Dedicated camera just for scanning

[River Mantis]

I'm thinking about getting a dedicated camera just for negatives. I have Fuji X100S with 23mm lens which is too wide. 35mm frame covers just a bit more than a half of a camera's frame in one dimension. I'm thinking about buying used Fuji X-E2 plus some old Nikon macro lens with an adapter. Do you have any other suggestions? Does it sound reasonable? Or maybe just some cheapest used DSLR?

 

[PhilBurton]

I'm thinking about getting a dedicated camera just for negatives. I have Fuji X100S with 23mm lens which is too wide. 35mm frame covers just a bit more than a half of a camera's frame in one dimension. I'm thinking about buying used Fuji X-E2 plus some old Nikon macro lens with an adapter. Do you have any other suggestions? Does it sound reasonable? Or maybe just some cheapest used DSLR?

Depending on your volume of negatives, you might consider a Nikon scanner. There is a private Facebook group devoted to these scanners. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1514948298527146/ The people there are very knowledgeable and there is always someone who wants to sell their scanner.

 

[albireo]

Yep, usually that someone is switching to camera scanning

and getting inferior results, but getting to play with loads of new kit!

 

[Cholentpot]

I'm using a T2i (EOS 550D) with a EF 100 2.8 macro. Does the job for me.

 

[NortheastPhotographic]

Get a mirrorless camera with a pixel shift function. You'll get great true RGB files with a very low noise floor. There are ways to get super high res images but if you're not printing big most APS-C cameras are just fine for this purpose. If you do want super high res, I recommend a Panasonic S1R or the current Sony A7R body.

The other thing I can recommend is an AF macro lens. Why risk an out of focus scan that you have to re-do later? AF will generally nail it every time, especially on a mirrorless camera that can AF seek on the whole frame. I think Sony may have an APSC mirrorless with pixel shift and probably more than a few Sigma or Tamron macro choices.

 

[macfred]

Before I bought a V600 flatbed scanner from Epson (2'nd hand) I scanned with a digital dinosaur - Nikon D2x. For use on the internet and also for prints I was quite satisfied; I used a Nikkor 40mm f/2.8 micro as lens. D2x is pretty cheap these days.

FUJI GA645 - Fujinon EBC 60mm f/4 - TMY 400 - scan with D2x and Nikon micro Nikkor 40mm f/2.8

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Nikon D850 and holder.

https://en.nikon.ca/learn-and-explo...ing-the-d850-and-es-2-negative-digitizer.html

 

[River Mantis]

Get a mirrorless camera with a pixel shift function. You'll get great true RGB files with a very low noise floor

For black and white negatives switching off the interpolation (can be done in Darktable for example) white setting the white balance to average does the trick too. You'll get a perfectly sharp greyscale image.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

I'm thinking about getting a dedicated camera just for negatives. I have Fuji X100S with 23mm lens which is too wide. 35mm frame covers just a bit more than a half of a camera's frame in one dimension. I'm thinking about buying used Fuji X-E2 plus some old Nikon macro lens with an adapter. Do you have any other suggestions? Does it sound reasonable? Or maybe just some cheapest used DSLR?

I would not recommend Fuji's CFA arrangement. There is not enough color resolution in the red and blue channels. You'd be a fair bit better off with a more conventional Bayer type CFA. Nothing against Fuji, but their CFA is not ideal for scanning film. You want more color resolution than that.

 

[Brendan Quirk]

macfred - Absolutely lovely picture. Best I have seen today!

 

[Huss]

and getting inferior results, but getting to play with loads of new kit!

You just bought a scanner, didn't you?

 

[albireo]

You just bought a scanner, didn't you?

I have had a couple for 15 years, would you believe it? Wonderful results and no tinkering with inferior Xtrans sensors and copy stands! Tiny desktop footprint too!

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Yep, usually that someone is switching to camera scanning

Or that someone is realizing that it's just better to do one of the other right film or digital and I try to do both.

 

[macfred]

macfred - Absolutely lovely picture. Best I have seen today!

Thank you, sir !

 

[removedacct2]

Before I bought a V600 flatbed scanner from Epson (2'nd hand) I scanned with a digital dinosaur - Nikon D2x. For use on the internet and also for prints I was quite satisfied

I first scanned with a Canon 5D (the 1st one, ~13MP) and it was indeed good for web and small prints.

