To those of us who “camera scan“ negs...

Steve@f8 · Apr 19, 2022

... here’s a random thought that occurred to me about camera ‘scanning’ (actually we’re taking a picture with a digicam, aren’t we). Should we describe ourselves as multi-media photographers, since we’re using both film and digital?
Incidentally and unavoidably, digital camera copying a negative leaves its ‘finger prints’, but I suppose any digital copying does too, eg dedicated scanner or flatbed.
The only true analogue way to keep the end result pure is to keep it 100% analogue. If only I had a darkroom.

250swb · Apr 19, 2022

I think the true genius of the English language is that anybody knows what you mean if you say you are scanning your negatives with a digital camera, just as they would if you said you were photographing them. The only people to make a fuss are those trying to score pedantic points. And who's to say some digital cameras can't 'scan' if the sensor is moving as it creates a pixel shifted file?

radiant · Apr 19, 2022

Hey, I've been waiting here with bowl full of popcorn and this is all you can do?

Moose22 · Apr 19, 2022

Steve@f8 said:
... here’s a random thought that occurred to me about camera ‘scanning’ (actually we’re taking a picture with a digicam, aren’t we). Should we describe ourselves as multi-media photographers, since we’re using both film and digital?
Incidentally and unavoidably, digital camera copying a negative leaves its ‘finger prints’, but I suppose any digital copying does too, eg dedicated scanner or flatbed.
The only true analogue way to keep the end result pure is to keep it 100% analogue. If only I had a darkroom.

This debate? I'm glad we're finally talking about it now. I'm sure nobody else has thought about this or discussed it on the internet before.

I just call my hobby photography and when I'm doing it I call myself a photographer. Who, other than me, cares about the process? It is hybrid, as most of my negatives never make it to positive in meatspace, only getting shared in cyberspace. But all the endless bickering over pedantic nonsense revolving around purity doesn't matter.

As for your "True analog" comment, and "pure"... whatever. I just like taking pictures. And there's one, and only one, valid reason for me to use film at all. And that's because I want to.

Besides, there's an important aspect to your notion of purity. Nobody sees my printed photos. Millions* of people see my images when they have been scanned and put on the internets. So even if I went through the entire analog process for every print I wanted someone to see I'd still have to digitize the result for them to see it.

* Number is approximate. I think the actual number is 7.

250swb · Apr 19, 2022

radiant said:
Hey, I've been waiting here with bowl full of popcorn and this is all you can do?

I'm glad you can at least supply popcorn, if nothing else. It's not a debate, the only answer if somebody doesn't understand the term 'scanning with a digital camera' is that they are a novice to the whole process, or the ongoing reassessment of copying film negatives into digital files.

Les Sarile · Apr 19, 2022

"Technically", scanning implies digitzing one line at a time until the whole image is captured. More accurately camera "scan" is more like camera copy similar to film to film copy via internegatives - or interpositives? However, we all use it to get the same end result a digital copy of the image captured on the film. Each has it's pros and cons.

Speaking only for myself, it doesn't bother me the least bit whatever it's called . . .

McDiesel · Apr 19, 2022

Once the image is taken, a photographer's work is done. The reproduction medium is a completely different domain IMO.

Wet printing, scanning, making murals, billboards, giant light boxes or even tatoos based on an exposed film (or a digital file) - all of this is possible and a photographer may not even be involved nor interested in these things. Not everyone is a modern day Ansel Adams, and even back in the day, didn't many photographers work with dedicated printers? Today some choose to work with labs who do the scanning or printing or both, so nothing has changed. Photographers are making photographs, and reproduction specialists are making reproductions. Some choose to do both.

