Can you recommend a decent dedicated neg/film scanner?

[jonny777]

I understand what you are saying Richard, but the whole point of mine and (I think) The SignalEngineer's posts are that the high resolution scans are not for day to day manipulation, but for storage purposes.

 

If you have a large sized TIFF file, it is easy to make a much smaller JPEG from that which can be used and tweaked as much as you like, but you still have the TIFF file squirreled away somewhere safe if the worst happened to your original negative.

 

It is belt and braces, if you like. You could argue that there is no guarantee the large digital file will not become corrupted at some time - but we are getting into the realms of Acts Of God.

[Jon Fitness]

Right folks, I missed the £10 neg scanner from Maplins but decided to have one of Lidl's finest for £30. I know it's down at the cheap end of the market but it will do to see what the negs are like. Initial results are promising for black and white negs but not brilliant for colour negs (yet) but I think once I've worked out how to sort the colour balance they should be ok. Can't post any results yet as I had to come to work before I'd got anything worth posting!
Cheers
JF

[jonny777]

Well, if you can get a 1600dpi for £10 and it produces results such as those seen on the previous page, then it would still be a bargain at £50. The Nikon Super Coolscan which is 4000dpi, is almost £3000 on the Amazon page.

[Jon Fitness]

Well, if you can get a 1600dpi for £10 and it produces results such as those seen on the previous page, then it would still be a bargain at £50. The Nikon Super Coolscan which is 4000dpi, is almost £3000 on the Amazon page.

I'll post a few scans up tonight when I get home from work....

JF

[martin_wynne]

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

 

There are still a few about in Maplin stores according to their web site today:

 

 

 

 

Martin.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...Now you may say, what is the use of one image being a massive 105Mb? But, remember that sharp 35mm transparencies could be projected onto a  wall or screen measuring maybe 4ft x 3ft without losing definition. If you do not scan film at the highest possible resolution, this ability will be lost.

 

Slides will not last forever; the colours on my early ones (which are over 40 years old) are already looking a bit suspect, and they have been stored inside a slide-box in a dark, dry cupboard for most of their lives. Once the originals have deteriorated, there will be no way of replacing them - unless everyone scans them digitally at the highest possible resolution now and saves them on whichever media they prefer, (a series of memory sticks/cards is probably the most reliable, but I have a 3Tb hard drive which holds thousands of them, and dvd backup)...

If the originals are Kodachrome, and this was used with a high res taking system, it is possible to project (using an equally good lens) about 12 feet across to reveal the smallest detail that was captured. What I found using drum scanners twenty years ago (then standard kit in newspaper offices and the like) was that there was no difference in what was seen on 'straight' greatly enlarged prints from 6400 dpi and 12,800 dpi scans. But if you had some good enhancement software, it could dig out more from 12,800 than 6,400. (I believe the scanner was equivalent to 12 bit colour depth for those who are interested.)

 

Which argues to me that if you have something archive worthy, go for all the scan resolution available against future use with enhancement software.

 

Then again, good old Kodachrome is still holding up without loss. I have seen some of the late 1930s K. and they are bright, sharp and fresh as ever they were. For this we owe such a debt to God and Man...

[Jon Fitness]

There are still a few about in Maplin stores according to their web site today:

 

 

maplin_stock.png

 

 

Martin.

None in Wrexham or Chester though. Maplins wanted £10 to transfer one from Liverpool!!

JF

[TheSignalEngineer]

I understand what you are saying Richard, but the whole point of mine and (I think) The SignalEngineer's posts are that the high resolution scans are not for day to day manipulation, but for storage purposes.

 

If you have a large sized TIFF file, it is easy to make a much smaller JPEG from that which can be used and tweaked as much as you like, but you still have the TIFF file squirreled away somewhere safe if the worst happened to your original negative.

 

It is belt and braces, if you like. You could argue that there is no guarantee the large digital file will not become corrupted at some time - but we are getting into the realms of Acts Of God.

