A modern scanner for 35mm and 120 film

PerTulip said:

...playing an instrument I hit a wrong note...

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I fiddled around with playing violin for a while. I was never any good. I'm the kind of guy who, on my best day, could probably make a $1 million dollar violin sound like a $100 violin .

I read about this discussion - someone on a different forum sent me a link to it. I just read the entire discussion, beginning to end.

My goal is to start with negatives taken (both older and now) on a 35mm film camera, and get them into my macOS computer so I can edit them in DxO PhotoLab4. I used to use my Epson V500 PHOTO scanner, but from all the reading I did, I bought what I think is the latest Plustek OpticFilm scanner. I've been getting a LOT of feedback in the Leica "l-camera-forum.com".

What I think I learned in this discussion, is that there is no single universal answer for which scanner "is best", but the scanner is just another tool, and people who are talented enough to get the best out of their tools can create excellent scans.

I started out with 120 film in a box camera, and then advanced to my dad's Contax II camera. That changed into a Nikon SP, which changed into a Leica M2, until I discovered digital, and I've been growing up with digital ever since. I kept my old film cameras (Nikon F4, F2, Contarex, Contax IIa, Leica M3, M2, and so on - they have been sitting in a drawer somewhere in my home for half a century. I got the desire to soot film again, dusted off the M3, and started using it. It's been a fascinating experience, and I want to continue.

For a scanner, I figured out how to use the Epson scanning accessories, and over the past year or so, I managed to learn once again how to use film, and then how to scan it. My darkroom is long since sold, so I figure either I get to scan my images, or have the processing lab do it for me.


Fast forward to the present. After a week or two of searching (I didn't know about this thread until today) I selected the latest Plustek, and a few days after I paid B&H Photo $500, it arrived. It came with Silverfast software, which I ignored, and I found that my copy of VueScan worked just fine - but it took several days of reading, watching YouTube videos, and finally testing to get used to it. As far as I can tell, it works fine. The advice I was given was to only use the scanner to get the image into my computer, and to avoid losing data, to keep it a "flat", minimal contrast image, and then bring it to life in my editing software. If I'm allowed to do that (as a new user here) I'll post one image below.

My thoughts on this discussion, as a new participant, are that a lot of it was meaningless to me "my scanner is better than yours" debate. Still, there were plenty of good solid reasons for using different techniques and products, and I decided that with enough information and time, I could probably make any of them work for me, including my old Epson. What I didn't find in the 8 pages of this discussion, was a good description of how to get one of them to work at its best - hints for user settings, and what I should be trying to accomplish in my scanning. Most of that I found out in the Leica forum by asking questions, and repeating what I was told, to be sure I understood it properly.

I think I'll post this now, as-is, and try to post another response with an image attached, if the software here allows me to do so.

Thank you all - lots of good solid information buried away in this thread!

So far, so good - my post got published. Here is the latest image I scanned last night. From my minimal experience, I liked it - but I suspect there are many ways I can still improve.

Auer said:

Wonder if the OP still reads this thread?

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Yes I am, pretty interesting discussion! Thanks!

Mike Myers said:

I read about this discussion - someone on a different forum sent me a link to it. I just read the entire discussion, beginning to end.

My goal is to start with negatives taken (both older and now) on a 35mm film camera, and get them into my macOS computer so I can edit them in DxO PhotoLab4. I used to use my Epson V500 PHOTO scanner, but from all the reading I did, I bought what I think is the latest Plustek OpticFilm scanner. I've been getting a LOT of feedback in the Leica "l-camera-forum.com".

What I think I learned in this discussion, is that there is no single universal answer for which scanner "is best", but the scanner is just another tool, and people who are talented enough to get the best out of their tools can create excellent scans.

I started out with 120 film in a box camera, and then advanced to my dad's Contax II camera. That changed into a Nikon SP, which changed into a Leica M2, until I discovered digital, and I've been growing up with digital ever since. I kept my old film cameras (Nikon F4, F2, Contarex, Contax IIa, Leica M3, M2, and so on - they have been sitting in a drawer somewhere in my home for half a century. I got the desire to soot film again, dusted off the M3, and started using it. It's been a fascinating experience, and I want to continue.

For a scanner, I figured out how to use the Epson scanning accessories, and over the past year or so, I managed to learn once again how to use film, and then how to scan it. My darkroom is long since sold, so I figure either I get to scan my images, or have the processing lab do it for me.


