Why do scanning companies not produce better scanners instead of always going downhill?

[Steven Lee]

Using a camera to.....errrrr scan an image is NOT scanning it is merely taking a photograph of a photograph. Come on get the terms correct! It is so very easy to get sloppy when describing something incorrectly.

The Fuji scanners use area sensors, as well as many cine film scanners like Blackmagic. They are essentially oddly shaped digital cameras. Scanning and "merely taking a photograph of photograph" is exactly the same thing.

Come on get the terms correct!

Agreed. You should.

 

[BrianShaw]

OTOH, one can make the point that 'photo replication with SLR' existed for DECADES preceeding the invention of any 'scanning' device (the first of which was the advent of the photocopier!)
I submit that 'photo replication with dSLR' is more similar in both concept and practice to 'photo replication with SLR' (only digital sensor in liue of film is the difference) , than it is similar to any electromechanical 'scanner'.
BTW, thank you for the links in Post 67.

… and didn't photo replication with a camera exist many decades before the SLR?

 

[koraks]

Gentlemen, let's please steer away from this vocabulary tangent. The reason I intervened on it before is as valid as it is now - there's a great potential for creating a diatribe where there's no good reason for it, it's overall counterproductive, and even worse, there's an undertone of wanton gatekeeping in some of the arguments. Let anyone decide for themselves what terminology they use - as long as we manage to understand each other, it's all good.

If there's a pressing need for a discussion on how to use the term 'scanning', kindly start a new thread about it.

 

[rhmimac]

I just checked my canoscan 9000F. She was still alive and eagerly waiting for producing some output in combi with Silverfast software. They are both doing fine work. I was surprised the analogue film uptick(youngsters, hipsters,...) didn't keep cheap filmscanners alive. So this uptick doesn't exist or isn't big enough for Canon or Epson to keep producing the flatbeds. The same story was written for the expensive Nikons and Minoltas. Pro's and prosumer masses stopped shooting film + home scanning and killed the product. Maybe the digicam+printing on the inkjet will be my future workflow.

 

[albireo]

I just checked my canoscan 9000F. She was still alive and eagerly waiting for producing some output in combi with Silverfast software. They are both doing fine work. I was surprised the analogue film uptick(youngsters, hipsters,...) would keep cheap filmscanners alive. So this uptick doesn't exist or isn't big enough for Canon or Epson to keep producing the flatbeds.

The uptick exists. Most of those youngsters get scans back from the lab.

 

[rhmimac]

The uptick exists. Most of those youngsters get scans back from the lab.

I'll say then: there wasn't a scanning uptick alongside the analogue film uptick as there was in the twilight zone of early 2000's when millions of grandpa's and grandma's and dads and mothers started scanning the analogue archives on the shelfs. It must have been a lot of them in order to flush the markets with a lot of types from cheap but very bad(slow) usb powered models up to so called semi-pro stuff( epson 850).

 

[koraks]

there wasn't a scanning uptick alongside the analogue film uptick as there was in the twilight zone of early 2000's when millions of grandpa's and grandma's and dads and mothers started scanning the analogue archives

That's a good assessment, yes. The difference is several orders of magnitude.

 

[wiltw]

… and didn't photo replication with a camera exist many decades before the SLR?

Achieving accurate focus on the slide/neg being replicated (onto film) was more easily verified with the SLR than with any rangefinder-focus device. Sheetfilm did not require a lens, mere 'contact print' via a sandwich of the original image onto the replicating medium. The point, however, was not the type of camera (like 'SLR') but in the replication of image using [camera+lens+medium of replication], for both film and for digital, not entailing any inventuion of a electromechanical device ('scanner'). No 'semantics' implied via this discussion, merely similarity of process btw film-based and digital sensor camera+lens

 

[BrianShaw]

Achieving accurate focus on the slide/neg being replicated (onto film) was more easily verified with the SLR than with any rangefinder-focus device. Sheetfilm did not require a lens, mere 'contact print' via a sandwich of the original image onto the replicating medium. The point, however, was not the type of camera (like 'SLR') but in the replication of image using [camera+lens+medium of replication], for both film and for digital, not entailing any inventuion of a electromechanical device ('scanner'). No 'semantics' implied via this discussion, merely similarity of process btw film-based and digital sensor camera+lens

Sure, I understood your intent. Such replication was done in the 19th century too. Not arguing, especially about semantics… just having a pleasant conversation about the history of photography.

 

[Les Sarile]

Sure, I understood your intent. Such replication was done in the 19th century too. Not arguing, especially about semantics… just having a pleasant conversation about the history of photography.

Pop Photo Sep 1957 included a slide copy in their magazine. Fastest film at that time used to take a photo of the most photogenic girl in the world as picked by Ed Sullivan!
Anyway they made 600,00 copies of the original slide for inclusion . . .

Pop Photo 1957-09 Cover by Les DMess, on Flickr

Pop Photo 1957-09 P104 by Les DMess, on Flickr

Used a reflective scanner to show the whole slide . . .

Veneta Stevenson Super Ansochrome slide 1 by Les DMess, on Flickr

Used a Coolscan 9000 to scan the copied slide . . .

Veneta Stevenson Super Ansochrome slide 2 by Les DMess, on Flickr

The slide itself is a little on the soft side. Probably an artistic choice for portraiture.

Not sure if the slide color is suppose to be like this given the lighting used . . .

 

[koraks]

Not sure if the slide color is suppose to be like this given the lighting used . . .

I think most of the cyan dye has left the building in the interim. Hey, it's been some 70 years! Could have been a lot worse.

 

[albireo]

Pacific Image XAS and XA Plus $549 on amason are outstanding scanners. I get better results with XAS compared to Lab scans with frontier and Noritsu. And having control is a must.
Their 120 while not as outstanding as XAS produce great results.

Good point about those Pacific Image scanners, which are I believe marketed as 'Reflecta' this side of the pond. I wonder why they seem to be less popular than the Plusteks, when at least on paper they seem to be better spec'ed. Perhaps the different branding confuses users. Probably more expensive and difficult to source too.

I did see some samples scans from a Reflecta 10T (4.1K dpi real resolution, the one reviewed here https://www.filmscanner.info/en/ReflectaProScan10T.html) which I thought were really really good, but I've never owned one of these scanners so don't know anything about reliability/compatibility with current computers etc.

 

[Les Sarile]

I think most of the cyan dye has left the building in the interim. Hey, it's been some 70 years! Could have been a lot worse.

I think it is aging gracefully . . .

 

[koraks]

She sure is, haha!

 

[Radost]

Good point about those Pacific Image scanners, which are I believe marketed as 'Reflecta' this side of the pond. I wonder why they seem to be less popular than the Plusteks, when at least on paper they seem to be better spec'ed. Perhaps the different branding confuses users. Probably more expensive and difficult to source too.

I did see some samples scans from a Reflecta 10T (4.1K dpi real resolution, the one reviewed here https://www.filmscanner.info/en/ReflectaProScan10T.html) which I thought were really really good, but I've never owned one of these scanners so don't know anything about reliability/compatibility with current computers etc.

The autofocus of the XAS is a must have

 

[Philmo]

Back in the day, I had a 50 mm Sigma 2.8 macro in Nikon mount that focused to unity. If you added a metal ring from a rubber lens hood between it and the included plastic lens hood it was in perfect focus to dupe slides from negs. Quick and dirty.