Negative Scanners

[JeremyLangford]

I feel that a negative scanner would be a good investment but I have no idea what makes some of them cost so much more than others.

I want to be able to scan 35mm color negs with "Digital Ice" and make prints with the file after I scan it.

I want enough resolution to be able to scan @ 40inch 240dpi.

I dont know much about the bits or colors I would need or anything else.

Does anyone know how much I should be looking to pay or have any suggestions?

[navilluspm]

Originally Posted by JeremyLangford

I want enough resolution to be able to scan @ 40inch 240dpi.

I am not sure what you mean when you say @ 40 inch 240dpi. I can tell you that I am happy with my Minolta Dimage Scan Elite F-2900. It will allow me to print up to 8 x 12 at 300 dpi (Scanning at the maximum optical resolution of 2820). It uses SCSI, so you might have to do surgery on a new computer to make it work. Vuescan works great with it. It has ICE. You can get one for under $100 on Ebay.

If you want the best for 35mm, look for a Konica Minolta ScanElite 5400II. They seem to be the best. They do not make the any more (which is too bad.) They are pricey.

You can't go wrong with any of the Nikon Supercool Scans (LS 2000 and up). But I would not trade my Minolta for an LS 2000 - the Nikons just cost more, they aren't necessarily any better.

That's my 2cents. Good luck.

Michael

[rogue_designer]

40 inches for a 35mm negative is really pushing the bounds of what they'll hold in my opinion.

Most negative scanners don't go over 4000 dpi at 100% - which works out to be just short of 24 inches on the long side at your 240dpi.

If you want to go bigger than that - you'll need a> very fine grained film, and b> a drum or virtual drum scanner (costing quite alot).

If you really want to make big prints - looking at 35mm or a dSLR is the wrong way to start. 120 film is your best bet unless your budget goes into the tens of thousands of dollars.



To put this in perspective - the pixel dimensions of a 40 x 27 inch print (proportions of a 35mm frame) at 240 dpi is about 6400 x 9600 pixels - or to put it another way, a 61 megapixel image.

[JeremyLangford]

Originally Posted by rogue_designer

40 inches for a 35mm negative is really pushing the bounds of what they'll hold in my opinion.

Most negative scanners don't go over 4000 dpi at 100% - which works out to be just short of 24 inches on the long side at your 240dpi.

If you want to go bigger than that - you'll need a> very fine grained film, and b> a drum or virtual drum scanner (costing quite alot).

If you really want to make big prints - looking at 35mm or a dSLR is the wrong way to start. 120 film is your best bet unless your budget goes into the tens of thousands of dollars.



To put this in perspective - the pixel dimensions of a 40 x 27 inch print (proportions of a 35mm frame) at 240 dpi is about 6400 x 9600 pixels - or to put it another way, a 61 megapixel image.

Thank you. Thats good to know. You seem to know everything about resolution.

So what kind of things should I look for when reading about a certain scanner?

The main thing is see is the "DPI" and the "Bits". Is that all that matters?

[rogue_designer]

Originally Posted by JeremyLangford

So what kind of things should I look for when reading about a certain scanner?

The main thing is see is the "DPI" and the "Bits". Is that all that matters?

Bit depth = how much color data each pixel holds - the higher the bit depth, the more data, the more information for later use - the better. Assuming you have graphics software that can take advantage of it. Pretty standard for the better scanners these days is 16bits per channel, or at least 48 bit scanning...

Dpi - dictates your maximum resolution. The important numbers here are the optical or native resolution - if the word interpolated ever comes into play, you can ignore that number - that means the computer is making up data to fill in the gaps. Most negative scanners are in the 3200 - 4000 range, with "interpolated" higher numbers on the packaging. Unless you're paying $12,000 for an imacon, you can assume anything that says 6400 or 8000 dpi is an interpolated number.

dmax - (maximum density) somewhat overrated and not standardized measure, but still somewhat useful - this talks about how much reach the scanner has to really penetrate dense negs and slides. If you shoot lots of slide film (usually denser than color negative film) then a dmax in the 4.0 or higher range is where to look.

--

When I'm not shooting, I work as an art director and designer - I have to answer lots of print resolution questions all day long.

