Digitising 35mm slides

Mercury

Having finally moved with the times, and retired my (t)rusty Canon Elan II camera in place of a digital one (Canon EOS 30D), I am finally realising the merits of being able to upload/email/edit photos, rather than having them stuffed away on a shelf somewhere.

However, now I'm left with a problem. I have years worth of slides sitting at home, a lot of which are very nice pics that I'd like to be able to archive as easily as I can with the digital shots, as well as send them to friends or whatever. Decent slide scanners, cost at least €600, and I know that once I have my slides scanned (1000 or so), I'll never use it again, which is money I don't have to waste right now.

So I guess I'm looking for a solution as to how to scan my slides with as good a quality as possible. Is there anywhere that a peson can rent this equipment for a week or so?? My guess is that the average camera shop will charge through the nose for such a service, so any advice would be appreciated. Alternatively, if ayone in the Galway area feels like donating a Nikon CoolScan or the like to me for a week or so in September, that would be appreciated too

magicbastarder

there's good resale value on dedicated slide scanners, so if you bought a secondhand one, you could probably sell it again a couple of months later without incurring too much of a loss.
that said, the secondhand market for them in ireland is probably very small.

Mercury

Yeah, the thought of buying then reselling had occured to me, but the thought of being out of pocket the price of the scanner, then trying to resell what is a fairly specialised piece of kit is a lot of work. Sorry if that makes me sound like a lazy git I've looked into alternatives, such as mounting kits from the front of the camera that allows you to 'photograph' the slides, one at a time, but I've heard nothing good about them in terms of quality. I'm thinking a scanner is the only way to go, but finding the service at a reasonable price seems to be almost impossible.

pete4130

I had a post about this earlier ino the week. I decided to buy a small light box, sut up an old enlarger with my camera attached, use a macro lens (an 18-50mm macro is the most appropriate lens I have to shoot them with...not ideal as it give some barrel distortion being so close to the slide) and shoot the slides at f8 or f11 in RAW. I have a neg/slide scanner but I've always found scans to be a bit crap in all fairness, even when I've gotten shops/labs to do them for me.
I got the light box for €30 and had an enlarger that I was able to mount my camera onto so it worked out pretty cheap.
The results were ok. More accurate colours than scanning I found but any dust or marks aren't removed as there is no ICE software. The only thing to do is use a blower brush to get as much off before you shoot the slide. you can then edit them in PS to make them as accurate as you can to the slide. Here are a few low res examples and a pic of my set up, using my old pentax to be a stand in for my DSLR.

Something like an 85mm macro or 105mm macro would be alot better than what I'm using, less distortion you could get tighter on the image. I prob had to do a 30%-40% crop on the total image size to cut out the slide holder so I lost some pixels doing that. It's not ideal but it seems to have worked out for me with reasonable results, low cost and high rate of reproduction.

magicbastarder

pete4130 wrote:

I have a neg/slide scanner but I've always found scans to be a bit crap in all fairness, even when I've gotten shops/labs to do them for me.
I got the light box for €30 and had an enlarger that I was able to mount my camera onto so it worked out pretty cheap.
The results were ok. More accurate colours than scanning I found

what scanner do you have? would be interesting to see one of the slides compared side by side, by duping and by scanning.

pete4130

I'#ve got a Canon 9900F I think. Got it about 4 years ago. The results from the scanner are really hit and miss. It's got no consitency. For B&W neg its fine for the first run of scans when the lamp isn't properly warm (its a flatbed scanner, so takes 24 35mm negs a time) and after that everything is very contrasty unless the neg is perfectly exposed.
For slide, its the other way round, I scan the same slides maybe 4 or 5 times to warm the lamp up properly and it still doesn't do a great job. If the slide is dark it sees it as being underexposed and gives a very noisey/grainy images thats useless. Some slides scan better than others though.
Here are 3 of the same slides scanned once, then twice and then again for the 3rd time and the final image has had its levels adjusted and some sharpening to see the difference. My scanner usually leave either a warm cast across the slides or an opposite cold cast, depending on the slide. These slides were good examples. I've shot gigs on slide before (Fuji 400 pushed to 3200) and the slides turned out fantastic. amazing colours but the scanner could not recognise them and would not scan them as they were predominantly dark or would scan them extremely badly.







