Home Scanning (Epson V550) vs. In Store Scanning

I would recommend using a DSLR with a good, flat field macro lens and a light table over a flatbed scanner. I have a Epson 4990 and use it all the time for scanning film. But it's only really worth it for large format type stuff. For 35mm film, the quality just isn't worth the hassle. With 35mm, I still can't get a scan that's good enough to print from, at least not at a decent size. I get much better results by scanning my film using my DSLR, and it's a lot faster than using a flatbed scanner. If you don't want to go that route, then I'd recommend a good, dedicated 35mm film scanner. Flatbed scanners are great for larger formats where you have detail to spare. But for smaller formats like 35mm, they're not good for much more than posting photos online.

And you can still edit jpegs. I don't know why you think you can't. Photographers seem to get stuck on these hyperboles and repeat them ad nauseam without having any personal experience with the matter. I'm a graphic designer. I edit .jpegs all day, every day. Sure it's not ideal, and they're not as flexible as noncompressed files, but most of the time, they can work just fine if you know what you're doing. The only time you really need the noncompressed version of a file is if it's really poorly exposed and you need every last ounce of information just to try and save it. If it was a well exposed and scanned photo to begin with, you shouldn't notice a difference between an edited .jpeg and an edited .tiff. Not if you know what you're doing anyway.

I have both an Epson V600 and a Plustek 8200. I find that both are capable of producing scans of higher quality than standard consumer-grade scans from most labs which tend to be oversaturated, oversharpened, and high contrast.
The advantages of the Epson are that it can scan up to 12 images at once and it can scan medium format negatives as well as prints and documents. Also the included software is easier to use than that provided with the Plustek.
The Plustek is limited to 35mm but gives sharper images in my experience. It comes with SilverFast software which is full-featured, but not particularly intuitive. The film holders also tend to keep the film flatter than those of the Epson, which can be important when scanning Tri-X, although third party holders are available for the Epson which fix that issue.
An important thing to remember is that quality home scanning is not an effortless procedure. Adjustments need to be made to most scans and it takes practice to get the process down. My workflow for both scanners is to scan with VueScan, make initial adjustments in Photoshop and then make final adjustments in Aperture or Lightroom. I currently use the Plustek for 35mm and the Epson for all other media.

jim10219 said:

I would recommend using a DSLR with a good, flat field macro lens and a light table over a flatbed scanner. I have a Epson 4990 and use it all the time for scanning film. But it's only really worth it for large format type stuff. For 35mm film, the quality just isn't worth the hassle. With 35mm, I still can't get a scan that's good enough to print from, at least not at a decent size. I get much better results by scanning my film using my DSLR, and it's a lot faster than using a flatbed scanner. If you don't want to go that route, then I'd recommend a good, dedicated 35mm film scanner. Flatbed scanners are great for larger formats where you have detail to spare. But for smaller formats like 35mm, they're not good for much more than posting photos online.

And you can still edit jpegs. I don't know why you think you can't. Photographers seem to get stuck on these hyperboles and repeat them ad nauseam without having any personal experience with the matter. I'm a graphic designer. I edit .jpegs all day, every day. Sure it's not ideal, and they're not as flexible as noncompressed files, but most of the time, they can work just fine if you know what you're doing. The only time you really need the noncompressed version of a file is if it's really poorly exposed and you need every last ounce of information just to try and save it. If it was a well exposed and scanned photo to begin with, you shouldn't notice a difference between an edited .jpeg and an edited .tiff. Not if you know what you're doing anyway.

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Unfortunately, a DSLR is not an option for me although it would be nice to have another camera in the collection! I apologise for my ignorance regarding JPEGs and TIFF files. I have tried to edit some relatively low quality JPEG files in lightroom but presumed I would have more flexibility using TIFFs and then converting to JPEG!

jim10219 said:

And you can still edit jpegs. I don't know why you think you can't. ...

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true, but ironically editing is the one time when it does actually make a difference... The less 'editing' needed the less it matters.

about JPGs and TIFFs

except within the special world of printing press imaging and other professional imaging applications what we are used to seeing is JPGs, almost everything in the consumer world ends up as a JPG.

