Should I Drum Scan, X1 Flextight Scan, or use the Epson V850 w/Aztek Wet Mount Kit?

[Pere Casals]

I did NOT do any dusting yet however, so you'll see some of that.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfg0peyjoj...50008.jpg?dl=0

An advantage of the V850 is that it makes a very good dusting automaticly, taking advantage of the infrared channel (with color film) (ICE , iSRD) making a perfect job, and saving a costly retouching.

This alone makes the V850 faster than the DSLR scanning.

The level of detail is just tremendous

Not bad for a moderate sized print... but a big print would benefit from stitching several crops. Also the color management is a bit "DSLR type", probably it can be improved with 3D LUT Creator but the V850 color conversion nails the Portra look straight from the scanner.

Anyway 30 effective MPix are a lot, this is four 4k monitors...

In fact that image may even have too much resolving power for portraiture...

[Alan Klein]

Alan,

I got it with my student discount promotion. If you're a student, I highly recommend signing up for it.

Little too old to be a student. But I did order it today and it's being delivered tomorrow. Thanks. Alan.

PS Do ex-teachers get the discount?

[manfrominternet]

Little too old to be a student. But I did order it today and it's being delivered tomorrow. Thanks. Alan.

PS Do ex-teachers get the discount?

Alan,

Ex-teachers should absolutely get a discount. Perhaps there's a discount for you if you can prove that you are/were a teacher. It's worth a look.

[manfrominternet]

So...

This arrangement is f*cking AMAZING. I compared my “digitized” scans (using my Sony a7R III/Sigma ART 70mm/2.8f MACRO/lightbox/copy stand) to an Imacon scan and the results blew me away and we’re just as good, maybe even better. The resolution is more than I need, at least for now. The size of the images, when stitched with just two shots, is enormous, with a good 4x5 negative still looking pretty sharp at 8.5’ (feet!) across and 6.5’ high.

Like sperdynamite astutely said, CMOS sensors, digital cameras, and lenses will only get better. Scanners, while some of them are still more than great, are slowly being phased out. (I’m looking at you, Imacon/Hasselblad.) I do however, think there will still be room for high-end drum scanning.

That said, I met up with someone this past Saturday who read this thread - an incredibly bright, talented, and generous young guy who will definitely be a very big name in the film processing and scanning industry in the next few years - and he offered to drum scan some of my work. While I’m certain that my setup and scans are no match for his technique with his drum scanner, I wonder how close my scans will actually be to those made by a drum scanner.

Anyway, here’s my setup:

[sperdynamite]

So...

This arrangement is f*cking AMAZING. I compared my “digitized” scans (using my Sony a7R III/Sigma ART 70mm/2.8f MACRO/lightbox/copy stand) to an Imacon scan and the results blew me away and we’re just as good, maybe even better. The resolution is more than I need, at least for now. The size of the images, when stitched with just two shots, is enormous, with a good 4x5 negative still looking pretty sharp at 8.5’ (feet!) across and 6.5’ high.

Like sperdynamite astutely said, CMOS sensors, digital cameras, and lenses will only get better. Scanners, while some of them are still more than great, are slowly being phased out. (I’m looking at you, Imacon/Hasselblad.) I do however, think there will still be room for high-end drum scanning.

That said, I met up with someone this past Saturday who read this thread - an incredibly bright, talented, and generous young guy who will definitely be a very big name in the film processing and scanning industry in the next few years - and he offered to drum scan some of my work. While I’m certain that my setup and scans are no match for his technique with his drum scanner, I wonder how close my scans will actually be to those made by a drum scanner.

Anyway, here’s my setup:

That's fantastic man! Your rig looks great. Yeah there are just a lot of people spreading FUD regarding camera scanning. I was a doubter myself for a while. The proof of the pudding is in the eating however, as they say. Camera scans just look fantastic. The S1R is an incredible camera. I'm a big fan of the L mount system right now. It gets a lot right.

Now if Adobe would just come out with a proper dust and scratches filter!!!! Argggghhhhhhhh waahhhhhhh. :-)

[Tin Can]

Looking good!

