JonPB Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · First Roll of Film Scans - Question on Scan Quality | |
My first recommendation is to compare the scans against your intended purposes rather than against digital images. Digital shots have an inherently high per-pixel sharpness that film scans lack; on the other hand, film scans lack the harshness and artifacts that are inherent in digital capture. At the pixel level, they will look very different, if only because getting the same image resolution from a film (or, at least, small format film) image requires a greater number of pixels to capture. Comparing film scans to digital captures at 1:1 magnification will strongly favor the digital images, even if the film scans actually make for a more pleasing image.
My second recommendation is to talk to the folks at the shop about the scans and what options are available. To my eye, those images are significantly over-sharpened; the primary problem is that this gives the grain a bubbly look that I don't like, and secondarily it causes halos and artifacts. They also have visible compression artifacts. Together, this means that they won't withstand significant post processing. I suspect, though, that these are based on automatic settings, and adjusting those default settings for your own purposes will always cost more money. Doesn't hurt to ask, though. They might be happy to run standard scans, standard resolution but unprocessed scans, high quality scans with standard settings, and high quality and unprocessed scans for you to review in the store and decide which price point makes the most sense for you. Best case scenario, they could give you the unprocessed (and rather dull, without processing) 16-bit TIF files at no extra cost.
Personally, I found the cost of having other people scan my negs to be prohibitive, so I mess about with my own scanner. Scanning yourself doesn't take much money--relative to scanning a roll per week--but it does take a lot of time, and the software isn't nearly as capable as it would be if film were as popular as digital. (I'd love to see what Adobe or Phase One would come up with if they put the same resources as they put into Camera Raw and Capture One into a film scanning program.) My current favorite is VueScan, although I still haven't found a good way to tap into the extended dynamic range that the negatives theoretically offer.
That said, those images look great at web resolution and would probably make fine 8x12 prints, perhaps smaller if you find yourself tweaking them quite a bit. I suspect that to get significantly better scans will require a technician who is willing to dedicate time and effort into the process, which will not be cheap unless you do it yourself. And it is always possible that, even though the per-pixel appearance of these images is poorer than what you'd get out of your Canon or Fuji, this level of scan would still be capable of revealing the characteristics of film that produce a superior print on the wall. Which, at least for me, is what this is all about.
Cheers,
Jon
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