Scanners for Large Negatives? 68
Ironsides asks: "My family has a number of old negatives that we would like to digitize. While we could spend the cash and have them all turned into prints and scan the prints, we would prefer to scan the negatives directly. One other problem is that several family members scattered throughout the country also have collections that would need to be scanned in and we could not possibly pay to have them all turned into prints. Now, here's the catch: a sizable number (at least 100 hundred, possibly several hundred) are 1:1 negatives that are 4x5 inches in size (yes, these are very old negatives). Now, I've been looking at slide and negative scanners and unfortunately it seems they only go up to 2.3x3.5 inches (6x9 cm). Does anyone know of a high quality scanner that will handle such large negatives?"
A drum scanner is designed for this. (Score:5, Informative)
Too expensive - get a flatbed (Score:3, Informative)
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While your comment may be true for taking new photographs, they can't use a digital camera, because they are old photos. Your comment seems to ignore their two main requirements - scanning old negatives, and doing it cheaply.
I'm faced with a similar situation - after the recent sale of my family home, I have several boxes full of photos and negatives, I believe some go back over 100 years. However, I doubt the original quality of the camera would justify the cost involved in scanning it on anything other
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Yeah
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35mm gives me adequate amounts of data for most puropses; 6x6 gives me enough to do 24"x24"@300ppi. Only my press camera gives me perspective and focal plane control.
As for the "mediocre quality" nonsense, please substantiate it.
It's not DMax; it's clear from my histograms that my 9950f has enough DMax to capture the data from my film. Even my slides of fireworks are not fully opaque.
It's not sharpness; useable imagte sizes like 100 MegaPixel are enough of a downsample
A drum is, however, the best tool for the job (Score:2)
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Very expensive (Score:2)
Let me re-state that then. Paying a service bureau for drum-scanner service is extraordinarily expensive.
Owner of an Epson Perfection 3200 Photo flatbed (Score:2)
Much less expensive to use a flat bed scanner that has back illumination.
I bought an Epson Perfection 3200 Photo scanner a couple of years ago. It comes with negative frames to hold the negatives at the correct distance off the glass, including the 4"x5" negative size you require. I don't know about newer models - this one has worked well enough for me.
That said, you will have to be prepared to spend the time to calibrate the scanner if you want to do professional-level colour work. For old negatives,
Be cheaper to buy an Imacon and DIY. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, for the price that a service bureau would charge, this guy could probably go out and buy a used Imacon Flextight and then sell it at the conclusion of the project. The difference in quality between a good Imacon scan and a drum scan would probably not be worth the cost in this instance.
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Disclaimer: I work for Nikon.
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drugstore (Score:1)
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Epson flatbed (Score:4, Informative)
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Flatbed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Flatbed (Score:5, Informative)
Just Remove the Bugs (Score:2)
Digital? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Cliff's gone off his meds again. (Score:1)
In that vein, I think we should all have a moment of silence for the late DEC and its products. I'm still waiting to get my hands on an Alpha... one of these days, I'm going to find one at a hamfest or something, and then my life will be complete. (Okay, well not quite; I still want to own a working
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OT Vaxen (Score:1)
Would you mind emailing me directly? If you think you might be interested in unburdening yourself of one, I do need a project for the winter...
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If you get the choice (as if you ever do during scavenges), the DS10 was a nice, recent, desktop system that you can find modernish versions of Linux or, even better, the hobbyist version of VMS and Fortran.
Actually... (Score:2)
Scanners and DEC (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if I know my DEC history correctly, but what do scanners have to do with DEC [wikipedia.org]?
4 recommendations (Score:3, Informative)
(1) Nikon 9000 , its very expensive ($1700 or so) but will give you a 4000 dpi / 16 bit scan
(2,3) Epson M-750 PRO or V700
(4) Canon 9950f
I have the 9950f and the nikon 5000 (the 35mm version of the 9000)
The main feature of these is they have some version of dust removal (which does not work on black and white btw), they all have color restoration if your negatives are pretty old and all the other good stuff.
The epsons are the ones i think the high end (modern) medium/large format people who aren't doing $100 per slide professional lab scans are using. I dont think you can go wrong with any of these. If you are only going to use this for the web and/or computer monitors (and not into tinkering with photoshop etc) I would get the 9950f as it is the most straightforward and cheapest. With medium format film (4x5) you can go to massive size prints even with a canon 9950f to be honest.
