Optimal settings to scan from 35mm film?

dtokez

dtokez

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Dan
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Hi all

We have lots of 35mm slides to scan and have purchased a Epson scanner. I have done some tests at 600 DPI and they look OK, but the filesizes are quite large.

What is the optimal DPI to scan at to not loose any quality, but obviously not to be overkill and have unnecessary large file sizes? Also what about JPEG compression?

Many thanks
 
What's the end purpose? Prints & if so how big? Web use?
 
Hi, not really planned the end purpose, possibly 6x4 prints? Ideally we would just like to store them digitally for now with no quality loss from the originals?
Thanks
 
What is the scanner? 600dpi is nothing for a film neg, that's only about 1000px wide for 35mm. Dedicated high end film scanners are working at 5400dpi, or the equivalent of a 36MP digital camera or thereabouts! Mine are done at 2820Dpi, or about 8MP.

With regards not loosing quality, that depends more on what they were shot with and on in the first place. If I shoot on Ektar 100 with good lenses, I'd need about 20Mp equivalent to keep the quality. If I shoot on CMS20, I'd be able to go beyond 5400Dpi. If however I'm looking at stuff shot with a god awful focus free compact on some horrid consumer 400 film from the 80s, then I'd get away with a lot less, and my dedicated Minolta scanner is very much overkill!
 
dtokez said:
Hi, not really planned the end purpose
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Then why scan them?


dtokez said:
Ideally we would just like to store them digitally for now with no quality loss from the originals?
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They are never going to be as good as the originals.

my usual advcice to people wanting to scan lots of negatives is don't bother. You will spend many hours doing something tedious and you will resent doing it.

Much better to just scan them as and when you need them and keep the originals as the archive.


Steve.
 
I’m currently scanning a load of black and white 35 mm negatives. I’m using an Epson V500.
After much messing around and comparing I have settled on using 16bit greyscale and 2400ppi. This gives me a file size of about 20 meg. Im happy enough. I don’t have any of the setting enabled either.
I’m finding it a worthwhile experience. I recently did the same with my grans old negatives and prints. Having them on computer allows me to share the pictures around the family in a much more versatile format. They are now being looked at rather than stuck under a bed in a box. A digital back up is no bad thing, its just as easy to destroy a box of negatives as anything else.
 
This is my take on scanning a film:

If, once scanned... I start zooming in in Photoshop... if I see the grain of the film before I see the aliasing of pixels.... result. If I see aliasing before grain... not good enough.
 
Blasted said:
its just as easy to destroy a box of negatives as anything else.
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No it's not. Whilst it's not a bad idea to have scanned backup files, I bet the originals outlast your files by many years!

A box of negatives and/or prints stored under a bed or in a cupboard remains a box of negatives and/or prints without you doing anything at all. Digital files need constant attention and backing up otherwise you are left with a bunch of corrupt files or perfectly good files on media you can no longer read.


Steve.
 
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Steve Smith said:
No it's not. Whilst it's not a bad idea to have scanned backupo files, I bet the originals outlast your files by many years!

A box of negatives and/or prints stored under a bed or in a cupboard remains a box of negatives and/or prints without you doing anything at all. Digital files need constant attention and backing up otherwise you are left with a bunch of corrupt files or perfectly good files on media you can no longer read.


Steve.
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I disagree, Its not inconcievable for them to be thrown away or damaged by fire or flooding or any other means inbetween. On top of that you cant say there won't be any chemical degredation over time, unless of course you monitor the environmental conditons, which as you say for digital, will require constant attention. Negatives are good no doubt, and properly looked after will last a great deal of time. But a digital version of the image is a much more versitle medium. Any format that gets people looking at the pictures rather than them being hidden away has got to be better than nothing. Unless that is of course you don't like looking at your own pictures.
 
How many boxes of prints exist from fifty plus years ago? How many files do you still have from thirty or even twenty years ago?


Blasted said:
Any format that gets people looking at the pictures rather than them being hidden away has got to be better than nothing.
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That is certainly true. However, the example I always give is that of clearing out a deceased relative's house. If you find an old album in the loft or a drawer, you will invariably stop to have a look through it and someone will usually keep it.

