MF Scanning at home vs lab

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gunnar

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So I've put first couple or rolls through my rolleiflex and now I have a dilemma: get the lab (AG photo) to scan them or buy a scanner and do it myself.

Looks like Epson V550 will pay for itself very quickly and I will also have a complete freedom as to how I scan.

On the other hand professional scanners whey use (Noritsu) will probably deliver better quality.

Any thoughts?
 
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I would do it myself in order to excercise quality control, especially over tonal range. I've had colour negs scanned by Ag where highlight detail present on the negs was lost in the scans. To my mind this consideration outweighs any issues of pixels per inch.
 
droj, thank you.

What about AG development service? Are you happy with them?
 
Up until this year I home scanned and devved all my negs. When Mrs Snap started also shooting film and entered the Film POTY she insisted on sending her films off to Filmdev for Dev and scans, doesn't trust me obviously:D. When the downloads arrived I was amazed at how sharp they were and when i later home scanned a couple of shots the Filmdev examples were noticeable and significantly superior. I have an older Epson scanner, the 4990, as this scans large format, but I don't believe it is any worse than the v500 so I now get any important rolls done by Filmdev and just scan my test rolls etc and large format negs.
I'm not trying to put you off getting a scanner as they are very good but I am convinced that the pro scanners are much better.

Andy
 
What sort of resolution do the images come back in? Its a shame they don't do large format. Scanning is such a ballache it would be nice to farm some of it out.
 
AshleyC said:
What sort of resolution do the images come back in? Its a shame they don't do large format. Scanning is such a ballache it would be nice to farm some of it out.
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About 5mb for the medium sized scans, not had any large sized done as yet.
 
I'd agree with what Andy said about lab scans being better quality, but that does come at a price. As a compromise, I bought an Epson V600 and I find MF scans from it are perfectly acceptable to me for everyday type photography. 35mm scans aren't too bad from it either, but I've found more of a difference between those and 35mm lab scans. I mainly use Kodak Ektar 100, Fuji Neopan Acros 100 and Ilford XP2 400 and find the V600 copes OK with those.

What I tend to do these days is use my scanner for every-day type stuff, but opt for a high-res scan of the negs done by a lab at the same time as development if I think I've taken something a bit 'special'. Here's an MF scan from the V600 (not tweaked in Photoshop as far as I remember), taken with my Yashinon lensed Yashica 635 (so not too dissimilar to what you could expect from your Rolleiflex). Also, with only 12 shots per roll of 120, scanning (and any subsequent Photoshop/Lightroom tweaking) doesn't take too long either - not like doing 36 of them anyway! Hope this is useful.

 
I am going to throw a spanner in the works :)

I don't use a flatbed scanner and I don't shoot larger than 120 film.

I have in the past had a couple of 35mm deved and scanned, can't for the life of me remeber where, and found them to be rather flat and grainy as anything.

I have two dedicated film scanners that I use and find them better than the scans I had done, mind you one of the scanners takes about 3-5 minutes per scan if I am doing a 6x6 in 48bit colour @ 4000dpi. It can be a very slow process.

I also use AG for deving and bit and bobs and I find their service to be very good, never used their scanning service, maybe should give them ago :)
 
I watched this video on Youtube a while back which gives a quick overview of scanning choices (High Street vs pro-lab vs home flatbed, plus a look a drum scans). It doesn't go into great detail, and is mostly focusing on 35mm, but I came away wishing I had a drum scanner (even though it would probably be a massive time sink and overkill for most of my shots - plus extremely expensive). :)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_SBv3yPKSk
 
For what it's worth ... I home dev, darkroom print and scan all my film. For a long while I used to be perfectly happy with my V500 flatbed scans but after having a couple of rolls lab processed and scanned during I realised what i'd been missing. For 35mm film I find there's a massive difference between a good lab scan and a good flatbed scan. For MF film there's less of a difference but still a noticeable difference in my opinion. I opted to sell the flatbed and bought a dedicated Minolta 5400 scanner which gives great results for 35mm (what I shoot 99% of the time), and either send my few MF negs to the lab or scan them with my DSLR & Macro if i'm in a rush.
 
Knikki said:
I am going to throw a spanner in the works :)

I don't use a flatbed scanner and I don't shoot larger than 120 film.

I have in the past had a couple of 35mm deved and scanned, can't for the life of me remeber where, and found them to be rather flat and grainy as anything.

I have two dedicated film scanners that I use and find them better than the scans I had done, mind you one of the scanners takes about 3-5 minutes per scan if I am doing a 6x6 in 48bit colour @ 4000dpi. It can be a very slow process.

I also use AG for deving and bit and bobs and I find their service to be very good, never used their scanning service, maybe should give them ago :)
Click to expand...

Nick, what scanners do you use?

6*6 at 4000 dpi in 5 minutes... doesn't sound too bad in terms of time, but the files must be YOUGE!
 
ChrisR said:
Nick, what scanners do you use?

6*6 at 4000 dpi in 5 minutes... doesn't sound too bad in terms of time, but the files must be YOUGE!
Click to expand...

Hi Chris

The scanner is a Microtek tf120 but i think most know it as the Polaroid Sprintscan 4000, noisy and slow :D however when you get Vuescan right it does a very good job, yep the file can be in excess of 300mb in size :D
 
I have had all sorts of scanners and lately i was in search of Plustek 120 /Nikon 9000ED to replace our SP3000 and SPrintscan 120 due to Frontiers Size and space it takes and Sprintscan is has no ice which is a pain,

There is no match between flatbeds and Professional film scanners irrespective of their use from home or in Lab, they will always produce superior results and quality.

I had had ended up buying Plustek 120 which was a great scanner however CCD broke down and stopped working so had to return it. Decided to keep Frontier SP-3000 for as long as i can have it in garage.

All Above -----> (IMHO)
 
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