Here are some night time/gig photos to see how they scan. I've just adjusted the levels and did some small sharpenning to them.....and would you believe...they don't actually look all that bad but nowhere as good as the actual slide.

magicbastarder

pete4130 wrote:

I'#ve got a Canon 9900F I think.

there's your problem, right there.
the canon software is appalling.
i've a newish canon flatbed - 8400f, and it's not a patch on my six or seven year old nikon coolscan. can't even come close.
i've used a 9900f, and had similar issues.

Mercury

Was just going to make the same comment regarding the Canon 9900F. Flatbed scanners with film/slide adapters will never come close to a dedicated film scanner. I was hoping to beg/buy/borrow a CoolScan or somethign similar - it's the only way I could justify making the effort to scan these photos.

DaireQuinlan

magicbastarder wrote:

there's your problem, right there.
the canon software is appalling.
i've a newish canon flatbed - 8400f, and it's not a patch on my six or seven year old nikon coolscan. can't even come close.
i've used a 9900f, and had similar issues.

Yeah, bigtime. I have an 8600f that I bought exclusively for scanning medium format. As an experiment I scanned a bunch of negatives on it and then duplicated the scans on my coolscan V. Despite the canon's claimed higher resolution the flatbed scans didn't even come remotely close to the quality of the dedicated 35mm scanner. Does the job OK for MF though, it helps of course that the negatives are 4 times bigger, though I would probably give my eye teeth for one of those nikon MF scanners.

@pete4130, if you don't mind me asking, was that provia 400 pushed to 3200 ? have you 100% crops of those anywhere ? Did you get them pushed when you got them dev'd ? The notion of a slide film that I can use at 3200 ... intrigues me :-)

magicbastarder

DaireQuinlan wrote:

Does the job OK for MF though, it helps of course that the negatives are 4 times bigger, though I would probably give my eye teeth for one of those nikon MF scanners.

on resolution, it's fine for MF, but completely falls down on colour.

DaireQuinlan

magicbastarder wrote:

on resolution, it's fine for MF, but completely falls down on colour.

Actually, yeah. Luckily though the vast majority of my MF stuff is home-dev'd B&W so no real worries there. Though I do find that vuescan is a godsend for any scanning task. I use it for my coolscan aswell as the flatbed. Miles better than the wierd software that generally ships with scanners.

magicbastarder

DaireQuinlan wrote:

The notion of a slide film that I can use at 3200 ... intrigues me :-)

is provia 1600 not available?
it's designed to be pushed, apparently. i dropped a few rolls into the fuji place once, and the first question i was asked was what speed they were rated at.

magicbastarder

DaireQuinlan wrote:

Actually, yeah. Luckily though the vast majority of my MF stuff is home-dev'd B&W so no real worries there. Though I do find that vuescan is a godsend for any scanning task. I use it for my coolscan aswell as the flatbed. Miles better than the wierd software that generally ships with scanners.

i find the nikon software straightforward to use. does vuescan allow you to control analog gain? i've found myself using that a few times on shots which haven't been exposed correctly.

DaireQuinlan

magicbastarder wrote:

i find the nikon software straightforward to use. does vuescan allow you to control analog gain? i've found myself using that a few times on shots which haven't been exposed correctly.

