The Zen of film scanning

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This is not a “ how do I do X or Y” type post but a bit of a ramble around old and new film photography – from the point of view of a casual amateur.

My wife and I have taken photos since the 60’s. I had an ordinary time whereas she was globetrotting from an early age with the family. We have boxes of prints, slides and negatives – hardly looked at for decades and so, a few years ago I decided to start scanning these and put them on Google photos ( and now Amazon Prime and NAS ) so we can actually see them and reminisce. Aren’t iPads wonderful ?

You can look on this as a chore – ( and I probably would have given up long ago if it had felt like this ) or as an occasional pastime in the quiet hours to reflect on time past. It takes about 3-4 mins per scan on my Proscan 10T – long enough to get on with some household chores interim in the day or just look at the pics at night as they come out. I just do one or two rolls a day although I have had an occasional Netflix type binge and done 4 or 6 .

For me, one thing I noticed is that the quality of the scans are far far better than most prints we had at the time ( and I am only scanning to jpeg with basic settings in Vuescan, maybe tweaked a little if needed. I sometimes go to TIFF/RAW if there is something I really want to do to the image but basically these are “snaps’ not creations of artistic merit.

We also had a lot of aps films so I used Mr-scan.co.uk for these – brilliant job.

This gets me back to film photography: I like film photography and, until a few years ago, I was shooting basic Fujifilm Superia or FP4/HPS regularly – the C41 processed in our local ASDA and the B&W at home. The former stopped and this has put me off though I expect I will try a postal service some time. ASDA was cheap and good and I had had run ins with Max Spielman when they fogged my negs and blamed me.

I did look at the Rollei 25 C kits but I worked out that it would be more expensive than lab processing unless I was zapping off a huge ( for me ) number of rolls.
 
I find scanning to be the ideal partner to listening to football matches on the BBC Sounds app on the computer. This removes the potential guilt of "I should really be doing something" while listening to the football. ;) Music programmes are equally good, but not news or talk programmes as you lose attention to both.
 
Ab Fab or One Foot In The Grave while I'm scanning at the moment. Yay for Britbox.
 
The only ZEN part of scanning ( or any other digital part of photography) for me personally is the relief when it's completed and I've managed to obtain the result I desire ( which I might add often doesn't come from a scan!)
 
I must be in the minority as I love scanning film. Zen? Definitely.

That raw positive slowly appearing in Vuescan while I'm doing something else (listening to a CD, reading some news)? I always look forward to it and to the potential creative possibilities about to appear with that file (which is more likely to be just another cr*p shot of mine, honestly :LOL: )

But I am perhaps an unusual film photography user. I get the impression that for many film photography fans the 'real target' is a wet lab print. I'm surprised at how many people consider a scan an 'imperfect' way to finish a film photography workflow. I'm surprised at how many people see a negative not as an end point (from a data-container point of view), but as an intermediate step to a wet lab print. Must be a generational issue. I've heard it all: a scan 'is an abomination/doesn't make sense/why bother with film if you want a digital file/it's akin to cheating because you can post-process'. Me I guess I'm in the camp of those who want a 'digital' end product, such as a scan, but want to get there via a fully analog workflow up to a negative, and I will always try to optimise my workflow to achieve the best scan.

Unpopular opinion: in general, I think wet lab printing is way overrated. A good print can be a work of art (yes, I've been lucky to appreciate many exhibition-grade wet lab prints over the years), but many wet lab prints are a disaster. In my opinion a perfectly executed scan of a well exposed and well developed negative can be as beautiful, and as challenging to obtain, as a good wet lab print.
 
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trypdal said:
I'm surprised at how many people consider a scan an 'imperfect' way to finish a film photography workflow.
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There are some without a doubt but I’m not one of them.

In the same way that digi and film cameraa both have advantages and offer a completely different way to obtain a photograph, so does, imo, scan/ inkjet printing and darkroom wet printing.

Out of the two methods, I much prefer the darkroom but I have some superb inkjet prints from negative scans that I haven’t been able duplicate in the darkroom to a standard that comes anywhere close.
On the other hand I have wet prints that simply look better than their inkjet versions.

it can be interesting to have a print made by each method to compare, not so much to see which is better , but to realise that they both offer a certain style that is pleasing......just like results from a FF digi camera and a 35mm film SLR
 
trypdal said:
That raw positive slowly appearing in Vuescan while I'm doing something else (listening to a CD, reading some news)? I always look forward to it and to the potential creative possibilities about to appear with that file (which is more likely to be just another cr*p shot of mine, honestly :LOL: )
Click to expand...

If I take nothing else away from this forum post, I'll take this. I absolutely used to have the opinion that...

Asha said:
The only ZEN part of scanning ( or any other digital part of photography) for me personally is the relief when it's completed
Click to expand...

But in future, when I scan my film, I shall try and take the "trypdal approach" which will definitely ease my sanity.

I say "try" :)
 
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Using a flatbed Epson V600 scanner enables me to load the negatives and press 'Scan' and leave it to do it's work while I get on with some housework, cooking, etc. I then come back once it's finished and load the next lot and repeat as necessary. :)
 
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