Agreed, I make fairly high res scan after I have previewed the slide or neg, archive it,  then manipulate and copy to the size I want for use. Sometimes I will do the highest resolution I can on a crop of part of the negative if I want to look at a small section, although obviously the result will depend on the quality of the original.

 

I have recovered some pretty dire stuff in that way, getting decent pictures from negs vastly under or over exposed and damaged or faded slides. 

[martin_wynne]

A few more from the Maplin £10 film scanner.

 

These are a chain welding machine from 1973. As scanned, no post processing:

 

 

 

 

These are from some very scruffy negs from the 1960s. They needed a lot of tidying up in PaintShopPro but the results are much better than I expected. I think it is Abermule. Anyone?

 

 

 

 

Martin.

[Grovenor]

When I checked this morning, on first reading this topic, Stratford had 3, so I made a little excursion down there, hence the stocklist showing 2 when you checked this afternoon. They were not on display but hidden away in the stockroom and the assistant who went and pulled one out for me was surprised by the price reduction.

Thanks Martin.

Keith

[martin_wynne]

More playing with the Maplin £10 neg scanner.

 

The nuclear flask transfer yard at Trawsfynydd in August 1969. No post processing, as scanned:

 

 

 

 

 

Hard to believe that's 45 years ago -- I remember the day, but this is the first time I've seen the pics. Should I be posting stuff like this in its own topic? It looks very modellable.

 

Martin.

[flyingsignalman]

 

 

 

These are from some very scruffy negs from the 1960s. They needed a lot of tidying up in PaintShopPro but the results are much better than I expected. I think it is Abermule. Anyone?

 

 

Martin.

Yes that's Abermule. Here's a scan of a slide I took about 1981.

 

[Jon Fitness]

Here's a couple of scanned B&W negs.

Bickershaw colliery 1983

Atherton Goods Yard SB interior 1983

Straight scans but re-sized for posting. Sadly I have yet to obtain a decent scan from a colour neg but I'll keep trying.

JF

[Jon Fitness]

Here's a typical attempt at a colour neg scan. I'm sure it must be something I'm not setting right. The black and white ones seem trouble free..

Eccles 1982 (I think)

JF

[martin_wynne]

Hi Jon,

 

There's nothing wrong with the scanner settings. In fact on the Maplin scanner there isn't anything to adjust.

 

The problem is the orange filter which is included on all colour-negative film to reduce the blue sensitivity. The filter has to be corrected out at the printing stage with a cyan filter, and getting it right is tricky. Anyone who has tried darkroom colour printing (i.e. with chemicals) will know how difficult that can be. I dread to think how much expensive colour materials I wasted doing test strips and test prints, just to get one half-decent final print. Another problem is the way the human eye adjusts to a colour cast, so that the longer you look at a picture the better it appears. Until you look at it again 10 minutes later!

 

The main problem with colour film is that the image is formed from coloured dyes which degrade with time and storage conditions. Which usually means that a colour correction which is right for one part of the image is wrong for another part. Usually the best way to deal with that is to reduce the overall colour saturation, so that the picture starts to look a bit like a washed out water-colour painting. You can then brighten it up by increasing the contrast a bit.

 

Here in PaintShopPro I removed a lot of red, and reduced the saturation. I think it looks better, but it's very subjective. Someone else might think it's a lot worse:

 

 

And with the saturation further reduced:

 

 

Is it now a bit green? Sampling the colours on the yellow loco front doesn't suggest so, but...

 

Anyone else fancy having a go?

 

Martin.

[Pugsley]

Here's my effort, with a little tweaking in Photoshop:

 

I've adjusted the colour balance and contrast.

[Froxfield2012]

Couldn't resist my own go, which comes out pretty much like Pugsley's.  Using Photoshop CS6 and just clicking on the "auto colour" and "auto contrast" menu items in "Image".  It was that simple.  The chain welding shots are great and for £10 it looks like an absolute bargain although it won't do 120 film and glass plates.  Otherwise I might try to find one!

 

Richard

 

PS Of course, buying (or renting these days!) a full copy of Photoshop adds to the £10 cost quite a bit .  But I guess Photoshop Elements might do the job.

