Help me out with some disk film (yes, off of the 80s)

JonathanRyan

JonathanRyan

Suspended / Banned
Messages
10,765
Name
Jonathan
Edit My Images
Yes
Long story short......client's wife has recently died. I'm scanning and restoring some pictures for him which are obviously of great sentimental value. I'm doing OK with slides and various brands of damaged prints but I'm now struggling with some disk film.

This is the disk stuff that Kodak inflicted on the world for a brief period in the early 80s. I have the negs which are still in disk format. I've tossed them in my Epson Perfection 4490, set it to neg mode set to 6,400 dpi and gone off for a cup of coffee. It renders the entire film as a 170 MB tiff. I can slice individual files off this in PS and the colours aren't actually too bad (for the 80s). But the pics are horribly soft.

Is there any way to get better scans without cutting the negs? For obvious reasons I want to avoid that. Or is the softness just because the negs are really really tiny?

Or.......does anybody have the equipment to print from these? Yeah, long shot.....

I've attached one that I've run through Topaz Clarity as much as I dare. You'll understand I've picked a non personal one ;)

View attachment 8339
 
Job. From. Hell.

Maybe you're doing the best you can - the prints you used to get back from those disk cameras *were* horribly soft.
 
Lyope said:
Maybe you're doing the best you can - the prints you used to get back from those disk cameras *were* horribly soft.
Click to expand...

But....but...but....Wikipedia says Kodak invented it so they could make much sharper pictures! Yeah, I know.....

At least these ones aren't creased torn and soaked in tea :)
 
Wowsers. Old Film Processing can do the job. They want £35 per film (not too bad I guess) and say it should be complete within 4 months :(
 
I would try and adjust the film so it's at the optimum height (and therefore sharpness) for your 4490. Failing that, although it involves cutting, I'd mount the cut negative on a 35mm slide and then scan it with a proper dedicated 35mm film scanner.
 
freecom2 said:
I would try and adjust the film so it's at the optimum height (and therefore sharpness) for your 4490.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I don't know how familiar you are with the film - there's a plastic boss in the middle which is thin on one side and thick on the other. Without cutting that basically gives me a choice of 2 heights. This is at the lower height which looks roughly as thick as an Epson neg holder. But I realise that "roughly" could be a long way out for these purposes.
 
What about making a rig and using your dslr to photograph the negs? A couple of folk round here have done it and get better results than with the flatbed.
 
steveo_mcg said:
What about making a rig and using your dslr to photograph the negs? A couple of folk round here have done it and get better results than with the flatbed.
Click to expand...

I was idly wondering about that. I'd have to figure out how to illuminate it.
 
@JonathanRyan this place does a scanning service for £20 a disc. Their scans are about 5 mp, and from experience with this company I know they'll do a good job (I use them for 110 processing when I put a cartridge through my Pentax Auto 110 SLR and they do a really good job for the price they charge).

http://www.photofilmprocessing.co.uk/DISCFilmProcessing.html

I wouldn't touch Oldfilmprocessing with a bargepole, they charge excessive prices for services that others do for a much more economical price (and I imagine for the same or better quality!)

Part of the reason why disc film prints were so soft was because the labs printing it were supposed to buy and use a new printing lens optimised for the tiny negative. Most didn't bother though and just used their standard lenses which made the prints look even worst than they were already.
 
Ulfric M Douglas said:
As far as I remember the results were worse (softer) than even the later APS film, something like 110 quality ... which seems the wrong word.

Quality.

Not.
Click to expand...

Even worst than 110 quality in fact. For small prints 110 is not actually too bad - especially with todays emulsion technology - the softness usually resulted from the cheap/simple lenses used on the snapshot style cameras that mostly used 110. The Pentax Auto 110 SLR which I have produces some lovely sharp shots with the 3 lenses which I have for it.