Fast forward to the present. After a week or two of searching (I didn't know about this thread until today) I selected the latest Plustek, and a few days after I paid B&H Photo $500, it arrived. It came with Silverfast software, which I ignored, and I found that my copy of VueScan worked just fine - but it took several days of reading, watching YouTube videos, and finally testing to get used to it. As far as I can tell, it works fine. The advice I was given was to only use the scanner to get the image into my computer, and to avoid losing data, to keep it a "flat", minimal contrast image, and then bring it to life in my editing software. If I'm allowed to do that (as a new user here) I'll post one image below.

My thoughts on this discussion, as a new participant, are that a lot of it was meaningless to me "my scanner is better than yours" debate. Still, there were plenty of good solid reasons for using different techniques and products, and I decided that with enough information and time, I could probably make any of them work for me, including my old Epson. What I didn't find in the 8 pages of this discussion, was a good description of how to get one of them to work at its best - hints for user settings, and what I should be trying to accomplish in my scanning. Most of that I found out in the Leica forum by asking questions, and repeating what I was told, to be sure I understood it properly.

I think I'll post this now, as-is, and try to post another response with an image attached, if the software here allows me to do so.

Thank you all - lots of good solid information buried away in this thread!

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Welcome to the forum!

Mike Myers said:

So far, so good - my post got published. Here is the latest image I scanned last night. From my minimal experience, I liked it - but I suspect there are many ways I can still improve.

View attachment 284126

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That looks pretty good.

1960's, New York. I was part of a "work study program" with the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the University of Michigan, studying Naval Architecture. We learned that an aircraft carrier was coming into the port for work - I believe it was the Essex, CVS 9. I went to the New York piers, and there was a boat loading professional photographers to get photos, and somehow I got them to allow me on board. I took lots of photos of the Essex, and gave the photos to the people I worked with, as the photos showed things they were most interested in. During the boat ride though, I also photographed things that I was fascinated by, knowing I'd probably never get another chance.

This is probably a boring photo of a tugboat, but it's a style that is now extinct. New tug boats are very different.

The negative somehow got something like "grease" or "oil" on it while sitting for half a century in the glassine envelope - I wiped it off, and amazing the negative cleaned off nicely. I scanned it at the same settings I've been using, low contrast, and tried to adjust it in DxO PhotoLab4 so the histogram covered the full range - but it didn't look right, so I put it back where it was. The "blacks" were fine, but the whites never reached the right end of the histogram. As a test, I adjusted the highlights, to fill in the histogram, and this is the result.

It was a cloudy, hazy day, and I probably used whatever light meter I was using way back then. The camera and lens were my Leica M2 and 50mm Summicron, as that's all I had back then. I rather like the end result!

Instead of getting a dedicated 120 film scanner, I went to a 35mm unit and for 120 a flatbed. Im currently using a PrimeFilm XA SE and will be getting an Epson V850 soon.

Old Gregg said:

there aren't that many samples, especially color negative scans, especially full-sized, from your PrimeFIlm. Please contribute!

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I posted a thread in this section showing samples off B&W Plus X. Includes a crop from a 10000 dpi scan. Look in this section for it. I havent done color neg on the scanner yet. I did do a few color slides, but I found it inconclusive about the color on the unit.