 

[removedacct2]

I'm thinking about getting a dedicated camera just for negatives. I have Fuji X100S with 23mm lens which is too wide. 35mm frame covers just a bit more than a half of a camera's frame in one dimension. I'm thinking about buying used Fuji X-E2 plus some old Nikon macro lens with an adapter. Do you have any other suggestions? Does it sound reasonable? Or maybe just some cheapest used DSLR?

I was wondering the same last year. First I used the Canon 5D because I had it around but that's not very comfortable. So I got the cheapest 2nd hand Sony A5000 I could find. It's a 20MP with wireless and remote app, I peak focus and shot from the mobile phone app. I picked an old Durst-C35 and an old Gitzo tripod head that were going to junk, removed the head, trimmed the holder, dremmeled a bit, expoxyglued the Gitzo head, the light is a cheap LED square wall/ceiling lamp from the DIY store, and camera is WB calibrated to it. I grabbed a Novaflex Novatar 4/105 macro bellows that was sleeping in my M42 miscellania box, but I have used different M42 lenses.

for 35mm I use a Reflecta Proscan-10T. which is in the Americas a PrimeFilm XE, with ~4100dpi effective. It's single frame scan, so it's slow. I use Vuescan Pro with the Proscan.
Negatives inverted with ColorPerfect.

Resolution is similar I guess with the Sony A5000, a bit better with the ProScan.

for instance, left the Proscan, right the Sony A5000:

then, there's the issue of scratches removal, where a scanner has an advantage.
A 32 years old negative that had been somewhat mistreated, ProScan on the left, Sony A5000 on the right:

for better scratch removals, I do wet scanning, by sandwiching the negative between two plates of glass with some Primus burner fluid (naphta, almost pure heptan)

otherwise for even better control over heavy scratch correction, and for BW negatives, there are softwares. I bought Silverfast SRDx and it works really well, did surprise me.

 

[Les Sarile]

I'm thinking about getting a dedicated camera just for negatives

If by negatives you mean color negatives then be prepared to spend quality time with each and every single frame color correcting and dust and scratch removal. By quality time I mean many minutes on each frame. There are many of them on youtube that show this. The best I've seen so far states a minimum of 5 minutes per frame just color correcting. And this correction only applies to that one frame and not across a roll. Now if you have a dirty scratched up frame then that will add much more time in your post work. There are many here and everywhere else that show the speed of "scanning" a frame of film with a digicam - seconds if you have the right setup, but most don't admit the time and "expertise" of the post work ahead of the capture.

 

[Les Sarile]

@Les Sarile Sad but true. And it's even worse with scanners, as SilverFast gives you a far worse starting point than Negative Lab Pro or Negafix, and doesn't handle batch conversions nearly as efficiently. Also, properly developed film doesn't have any scratches or dust. For dust to get onto a negative you need one important dust-injecting ingredient: a scanner.

I have scanned almost 40,000 frames of many brands of films using the Coolscans V, 5000 & 9000 + Nikonscan and have not encountered a single frame that required more than the slightest of post work. For instance this is from Kodak 160VC scanned with Nikonscan with all color settings off or neutral compared to a very early version of Vuescan which had a specific film profile for this film as well as the various modifiers.

As far as ICE (dust and scratch removal) is concerned, there is none to match the quality and performance of Nikonscan ICE on a perfectly good example of a badly scratched frame of film - 9000 even better then the 5000 or V. This "mishap" courtesy of Fuji Pro handling of this frame after I sent it to them to make a 20" X 30" optical enlargement - one of many film types I sent so that I can compare their color print results to my Coolscan scans in terms of color, contrast and detail

Full res version -> http://www.fototime.com/36BED059AD8E686/orig.jpg

Of course we're so far removed from "film color accuracy" these days due to no standardization of scanning that it seems a moot point anyway. That's ok by me as long as the user enjoys the results they get but you will always see comments about their results are blown out or they hate a particular film due to it's poor color handling that they won't use it ever again not knowing that these are all due to their scans. For example here's one from a perfectly well exposed shot from Kodak Gold 100 scanned by a minilab compared to my own neutral scan from my Coolscan. You would think they were from two different frames of film when in fact they are from the same.

Here's another from Kodak Ektar 100 using my Coolscan & Epson scanners.

Here's yet another showing a blownout Fuji 100 from a Noritsu minilab scanner compared to my Coolscan.