I have a V700, when it dies, now 7 years old, I will also go to copy stand

As I have all the parts for the resolution I need...

[MBrooks]

Here is a great recent example of Portra 160 scanned with the S1R in pixel shift. I processed this with Negative Lab Pro. I did NOT do any dusting yet however, so you'll see some of that.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfg0peyjoj...50008.jpg?dl=0

This would print to about 37x46 at 300ppi. The level of detail is just tremendous, and NLP does this fantastic color conversion is just a few clicks. By the way I should note that NLP accepts scans from traditional scanners too. Many people are using it with Nikons, Epsons, one guy was using a drum scanner of which time I forget....

Impressive results, wow! Looks very nice.

So...

This arrangement is f*cking AMAZING. I compared my “digitized” scans (using my Sony a7R III/Sigma ART 70mm/2.8f MACRO/lightbox/copy stand) to an Imacon scan and the results blew me away and we’re just as good, maybe even better. The resolution is more than I need, at least for now. The size of the images, when stitched with just two shots, is enormous, with a good 4x5 negative still looking pretty sharp at 8.5’ (feet!) across and 6.5’ high.

Like sperdynamite astutely said, CMOS sensors, digital cameras, and lenses will only get better. Scanners, while some of them are still more than great, are slowly being phased out. (I’m looking at you, Imacon/Hasselblad.) I do however, think there will still be room for high-end drum scanning.

That said, I met up with someone this past Saturday who read this thread - an incredibly bright, talented, and generous young guy who will definitely be a very big name in the film processing and scanning industry in the next few years - and he offered to drum scan some of my work. While I’m certain that my setup and scans are no match for his technique with his drum scanner, I wonder how close my scans will actually be to those made by a drum scanner.

Anyway, here’s my setup:

Your set-up looks great and I absolutely agree, scanning with digital cameras is going to be the future for many. Most of the copy stand set-ups I've seen produce way better results than Epson flatbeds or other consumer scanners. The high-end scanning solutions that Phase One are developing are quite remarkable and sensors will only get better with time, as you said. I'm proud to own and operate a drum scanner, but I'm excited to see where high-end sensors can bring scanning tech in the coming years.

[Alan Klein]

Do you need to go to a full frame cameras or can the smaller sensors do as well?

[Pere Casals]

Do you need to go to a full frame cameras or can the smaller sensors do as well?

You may use a DX / APSC sensor camera, but you'll have to stitch more crops to get the same quality, a Full Frame may deliver around 30MPix effective, with a 24x16mm you may get around 16 MPix effective for each shot. If you know how many "effective pixels" you want in the scan this says how many shots you have to stitch, also consider that shots have to overlap to be stitched, you have a remarkable loss from the theoric value.

With a single shot (without stitching crops) say that you use a Nikon D5600 camera and a Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G lens, the shot delivers 14 MPix effective, but as the formats are different, 4:5 vs 2:3, you won't use all pixels in the sensor, you'll get around 11 or 12 MPix effective, around the same that if you had shot the scene with a good smartphone, good enough to post the image to the internet, or to see it in a monitor.

A 4x5" shot may treasure 400MPix, you take 12 with a single DX shot.

This also happens with the Full Frame, of the 30MPix effective, with a single shot you take 30*5/6 = 25MPix effective.

[sperdynamite]

Do you need to go to a full frame cameras or can the smaller sensors do as well?

There are advantages and disadvantages. For one your macros are going to be shorter, so more DoF, that's a plus. You are shooting at base ISO, so even Micro 4/3rd cameras will create a nice clean capture. However, full frame sensors of the moment generally have more resolution, and currently you have more pixel shifting cameras. Pixel shift gives you a true RGB capture with no debayering, and in some cases can increase resolution quite a lot. I believe Pentax and Olympus cameras have this feature. But if you just happen to have a crop sensor camera and a macro lying around you can create really nice scans that just maybe won't print large. There are lots of folks scanning with Fuji mirrorless cameras for instance. Most people never bother to print at all anymore, so yeah in those cases a crop camera is a perfectly fine choice.

My choices are all based around printing, so I have to meet those standards.