I think I have spent as much time scanning as I have taking photographs, but I don't regret it and still rather enjoy it. My first scanners were simple Pacific Image/Prime Film units, starting at a claimed 1800ppi and later 3650ppi. Surprisingly good results, absolutely good enough for web posting or an inkjet print to A3 size. But once the bug bit, I got further into it. Both KM5400 MkI and MkII went through my hands. Quite nice, fast, reasonably quiet, but both developed a line of dead pixels in the CCD. Next came the Nikon 9000ED, which was noisy, slow, but even better quality. I kept the Nikon as a backup when I bought a used Imacon 848, and used that heavily till it failed rather spectacularly with springs and a cog actually flying out of the machine. It proved awkward to get repaired, as sending such a beast across borders is not cheap, nor is the paperwork simple. I sold it after that and replaced it with a new Hasselblad X1. Both Flextights were quick, quiet and really easy to get good results from. The software to run them was a bit clunky, but did the job OK. I remember doing comparisons of 4x5 negatives through the X1 and on a V850 and seeing there was a difference, though not a huge one. I had to have the V850 for 10x8 negatives. Likewise I compared the X1 and the 9000 with 35mm and 120 film, and again there was an advantage to the X1, but also not huge. Not enough to matter for posting even 4000 pixel JPEGs to Flickr, but would matter if making huge prints. It was the speed, quietness and ease of use that made the Flextights worthwhile for me.
Last year it became obvious that Hasselblad was not going to rewrite the FlexColor driver, leaving it in 32-bit limbo and dependent on me finding and keeping old Macs with progressively more insecure old OS's on them. I spoke to Ed Hamrick, who was quite sure he could make a version of VueScan that would work, but Hasselblad would not give out the engineering data he required. A contact in the company told me they were discontinued, but that there would be no announcement, which seemed to me to be a cynical way of ensuring all the scanners in stock would be sold before their new owners realised they had just bought expensive paperweights. I decided to sell the X1 while it still had some value, especially as I was in uncertain health again and didn't want to leave my putative widow with a problem. But it looks like my bone marrow transplant has held things at bay, and I'm getting back in the swing of things, now using the 9000 for 35mm and 120, and the V850 for 4x5 (the 10x8 gear was sold too). But now I've gone and complicated things again, by letting the evil people at KEH sell me a used D850 and a 60mm macro, whilst the enablers at B&H supplied an ES-2 digitizing adaptor. All I've done so far is make my first effort at digitizing a single negative from the last roll of film, but it does look very promising. The time saved over waiting for the 9000 to do its stuff will probably be lost again with the increased faffing around inverting the image, and certainly if I have to take a colour negative through the ColorPerfect plug-in (FlexColor was excellent for colour negatives). For those interested, these are links to large JPEGs on Flickr:

Nikon 9000: https://flic.kr/p/2mmx9kv
Same film, D850: https://flic.kr/p/2mq4UMP
Same camera, same kind of film, but X1 scanned before it was sold: https://flic.kr/p/2hTAWzC

I'm not saying I'm swapping to doing it this way, but it is nice to have options!

drmoss_ca said:

and certainly if I have to take a colour negative through the ColorPerfect plug-in (FlexColor was excellent for colour negatives

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ColorPerfect provides the most consistent results I've experienced from my Coolscan 9000 in terms of C-41 film, although does sometimes get confused and give colour casts. E6 I just put through VueScan and make adjustments in PhotoLine.

Mike Myers said:

It was a cloudy, hazy day, and I probably used whatever light meter I was using way back then. The camera and lens were my Leica M2 and 50mm Summicron, as that's all I had back then. I rather like the end result!

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What in excellent negative. Nice job! You have shown three valuable lessons here:

1. You have good technique with your scanning.
2. Old photographs become more and more interesting as the years and decades go by. This is especially true if they show some cultural or technological features that have changed overtime.
3. You were able to retrieve image data, and a lot of it, from some piece of media that's 50 years old. Do you think we will be able to retrieve our digital files in 50 or 60 years? (Most of you realistically know the answer to that.)

Mike Myers said:

Fast forward to the present. After a week or two of searching (I didn't know about this thread until today) I selected the latest Plustek, and a few days after I paid B&H Photo $500, it arrived. It came with Silverfast software, which I ignored, and I found that my copy of VueScan worked just fine - but it took several days of reading, watching YouTube videos, and finally testing to get used to it. As far as I can tell, it works fine. The advice I was given was to only use the scanner to get the image into my computer, and to avoid losing data, to keep it a "flat", minimal contrast image, and then bring it to life in my editing software. If I'm allowed to do that (as a new user here) I'll post one image below.

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I would strongly encourage you to give SilverFast a try. I find it far superior to VueScan if you are sticking with a dedicated scanner. I recently upgraded my iMac to an iMac Pro (my old iMac was a ca. 2011 cpu and could no longer keep up with the OS updates and other software as well). I had to get a new copy of SilverFast as I was nursing along SilverFast AI 8, which I couldn't port over to the new machine. SilverFast AI 9 was such a quantum improvement - I feel like my Epson V750 is a different, new machine!

To offer some contrary advice - especially for scanning your 35mm negatives, if you have a DSLR/Mirrorless camera and a macro lens, I'd seriously consider going that route for scanning your negatives. Put the negative on a light box, and position the camera above it on a copy stand (ideally) or a tripod. You can scan the negatives much faster that way, and it cuts down on all the artifacts that scanning with a flatbed introduces (less dust, hairs, etc).

