Medium Format Scanning and Scanners

[warden]

The thing is, ICE doesn't soften anything. And by that I mean that nobody would ever pick the ICE-d version of a scan versus the non ICE-d in a double blind test done correctly.

Yep. That’s been my experience anyway.

 

[Les Sarile]

Dust and scratch removal in PS does not need AI and is better overall quality than ICE because it doesn't soften the entire image to remove dust and scratches.

There is some loss that the user will have to decide if it'sworth it or not. Do you know what that looks like from a Coolscan or other scanner?

 

[Robert Ley]

After 50+ years in photography I have thousands of negatives and slides that I am in the process of copying. Most are medium format (6x7, 6x9, and 645), 35mm and quite a few 4x5. I have both color and B&W negatives and quite a few 35mm slides. I have an Epson 4990 and a Plustek 7600i that I initially tried but was not satisfied by the results with the scanner.
I presently use my Nikon D600 (24mega pixel) and 60mm and 105mm macro lenses with an old copy stand and a good LED light panel. I shoot in raw and convert the negatives using a plugin called Negative Lab Pro in Lightroom Classic. As far as I'm concerned NLP is the only way to convert digital negatives. I have been copying my 4x5 negs and getting 90 megabit tiff files from my conversions. Could they be better, yes using other methods. Do I need better, no. I am amazed at how good the conversions are, good result with very little tweaking required. NLP allows a large amount of tweaking if you need it.
I use the latest version of NLP v3.0 and I highly recommend anyone photographing their negatives to at least check it out.
https://www.negativelabpro.com/guide/

 

[warden]

There is some loss that the user will have to decide if it'sworth it or not. Do you know what that looks like from a Coolscan or other scanner?

Yes, I use Coolscan and Epson scanners. Manual spotting of dust and scratches in Photoshop is my preference as it doesn’t degrade the image like ICE or automated Photoshop tools.

 

[Helge]

Define "good"? Putting the workflow issues aside and only looking at the image quality when scanning medium format, it goes roughly like this, in the ascending order:

• Dirt cheap camera-based setup with an extension tube
• Epson V600
• Epson V700/750/850
• Plustek 120 Pro
• Mid-priced camera-based setup with a macro lens
• Coolscan 8000/9000
• Flextight 949/X5
• High-end camera-based setup
• Creo
• Drum

The definition of cheap/mid-priced/high-end camera setups deserves a thread of its own. Mainly this is about megapixel count, lens quality, availability of pixel-shifting and stability of the platform.

Also, there's the law of diminishing returns. Starting from the middle of this list each subsequent upgrade costs progressively more money while offering smaller marginal improvement than a previous upgrade.

That is a highly simplistic list.

It very much depends on whether you are ready to do stitching for optimal quality.
If you use an enlarger lens with a very flat field and stitch with generous overlap then you can get better results than a drum.

One shot from a 24MP camera will probably get you a little bit over half that, due to diminished contrast and focus not being exact enough.

It also really helps to clamp your film between AN glass or even better with naphtha/scanning liquid between the glass and film.

The difference between V600 and 8/7X0 for medium format is practically non existent.

Creo as an advanced flatbed, will have trouble too with ultimate sharpness due to the glass. And it’s old and flaky.

 

[Steven Lee]

@Helge agreed. The OP posted a fairly generic question, so I took a stab at overgenerlizing so at least he'll have a rough idea where to start digging.

From a practical standpoint for most people who don't print large and just post stuff online, the search begins and ends at the V850.

 

[_T_]

The size of a 6x6 negative is so big that any given scanning solution will far exceed what anyone would need out of a digitization system. It's not like scanning 35mm where you're eeking out the last few lp/mm available in your best negatives.

Some solutions are faster, some are easier, some will produce larger files that require more and more costly storage. At 6x6 it's not a matter of what is going to give you the best image quality, but rather what will provide you with the workflow that you prefer.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

There is some loss that the user will have to decide if it'sworth it or not. Do you know what that looks like from a Coolscan or other scanner?

Is ICE worse or better than cloning out spots in Lightroom?

 

[Steven Lee]

@_T_ makes a good point. There's a practical reason for why a $15K Flextight offers "only" 8,000x8,000px for 6x6 scans. Sure, you won't be able to enjoy the intricate details of the grain character 10 inches away from a 32x32" print. But if you're into that flavor of pixel peeping, maybe you shouldn't be shooting medium format to begin with?

 

[Steven Lee]

Is ICE worse or better than cloning out spots in Lightroom?

Not all ICE is created equal. But I remember Nikon's implementation to be pretty good. Either way, I had to spend 10-30 seconds per scan to carefully review everything to make sure ICE didn't go haywire destroying detail anywhere. That reviewing time was comparable to the time it takes for light Photoshop healing, so there's no time savings. The other scanner I had, maybe it was Plustek, was much worse.

But my big point regarding ICE is that if you need it, you're doing something wrong. You shouldn't have any dust on your negatives to begin with. It's not hard to maintain film handling hygiene that removes the need for this. In fact, I would argue that most scanners are dust magnets themselves, especially flatbeds. So they create the dust problem to begin with, and then use ICE to mitigate it. Camera scanning is much cleaner, it doesn't add any dust on its own (my film holder is metal, with anti-static cloth on both sides)

But when scanning archived films, ICE is a GODSEND. At least the Nikon's implementation, as it took care not only of dust but also scratches.

 

[Les Sarile]

Is ICE worse or better than cloning out spots in Lightroom?

Here are my two best examples of very scratched and ingrained dirty film. The first is 60's Kodachrome scanned with a D800 and Coolscan 9000 with no ICE, Normal ICE and Fine ICE. The second is a frame of Kodak 160VC color negative that I scanned with a Pentax K20D (with my attempt of color negative conversion) as well as the Coolscan with no ICE, Normal ICE and Fine ICE.

Kodachrome D800-Coolscan by Les DMess, on Flickr

Kodak 160VC-06-36 K20D vs 9K ICE by Les DMess, on Flickr

The Coolscan 9000 + Nikonscan of 35mm adds about 30 seconds of overhead when ICE is enabled. So if you have the option, would you manually spot in post or enable ICE?

 

[Film Rescue]

Hi all, Hope this does not breach the rubric. just now realising I would like to scan my hasselblad and yashicamat negatives (all 6x6) So I can post online. Do any of you have suggestions about good medium format scanners to look at or good scanning methods.

many thanks?

Hmm...My opinion on this is often unpopular.

We have three methods we use to digitize film. A Fuji SP-3000, a Creo iQsmart 3 and a Phase One Cultural Heritage system. All three are good for B&W with the Phase One being the best and the Fuji the worst. For color, whether positive or negative, but especially negative, the Phase One is the worst. While it will reproduce a linear version of the picture with the inversion that museums and archives want, it just doesn't look right unless you perform somewhat heroic measures to it...which anyone displaying an image will want. Even using Negative Lab Pro or the Cultural Heritage software to do the inversion, something's not quite right with the reds in most cases and you need to get into the the color mixer in PS and muck with the red luminance to get the image looking like the emulsion designers intend the film to look or at least our guess at that. Often with NLP (which work better than the cultural heritage software), you can get a perfectly acceptable image but there's just more mucking about to get it than using an actual film scanner.

Ultimately, I'm not a fan of digitizing color negatives or even color reversals using a DSLR. What we think this is due to is the bayer pattern of the camera's sensor because using a monochromatic camera and and taking three exposure with a red, a green and a blue filter and then putting that together digitally, works very well but we're not sure.

In the end, DSLR digitizing of color material is often good enough for most people but it isn't optimal. Haha...but please don't call it "scanning" because it's not