Best 120 scanning under $1200

[Cinema]

6x6 shot on a sony a7r2. i will use dslr for black and white but still find the color from epsonscan superior, so i still use my flatbed for color negative 120 despite it being a little softer.

 

[PhotoPham]

I am camera scanning now, before I did V850 but I always had to do extra steps to add a quality unsharp mask in photoshop and it just became a huge time sink and frustrated me that my Lab's Noritsu had a significantly better sharpness baseline in comparison. Wet-scanning helped a tiny bit but not a whole-lot.
With camera scanning it's so tack sharp as is as I can pinpoint the focus.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

Out of all of the above mentioned, which will produce the best quality scans?

Define best quality.

DSLR scanning is fast, but unless you have at least 40-50MP or are willing to do stitching or can pixel shift, even the "OK" epson will produce higher resolution than the camera scan simply because single capture camera scan at less than ~45MP is less than 2400dpi for 120 film. That's if you mean best quality in terms of resolution.

If you mean best quality in terms of color rendition, it's a mixed bag, though DSLR scanning kind of requires that you do your own color conversions in photoshop or similar, other scanners have software available to do that.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

I'd like to see a "good" DSLR scanning rig for under $1200. Most reasonable DSLR's are going to be in the $1200 range by themselves, and a flat lens such as a decent macro will be another $500.

That's really low balling it. My current rig is way north of $5K, but given the amount of film I scan, worth every penny.

The key is to get something that will get you at least started without a huge investment, then after you've got some film run through it, identify your pain points, and spend the money there. Iterate on that a handful of times and it's pretty easy to be where I'm at, and I still have pain points that I haven't spent money on yet.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

There's no way that could be right. I wouldn't be surprised if on actual tests this scanner doesn't achieve more than 2600dpi.

I have a v850 Pro. As @grat said, it's not as good as Epson claims, but it's also better than what the internet generally claims, but takes some practice to get there. It's perfectly passable for most uses and easily produces very good 2400+ dpi scans, which is totally fine for a lot of uses.

 

[Kodachromeguy]

I have a v850 Pro. As @grat said, it's not as good as Epson claims, but it's also better than what the internet generally claims, but takes some practice to get there. It's perfectly passable for most uses and easily produces very good 2400+ dpi scans, which is totally fine for a lot of uses.

Are you referring to 2400 dpi for 35mm or also for 120 film? My old Minolta Scan Multi can do 2820 for 6×9 and, supposedly, 5640 for smaller sizes. But I doubt the latter is true optical resolution. I almost always stay with 2820.

 

[grat]

That's really low balling it. My current rig is way north of $5K, but given the amount of film I scan, worth every penny.

I priced out a Rebel T7 plus a Sigma 70mm macro Art lens, and the total was right around $1000-1200 USD. The EF 100mm f/2.8 macro wouldn't be a bad option either, and used, they're going for around $400.

That was as close as I could get to the price of the Epson for a decent DSLR rig. It's "only" 24MP, but the lens kind of makes up for it.

 

[PhotoPham]

As a former V850 user, I did both dry and wet scanning with better scanning products or direct to bed, it doesn't get close to what a Flextight and Noritsu scanner produces. I would always have to waste time doing unsharp masking with photoshop per photo because I didn't like the unsharp mask from SilverFast. Big res sure but a large res of an "ok" results is ok at best. Even the unsharp mask wasn't as close as a pinpoint focuses scanner the likes of noritsu makes. You spend a whole day fine-tuning the height of the better scanning holder and still they get whooped.

I bought a Sigma macro lens for my digital camera (A7riii) and I'm in love with the results, no more wasting time with unsharp making at pinpoint focus with a modern macro. Of course, since you have a limited budget I would like to know if you even own a digital camera.

Vintage Macros produce good results too and I know a lab that uses canon FD vintage macros for scans with a A7iii and they look perfectly sharp. $50 lens Plus $15 amazon adaptor, Plus camera.

 

[gone]

I had a Nikon Coolscan that was able to do 120 as well as 35mm. It was very high resolution and also had ICE. File sizes were huge! Not sure what a used one would go for now. If you're shooting color or C41, the ICE feature would be sorely missed on a DSLR setup.