Basic editing tools for JPGs (JPG only) provide few user choices for quality, because they are basic tools and choices can cause confusion. The choices are often something like adjustment of brightness, contrast (maybe), cropping, special color effects. One of the key choices often omitted is the choice of image quality which boils down to large file size-high image quality or small file size-low image quality, which is achieved by lossy data compression, data is discarded and is not recoverable.
More advanced JPG editors permit choice of the compression factor/file size variable. When set to highest quality the result is an almost imperceptible loss of quality each time the image is saved. When set to lower quality values the image quality loss each time the image is saved becomes larger and larger.

TIFF images can be saved over and over again without any image quality loss. (NB There are TIFF settings which ARE lossy and throw data away to reduce file size, but this is optional.)

In my opinion this is one of the big reasons to use TIFFs, the lossless save option. In these days when memory is cheap the larger file sizes associated with TIFFs are not much of a drawback.

Plustek scanners have changed little over the years but the software has. Going to Plustek's download site one can download the drivers for their operating system. Plustek 7200 and lower model numbers will only run on Windows 7 and older operating systems. There are no drivers for windows 10 so it will not run with Vuscan on Windows 10.
Plustek 7300 and higher has drivers for Windows 8 and higher operating systems but Silverfast 6 does not run on Windows 10. I have a 7200 for cheap, its complete. (not an ad). I also have a 7600 Ai that will run under Vuescan on Win 10 but Silverfast Ai6 will not.
Craigs list or its UK equivalent may turn up an older version, make sure its complete with power supply and film holders.
The 8xxx uses LED light source while 7xxx use cold cathode florescent light source.

Thomas Keidan said:

I know I can't work out myself why Photo Express charge an extra £2 for HQ JPEGS and an extra £2 for TIFFS, I don't see how that cost equates to the extra 5 minutes of work they have to do!

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This tells me you haven't done a lot of scanning .

jim10219 (#26), quote: "I get much better results by scanning my film using my DSLR, and it's a lot faster than using a flatbed scanner."

How are you dealing with the increased contrast in your copied images? Several people I know went this way and they all gave up, the too-high contrast in their copy images defeated them. Some of this could be reduced in post processing, but this added a lot of extra work (and a lot of time) to their workflows. I saw their results and decided this wasn't for me, time is limited and valuable and the DSLR and macro lens is not the way most of us want to go.

The rest of your post is well thought out and written, especially so your final comment, (again quote): "Not if you know what you're doing anyway." This should be engraved in brass, framed and mounted on the wall above everyone's computer-scanner system.

To contribute something to this thread, after much experimentation and having reached the conclusion after all my efforts that little has changed or greatly improved with scanners and scanning since about the year 2000, with possibly the exception of the high-end lines like the Plustek OpticPro120, I decided that for my needs, two separate scanners were the best option. I use a Plustek 7600i with SilverFast for my 35mm scans and an Epson V600 for my 6x6, 6x7 and 6x9 scans, the latter either with VueScan or the packaged Epson scan software depending on which laptop I'm using when I do my scans.Others' mileage may differ of course, but many other photographers I know have done the same and they are all satisfied.

Experimenting, keeping detailed notes and above all working carefully will give you optimum results with whatever equipment (hardware or software) you are using. To me this is the First Commandment of photo image scanning.

I still live in a fantasy world where one day someone will market a slide scanner that automatically scans mounted slides in Kodak Carousel trays as high-res TIFFs directly to a USB stick or SD card. The closest the market has ever seen to that is the Reflecta Digitdia and Braun Multimag SlideScan, both of which were/are European models and don't take Kodak Carousels. The Carousel format was so ubiquitous certainly Stateside that I'm surprised there has never been anything along those lines.

ozmoose said:

How are you dealing with the increased contrast in your copied images? Several people I know went this way and they all gave up, the too-high contrast in their copy images defeated them. Some of this could be reduced in post processing, but this added a lot of extra work (and a lot of time) to their workflows. I saw their results and decided this wasn't for me, time is limited and valuable and the DSLR and macro lens is not the way most of us want to go.

