Can you recommend a decent dedicated neg/film scanner?

[Jon Fitness]

Here's a bit of a comparison

A scanned print

and a scanned neg.

I've messed around with the neg scan to change the colours and the saturation but the print was scanned on my Epson BX300 using Epson's easyscan colour restoration tool.

Maybe I'll stick to B&W!

JF

[Pugsley]

The print is too red and the scanned negative is a bit green. Again, I've tweaked the colours, brightness and contrast of the two pictures, and my personal favourite is the scanned negative. There's more detail apparent, although that comes at a bit of a loss of definition in the sky.

 

 

[DaveF]

Jon,

 

Don't give up on the colour scans, you will quickly sort out colour correction if you persevere.   You should have seen the state of some of my images as they came out of my slide scanner!  They are not perfect now, but they are much more viewable than the originals were.

 

I hope you don't mind but I did a little bit with your negative scan in Photoshop CS3.  

 

Correct colours are always a problem, we all see colours differently and all films and papers produce different shades, so don't worry too much about "accuracy".  After all think how different BR blue looks on a dull day compared to a sunny day, or in the evening compared to midday.

 

 

Edit:

All I did was use levels to slightly alter the brightness and contrast, then used the dropper to select a grey point (actually the small cabinet to the right of the base of the signal) to try to get a neutral set of colours.  Then I increased saturation a little bit, then selected using magic wand a few small areas which had bits of purple/magenta (very common on negatives and slides).  I used replace colour, clicked a small area with the purple/magenta cast and then reduced the saturation of it.  

Lastly I used unsharp mask to slightly sharpen the image.

David

[martin_wynne]

I straightened up the lattice signal post, but I can't match David's colours:

 

 

Martin.

[Jon Fitness]

Many thanks all. I'll try and choose some less challenging colour negs to practise on but I'm still getting better results with the B&W at the moment.

Passing Astley on Chat Moss

Cheers

Jon F.

[martin_wynne]

Right folks, I missed the £10 neg scanner from Maplins but decided to have one of Lidl's finest for £30.

 

Lidl have their film scanners available again this week at £25. It's now called a "Negative Digitiser", notwithstanding the fact that it comes with a holder for slides / transparencies (positives).

 

It appears to be essentially the same as the Maplin scanner (re-badged import).

 

Martin.

[ParkeNd]

This is a scan from A Nikon Coolscan IV. It's a dedicated negative only scanner (as opposed to a flat screen scanner with a negative accessory) running on Silverfast software.

 

[ParkeNd]

This is a scan of a colour negative to compare with the black and white above. The scanning results are far more about the software used to make the scanner work than the scanner in my experience. Whilst the Nikon Coolscan scanner was about £600 when new the original Nikon software was nowhere near as good as the latest version of Silverfast software. The Silverfast software uses much cleverer methods of combining scans at different settings and does it automatically - it also allows you to specify the exact film brand, type and ASA of your original. It also takes a lot of practice to get skilled enough to produce great results every time. The quality of the films was also greatly inferior to current digital camera sensors - no matter what the film buffs say.

 

[ParkeNd]

Two more photos in support of dedicated negative scanners (in this case a Nikon Coolscan IV) with decent modern scanner software (in this case Silverfast SE).

 

The first was from about 1985 and the camera was a very modest Nikon FE with 28mm lens. Film was Fujicolour 200 ASA.

 

 

The second was taken last year on a much more highly regarded but even older camera - a Nikon F2 Photomic with Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens. Film was HP5.

 

 

But least you should be seduced by more than the fact that your old negatives are still useful - i.e. be lulled into thinking film was technically superior to current digital - this is a shot from a full frame Nikon D700 with Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 lens. 

 

[rab]

Just bought the Lidl £25 scanner. Had a play with it;I think it'll do for what I want.

Am interested in what settings others are using.

I guess it's best saving to tif format not jpeg?

Is there much advantage in using 3600 DPI.

Likewise colour depth higher than 24 bit.

With both of these it's a playoff between image quality,

hence my interest in what others have settled on.

[martin_wynne]

Hi,

 

The 3600DPI setting is simply software interpolated, so a complete waste of time. It's just the same as enlarging the image in your photo editor afterwards.

 

Given the cheap and cheerful nature of this scanner, TIF format offers nothing over the high-quality JPG setting.

 

24-bit colour gives you 16 million colours -- how many do you want? That's the limit for the JPG file format anyway.

 

But it's a great little scanner. These at 1800DPI, high JPG, negatives, from 1973 and 1986:

 

 

 

Martin.

 

[rab]

Hi,

 

The 3600DPI setting is simply software interpolated, so a complete waste of time. It's just the same as enlarging the image in your photo editor afterwards.

 

Given the cheap and cheerful nature of this scanner, TIF format offers nothing over the high-quality JPG setting.

 

24-bit colour gives you 16 million colours -- how many do you want? That's the limit for the JPG file format anyway.

 

 

But it's a great little scanner. These at 1800DPI, high JPG, negatives, from 1973 and 1986:

 

keh4a_1973.jpg

 

boyne_gauntlet2.jpg

 

Martin.

Thanks Martin.

I'll keep it simple then!

[ParkeNd]

This is a very good demonstration of a scanner which at that price you should be excited that it works at all. Whilst the low gamma doesn't compare with a £600 dedicated film scanner it has the advantage of actually being available new in 2015. Secondhand Nikon Coolscans now cost £1000 which most people reading this thread would consider an obscene amount of money, and the cheap jobbies appear to deliver a result. Scanning is much slower as a process than most people will be prepared for so not much money will have been spent when they realise how long the dream of digitising your lifetime of negatives would take.

I first started taking photos in about 1972 and all my negatives are still in existence and in perfect condition. They still produce identical quality optical prints when I send the odd few to Palm Labs. That's 43 year old negatives. My own scanner was its most useful when digital cameras were in their first ten years or so of evolution. Now the Coolscan only struts it stuff if I get nostalgic with the Nikon F2 Photomic or the more idiot proof evaluative metered Nikon F100. But although a digital DSLR is now technically superior to equivalent sized film I doubt the truth of "digitise your film and preserve it for ever". What digital standards, equipment, and current storage methods will be around in 43 years time? So I think that film scanners in 2015 are a novelty to play with - so low price offerings seem more relevant.

[martin_wynne]

A few practical points about using the Lidl / Maplin cheap scanner:

 

It is connected to the computer not as a TWAIN scanner, but as a webcam (it has no moving parts). That means you can't "acquire" images from it in most photo editor programs as you normally would with a scanner.

 

It comes with add-on capture software for the supplied Arcsoft Media Impression photo editor, which does the colour negative correction. It works, as you can see from the images I posted earlier, but it's obviously a cheapo product with few controls.

 

Not many image editors can capture from a webcam, but one which can is Google Picasa (free), which I have been using recently instead, generally achieving better colours and contrast after a bit of fiddling with the settings. Although it is then an even slower process to use.

 

The scanner is powered through the USB connector, and seems to be drawing close to the current limit for a plain USB socket, losing connection occasionally. I have had this happen on two different computers. There is certainly a very bright lamp inside. It works better through a separately powered USB hub, if you have one.

 

Martin.