Film to digital

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
Film dudes, and dudettes...

I've been going back to film... and I have a few questions about what other film shooters are doing to get to digital.

Obviously processing and scanning to CD services are still with us, as is the expensive part, printing...

I'm inclined to have the film processed and scanned directly to a CD by the processors... Here's the problem.. They all seem to use what I would consider a low resolution JPG as their standard... I'm guessing the reason is speed... I asked two processors what resolution their scanning system is, and got the deer-in-the-headlights looks... It's fairly obvious from their CD's file size, that the images are cursory, and not intended to meet any definition of quality...

My next step is a Nikon ES-1 slide copying adaptor, which creates images at the full resolution of my camera (a D600)...

If you're currently shooting film, which film are you shooting, and what is your workflow to get from the film to a digital image. Or do you NOT goto digital, and just order prints??????

Thank you for your input...
 

Eyelight

Senior Member
I have used an Epson RX series. It is an older unit, but does quit well on the positive and negative film I scanned with it.


I've been playing with copying slides using my 40mm Micro, but not refined it yet. My idea with it is copying fast and when I need higher quality, use the flatbed.

@STM shoots film and scans it to digital.
 

STM

Senior Member
I have used an Epson RX series. It is an older unit, but does quit well on the positive and negative film I scanned with it.


I've been playing with copying slides using my 40mm Micro, but not refined it yet. My idea with it is copying fast and when I need higher quality, use the flatbed.

@STM shoots film and scans it to digital.

Flatbed scanners do a decent job scanning negatives but they are a compromise. Your best quality will come with a dedicated scanner though not many high quality ones, especially in larger formats, are still made today. I use a Nikon Super CoolScan LS-8000. They are no longer made, but even used they are rather pricy ($2000 +/-). And they use a Firewire connection and not USB. But the quality at 4000 dpi is superb, especially with 6x6 or 6x4.5. I use Nikon Scan 4.03 software, which is not supported past Windows XP (though you can 'trick" it with Windows 7 but with some loss of features) so I have an older IBM laptop with XP and built in Firewire as essentially an integral part of the scanner. The combination works perfectly.
 

Eyelight

Senior Member
I experimented with various settings on the Epson and there is a certain DPI that beyond which there is nothing to gain. Looking back at some of my scans, it appears I settled on 4800 as the setting that was yielding as good a result as the next setting up.

There is also a trade-off between resolution and time. The higher the scan resolution the longer it takes. Seems like it took about 5 minutes to scan 4 slides (or negs) at 4800 dpi. Newer equipment may do better.

There are also copiers that use a digital sensor to copy 35mm film, so they work faster that scanners. Looked at them, but figured why not put the money into a decent lens instead.
 

hark

Administrator
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obama

Senior Member
You can also user your DSLR to scan the films. But you need a sharp lens, preferably macro. You will get a RAW editable file at high resolution.
 
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