If you found a CD with images on, I doubt that it would ever get looked at again.


Steve Smith said:
My usual advcice to people wanting to scan lots of negatives is don't bother. You will spend many hours doing something tedious and you will resent doing it.
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Just to clarify my original point - I often see threads on other forums which say something like "I have 10,000 slides I need to scan". When you work out how much spare time that person has to do it and the amount of time a scan takes to do properly, you can often work out the total elapsed time in years rather than hours.

When you are doing a repetitive task you tend to lose interest and not do a thorough job of it. Hence my suggestion to do them as and when you want to use them rather as a job lot.

Doing them in small batches, e.g. ten at a time to share with relatives and friends is a much better plan.

Steve.
 
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Steve Smith said:
No it's not. Whilst it's not a bad idea to have scanned backup files, I bet the originals outlast your files by many years!


Steve.
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I have files I saved from decades ago when I was using a Commodore Amiga.... back n the 80s. Still all here. Migrated from floppies, to zip discs, then tape drive, then CD, then DVD, now all reside on my server. I have however, lost negatives from that period.


Steve Smith said:
No it's not. Whilst it's not a bad idea to have scanned backup files, I bet the originals outlast your files by many years!
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Only if you're sloppy with your data. Then again, if you're sloppy with your material possessions, you will likely lose or damage them too.

Triple redundant backups going in here... and mirrors to 2 more independent systems..... and cloud.

Bring it on!

I've already proven that it's safer to store data than negatives.




Steve Smith said:
How many boxes of prints exist from fifty plus years ago? How many files do you still have from thirty or even twenty years ago?
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I have lost negatives from 30 years ago. I have not lost any files that I intended to keep... once archived. I've lost files through error and data corruption at the taking stage (due to not immediately backing up), or when transferring.. but once on the system and backed up... nothing. Losing files during the transfer, capture, or initial storage on card is akin to losing a roll of film prior to processing though... that's happened too.. accidental fogging, or accidental physical loss. It was easier to damage film prior to processing than it is to lose files prior to back up.




Steve Smith said:
That is certainly true. However, the example I always give is that of clearing out a deceased relative's house. If you find an old album in the loft or a drawer, you will invariably stop to have a look through it and someone will usually keep it.

If you found a CD with images on, I doubt that it would ever get looked at again.
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Of course I'd look at it!!! Why wouldn't I? Why would I be less likely to look at that than a photo album? Anyway... who the hell archives on optical discs except people who don't know what they're doing? You'll also find people who are just as clueless about archival storage of negatives too though.
 
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It is a Epson V330 which seems to do a pretty good job. When I said I wasn't sure of the end purpose I mean't that some might be just viewed digitally, some might be printed, some might be blown up etc. I can't see the point in not digitizing them. Computer experts say that data is not actually data unless it exists in at least 3 places - so surely it is similar with hard copies of photos. It does not take much for the originals to be wiped out, but all my digital data is backed up on a hard drive that I have in a different house just in case.

I guess it might just have to be a case of trial and error then with regard to the settings that I should use? Any general pointers for jpeg settings or anything?

Cheers all
 
If its any help, many years ago I was involved in scanning both negs and slides. we did some tests, and found that an uncompressed file size from the average 35mm original came in at about 24Mb. Slides seemed to a bit better at a slightly large resolution, but not a huge amount. Now the final quality does depend on the quality of the original and the scanner itself. The actual resolution we were using was around 2,000 ppi. With typical JPEG compression we were obtaining files about 2Mb in size
 
Thanks for the input John. How much JPEG compression did you use?
 
Might be best to post in talk film and conventional section if you want some more input. Lots of film users scan their negatives and discuss it there, but may not visit this section.
 
I use a dedicated film scanner so can't comment on the Epson you use. But I'd scan at 2000 - 2500dpi as mentioned above, in 8-bit rgb. If you can scan individually rather than batch you may find that each image ideally needs different settings in the scanning software (eg levels / curves). First choice of output would be tiffs, otherwise uncompressed jpg's. Try it with a few and review the results by enlarging them on screen, before proceeding further.
 
From memory, and it is some years ago we opted to keep the file size reasonably large which produced a JPEG of around 10% of the original.
 
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