My wife uses the Negative Supply kit with the risers for her film cameras, and she loves it. So throwing another one in the hat for Negative Supply if you don't mind the price.
For 35mm I use a JJC film holder with USB powered light source from ebay. The setup screws directly to my macro lens and Sony A7Riii. For 645 I use another film holder lightbox setup off ebay and built my own copy stand with some metal pipe, quick clamps and a macro rail. I'm sure the stuff from negative supply is better, but my setup cost about a third of the negative supply versions. My scans rival what my lab can do with Frontiers and Noritsu with their pro scanning settings.
I use SmartConvert for conversion. I'm happy with my scans but I don't shoot film aiming to get the same detail or cleaness of digital.
I've been using a coolscan 5000 but I've heard excellent things about old Kodak Pakon scanners for BW. You're also to able an entire roll at once which seems really awesome
I've used dedicated scanners in the past I had a Nikon Coolscan about 15 years ago or more. I'm about to set up a new dedicated scanning station using a 40+ megapixel camera and a scanning set up from Valoi or the Nikon ES-2.
treacle wrote:
I've used dedicated scanners in the past I had a Nikon Coolscan about 15 years ago or more. I'm about to set up a new dedicated scanning station using a 40+ megapixel camera and a scanning set up from Valoi or the Nikon ES-2.
Just to demonstrate getting an acceptable scan by any of the methods here are four methods of the same Reflx 800T color negative using NLP for all of them - same color profile - same 4000dpi (except the 5DSR was higher rez) - just different scanning methods. Any one of these is an acceptable starting point for me - I can take any of them and get what I want in Photoshop.
theHUN wrote:
Agreed that everyone should test this. I read somewhere that Blue is better, tested it, and confirmed it, though Green was not that much worse. Red is certainly trash.
Interesting, I wonder if G would be better if the focus on the scanner were adjusted...
In the tests I did, the G was very slightly sharper than the B, but there was an additional benefit to the G channel that I didn't mention; the G channel, due to the nature of the way the scanner arrays are built, had lower noise, so it produces a less gritty-looking image and it would accentuate the grain less. I figured that it's easy enough to increase graininess if needed, so I felt the lower noise is a better path to take, but IIRC, the B was a very close second on sharpness.
I believe the noise difference between the G and B channels (and the R as well, it has pretty high noise) is due to the strength of the filtration needed to get the B and R channels to balance with the G channel. They essentially have a higher gain on those channels to balance the color to white.
Somewhat similarly, I think the G channel benefits from the optics being a bit more amenable to wavelengths in the center of the visible spectrum being focused on the sensor array properly and presumably, the optics aren't truly apochromatic (and depending on the optical arrangement, one of those lines on the CCD has to be optically "centered" in the line, and it is probably the G channel).
mjm6 wrote:
Interesting, I wonder if G would be better if the focus on the scanner were adjusted...
In the tests I did, the G was very slightly sharper than the B, but there was an additional benefit to the G channel that I didn't mention; the G channel, due to the nature of the way the scanner arrays are built, had lower noise, so it produces a less gritty-looking image and it would accentuate the grain less. I figured that it's easy enough to increase graininess if needed, so I felt the lower noise is a better path to take, but IIRC, the B was a very close second on sharpness.
I believe the noise difference between the G and B channels (and the R as well, it has pretty high noise) is due to the strength of the filtration needed to get the B and R channels to balance with the G channel. They essentially have a higher gain on those channels to balance the color to white.
Somewhat similarly, I think the G channel benefits from the optics being a bit more amenable to wavelengths in the center of the visible spectrum being focused on the sensor array properly and presumably, the optics aren't truly apochromatic (and depending on the optical arrangement, one of those lines on the CCD has to be optically "centered" in the line, and it is probably the G channel)....Show more →
I adjusted focus based on overall scan quality well before reading up on selecting just one channel, so it is certainly possible that G could be the winner at a different focus point. And I only looked at resolution, not noise. I'll add this comparison to my rainy-day to-do list and post the results.
But I am in the middle of a scanner upgrade exercise. It appears to happen once a year, but there could be an actual purchase later this year in which case the V850 might be out the door, so perhaps I will not get around to the comparison above.