Not having film carriers on my old Epson 2450 flatbed, I would tape the edges of the film negs to the glass. It made great scans like this. In fact, they looked essentially like the Coolscan V ED scans, just at a smaller file size. Again, no ICE on the Epson, so if your negs have issues you'd want to have it.

 

[grat]

Again, no ICE on the Epson, so if your negs have issues you'd want to have it.

Current Epsons support infrared dust/scratch removal.

 

[markjwyatt]

I use a Durst slide copier with my Fujifilm XT-2, and a 75mm enlarging lens. I recently shimmed the camera mount to bring the image closer to the center of the diffuser. With 35mm it was not issue, but 6x6, I was pushing against one edge and it was causing an issue on one side, but the shimming fixed it. I also crop the neg in camera sometimes if I want a rectangular image and want more resolution (instead of approaching 4kx4k, I can push to 4k x 6k in those cases). I mainly do B&W. Color is trickier.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

Are you referring to 2400 dpi for 35mm or also for 120 film? My old Minolta Scan Multi can do 2820 for 6×9 and, supposedly, 5640 for smaller sizes. But I doubt the latter is true optical resolution. I almost always stay with 2820.

The size of the negative is irrelevant. 120 is just scanning the same resolution, but a larger area. 120 just results in a larger overall image. I guess I'm not sure what your question is. The v850Pro can scan up to 8x10 film, and can do so with a solid 2400dpi. Scanning 5x7, 4x5, 120, or 35mm is the same resolution, just smaller film.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

I priced out a Rebel T7 plus a Sigma 70mm macro Art lens, and the total was right around $1000-1200 USD. The EF 100mm f/2.8 macro wouldn't be a bad option either, and used, they're going for around $400.

That was as close as I could get to the price of the Epson for a decent DSLR rig. It's "only" 24MP, but the lens kind of makes up for it.

You're missing a copy stand and a light source, and a good way to hold the film.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

If you're shooting color or C41, the ICE feature would be sorely missed on a DSLR setup.

If you scan your film as soon as its dry enough to handle, and run a HEPA filter unit in your film processing and scanning area, and do a quick wipe down with an ant-static brush it's actually not bad. You do get the occasional chunk of crud or fiber, but that's maybe a handful of things to touch out for a whole roll. I actually prefer that over ICE, particularly if doing it in Adobe LR or Photoshop with content aware spot healing. I regularly run into instances where there just happens to be a chunk of something or a fiber in a really bad place that ICE would really struggle with if it had to deal with it and with the content aware spot heal or LR heal, it's a lot easier to deal with in a way that makes it nearly invisible. Having a chunk of crud or fiber so badly placed that I have to re-wipe the roll and rescan it is an extremely rare occurrence.

That's with freshly processed film. With old film, gosh, yes, ICE is a life saver, and in fact, unless somebody absolutely has to have the highest resolution I offer, I often will run old film through a dedicated scanner that has ICE for exactly that reason as even though the scan time is way slower, the overall time to a deliverable image is faster because old film that hasn't been well kept tends to be absolutely dirty and and scratched to kingdom come.

 

[grat]

You're missing a copy stand and a light source, and a good way to hold the film.

True. But that's so many variables, I didn't want to go there. Absolute cheapest would be the Pixl-latr, a tripod with an inverted or horizontal mount, and the Raleno PLV-S192, which is all a bit fiddly and not what I'd want for high volume.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

True. But that's so many variables, I didn't want to go there. Absolute cheapest would be the Pixl-latr, a tripod with an inverted or horizontal mount, and the Raleno PLV-S192, which is all a bit fiddly and not what I'd want for high volume.

I totally agree, but at the same time, those variables are the ones that will really bite you. It makes little sense to spend the money on that lens if you can't reliably keep the film flat and without curl. The same goes for fiddling as you noted. If you're going to have any amount film to digitize, you're going to discover pain points pretty quickly that don't have anything to do with the resolution of the camera or the lens, but rather in those variables. If anything, the camera and the lens are just items you need to get started, but otherwise, will perform exactly as expected.