I have a Imacon Flextight and used it a lot. But a modern DSLR like a Nikon D850 with some negative holder to keep the negative flat and a supreme optic like a Apo-Gerogon can outperform the Imacon.
Doesn't the Nikon D850 quality vary depending on the size of the negative?
The same is true for the Imacon/Flextight. It's the same sensor with its fixed width and resolution, regardless of what media you scan. So a 35mm frame will scan at a higher (theoretical) resolution expressed in dpi than a 4x5" sheet. On a Flextight X5, the (theoretical) max resolution for 35mm is 8000dpi, for 4x5" it's 'only' about 2000dpi. If you do the math, you'll realize that the pixel dimensions end up exactly the same regardless of the format scanned. Just like with a dSLR - although with a dSLR, you always have the option to photograph multiple sections and then stitch them back together. If you're really patient and for some reason need astronomic resolution.
Wouldn't you have the same number of pixels per inch just like a flatbed scanner?
If so, then a camera gets you less resolution the larger the film size.
No; in scanners like the Flextight but also some other film scanners (Nikon Coolscan series), the sensor is a fixed size. The distance between the focusing lens, the sensor and the film is adjusted to chance magnification and focus for different film formats. The result is that the absolute number of pixels remains the same, and thus, the resolution in dpi changes.
I actual have a Imacon Flextight and know what is inside. ;-)Doesn't the Nikon D850 quality vary depending on the size of the negative?
I don’t know of any Nikon multiformat scanner that behaves that way. There is a Minolta MF scanner that scans MF film at lower resolution than small format though, maybe you had that in mind?
My opinion based on owning a Colorgetter PMT drum scanner and various other high quality CCD flatbed scanners and now currently using a digital camera copy stand approach is that I wouldn't go back to any of the prior methods because the workflow is much faster and appears to be equally good in most respects with a digital camera approach, but the devil is in the details.
I certainly wouldn't go back to something like the Flexscan because it doesn't offer the one key aspect of a PMT drum scanner that the modern digital camera approach does not offer, which is the variable of over- or under- scanning and sampling increments.
This is the one big thing that you can work with in in a drum scanner that all the other approaches don't offer, and at times, this capability can be very useful for really high quality scans where the reproduction ratio is going to be very high. Most of the time, this isn't much of a concern, but when going very large, you can adjust the sampling increment and the sampling aperture to help adjust the way that the scanner records film grain. You can enhance or reduce the appearance of grain by how much the sampling aperture over- or under- samples the sampling increment. Undersampling will tend to increase the grain appearance in a scan, and oversampling can soften the grain in a scan.
None of this will really be apparent unless you are doing pretty large reproductions... 10X would likely be the very beginning of any kind of appreciable impact, and really it's be more like 15x or 20x before you could look at the differences and start to make clear differences in one vs. the other. And a lot of this will be somewhat aesthetic, so it's possible that the digital camera will produce a more pleasing scan in the right circumstances whereas the drum scan could do it in other conditions or when different options are chosen during the scanning process.
One thing I do know is that the Flexscan machines I've seen don't have anywhere near the DR capability of modern high end digital cameras and so they will likely not compare favorably to a high quality digital camera setup when operated with good methods and when using a high quality copy lens. They also don't have the resolution of the modern digital cameras to match (compared to a D850 or far, far better, the Fuji GFX 100MP cameras). Also, no, pixel shift isn't going to gain you anywhere near what you might think (at least in terms of resolution), but it will gain an improvement in aliasing artifacts when getting down to the smallest resolutions the system is capable of. That's hard to distinguish on film grain at times, but easier to see with a Siemens star.
If you are absolutely dedicated to producing the highest resolution and highest fidelity scans, you can likely do better with the last of the Howtek scanners, but the price of admission is high and the effort required is also very high. At that point you have to ask yourself whether you need 8000 SPI scans all that often and is it really necessary to go that large with your 4x5 or 120 film scans... Do you intend to be printing huge reproductions regularly or not and if so, do you want to dedicate a room in your facility for the scanner and computer station and all the time it'll take to get competent on the scanner. The learning curve isn't going to be easy and using old hardware will pose operating system issues that you'll need to overcome. One thing about an 8000 SPI scan is that it is effectively "rendering the grain" and the gaps between the grain. There isn't really more information to be captured than the grain and you are just getting more precisely captured grain structures when you are going that high in the sampling. So, the image won't really look more detailed, but the grain will appear to be more clearly rendered with high quality super high resolution scans.
