Tim, Ulrik Many Thanks, have few more seascapes to scan from this year, slowly make scans. I know about really nice place for real sea stones beauty in Portugal, Cabo de Roca and near places http://jalbum.net/browse/user/album/133685/;jsessionid=1l52w81wepaz7, have to visit this place someday.
i tested my digital setup (canon 40d, nikon 55mm ais macro lens) vs. an older coolscan, a LS-30.
with a negative 200 iso film the nikon was a tiny bit sharper, but next to undistinguishable. and only if compared side to side and at 100% view. dont forget: a 40d has only 10MP.
the camera scan had more "life" into it and nicer colors.
also, the nikon scan was not sharp at the edges. or, it was sharp at the edges but not in the middle of the frame. which is to say, the coolscans have too small depth of field with their scanning lens and it is impossible to get a grain level sharp scan, edge to edge. i think the newer models also suffer from this problem.
i tested my digital setup (canon 40d, nikon 55mm ais macro lens) vs. an older coolscan, a LS-30.
with a negative 200 iso film the nikon was a tiny bit sharper, but next to undistinguishable. and only if compared side to side and at 100% view. dont forget: a 40d has only 10MP.
Things have come a long way from the LS30 and there are films much better than any ISO200 C-41. Film like Kodak's Gold 200 probably is limited to about 10MP of detail. Films like Provia, Velvia 50 and TMax and probably a fair number of the Pro ISO160 color negative films can go way past 20MP, but they cost 3X as much. Also, don't blame the scanner if you couldn't get the colors from the film. It takes time to learn scanning software. It isn't like photoshop and getting it wrong in the scan might be wrong enough that you can't get it back in photoshop either.
I'll freely admit that the LS-4000, LS-5000 and LS-50, even with their ED glass do not have total edge to edge sharpness. It does taper towards the edges of the frame, but the LS-4000 and newer were a major jump up from the earlier efforts. There are better scanners on the market though.
There are a number of technical problems when using a camera for copy, but it has been done for a long time. The starting issue is keeping the film flat so that it can all be in focus. This can be a real problem with scanners too, but there are wet mounting options to address this. The second is keeping good even illumination across the film at the correct viewing color temperature. Third is the lack of digital ICE. I've got better things to do than spend hours cleaning dust from 35mm frames.
ulrikft wrote:
Great as usual dim.ka! Amazing textures in that last one, I bet that one prints very, very well! When I'm a rich lawyer, you have to decorate my house
I agree. But just to be clear. Just because you become a working lawyer one it won´t mean that you will be rich. Camera gear are damn expensive :-)
Anden wrote:
I agree. But just to be clear. Just because you become a working lawyer one it won´t mean that you will be rich. Camera gear are damn expensive :-)
A
Hahaha, true that.. I'll spend 80% of all my paychecks on camera gear.
generally I agree, but if you tell me a decent pro film can deliver more details than 200 iso consumer one, I 'll point again to the fact, that I have used only a 10MP digital camera. there are higher resolving bodies out there.
as far as keeping the film flat is concerned: just use a film holder from an old enlarger and you will be fine. and I spent years scanning films, so when it comes to bad colors I am pretty sure it was the scanner, not me.
if you use slides, then dust is not such a big deal anyway. with negatives and good working envirnment it should not be either.
my "technology" implies however, that you actually already own a decent digital camera anyway - and could "misuse" it for a scanner. it works fine for me.
Again, from what I've seen, a decent scanner, like a Coolscan V or 5000, will do a bit better than something like a 40D. Not just in sharpness and resolving fine details, but digging into the shadows and giving you uninterpolated color, something a bayer sensor can't do. That's not to say the you can't get perfectly usable or even good 'scans' from a slide copying setup adapted for a DSLR. You did ask which we thought was better.
thanks for your input, kidtexas, but frankly speaking I was hoping to get first hand experience reports. may be it is too much a niche question..
now, you think this and I think that. but it seems nobody *knows* it for sure.
