Help needed, film -> digital

beans

Well,

I'm unhappy with the way my scanned prints are working out for me. If you scan at 600x600 the quality is fairly poor (see attached), but at 1200x1200 the memory used opening the jpg is so huge that it takes around 20 minutes to load to photoshop, and then the memory usage is so hefty that it can't function properly

So scanning prints isnt a good idea then. How about film scanners? Does anyone have experience with these? Help me find the best way to digitize my film!

example of bad scanning

Fajitas!

Is it a good scanner? Could you have too much memory used on your PC as it is? It could quite easily be your PC, and not the scanning like?

beans

Fajitas! wrote:

Is it a good scanner? Could you have too much memory used on your PC as it is? It could quite easily be your PC, and not the scanning like?

Good possibility of the scanner being the weak link alright. It's a fairly bog-standard Dell machine.

I guess the question really is: can anyone recommend either a flatbed or film scanner that can reproduce shots with the kind of quality that would do a nice scan justice. Or if you go with the flatbed option, are you doomed to bad colour rendition and contrast unless you want to beef up your processor/ram?

Fajitas!

Tbh, I'd say that you'd have to beef up the ram to get anywhere. If it's doing good scans at higher res, but it takes ages to load anyways! Not sure how much Ram costs anymore, but I doubt it's too pricy. Well...Cheaper than a new scanner anyways!

Thirdfox

I just typed in Canon film scanner and got this:

http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/Canoscan4000.html

I'm sure their scanners are great for film and cheap too (at $500)

beans

Fajitas! wrote:

Tbh, I'd say that you'd have to beef up the ram to get anywhere.

Wow, i'm having a slow morning. Of course I'll have to get more RAM to get anywhere. The problem doesnt lie with the scanner, but with the machine's ability to process what the scanner has to offer. Goddamnit

Let me change my question again to people's views of film scanners - they would cut out the need for having prints or a CD made every time a film is developed, so handy from that point of view. Any personal views?

Check this one out for example link

dalk

Have to echo what people say. Sounds like you should invest in RAM. Its cheap and easy to install. Bring your PC up to a gig of ram at least.

On the film scanning front, i use the Canoscan FS4000US. It produces very good results, much much better than scanning a print. Scanning the neg/pos will always give better results.Its a dedicated film scanner rather than a flatbed with an attachment to scan film. It can also scan APS.

BUT... its slow. Its a relatively old scanner now. Full quality scans (4000DPI which in fairness you dont need unless you are printing bigger than A3), take about 5mins per frame. (I only scan frames that i intend printing so not an issue). It all depends on what you want to spend, but there are scanners on the market that can do the same scan in less than 30sec...

I'd go for the Konica Minolta scanners now i think.

Blake

Hi Beans

How much Ram does your PC have?? you should be looking at 512MB otherwise photoshop is going to be a complete dog

You should be able to scan at 1200 x 1200 - that really isnt very high - modern scanners go up to 9600 x 9600 or more

First thing you do is load it into photoshop and resize to however big you want to print and at 300 DPI

Save the image then reload it in Photoshop and you should go faster

If it's still slow then go down to 180 DPI

I scan medium format/large format film - can easily end up with a 500MB file of 100 to 300 Megapixels - now thats a photoshop killer

FinoBlad

can you post some screen shots of the settings you are using on the scanner

Zillah

beans wrote:

Let me change my question again to people's views of film scanners

We use them all the time in college. They're brilliant, you get perfect scans. Although obviously we get good Pcs to go with them.

EDIT: Although if your PC isn't able to handle big images it doesn't matter a flip where they came from, a scanner or a film scanner or hat.

Beats

Try Scantips for extensive stuff on scanning. Goes through the fundamentals fairly extensively and in an easy manner.

DotOrg

just a note, if you are scanning 6x4 prints, there's no point in scanning more than 300dpi (at 6x4) as most lab prints are done digitally from film at 300dpi

Yv

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=313435

^ Epson Perfection 4490, the next step up from the 3490. I got this for my birthday in January & I'm well pleased with it - it's a flatbed but I use it pretty much exclusively to scan negatives with the included adaptor. The quality is great, lovely smooth tonal transitions. I can get impeccable-quality prints up to A4 with my Canon photo printer. I think the 3490 is very similar, just doesn't have quite-so-high resolutions.

Edit: Scans from negatives at high resolutions take forever (5-10mins at top res) & are really large so a more capable computer is definitely the way to go before you go getting a great scanner & crashing your computer with the huge files :P

jlang

On that, in PC World today the Epson 3490 is EUR99 and the 4490 is EUR299.

adrian522

I've been using the Canon Scanner CanoScan 8400F which I picked up for €190. Have been pretty happy with it but the only problem is when scanning film at high res it tends to take quite a while to scan a roll of film, which is a bit of a problem if youve got loads to do, but once you've scanned in all your old film, it shouldnt cause a problem as you'll only be doing a bit at a time.

beans

Thanks for all the replies

Two things come out this i think
- I need to buy myself another gig of RAM!
- Film scanners aren't necessarily the scary specialist tools i once thought they were

I'll be adding both the above to my list of things that I dont need, but want. Damn that list...