 

[martin_wynne]

PS Of course, buying (or renting these days!) a full copy of Photoshop adds to the £10 cost quite a bit .  But I guess Photoshop Elements might do the job.

 

post-7179-0-95470200-1394926121_thumb.jpg

 

The Maplin £10 film scanner comes with a bundled copy of Arcsoft MediaImpression which includes all the colour correction functions, and the scanner controls. You don't need any additional software. For a more powerful image editing program, try GIMP (free): http://www.gimp.org

 

I used my existing copy of PaintShopPro only because I'm familiar with it.

 

Those last two look a bit icy blue on my monitor, especially the pile of ballast by the loco cab. That's another variable of course, your monitor's colour temperature setting.

 

Martin.

[TheSignalEngineer]

From my own experience I have found that a small number of colour prints and slides were just too bad to get a decent balance across the whole spectrum. Most of these made good black and white prints though. This was taken on a misty day in summer 1964 on Gevaert colour slide film, notorious for blue casts and fading.

 

The first is from the slide with minimal adjustment on the scanner software, the second is rescanned and reprocessed as a grayscale picture.

 

 

[MikeOxon]

...I'm sure it must be something I'm not setting right....

 

I couldn't resist having my own go, over morning coffee.

 

I used my ancient copy of Photoshop Elements 2.  The first step was to try auto colour correction (as used by Froxfield2012).  This is useful to give an indication of where to go next.  In fact this would be quite a tricky shot even with a digital camera, as there is strong front lighting against a cloudy sky. 

 

I used the 'magic wand' tool to select the sky and then 'brightness' and 'contrast', to bring out the cloud details.  After that, I use the 'dodge' and 'burn' tools to correct the shadows and highlights, plus some use of the 'saturation sponge' to enhance specific colour areas.

 

 

I do quite a lot of this sort of thing, so find it doesn't take long, but I appreciate that it takes practice and you would not want to do it on every photo!  As others have said, you do have to work on separate parts of the image with different tools in order to bring out the best in a print - the old expert photo printers knew all about that!

 

Mike

[TheSignalEngineer]

From my own experience I have found that a small number of colour prints and slides were just too bad to get a decent balance across the whole spectrum. Most of these made good black and white prints though. This was taken on a misty day in summer 1964 on Gevaert colour slide film, notorious for blue casts and fading.

 

The first is from the slide with minimal adjustment on the scanner software, the second is rescanned and reprocessed as a grayscale picture.

 

CTT_002_00 (2) (640x428).jpg

 

CTT_002_01_g01 (2) (640x428).jpg

O/T but the loco is 050-T E-523. The 3 SNCF men on the right were trying to find the owners of the parked cars as they were shunting the stock to the road nearest the camera. 

[Jon Fitness]

Thanks for your efforts with my pair of 31s! Each one is a great improvement and it would appear I have a lot to learn when time permits. I got the arcsoft software bundled with the scanner too so I'll just have to get to grips with it. I also have photoshop elements on my computer so more learning to do. I have tried the "scan as b&w " trick as shown an that made an improvement.

Many thanks for all the hints and tips so far!

JF

[MikeOxon]

If you have had prints made from your colour negs, it's often easier to scan the print with a flat-bed scanner than to scan the neg.  It won't give ultimate quality but it avoids having to tackle the orange colour mask yourself.

[Pugsley]

Those last two look a bit icy blue on my monitor, especially the pile of ballast by the loco cab. That's another variable of course, your monitor's colour temperature setting.

I've found this to be a particularly useful site for monitor calibration:

 

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

[Jon Fitness]

If you have had prints made from your colour negs, it's often easier to scan the print with a flat-bed scanner than to scan the neg.  It won't give ultimate quality but it avoids having to tackle the orange colour mask yourself.

I'm beginning to think that. It's just the paper I had the originals printed on was slightly textured. Seemed all the rage at the time but it means the scans aren't as crisp as I wanted. Not sure if I can improve things yet!

JF