If you ever get blownout results from any color negatives and your camera meter was even close to reasonable, it's the scanner. Here's what overexposing color negative looks like compared to any digi - even current ones. Plus 10 stops overesposure on Kodak Portra 400 and still recoverable with the mildest of post work.

Film 18 years expired but refrigerated . . . no problem for neutral Coolscan . . .

Film left out on an Atlanta driveway for 18 years . . . still no problem for neutral Coolscan . . .

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I was wondering the same last year. First I used the Canon 5D because I had it around but that's not very comfortable. So I got the cheapest 2nd hand Sony A5000 I could find. It's a 20MP with wireless and remote app, I peak focus and shot from the mobile phone app. I picked an old Durst-C35 and an old Gitzo tripod head that were going to junk, removed the head, trimmed the holder, dremmeled a bit, expoxyglued the Gitzo head, the light is a cheap LED square wall/ceiling lamp from the DIY store, and camera is WB calibrated to it. I grabbed a Novaflex Novatar 4/105 macro bellows that was sleeping in my M42 miscellania box, but I have used different M42 lenses.

View attachment 266328


for 35mm I use a Reflecta Proscan-10T. which is in the Americas a PrimeFilm XE, with ~4100dpi effective. It's single frame scan, so it's slow. I use Vuescan Pro with the Proscan.
Negatives inverted with ColorPerfect.

Resolution is similar I guess with the Sony A5000, a bit better with the ProScan.

for instance, left the Proscan, right the Sony A5000:

View attachment 266329

View attachment 266330


then, there's the issue of scratches removal, where a scanner has an advantage.
A 32 years old negative that had been somewhat mistreated, ProScan on the left, Sony A5000 on the right:

View attachment 266331


for better scratch removals, I do wet scanning, by sandwiching the negative between two plates of glass with some Primus burner fluid (naphta, almost pure heptan)

otherwise for even better control over heavy scratch correction, and for BW negatives, there are softwares. I bought Silverfast SRDx and it works really well, did surprise me.

The colors seem better on the left with the scanner The blue sky is washed out through the memorial arch on the right camera side. Also, the colors overall seem a little washed out with the camera. That could be processing, but I don't know.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

@Les Sarile Sad but true. And it's even worse with scanners, as SilverFast gives you a far worse starting point than Negative Lab Pro or Negafix, and doesn't handle batch conversions nearly as efficiently. Also, properly developed film doesn't have any scratches or dust. For dust to get onto a negative you need one important dust-injecting ingredient: a scanner.

My V850 seems to capture more dust than my old V600. Fortunately, I don't shoot that many "keepers". So I spend the time spot removing them in post-processing. I usually don't bother with ICE.

 

[Les Sarile]

My V850 seems to capture more dust than my old V600. Fortunately, I don't shoot that many "keepers". So I spend the time spot removing them in post-processing. I usually don't bother with ICE.

On the V7XX running ICE just about doubles the scan time. What is it on the V8XX?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

On the V7XX running ICE just about doubles the scan time. What is it on the V8XX?

Same. Also ICE doesn't;t get all the dust anyway. So I figure it's just as easy to not use ICE and just remove the dust myself. It's just that the V850 is worse than the V600. That could be because there's glass holding the film flat with the V850. I use an anti-static brush and Rocket blower. But it's still pretty bad.

 

[Les Sarile]

@Les Sarile I am not sure what your images are supposed to demonstrate. None of them look good and overall serve pretty well as an ad for camera scanning.

Not for me to convince you one way or another although it is a great reason these decades old used scanners command a price in the used market.

I forgot to mention that these fully automatic neutral results from the Coolscan 5000 take about 30 seconds per frame - 50 seconds with ICE, in unattended batch mode.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

How hard would it to make a really good 35mm scanner that uses a 24mb or 36mb sensor built into a little scan device?

 

[MattKing]

How hard would it to make a really good 35mm scanner that uses a 24mb or 36mb sensor built into a little scan device?

In addition you need high quality, flat field optics that cover the field of the negative/slide and resolve it accurately right out to the corners - a more demanding implementation than the one used in scanners.
You also need a structure that keeps everything parallel and aligned.
Plus an even and consistent light source with a continuous spectrum output.
Plus a reliable means to hold the film in place, level and flat, and to permit efficient handling.
Plus electronics and software necessary to convert the sensor's output into a usable form.