Looking for experiences/advice on high-end scanning options!

138S · Jan 14, 2021

Les Sarile said:
The Coolscans I have don't know whether I shot the frame optimally or not. I also know what it can achieve and now it's consistenty over thousands of scans. Much more impressive to me are the results in color/contrast and all without drama.

Coolscans are impressive machines for 35mm and MF, but they are old, usually expensive, and have difficult service. They are very Pro machines... no doubt you have very good scanners.

Compared the Epson is relatively cheap, new, with warranty and service. It requires playing attention to focus (height), for optimal results you have to oversample in the scanning and optimizing in Ps, this is not painful today because we'll have (soon again) Ryzen 5950x + NVMe at 7,400MB/s... but still we require a proficient edition that anyway one should master for the hybrid.

The Epson, if proficiently operated, it is pretty decent for 35mm, totally capable for MF, and it shines like the sun for LF. The Nikon only makes rolls but my Epson scans 8X10" with more quality than I will never need... Still with the Epson a clumsy user will get a botched job after the other, but anyway he would not go much farther with the Nikon. It is the Comanche guy, not the arrow.

Lachlan Young · Jan 14, 2021

Les Sarile said:
Fuji Lab in Arizona. I talked to their reps at a PMA show in Vegas and they said that's no problem.

Right. So they weren't hand printed by a custom lab, but rather by a large scale bulk photofinisher?

Les Sarile · Jan 14, 2021

Lachlan Young said:
Right. So they weren't hand printed by a custom lab, but rather by a large scale bulk photofinisher?

The results were consistent with optical (microscopic) verification of the film and the type of paper used. As with anything a tolerance range always comes into question. Depending on equipment, is manual intervention better then automation? I've not seen any data regarding this so if you do please share.

fs999 · Jan 15, 2021

Why have I worked in Michelin stars restaurants when I could learn cooking in a McDonald's...

138S · Jan 15, 2021

Old Gregg said:
Folks on Reddit are happy with CN "scans" they make with their iPhones (!), and there's nothing wrong with it.

In lomography, the weirder the colors the better, it helps creativity a lot...

Of course color is subjective, but see here minute 22:00

Of course that opinion is debatable, I don't say if he is a great artist or not, but it comes from sombody having at least a solid personal criterion, at least his color edition is sound https://www.ishootfujifilm.com/spotlight/nick-carver

My opinion from my personal experience, which is way less worth than the Carver's one, is also that CN DSLR scans have a difficult color inversion, I'm a user of 3D LUT Creator and I feel I can end controlling well the inversion, but a sound inversion like the one from Negafix is not that easy or straight. We have to go to the Frontier or the Noritsu to surpass that, IMO.

radiant · Jan 15, 2021

Old Gregg said:
Folks on Reddit are happy with CN "scans" they make with their iPhones (!), and there's nothing wrong with it.

Yeah, pretty horrible quality https://old.reddit.com/r/analog/

Lachlan Young · Jan 15, 2021

fs999 said:
Why have I worked in Michelin stars restaurants when I could learn cooking in a McDonald's...

Indeed - but instead we're forced to listen to people who have apparently seared off their taste buds insisting that McDonald's has to taste better than anything else possibly can.

Adrian Bacon · Jan 17, 2021

Lachlan Young said:
Indeed - but instead we're forced to listen to people who have apparently seared off their taste buds insisting that McDonald's has to taste better than anything else possibly can.

At the risk of sounding low class.... I'm perfectly capable of recognizing and enjoying a 5 star meal, but also appreciate the value and taste of a Big Mac. Each has its place. It's great to be a purist and insist that anything less than the best is unacceptable, but for many of us, due to other constraints, will take what we can get, even if it's a Big Mac. That doesn't mean the Big Mac is bad, it just means it serves a different purpose that doesn't require a 5 star meal. One mans trash is another mans treasure. It's all relative.

Mesabound · Jan 18, 2021

Adrian Bacon said:
if you’re looking to set something up in a shared environment for student work, I’d just set up a bunch of midrange flatbeds that came with reasonably good and easy to use software. The goal in that scenario should be ease of use and maintenance, not maximum performance.

I agree with this and would add that any focus on 35mm in a classroom environment just seems like an unnecessary headache when scanning is going to be involved (unless it's a very small class, and probably even then). Set up some flatbeds, use the excess budget to limit yourselves to larger formats, raise the stakes on individual exposures, create an investment on the students behalf into the scanning process where they will want to learn how to maximize their handful of MF or LF negatives rather than just get through one after the other.

I do personally find Greg's scans to be quite compelling when factoring in time, but I've also learned quite a bit about photography and, specifically, color through scanning; it's a part of the process and I don't mind it. Maybe Vuescan is just that much better than Silverfast.

Adrian Bacon · Jan 18, 2021

Mesabound said:
raise the stakes on individual exposures, create an investment on the students behalf into the scanning process where they will want to learn how to maximize their handful of MF or LF negatives rather than just get through one after the other.

having an all mechanical camera with no auto exposure and no autofocus will force you to learn how to expose, or be crazy level frustrating.

Mesabound · Jan 18, 2021

Yeah, was also thinking starting the class or workshop or whatever it is with a bracketed roll of 35mm (scanning could be outsourced for expeditiousness) to give a baseline understanding of exposure before moving on to more intentional stuff, because that's what the bigger formats and really so much of what people turn to film for, is all about. Also the harder thing for a student to access. And for the resources it seems they already have on-hand I have to imagine there's a few meters lying around, or wouldn't be difficult to find. Shit, Sunny 16 and some of the phone app meters out there would probably be fine in such a context.

Les Sarile · Jan 18, 2021

Mesabound said:
I do personally find Greg's scans to be quite compelling when factoring in time, but I've also learned quite a bit about photography and, specifically, color through scanning; it's a part of the process and I don't mind it. Maybe Vuescan is just that much better than Silverfast.

DSLR scanning is most compelling for use with true b&w as ICE does not come into play and post work is relatively minimal. Spotting the image will be the same. For E6 ICE now becomes much more useful and spotting can take more time in post. For color negatives the post work required can take far longer doing the inversion and spotting. He claims 5 minutes per frame in his setup -> https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/negative-lab-pro-mini-review.180378/

Lucky Luke · Jan 18, 2021

To everyone, thanks a lot for all the discussion and information, it is all very much appreciated. My apologies for this late reply, due to circumstances things got very busy here and was unable to get to this. I'm gonna take some time to go through all these comments and see where we end up!

Looking for experiences/advice on high-end scanning options!

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