Yeah, all the controls that are available on the nikon software. I have a specific workflow though. vuescan allows you to batch scan and save out as raw 64bit RGBI tiffs which means that if you have a lot to scan you just bung the strips in one at a time and let it go about its scanning in batches of 6. They're completely untouched by any color correction/film emulsion color balancing and IR dust and scratch removal. Then you can reload these raw files and apply whatever level of ICE to them you want, color balancing etc etc. I find I get through a batch of shots considerably faster than if I was doing each one individually. Plus in the RGBI tiff you have the closest analogue to a digital negative you're likely to get. It just works better for me I guess. YMMV.

magicbastarder

DaireQuinlan wrote:

They're completely untouched by any color correction/film emulsion color balancing.

this is exactly what i want, what causes me most grief with the canon software.
i must invest.

pete4130

@ DaireQuinlan,

Yeah, I think it was Provia 400 I pushed. I know on the inside of the box it says it can be rated up to 3200. To be honest, I couldn't even have a remote guess at which slides were pushed. It's so easy to forget what you've done with 35mm after its been processed and sat in a neg sleeve/slide sleeve for a year or 2!?

I got it processed in The Colour Lab in Fumbally Lane, which is sadly not open anymore. They had no trouble overprocessing it for me, costs a bit extra per stop but I was really happy with the results. I pushed it for shooting a gig in the Music Centre but as the edges of the frame were so dark it was really hard to distinguish one frame from another, so I can understand the 9900F scanner not registering that there was anything there to scan (they were in strips of 6).

Another good film to push it Ilford Delta 3200....I've pushed that 2 stops to ISO 12800 equivelant and then underexposed the shots at that for faster shutter speeds at gigs when I wasn't using flash..even though its grainy its a real nice smooth textured grain. I love it!

magicbastarder

daire, is it vuescan pro you have?
or does the standard edition allow you to turn off colour correction too?

DaireQuinlan

magicbastarder wrote:

daire, is it vuescan pro you have?
or does the standard edition allow you to turn off colour correction too?

Yeah, I have the pro edition, I don't think the standard edition allows you to save out as raw. Seriously though, its the best $79.95 I ever spent. There's a free trial if you want to run through it (I think it puts watermarks on the output file or something). Read a few reviews and testimonials on other sites on the web. Its got a bit of a quirky UI but once you get used to it it's fine. Its widely regarded as the best way get the best out of negative scans. Plus, Ed Hamrick is very helpful with regard to queries about bugs and the like (as long as they're not covered in the FAQ at least! ) and its updated constantly. And I feel entirely justified firing off 79 bucks to some guy who's sat down by himself and written a fine piece of entirely functional software :-)

magicbastarder

i've been playing with it. it's all well and good, but doesn't seem to be able to get around the problem that on a velvia shot i have, the scanner reproduces a lovely rich green as olive drab.

prox

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like giving their canon flatbed a punt up the hole. Inconsistent results drive me bonkers.

Even for MF [which is why I went for the 8400f] the carrier is woeful for sag. Has anyone ever experimented with making their own out of two pieces of glass? I haven't looked into whether it assumes a particular focus distance when using the carriers.

mb - I *think* vuescan has profiles for velvia under media input types but I could be misremembering that.

magicbastarder

prox wrote:

Even for MF [which is why I went for the 8400f] the carrier is woeful for sag. Has anyone ever experimented with making their own out of two pieces of glass? I haven't looked into whether it assumes a particular focus distance when using the carriers.

mb - I *think* vuescan has profiles for velvia under media input types but I could be misremembering that.

you'd be running the gauntlet of newton's rings then, i'd imagine.

the odd thing is, the scanner seems to cope much better with a 35mm velvia, again with punchy greens. could be that the 120 shot has considerably more shadow in it.

prox

I occasionally get newton's rings even using the supplied carrier. I've even had to scan the emulsion side of a few of them to get anything approaching a flat scan.

I'd love to get a few comparative scans through a coolscan to see the difference on the 35mm. I might post a few over to you.

DaireQuinlan

prox wrote:

I occasionally get newton's rings even using the supplied carrier. I've even had to scan the emulsion side of a few of them to get anything approaching a flat scan.