To put it in perspective though, the disc film negative was only 11mm x 8mm compared to 110's 17mm x 13mm, or in terms of area only about 40% of the size of 110! Because it represented such a difficult medium to get quality out of, apparently Kodak used to deliberately release new emulsions in disc first to the extent that they were usually 1 or 2 generations ahead of the other formats!
 
id try the dslr method, its reasonably quick. i think finding a material to defuse the light will be the key, need a very smooth light, i tried tracing paper and it added a bunch of grain
 
s162216 said:
@JonathanRyan this place does a scanning service for £20 a disc. Their scans are about 5 mp, and from experience with this company I know they'll do a good job (I use them for 110 processing when I put a cartridge through my Pentax Auto 110 SLR and they do a really good job for the price they charge).

http://www.photofilmprocessing.co.uk/DISCFilmProcessing.html

I wouldn't touch Oldfilmprocessing with a bargepole, they charge excessive prices for services that others do for a much more economical price (and I imagine for the same or better quality!)

Part of the reason why disc film prints were so soft was because the labs printing it were supposed to buy and use a new printing lens optimised for the tiny negative. Most didn't bother though and just used their standard lenses which made the prints look even worst than they were already.
Click to expand...

Thanks - very interesting.

Based on the other pics from this client I'm now trying to work out if the softness if my scanning or his photography :)
 
@JonathanRyan With a flatbed you won't get more than about 2400 dpi maximum out of it even if you stick it to the maximum optical resolution (because although the sensor can resolve 6400 dpi, the optics in the scanning path - especially the high pass filter - limit the actual resolved resolution) so essentially the files just become bloated with excess information which gives no more detail! Thats probably part of the reason for the softness (especially considering the tiny 11x8mm negative), and the other more major factor is probably the original camera they were taken on as few if any disc cameras had anything better than very simple optics (like with the 110 example I said about above).
 
s162216 said:
@JonathanRyan With a flatbed you won't get more than about 2400 dpi maximum out of it even if you stick it to the maximum optical resolution (because although the sensor can resolve 6400 dpi, the optics in the scanning path - especially the high pass filter - limit the actual resolved resolution) so essentially the files just become bloated with excess information which gives no more detail! Thats probably part of the reason for the softness (especially considering the tiny 11x8mm negative), and the other more major factor is probably the original camera they were taken on as few if any disc cameras had anything better than very simple optics (like with the 110 example I said about above).
Click to expand...

Thanks.

So you're basically saying this is probably the best I can do with this scanner? Largely because

1. It's a stupidly small neg
2. The lenses they put on the disc cameras were pretty useless
3. We're unsure if the photos were actually shake free / correctly focussed in the first place (and I can't easily check with say a loupe because the negs are so small)
4. My scanner's lying about its resolution :)

If all that's true, I think I'll just tart them a bit and then drop into a lab to see what the 6X4s look like. They look nasty on a 27 inch iMac but prints may look better.
 
Considering that a professional 4000 dpi scan would only result in an ~2.2 mp file anyway for such a tiny negative I think thats probably the best thing to do! The aspect ratio of the disc negative is ~1.37 so you'll lose a bit off the sides or top with either 5x4 or 6x4 prints (pretty much the same actually with either so it makes me wonder whether that was a deliberate decision seeing as 5x4 and 6x4 were both standard sizes at the time?).
 
My scans claim to be 5MP but there's not a huge amount of detail in them. Interestingly there's a slightly lighter area on the neg which surrounds the area I assume they print from. There's more picture there but it's at a different brightness level.

lightarea.jpg


Also, the negs overlap. It's like Kodak were trying to mess this up.
 
Don't forget it's upside down too?
 
Hi Jonathan, If you were thinking of going down the copying road via your camera and have access to an iPad you can get a free app that will turn your iPad into a light box. I have used this method several times with good results. You will need to raise the negs a bit from the iPad screen as if they are too close you will see the light grid of the iPad in focus. All I do is place a 10x8 picture frame glass over the iPad raised up on four bits of blue tac etc. Lay the negs on top of that and you have a very good diffused light source suitable for copying negs or slides.

If you don't have access to an iPad and maybe have another tablet etc and there is not an app available then just photograph a piece of white card etc filling the frame (it doesn't matter if it's in focus) bring the blank white card shot up on the screen and there you are the perfect light source.

Hope this helps.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top