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I digitize film with a DSLR too, and I haven't even been able to reproduce the uncoverable contrast increase that some others have reported. I suspect they just use settings that are not suitable for this type of work, uncalibrated monitors, and/or have e.g. gamma issues that they mistake for contrast issues - in this case, no wonder they can't find a correction. FWIW, I use a Nikon D610, keep all adjustments as neutral as possible, calibrate everything as best as I can, and I process the RAW files in Lightroom. My contrast corrections on slides seldom go beyond -12 (the setting can go down to -100), I sometimes enhance the shadows somewhat, and that's all I ever need to do.

I was pondering over the same question. What scanner should I get (for 135 and 120)? Many options out there, and yes, a dedicated film scanner would be the best option in terms of quality. Scanning everything at the lab was out of the question from the beginning for two reasons: I develop my own film and it's too expensive. So I was considering an expensive 135/120 scanner. But I realized that 99% of the images will just be archived, so I decided on a compromise:
- got an Epson V600. Good enough to scan 135/120 for preview an archival purposes. I have all my images in Lightroom (most of my photography is digital), so I can scan, adjust and archive my images there (along with metadata on where to find the negatives in my folders).
- for those few images I want to print: after previewing the V600 scans (and loupe, of course), I have them scanned at the lab on a high-end scanner at "premium scan" (maximum resolution, maxmium bit depth, big color space) price. Those are just very few images, so those scans don't break the bank.

Thomas Keidan said:

Hi everyone,

I'm thinking about getting a flatbed scanner down the line but have been reading about how difficult it is to scan negatives on them. I'd be looking to get something like the Epson V550 and would like to know if the improved image quality would make up for the fiddly nature of using a flatbed scanner. Currently, I send my negatives off to Photo Express in Hull and get around 2mb images back on a CD. Although this is OK for posting online I would quite like to start using lightroom to post-process my images. If I were to get the scans sent to me via high quality TIFF format, the price would increase exponentially. If anyone has any experience with home scanning vs store scanning and which I should go for I would really appreciate it!

Thanks as always!

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I wouldn't touch Photo Express with a barge poll. In the UK, use filmdev - £6 for C41 dev+medium (jpg) scan. A medium scan is plenty big enough to do stuff with unless your planning to print larger than A4.

Choice of Frontier or Noritsu scanner too, depending on taste

Ste_S said:

I wouldn't touch Photo Express with a barge poll. In the UK, use filmdev - £6 for C41 dev+medium (jpg) scan. A medium scan is plenty big enough to do stuff with unless your planning to print larger than A4.

Choice of Frontier or Noritsu scanner too, depending on taste

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Hi, why filmdev over Photo Express? I thought they did fairly comparable scans?

Thomas Keidan said:

Hi, why filmdev over Photo Express? I thought they did fairly comparable scans?

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Cheaper, and better quality scans.

Or to put it another way - I have zero problems with using medium scans from filmdev or AG Photographic in Lightroom or Snapseed, and the detail I can pull from shadows is pretty darn good. Which I believe was your original problem ?

If you only want to scan 35mm then look for a Canon fs400us on ebay. You can often get them for about $150, sometimes less. Don't pay more, that is unless you are in a real hurry to get one. Just be sure it comes with film and slide holders because these parts are no longer available. Get a copy of Vuescan (about $65 I believe), and you are all set to go.

These scanners produce scans that are very close to the quality of scans from a Nikon scanner at a fraction of the price. The downside is that this scanner is slow.

For medium format scanning with a flat bed scanner the sweet spot for price/performance ratio is probably the Epson V700/V750/V800/V850 series, though these are quite a bit more expensive than the lesser flatbed scanners. One advantage of these scanners is that you can also do large format (e.g. 4x5) film. Pick yourself up an inexpensive view camera on ebay (such as a Calumet or a Graphic View) for a couple of hundred dollars and your image quality will knock the socks of from virtually any digital image and most medium format images as well.