Flatbeds; beyond that, Imacon. (Score:3, Informative)
It all depends on what this guy's
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Nikon scanner == good (Score:2)
BZZT. please try again (Score:2)
see the specs. in appendix A
"Scanner type Transmission (film) 35mm to 4" x 5""
4x5 is inches, 6x9 is cm (Score:2)
Epson (Score:2)
Ignore the drum scanner comments. (Score:5, Informative)
Try this (for B&W negs):
* CanoScan models don't work on Linux; the Epson v750 may with Vuescan (needs libUSB and USB group access).
Missed an item... (Score:2)
I haven't had a newton's ring since I started scanning emulsion down.
DMax (Score:2)
One thing I should point out: I'm a big fan of Silverfast scanning software, and they just released a new version 6.5 which has a multiscan technique, it's sort of like HDR for scanning. It does multiple scans of each row at different exposure settings, combini
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There are a multitude of reasons why Silverfast is superior to VueScan, the biggest one is that VueScan's GUI is absolute crap. My personal favorite feature of Silverfast is the ability to set white-point and black-point directl
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Actually Vuescan comes with ICC profiles for lots of different models of scanners, and if you have an IT 8 target you can create a profile calibrated to your scanner. (If I were to do this again, I'd try to calibrate it every thousand slides or so to compensate for the lamp fading over its lifetime.) Plus, Vuescan includes film profiles for every type of f
I did the same thing (Score:4, Informative)
I spent a lot more time than I had to because I scanned them all at 20MB raw image size (the jpegs averaged roughly 6MB each when I was done.) My intent was to keep good-quality archival copies of the slides. However, these large files meant that every action with them was slow: transferring them from the scanner via USB 1.2 took like 40 seconds per image, loading and saving them in an editor to rotate and crop them was slow, importing them into Arcsoft to produce the slideshow was slow, and so on.
Decide what you intend to do with the digital images first. Are you going to archive them as I did? Then accept that it will be slow. An archival quality scan of the medium format film that you describe will take hundreds of megabytes per image. But if you're just going to burn a DVD for the family and discard the scans as intermediate files, scan them at DVD resolutions and you'll save a ton of time throughout the process.
Invest in some good scanning software. The out-of-the-box stuff I got from Minolta was slower than molasses. It took it 20 seconds to autofocus each slide individually, and that was prior to the scan itself! I purchased Vuescan from Hamrick software and it sped the process considerably. They support many dozens of scanners, film profiles, etc. It automated the process of scanning a full carrier of slides. It was worth every penny to me.
Use a dust brush on each and every negative before scanning it. A cheap squeezy rubber-bulb brush will clean up most dust and hairs nicely, and they're only like $5.00.
Don't bother printing them unless you actually want the prints of the pictures.
Find a good program to help rotate and crop the images, clean up dust specks, and fix colors. I used Paint Shop Pro, and eventually got pretty fast at it. Later, I found RPhoto (freeware! on the web) that enabled me to whip through rotating and cropping at high speeds.
Figure out in advance how you want to organize the images you scan. I built a directory structure by year, and scanned the images in rough chronological order. If there is no organization to your media, be sure to take the time to tag them at some point in the process (probably the time you crop and rotate them.) Names, places and dates are all good searchable data. I used a short description for the file names, but I wish I'd edited the EXIF data when I had the chance.
Regarding medium format film, ask about flatbed scanners at a good photography shop. When I was shopping for newer film scanners, I found an Epson flatbed with a "negative attachment." It consisted of a backlight-box that had a snap-in film carrier on the bottom that would hold 2 five-frame 35mm filmstrips. You could remove the film carrier and use a larger frame to hold your negatives in place (the adjustable carriers that you use in enlargers to hold medium format film comes to mind.)
Once you figure out what you're doing, take a few minutes and write up an instruction sheet. You'll probably go stir-crazy after scanning a thousand frames, and you'll likely want to take a break for a few months. It's nice to come back to full instructions so you can pick up exactly where you left off.