[rogue_designer]

Originally Posted by nikonhswebmaster

All depends on how close you want to stand. I routinely print 24 x 48 at 120 dpi and the prints look great. I know a photographer who has printed 35 mm at 20 x 40 feet.

Agreed - but since he stated 240 dpi, I'm guess he's expecting miracles about the kind of resolution and details he's going to get.

Viewing distance is key. But so are reasonable expectations.

[Kim Coxon]

The latest series of Nikon scanners ie the 4000 and 5000, scan at 4000dpi. This is about as good as you will get. However, they are pricey eveb secondhand if you can find one. The Coolscan III scans at 2700 dpi which is similar to the Minolta. I wuld do a search on the completed listings of eBay under "coolscan" and "dimage". I will shortly be getting rid of my Coolscan III but I suspect shipping to the US would not be worth it.

Kim

[JeremyLangford]

So is DPI the main difference between scanners?

Is that the main thing people pay nig bucks for?

[rogue_designer]

Originally Posted by JeremyLangford

So is DPI the main difference between scanners?

Is that the main thing people pay nig bucks for?

DPI, DMAX and sharpness/performance. A high DPI with a blurry image is meaningless.

[JeremyLangford]

wow. fast response.

[rogue_designer]

I'm on my "lunch break"

That sharpness factor is one reason why dedicated film scanners perform better than flatbed scanners with film scanning options - even though the nominal dmax/dpi are competative - the optics of a film scanner are optimized just for that task, and that is a huge advantage. But it also costs more.

[JeremyLangford]

How can something be measured by just DPI? Wouldn't you have to know the total size or inches the the scanner can scan at?

This has been confusing me all day.

[rogue_designer]

Originally Posted by JeremyLangford

How can something be measured by just DPI? Wouldn't you have to know the total size or inches the the scanner can scan at?

This has been confusing me all day.

The DPI numbers are at 100% of the original's size.

so, 4000dpi at 24mmx36mm - so you can convert that back down to print sizes.

Drum scanners and virtual drum scanners go the other way - a target output size and scan accordingly - but this is not an option with any of the consumer scanners, both technologically or practically.

Ok - back to work for me.

[JeremyLangford]

So this seems like its going to be hard to calculate DPINCH when I start at with millimeters.

Can you tell me the biggest size a 2700dpi scanner can scan @ 240dpi?

[rogue_designer]

from 35mm film - roughly 11"x16"

24mm x 36mm is a standard 35mm frame - that equals .945 x 1.417 inches if that helps in the future.

[JeremyLangford]

yea it will. Man Im so glad you made that clear.

[JeremyLangford]

So is there a certain DPI that should be equivalant to 35mm film and cover every grain of the film?

[d_ross]

yes, its called a drum scanner.

[d_ross]

Seriously though Jeremy, in reality you are never going to be able to make the qaulity of prints you seem to want to make without spending a considerable amount on a scanner, pretty much its the more you pay the better you get. and the only way you would ever get near a good 40inch print from a 35mm colour neg would be via a drum scanner. good luck though. The earlier advice about a med format camera is a better idea for your money if you want to make large prints.

[JeremyLangford]

Yea, I realize I can't get 40in. Im fine with smaller prints.

[jlw]

Let me try to sort this out a bit. When you scan an original, you wind up with a file that has certain pixel dimensions. That's an absolute number of pixels vertically and horizontall, NOT pixel "per" anything.

Think of it like this: suppose you're redoing your bathroom and you want the tiles to form an image of your school mascot. You sketch out the mascot, divide the image into squares, and decide that the least number of squares that will represent the mascot is, let's say, 40 x 40 tiles.

Now you give that sketch to your tile guy. He knows he's going to need to buy 40x40 or 160 tiles. (He also knows he's going to make a mint off this job!)

What you DON'T know yet is how big the tiles are going to be. If you decide to use little tiny quarter-inch tile chips, your design will come out taking up 10 inches by 10 inches on the floor. If you use 12-inch tiles, your design will come out taking up 40 by 40 FEET on the floor.

Notice that both designs will contain the same amount of fine detail -- there's only so much you can represent when you divide the mascot into a grid of 40 x 40 tiles.