mind you, I do NOT compare a scan with a 40d to a nikon coolscan V generated file. this was just an example. i am talking about two different approaches to the problem of scanning. so please leave my poor 40D in peace. :-) after all, i could do scan stiching with my 40D and this surely would blow any coolscan away, in terms of resolution.
and, why do you think a bayer interpolation should be worse than any other technology a coolscan might be using? from what I read, coolscans seem to suffer a lot from their poor light source. just have a look at all those epson flatbeds. they may resolve not so well as the coolscans, but besides that the results seems to have a different & better quality, at least to my taste. probably the same happens, when you try to use a digital slr as a scanner.
i guess, i wont know it for sure until I buy a hi-res digital body and test it for myself.
east wrote:
and, why do you think a bayer interpolation should be worse than any other technology a coolscan might be using? from what I read, coolscans seem to suffer a lot from their poor light source. just have a look at all those epson flatbeds. they may resolve not so well as the coolscans, but besides that the results seems to have a different & better quality, at least to my taste. probably the same happens, when you try to use a digital slr as a scanner.
Ok, I'm obviously going to ignore the fact that a lot of film doesn't actually have this kind of *true* resolution. However, there's something to be said for properly resolving grain clumps, oversampling and downsizing, etc. But I'm going to ignore that here.
A Coolscan 5000/V/9000 scans at 4000 dpi. On a 35mm neg, 24x36mm in size, you get roughly 4000x6000 pixels. Thats 24 mp with full, non interpolated color. These scanners have full RGB sensors, so there is no Bayer interpolation going on to get the color information. I'd say to match that with a DSLR system, you'd want a 24 mp DSLR that doesn't have a Bayer array over the sensor, but instead uses a full RGB sensor... I don't think that exists.
Moving on... Let's say you get your bellows and banging macro lens set up just perfectly, and your macro lens is actually optimized to shoot at a 1:1 reproduction ratio. This plus a mythical sensor that doesn't exist is essentially what a Coolscan V is. I got mine for $600. I don't think you could best that price wise with a DSLR setup. Mind you that no bellows/slide copier attachments are currently made by Canon or Nikon for their cameras that I know of. The PB-6 and... I forget the name of the negative holder for Nikon seem to be a good bet, but that's going to run you about $150. Tack on a nice macro lens (Rodenstock 75mm D is the one I'd get) will cost some money. Plus adapters. And a light source.
As far as edge sharpness goes with a Coolscan, there's a negative holder doohickey that gives your far superior sharpness across the neg, fh-3 or something. It's about $25.
I've seen results of slides shot with a 5D or 5DII, I think on photo.net, I forget which, and they looked pretty good. They didn't look as good as a Coolscan V/5000/9000, scanned at full resolution and then resized, but they looked better than a crummy flatbed scan. If you have the setup, and need to rip off a couple of 'scans' I'd say go for it. If you still shoot film and want the best scans you can buy for <$1k, then get a Coolscan V or something. That's my take.
slungu wrote:
Great shots, TWoK, esp. no. 1. Any comment on what you got them with ( for us gear heads ) ?
Regards,
Stefan
1-3 Leica M6 with Canon 35/1.5 LTM
4 Nikon S3 with 50/1.4
5 Leica M6 with Nikon 35/1.8 LTM
All the film was Fuji 100 color negative, either Reala or Fuji 100.
I've heard complaints about the Coolscan 9000 ED now being outdated, plus you have the problems involved with it no longer being in production. What is the next step up from there? A $6,000 Hasselblad flextight?
TWoK wrote:
I've heard complaints about the Coolscan 9000 ED now being outdated, plus you have the problems involved with it no longer being in production. What is the next step up from there? A $6,000 Hasselblad flextight?
I don't really think the Hasselblad is a significant step up from the Nikon. What is up from that is the high end flatbeds like Kodak Creo or the drum scanners like Aztek or ICG.
As far as I know, it was only the LS-5000 that was discontinued. The LS-9000 was still in production last I saw. The only thing I don't like about the Nikon is that Nikon hasn't made a driver for a 64 bit OS.