Realize that this will take a lot of your time. Check with a commercial photo house and ask about their scanning rates. I was quoted from about $0.75 per slide to $1.20 per slide. Of course with over three thousand slides to scan I wasn't about to spend that kind of money, but I did spend several hundred on a Minolta Dimage film scanner, and many, many hours scanning. That's where the instruction sheet helped -- my wife picked it up and she started scanning in her free time, too! You might want to consider hiring a photo house to use a drum scanner just for your medium format slides, rather than tackle them yourself. You'll get the best quality scans
Nikon LS 9000 ED (Score:2)
Epson (Score:2)
My only complaint with the Epson is that my Polaroid Type 55 4x5 negs don't quite fit in the holder. (Anyone else dealing with that problem, or coming up with a solution, feel free to reply.)
How big do you want to print them? (Score:2)
Consider that even a low-end flatbed scanner these days can achieve 2000 dpi symmetric, which would allow you to print a 4x5 negative up to 26x33 inches at reasonably high quality (300dpi, which is enough for most uses). So the only questi
Epson (Score:2)
http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=
Forget dust removal for b/w negatives! (Score:1)
Epson Flatbeds (Score:2, Informative)
For my scanning purposes I am satisfied with an Epson Perfection 4990 Photo flatbed.
It can scan negatives up to 8x10".
And btw, lots of people still use film and Large Format cameras. The quallity and
resolution you get from such a negative is unmatchable.
recently did this. (Score:2)
I originally looked into some of the various mail business where you ship them everything and they do it all to DVD and whatever else you want, they cost in the $.39-$.59 per print or negative and can easily be found with google. Too expensive and did far more then I really needed; besides they charge the same for print or negative.
You can purchase decent negative and print scanners in the $1000 range, various reviews can be
How Much to Spend? (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't have one, but I have had some 2 1/4" x 2 1/4" (6x6) negatives scanned on a V700 at low resolution for web display. The scans came in at 13MB and I was not disappointed.
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You must be new here.
Svc bureau, or flatbed + Vuescan (Score:1)
The AGFA T1200 is another
Vuescan -- I second that motion (Score:2)
Nikon LS-9000 -- I'm saving up to buy one now. But it won't work for 4x5 film.
Imacon Flextite -- certainly an excellent scanner, but the cheapest one that will take 4x5 is about $10,000 US.
For amateur use, I'd go with one of the Epson flatbeds. And by all means, buy a copy of Vuescan to drive it.
My B&W negative scanning project (Score:3, Informative)
As mentioned in previous posts, the Digital ICE dust/scratch removal doesn't work on B&W film. Also Kodachrome color slide film may not work well with certain scanners when trying to use the auto dust/scratch removal.
B&W presents some challenges. You must scan at 16 bits/channel resolution, otherwise, B&W results will be too contrasty and lose shadow detail. It sometimes helps to scan as positives then invert the image in Photoshop. Secondly, flatbed scanners tend to be noisy. This can be offset by using a multiple-pass option. Four passes work reasonably well without taking a lot of time. Quite a bit of this noise can be dealt with via NeatImage or Noise Ninja as well. Since Digital ICE (available on the 4990) does not work with B&W, you will get a lot of dust. Resist using third-party dust reduction software since it seriously degrades the image. Just plan to Photoshop images you plan on printing.
If you are wanting to really get down and do some serious negative scanning, quickly (and cost is not restricting). Get a Creo Eversmart (now owned by Kodak) flatbed scanner. http://graphics.kodak.com/global/product/scanners
The main thing is to make sure your negatives keep protected. In another 10-15 years, the scanning capabilities will be much, much better. However, the people you want to enjoy seeing these scanned images might be gone! So it's best to use what you can and get the job done. Let the next generation scan again if they want it done better.
You have two separate problems (Score:2)
Epson 4990 Flatbed scanner, 100 megapixels (Score:2)
Please excuse the drop off in the top corners and the out
epson (Score:1)
I have an epson 4490 that has a negative adapter for that size.
Any current flatbed that has a negative adapter will likely support 4x5. I believe Microtek has one too.
Look in Photography magazines.
It'll cost around $200-$300, or more depending on speed and resolution requirements. Take the time to learn to use the equipment; try photoshop elements for quick, painless adjustments.
At graflex.org... (Score:2)
You might try posting your question at there [graflex.org] or on photo.net [photo.net], or just reading the existing postings there.
And yes, you can still get 4x5 film. Try it out sometime!