I spent the last couple of hours trying a colour negative through the D850. This is Portra 160, and the first link is the Hasselblad X1 scan processed with FlexColor:
https://flic.kr/p/T5uFsy
The next link is the D850 version after a prolonged struggle with the ColorPerfect plug-in in PhotoLine, and some further adjustments in Affinity Photo (it took ages!):
https://flic.kr/p/2mqHQgU

I should probably see how the in-camera JPEG turns out if I use Nikon's cheating easy way! Otherwise, I'm just glad I do nearly all B&W film.

drmoss_ca said:

The next link is the D850 version after a prolonged struggle with the ColorPerfect plug-in in PhotoLine, and some further adjustments in Affinity Photo (it took ages!):
https://flic.kr/p/2mqHQgU

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What went wrong here? This is not, in my experience, representative of what Colorperfect can do - though I only use it with 48bit linear raw files produced by Vuescan via a film scanner - so the standard use case.

albireo said:

What went wrong here? This is not, in my experience, representative of what Colorperfect can do - though I only use it with 48bit linear raw files produced by Vuescan via a film scanner - so the standard use case.

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A good question. I used to use Colorperfect in PS, but since abandoning Adobe I installed it in PhotoLine, but on my M1 Mac I have to run both PhotoLine and the plug-in in Intel mode. I don't think that has anything to do with it, but more to do with the plug-in's ability to interact with the file. After some further trial and error I have discovered that if I take the .NEF file from the D850, open it in Graphic Convertor and save it as a TIF, I can then open it with PhotoLine, and ColorPerfect immediately makes a nice conversion. If I save the .NEF as a .TIF from PhotoLine itself, the plug-in won't do a thing, just a black box. I can't remember what I did to get the wonky one (I'm sick of the whole process by now!) but probably saved it as a TIF some way or other, likely in Affinity Photo, and ColorPerfect didn't like it as much. Here's a link to a decent Graphic Converter/PhotoLine/ColorPerfect version:

https://flic.kr/p/2mqJfJ5

I've been using the V750 for several years now, and really like it...although I do find scanning a real pain! If I ever got a new scanner, it would probably be V850.

Andrew O'Neill said:

I've been using the V750 for several years now, and really like it...although I do find scanning a real pain! If I ever got a new scanner, it would probably be V850.

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The V850 is about the only option left, other than a few underwhelming Plustek film scanners that top out at medium format, and not all that well.

I bought one of those underwhelming Plustek film scanners, and I have been very satisfied with it. I scan 35mm b&w negatives at 3600 or 7200 dpi settings, and the results seem to be better than I got with my Epson V500 PHOTO. It's also easier and faster. It's nicely made, acceptably fast, and will scan 35mm negatives or slides. It's also reasonably sized, and quiet.

I wonder if anyone sells 35mm "test" images, that people can scan and see the limits of their scan.

I'm using it with VueScan - it came with the latest version of Silverfast, but while I did install it, I haven't tried it yet. One thing at a time.

TheFlyingCamera said:

other than a few underwhelming Plustek film scanners that top out at medium format, and not all that well.

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It would be informative to see a good quality comparison between the Plustek 120 Pro scanner and the Coolscan 9000.

Re post 187, a good choice IMO. The Primefilm XA appears to be identical to the Reflecta 10M which, having a true measured resolution of 4300 dpi seems to be the highest resolution 35mm scanner available new at this time.
https://www.filmscanner.info/en/ReflectaRPS10M.html
The Plustek 8100 (I have one) is less expensive and resolves 3600 dpi according to the same site.
They indicate how they go about their tests :
https://www.filmscanner.info/en/Aufloesung.html
The Epson 850 will permit making "contact sheets" from 35 mm and quite large prints from medium format.
Results for the Plustek 120 and Nikon 9000 are also given.
https://www.filmscanner.info/en/PlustekOpticFilm120.html

Pakon is the answer but its a can of worms.

I like my Epson 550 especially because it was free.

test_realm said:

Pakon is the answer but its a can of worms.

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Is the Pakon only for 35mm film?

Les Sarile said:

Is the Pakon only for 35mm film?

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It is - apologies I should have read the title better