MattKing · Apr 20, 2022

Personally, I'd be glad if someone came up with a good, clear, descriptive and universally understood term for using a camera for the process of digitizing film, because that would make it easier to intelligently discuss the innumerable technical issues that arise from that process, without getting them muddied by issues that are pertinent to the sort of line scanner that we currently call a "scanner".
But I'm willing to muddle through without that for now.

markjwyatt · Apr 20, 2022

I do call it digitizing, but since I use an electronic shutter for this process (to minimize camera movement), and in reality, the sensor "scans" the pixels, so perhaps scanning is an acceptable term.

gone · Apr 20, 2022

I guess I'm stupid, but I don't see any difference at all between using a scanner and using a digital camera. They're both doing exactly the same thing, in a sense. Digitizing a film negative.

radiant · Apr 20, 2022

markjwyatt said:
I do call it digitizing, but since I use an electronic shutter for this process (to minimize camera movement), and in reality, the sensor "scans" the pixels, so perhaps scanning is an acceptable term.

CMOS/CCD sensors are actually "scanning" too. So they are scanners? But what is digitizing then! (no, I'm not serious)

McDiesel · Apr 20, 2022

MattKing said:
Personally, I'd be glad if someone came up with a good, clear, descriptive and universally understood term for using a camera for the process of digitizing film, because that would make it easier to intelligently discuss the innumerable technical issues that arise from that process, without getting them muddied by issues that are pertinent to the sort of line scanner that we currently call a "scanner".

It's called scanning. There's nothing muddy about it. Everyone who does it calls it scanning. The process of mechanically dragging a line CCD across a negative got obsoleted and replaced by the process of electronically scanning the surface of a statically positioned area sensor.

What I have seen is that some older users of mechanical scanners get grumpy when they hear it. This is silly, kind of like complaining that modern car engines shouldn't be rated in "horsepower" because they are not real horses.

markjwyatt · Apr 20, 2022

McDiesel said:
...This is silly, kind of like complaining that modern car engines shouldn't be rated in "horsepower" because they are not real horses.

Given your Avatar, I will suggest you are showing some bias here. Do you consider yourself a "real" horse?

Steve@f8 · Apr 20, 2022

Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear from the off on this one. I’m multi-media using both digital and film to capture images. Film to have a go at ‘arty’ stuff and digital for everyday photography.
The thing with camera scanning compared to a dedicated scanner is the imprint the different devices leave on the digitised copy of the negative. I use an M240 on a Beoon with a camera lens (I’ve tried enlarger lenses but can‘t achieve 1:1 registration due to verticals limit of the column adjustment) if I can’t be ar$ed spending the time with the Plustek, which is much slower. I see a difference and do prefer the look produced by the dedicated scanner, but I have a feeling the scanner still leaves its finger prints. Not having a darkroom - and no chance of setting one up - I can’t make a comparison.

Les Sarile · Apr 20, 2022

Steve@f8 said:
Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear from the off on this one. I’m multi-media using both digital and film to capture images. Film to have a go at ‘arty’ stuff and digital for everyday photography.
The thing with camera scanning compared to a dedicated scanner is the imprint the different devices leave on the digitised copy of the negative. I use an M240 on a Beoon with a camera lens (I’ve tried enlarger lenses but can‘t achieve 1:1 registration due to verticals limit of the column adjustment) if I can’t be ar$ed spending the time with the Plustek, which is much slower. I see a difference and do prefer the look produced by the dedicated scanner, but I have a feeling the scanner still leaves its finger prints. Not having a darkroom - and no chance of setting one up - I can’t make a comparison.

Yes, a scanner can also leave its finger prints in a scan particularly as it applies to color negatives which requires a conversion.

This particularly extreme example is a straight-up fully automatic scan of the same frame of Kodak Gold 100 from my Coolscan as well as a corner drugstore Noritsu scanner and clearly shows the Noritsu misinterpreted the colors. But since both are results from the scanner interpreting the colors, could it be the Coolscan misinterpreted the colors . . .

Kodak Gold 100-7_30-36 Coolscan-Noritsu by Les DMess, on Flickr

Ideally the digitization process should render an accurate reproduction.

Alan Edward Klein · Apr 20, 2022

Doesn't a digital camera scan as well? Isn't the data collected off the sensor serially, not in parallel? So it works like a flatbed scanner.

jvo · Apr 21, 2022

sadly, photography books are pretty much only been bought by photographers, not by the average man/woman - even though everyone today "has a camera" and takes picture. They also know little about film, silver gelatin paper, or even digital imaging, platinum, palladium, alternative, and the process, (look at camera sales!).