I tried a comparison between Epson V850 and Howtek 8000 using the same 4x5 Tmax 100 negative and the results were comparable. It would be interesting to see what a D850 or other digital scan would do?
Howtek 8000 Drum vs. Epson V850 flatbed scanners
Here's a comparison between Howtek HiResolve 8000 drum scanner and Epson V850 flatbed. Negative is mine, Tmax 100, processed normal by North Coast Photo dip and dunk with Clayton F76+ developer (similar to Kodak D76). Taken on a Chamonix 45H-1, Schneider Symmar APO 150mm with B+W orange...www.largeformatphotography.info
It is the analog nature of the capture. Yes, eventually there is an analog-to-digital conversion in a drum scan, but the photomultiplier tubes (a form of vacuum tube) and the halogen incandescent lamps (the best quality and most natural looking form of electrical light) maintain the film-like look in the scan better than any other method.
Early digital computers were based on vacuum tubes. Were they "more analog" than today's digital computers? Did the outcome of a calculation somehow glow more brilliantly to the eyes of the mathematicians?
Is the photon capture in a capacitor any more, or less analog than the capture of a photon on a dynode where it sparks off secondary electron emissions?
What actual performance characteristics of the sensing method contribute to the superior performance of a PMT, and how does this relate to the distinction between analog and digital?
The superior nature of the incandescent light in a drum scanner, how much of its unique character is preserved as it passes through hard-cut color filters that are in every way as ruthless and discontinuous as the Bayer filter on a digital sensor?
There's a saying in digital electronics engineering: ultimately it's all analog. Paradoxically, if you drill down deep enough (and this is territory by all means relevant to image sensing), it all ends up revolving around discrete quanta - in "analog" as well as "digital" systems. The number of photons is, ultimately, discrete - it's never quite a continuous signal. And then again, the possible energies they have are spread over a continuous spectrum alright - and neither PMT's nor other sensor types used in practical photography are deterministic enough to not be affected by this. These notions are every way as essential in the concept of PMT as well as "digital" sensing technology.
Well, the comparison reflects somewhat the point I was making about high resolution scans not actually showing more detail/information but that the scans really just get into rendering the grain better after a point.
I wouldn't suggest your results between the two were really comparable, however. The Howtek shows clearly better rendering of the film grain in the scan and also contrast, but the differences may not be material for most applications. The improvements are real but it is a diminishing return and for someone who is going to take a 120 or 4x5 negative and enlarge it 5x or so, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to me to go through the trouble and frankly, a high resolution sensor digital camera will probably beat the flatbed these days anyway as well.
But in terms of capturing the film for printing purposes, high resolution scans aren't all that important to reproduce the image for a reasonable small magnification. You don't dig into the grain for that purpose and so a much lower quality scan will be perfectly acceptable for many people's needs.
Early digital computers were based on vacuum tubes. Were they "more analog" than today's digital computers? Did the outcome of a calculation somehow glow more brilliantly to the eyes of the mathematicians?
Is the photon capture in a capacitor any more, or less analog than the capture of a photon on a dynode where it sparks off secondary electron emissions?
What actual performance characteristics of the sensing method contribute to the superior performance of a PMT, and how does this relate to the distinction between analog and digital?
The superior nature of the incandescent light in a drum scanner, how much of its unique character is preserved as it passes through hard-cut color filters that are in every way as ruthless and discontinuous as the Bayer filter on a digital sensor?
There's a saying in digital electronics engineering: ultimately it's all analog. Paradoxically, if you drill down deep enough (and this is territory by all means relevant to image sensing), it all ends up revolving around discrete quanta - in "analog" as well as "digital" systems. The number of photons is, ultimately, discrete - it's never quite a continuous signal. And then again, the possible energies they have are spread over a continuous spectrum alright - and neither PMT's nor other sensor types used in practical photography are deterministic enough to not be affected by this. These notions are every way as essential in the concept of PMT as well as "digital" sensing technology.
Hendrix was right. "There's too much confusion".
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