To scan or not to scan

PMN said:
Erm... No WE wouldn't! I don't want to do anything in auto when either taking the photo or scanning the film. I want to tell my gear what to do, not the other way round.
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Well don't forget the thread is about 35mm and can be 36 exposures to be home scanned, and OK special treatment for the winning shots, but how many are just snaps of the family, parties, and other subjects that would please the photographer taking them but boring to others......go on holiday and you could have 180 exp to home scan and you have to be a dedicated enthusiast not wanting a theoretical scanning machine that could give great results on auto.
 
excalibur2 said:
Well don't forget the thread is about 35mm and can be 36 exposures to be home scanned, and OK special treatment for the winning shots, but how many are just snaps of the family, parties, and other subjects that would please the photographer taking them but boring to others......go on holiday and you could have 180 exp to home scan and you have to be a dedicated enthusiast not wanting a theoretical scanning machine that could give great results on auto.
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If I'm taking "snaps" then I'll use my iPhone. I treat every film image I want to digitise the same way, I don't have 'snap quality' and 'winning quality' but I guess we all have different standards for these things.
 
So, to summarise, the general consensus is that retail (high street anyway) scans are poor but home scanning an be very difficult. How about if I just get prints and wave them at you in front of a webcam? :D

On a serious note, like @PMN, I have an iPhone for snaps, anything taken with film will be serious photography stylee. ;)
 
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fabs said:
home scanning an be very difficult
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To be honest getting to grips with scanning is only like an extension of working with digital images from DSLR's. As you're turning the bit of film into a format with all the same technical limitations of those from digital cameras you just need to be a little careful, but it's really no more difficult than learning how to correctly expose on digital. It certainly isn't anything to be intimidated by.

Believe me, if I can get my head round it then anyone can! :p
 
PMN said:
To be honest getting to grips with scanning is only like an extension of working with digital images from DSLR's. As you're turning the bit of film into a format with all the same technical limitations of those from digital cameras you just need to be a little careful, but it's really no more difficult than learning how to correctly expose on digital. It certainly isn't anything to be intimidated by.

Believe me, if I can get my head round it then anyone can! :p
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Thanks Paul. I certainly won't be intimidated, this has all just given me a lot to think about.

And don't sell yourself short. :p
 
fabs said:
So, to summarise, the general consensus is that retail (high street anyway) scans are poor but home scanning an be very difficult. How about if I just get prints and wave them at you in front of a webcam? :D

On a serious note, like @PMN, I have an iPhone for snaps, anything taken with film will be serious photography stylee. ;)
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Huh! on a film forum and using\would use an iphone.:eek:........well all my snaps are on film and competently taken and it's just that they wouldn't win any prizes and would cause a big yawn here :sleep: but e.g. I could post shots on how my back and front garden has changed over 25 years if you are interested :D
 
excalibur2 said:
Huh! on a film forum and using\would use an iphone.:eek:........
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I'm hoping you're joking there Brian. Forum posts are notoriously difficult to interpret in all their subtleties, so I can't be sure.

@fabs
Paul is spot on. It's not a big deal. Even a buffoon like me can get some decent results.
 
simon ess said:
I'm hoping you're joking there Brian. Forum posts are notoriously difficult to interpret in all their subtleties, so I can't be sure.

@fabs
Paul is spot on. It's not a big deal. Even a buffoon like me can get some decent results.
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Well for me Simon, I must have scanned at least a 1000 negs going thru' some of my past negs and I've just had enough esp correcting quite a few very old colour negs and the problem with noise on quite a few B\W ones......and just wish there was a scanner that could do everything on auto and give great results.
 
john-oh said:
I think you would be hard pushed to get a new (consumer) 35mm film scanner these days. I believe Nikon (for example) stopped some time ago. Should be plenty about second hand though...
Scanning can be pretty tedious, but small batches wouldn't be too bad.
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The only proper way to home-scan 35mm within a reasonable budget is to use a format-dedicated film-scanner. But some of those that are now no longer made but still excellent (like the scsi-connected Nikon Coolscans) may be hard to adapt to more recent operating systems than, possibly, windows xp? Such a scanner comes with scan software that's somewhat equivalent to a RAW file processor. A jobbed-out budget scan is rubbish by comparison. How could it be otherwise at the price?
 
droj said:
The only proper way to home-scan 35mm within a reasonable budget is to use a format-dedicated film-scanner. But some of those that are now no longer made but still excellent (like the scsi-connected Nikon Coolscans) may be hard to adapt to more recent operating systems than, possibly, windows xp? Such a scanner comes with scan software that's somewhat equivalent to a RAW file processor. A jobbed-out budget scan is rubbish by comparison. How could it be otherwise at the price?
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Not sure if they make a scsi to usb adapter, but AAMOI if you have a modern computer with a non crippled bios motherboard (best to build your own computer as off the shelf ones could limit what you can do) you can put another hard drive in (could be an old hard drive with win 98 on) and install win98, win2000 or winXP...all you need to do at start up is select the hard drive you want to boot to, and I use this for games that won't work on Win 7. I've tried virtual memory for installing winxp but for me I'm not happy though others use it.

Edit: looked on the bay and they do make a scsi to usb convertor but new ones aren't cheap.
 
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droj said:
The only proper way to home-scan 35mm within a reasonable budget is to use a format-dedicated film-scanner. But some of those that are now no longer made but still excellent (like the scsi-connected Nikon Coolscans) may be hard to adapt to more recent operating systems than, possibly, windows xp? Such a scanner comes with scan software that's somewhat equivalent to a RAW file processor. A jobbed-out budget scan is rubbish by comparison. How could it be otherwise at the price?
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SCSI works on windows 7 with no problems as long as you have a card that's drivers have been updated past XP
 
Hamrick suggests SCSI Coolscans should work with Vuescan on (SCSI) Macs with no extra software...
 
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