To the point - the only people who care are the photographers themselves, some more than others, and only those more wedded to one side of the analog/digtal spectrum or the other. i suspect that in the middle you have a whole range of people doing various and hybridized work.

(you are what you do?)

JL Nims · Apr 28, 2022

radiant said:
Hey, I've been waiting here with bowl full of popcorn and this is all you can do?

OK Radiant. That was funny! You win this thread!

radiant · Apr 28, 2022

JL Nims said:
OK Radiant. That was funny! You win this thread!

Can I get refund?

bags27 · Apr 28, 2022

I "scan" my negatives with a camera and macro lens set-up. Am I am performing macro photography or scanning? I spend a lot of time on the macro work (equipment, lighting, manual focusing, etc). Is what I do more "photographic" than if I put my negatives on a flatbed scanner and pushed a button? I dunno. But I personally do think of what I'm doing as macro photography. Of course, that's now digital macro photography. When I scan negatives that I took with my macro lens, I'm doing digital macro photography of analogue macro photography.

The usual term for digitizing negatives is hybrid photography, right?

grat · Apr 28, 2022

Because I use my fingers to operate my film camera, that's "digital" photography, right?

I use my hands to hold my camera-- so that's a "manual" camera, even if it's an automatic point-n-shoot.

Personally, I usually refer to the process as digitizing negatives. I may or may not qualify that with "with a scanner" or "with a DSLR".

English is a funny language.

wiltw · Apr 28, 2022

MattKing said:
Personally, I'd be glad if someone came up with a good, clear, descriptive and universally understood term for using a camera for the process of digitizing film, because that would make it easier to intelligently discuss the innumerable technical issues that arise from that process, without getting them muddied by issues that are pertinent to the sort of line scanner that we currently call a "scanner".
But I'm willing to muddle through without that for now.

That has always been known during the film days simply as 'duplicating color transparency or neg'...so it is easily updated to 'using digital camera to duplicate color transparency or neg' (vs. 'scanning' using a digital scanner).

grat said:
English is a funny language."

English is a badly abused language, by those for whom English is their only means of communication!

Saying 'scanning' in the context of duplicating slides with digital camera using macro lens is simply misuse of the term 'scanning'!
just like 'bokeh' in lieu of 'out of focus highlights' is just plain wrong use of 'bokeh' made worse by commonality of internet abuse of the language. Folks like at Zeiss use the term 'bokeh' correctly, but that does not fix the abuse by others.

In the simplest of terms, digitization is turning something into bits and bytes, or 1’s and 0’s. 'Digitization' is the general term, not specifying the device or means of converting film images to 1's and 0's.
We can do 'digitization' with a digital camera or with a digital scanner.

JerseyDoug · Apr 28, 2022

People know what "scanning with a digital camera" means, just as they know what "our cruise ship sails at noon" means.

MattKing · Apr 28, 2022

JerseyDoug said:
People know what "scanning with a digital camera" means, just as they know what "our cruise ship sails at noon" means.

Except you are just as likely to encounter "our cruise ship sales at 12 o'clock".

grat · Apr 28, 2022

wiltw said:
Saying 'scanning' in the context of duplicating slides with digital camera using macro lens is simply misuse of the term 'scanning'!

What if I'm repositioning the camera or negative and stitching the final result?

My comments regarding "digital" and "manual" are proper use of English, if not a conventional use of the terms, and that is why I think English is a funny language, in multiple senses of "funny".

I admit, I'm playing devil's advocate here. Or possibly just being a jerk.

MattKing said:
Except you are just as likely to encounter "our cruise ship sales at 12 o'clock".

Is that local time, or ship's time?

To those of us who “camera scan“ negs...

Steve@f8

250swb

radiant

Moose22

250swb

Les Sarile

McDiesel

MattKing

Moderator

markjwyatt

gone

radiant

McDiesel

markjwyatt

Steve@f8

Les Sarile

Alan Edward Klein

jvo

JL Nims

radiant

bags27

grat

wiltw

JerseyDoug

MattKing

Moderator

grat

To those of us who “camera scan“ negs...

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