film scanners

woodstock

woodstock

Final Approach
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anyone have an opinion on the Epson perfection 4180? it's a decent price and I understand film scanners are better than flatbeds (if not as useful)
 
woodstock said:
anyone have an opinion on the Epson perfection 4180? it's a decent price and I understand film scanners are better than flatbeds (if not as useful)
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Do you mean slide / film scanners, ones built for scaning negative and positive films?

I've never used a decent consumer grade scanner... they always screw up the colors. Damn you Harley for getting me hooked on Velvia!

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
I believe so - you pop the negatives in and it scans them. I don't think this one has a flatbed also, but I could be wrong.
 
The determining factors in a scanner are pretty much resolution and color depth, as far as I know. In both cases, higher is always better where quality is concerned.

A film scanner needs a much higher resolution to be able to take an image on film and blow it up to a more normal viewing size.
 
Film scanners can be really great, if you get the right bit-depth and resolution.

I have a Minolta DiMage Elite 5400 that I'm very, very happy with.

I have, in a box, a Canon FS-2710 that I intend to list on Ebay. It worked OK, but the SCSI interface under WinXP requires some special stuff (officially: not supported, but there's a way around that), and I decided I wanted to go for the higher resolution. It should work fine with a Mac, and it will work fine under Win 98. I just need to find a buyer....

The New Orleans picture is a picture taken on film and scanned at 5400 dpi with the Minolta scanner. I resized it in Photoshop and converted from 16 bits/channel to 8 bits/channel.

The Paris picture was scanned with the older Canon FS2710, resized in Photoshop.

For both pictures I made some slight brightness/contrast adjustments.

bill
 
One more... this was done with the Canon @ 2700 dpi and reduced in size for the electronic screen. The halo around Notre Dame was from the sun, placed directly between the spires.
 
woodstock said:
excellent! the halo is good symbolism.
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Yep, that's why I like that one.

You catch the laser off the Eiffel Tower?
 
Spent most of my professional career evaluating and testing film scanners. From Nikon Coolscans all the way up to the Scitex Creo smartscans. There are a couple of factors but bit depth (8 vs 12 vs 16) is a big issue as well as the quality of the Lookup tables used by the vendor. 16 Bit is important if you plan on negative scanning. For our money Imacon makes the best film scanner but at $18K its not exactly consumer. Nikon's various scanners come up second in our evaluation. We went 100 digital this year so not much use for film scanners anymore. The kodak scanners win hands down for speed.

All that said, having you files scanned by a Kodak lab on PhotoCD might be a lot cheaper and get you a much better scan.


Dan Corjulo
The Hartford Courant Newspaper
 
corjulo said:
Spent most of my professional career evaluating and testing film scanners. From Nikon Coolscans all the way up to the Scitex Creo smartscans. There are a couple of factors but bit depth (8 vs 12 vs 16) is a big issue as well as the quality of the Lookup tables used by the vendor. 16 Bit is important if you plan on negative scanning. For our money Imacon makes the best film scanner but at $18K its not exactly consumer. Nikon's various scanners come up second in our evaluation. We went 100 digital this year so not much use for film scanners anymore. The kodak scanners win hands down for speed.

All that said, having you files scanned by a Kodak lab on PhotoCD might be a lot cheaper and get you a much better scan.


Dan Corjulo
The Hartford Courant Newspaper
Click to expand...

Hi Dan

I can get the Epson for 200 bucks, and I have a LOT of old negatives. I am not looking for pro quality (if I want something pro, I can do it individually at a pro shop) just something decent to put on websites mostly.

thanks!
 
corjulo said:
Spent most of my professional career evaluating and testing film scanners. From Nikon Coolscans all the way up to the Scitex Creo smartscans. There are a couple of factors but bit depth (8 vs 12 vs 16) is a big issue as well as the quality of the Lookup tables used by the vendor. 16 Bit is important if you plan on negative scanning. For our money Imacon makes the best film scanner but at $18K its not exactly consumer. Nikon's various scanners come up second in our evaluation. We went 100 digital this year so not much use for film scanners anymore. The kodak scanners win hands down for speed.

All that said, having you files scanned by a Kodak lab on PhotoCD might be a lot cheaper and get you a much better scan.


Dan Corjulo
The Hartford Courant Newspaper
Click to expand...

Dan,

Are you all shooting pure digital 35mm stuff, or converted MF / 35mm rigs with digital backs?

I really want a Contax 645AF with a Kodak digital back.

My finacee's family lives in Simsbury and East Granby. Next time I'm down, we should get a coffee / beer / whatever and do some hangar flying.

Elizabeth,

The big problem with negative scanning is that you want the best quality to make sure you get a good quality scan from it - 16bit, for example - but the problem is cost. Nikon makes some great gear.

A crappy scan is worse than a crappy print, I think, because you've already bought the hardware versus going to a different printer. But that is my .02.

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
And I'll add one more thing here.

Once you get the scanner and work with it a bit, you'll not be satisfied. Then you'll step up to a better scanner. Guess what? Not satisified. Then you buy Photoshop V.8 for $700.

Now all you need is time.

It works exactly the same way as it does with airplanes....

(Thats how us males do it, anyway)
 
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