So you can see it's the count of tiles (or pixels) that will determine how much detail is in the image; in this case, it's 40 x 40, regardless of size. The size of the tiles... quarter-inch, one inch, twelve inches, whatever -- will determine how big an image you get from a given pixel count.

So how does that apply to film scanners? My old Canon 4000 35mm scanner is rated at 4000 pixels across the height of a 35mm frame. In other words, when the film goes through, it gets divided up into 4000 little slices vertically. The length of the frame is about 1-1/2 times the height, so (assuming the scanner uses square pixels) it'll also slice it into about 6000 pixels along the film's length.

So, scanning a 35mm negative with this scanner will yield a file with dimensions of 4000 x 6000 pixels, period. We haven't specified "per inch" or per anything, because all this number tells us is how many "tiles" make up the image. It's later on, when we decide what size "tiles" to print, that we'll determine how big the final print will be.

It's at the printing stage that the "per inch" numbers get important. Suppose I'm going to print on one of the Epson Stylus Photo printers. These have impressively high-sounding numbers for how many ink droplets per inch they lay down. But since the printer has to combine several droplets to make a patch of color, the actual number of patches per inch is much lower. I've found through experience with my Epson printers that there's not much point in assuming you'll get more than 240 or 250 ink patches per inch. You can set the machine to print a higher number of patches per inch, but it won't translate into extra detail.

(These ink patches are sometimes called "printer pixels," but more commonly they're just called "dots" -- which is where you get specs such as 240 dots per inch or 300 dots per inch.)

So, I've got my 4000-pixel-high scan file, and I'm going to print it on my Epson printer that yields, say, 250 ink dots per inch. That means that each 250-pixel band of my scan file will lay down a band of printer dots one inch wide. Since I've got 250/4000 or 16 such bands, it means my 4000-pixel-high scan file will print at 16 inches high at a printer resolution of 250 dots per inch.

If I want to make a bigger print, I've still got only 4000 pixels to start with. So I have to tell my printer to make larger dots. That's no problem, except eventually the dots get so big that if you look closely at the print, they're visible to the naked eye. When that happens, people say the image is "pixellated" or "has got the jaggies," and for a print you're examining at a close distance, it's going to happen when you tell the printer to print about 100 ink dots per inch, or less. That 100-dot setting will make a print that's 40 inches tall -- 4000/100 -- but it won't stand up to close examination because the viewer will see dots instead of smooth tones.

Of course, if the print isn't going to be examined at a close distance -- and many huge prints are examined only from a distance -- then you can get away with much lower printer dots-per-inch numbers and make impressively large prints from your same 4000-pixel-tall image.

Does that make it thoroughly clear? Or are you thoroughly confused now?

[Bob Michaels]

Jeremy, as with almost everything in photography there is a learning curve. It will be a long long time before the quality of the output is limited by the equipment instead of your own skill.

Scanning, working up in an image editor (i.e. Photoshop) and printing is certainly not a point the mouse and click proposition. You can get "OK" output reasonably quick. "Good" takes a while to learn. "Really good" becomes a lifetime of continual learning, just as in the wet darkroom.

I don't want to dissuade you in any way. Just don't get too hung up over the quality of the equipment. It's you that matters.

[jarski]

is Nikon CoolScan V ED still good buy ? no rumors for updated model. I read from its spec that it was there already 3 years ago. 5000 ED or 9000 ED are so expensive that those are out of my reach.

[JNewell]

There are no rumors of an update and the state of the market makes an update very unlikely. It's still an excellent scanner and the only real choice IMO if you want to buy something that's not an orphan.

[anselwannab]

I agree with the learning curve comment. Besides DPI, bit depth , and DMAX, there are a host of other variables, like negative density, software used, scanning technique.

The good thing is that al it takes is a bit of screwing around to get to an optimized system. The better news is that there are alot of people here that can help out, and that not even considering the other websites out there.

I have a Minolta Scan Dual IV (3200dpi?, its been a few months). I can get good 11x17 prints, even 13x19 depending on maxing the variables. No digital ICE, but that doesn't work with B&W silver based films.

Something like the SDIV is $250. If I had it to do over, I might get a flat bed like a Epson 700/750 so I could do medium and large format negatives.

Mark