finding a used Minolta or Nikon scanner but its rather risky since I have no idea if anyone could fix it. I just don't know enough about Plustek at the moment but if anyone has personal experience and can compare products I would love to hear about it. I think this could get me to 13'x19" and if I wanted to print something bigger, I would send it off to be drum scanned (the going rate seems to be about $20 per high resolution picture unless I read that wrong, low resolution scans are priced much lower like less than a dollar). I would put the budget for this at a max of $7k (that would be only if I never had to send anything out to be scanned and it was still supported. You can find used drum scanners for less but I may not be able to get parts for it). If I still had to send my photos out for high quality scans but could print 13"x19" with no problems I would want to stay under 1.5k but see me spending up to 2.5k if a good deal popped up for a Nikon scanner (I still think that is rather risky and stupid though).
http://www.silverfast.com/show/scanners-nikon/en.html
Any other experiences the forum folks can provide on the Plustek would be appreciated.
In reading the negative reviews with the most of these scanners, Silverfast seems to be a culprit with many users, either it does not work well with Apple PCs, you cannot load it more than once, or numerous issues just working the software. I work with software for a living, so it cannot be any worse than some of the nightmares I have been involved with.
I am now looking at the Epson V850, it is more than I want to spend, but it seems this unit will provide real good quality scans.
Thanks again.!
I am guilty, I hardly ever comment on a quality product. If I have a problem with a product I will address it publicly but I do make sure I have not done anything wrong first.
I am still looking for a scanner solution but have not put much time into it recently.