I'd love to get a few comparative scans through a coolscan to see the difference on the 35mm. I might post a few over to you.

MF wise, I always scan the emulsion side. I presume the emulsion has enough irregularity to it to ensure that the dreaded newton doesn't show his ugly head. I've laid negatives flat on the glass with no problems, emulsion side down. That said, taking a negative 4 times the size and reducing it to a similar res as a 35mm scan is going to disguise any slight focus errors on behalf of the scanner. I'm reasonably happy with the results I get from the flatbed, knowing its limitations. I just never want to see a good drumscan of any of these same negs. I'm sure it would bring tears to my eyes :-)

MB, with regard to transparency film, its probably the case where I use the capabilities of vuescan the least, I scan directly to a positive with no color correction and then level up in ps to get the colours correct. I find this pretty much does the trick balance wise.

magicbastarder

prox wrote:

I'd love to get a few comparative scans through a coolscan to see the difference on the 35mm. I might post a few over to you.

i can do some up in the next few days.
one thing i liked about vuescan was the infrared cleaning - interesting to see how it's done.

JMcL

Perhaps consider the Epson 4990, or for better quality V700 (€385 and €520 respectively from Dabs.ie). I know you say that flat bed scanners don't match dedicated film scanners, but both these really have had glowing reviews, and come with film/slide holders so you can scan multiple slides at a time. At the end of it all, you'll have a top quality scanner for other use.

Mercury

It's early days yet, but I *may* have the use of a Nikon CoolScan IV for a couple of weeks in September when I get back. Fingers crossed that this will pan out. Anyone have any experience of this particular scanner? Any feedback would be appreciated....

magicbastarder

i've got the III.
if you have any strips of film, beware of using the automatic feeder. unless you keep it scrupulously clean, it can scratch negs.

Mercury

Everything I'll be scanning will be of the mounted 35mm slide variety, so hopefully this will offer some protection in terms of scuffing and scratching. How do you find the quality of scan on the III in comparison to, say, an image taken directly form a decent digital camera??

magicbastarder

i can upload a shot to let you see. probably won't be till sunday, though.
they're obviously softer than a digital shot, but that isn't a bad thing sometimes.
one issue to bear in mind that if a slide is not perfectly flat in the holder, it'll focus on the flatter portion and the curved section will lose sharpness.

magicbastarder

okay, fresh shot, got it back today. velvia, and i deliberately picked a monochrome-ish shot.
scanned at 2700DPI on the nikon using nikon software, 1600DPI on the canon using vuescan (as will be apparent from the dollar signs). both saved as 24 bit TIFFs.
all settings on both scanners set to defaults, obviously bar media type. no PSing, bar reduction to 1600 pixels high, saved as full quality jpegs.
nikon:
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/3499/nikonpt4.jpg
canon:
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/741/canonqs0.jpg

i've obviously linked to them because of their size. colour reproduction is pretty much completely accurate on the nikon.

magicbastarder

and again with something with a bit of colour. easy enough to spot which is which. i did a bit of dust removal on these, which in hindsight was a mistake; would have shown how much more dust you get on a flatbed, as you've an extra medium to scan through.

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/9859/010707001km2.jpg

http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/1253/scan0707010001wt4.jpg

Fajitas!

Jesus, the cast on the Canon is dreadful.

Mercury

Thanks for that - definitely gives me something to draw a comparison from. I've been promised the use of a Nokon CoolScan IV when I get back, or something better (CoolScan V, CoolScan 5000??) if it becomes available.

CraggyIslander

I too am very disappointed with the mixed results I'm getting from the canoscan 9950F. Am seriously thinking of getting a Coolscan V from here

Including shipping ($80) and (possible VAT) it comes to 540Euro..... a heck of lot cheaper than what I've found here 710+shipping from pixmania

Have used this crowd before (in fact ordered some stuff last Tue, delivered yesterday) and their very speedy.