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Thread: DSLR Film Scanning

  1. #11
    Peter De Smidt's Avatar
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    Re: DSLR Film Scanning

    Always try what you have. That way you have a baseline of quality, and you can judge if it's good enough for you. I did a lot of scanning at 1x....but that was 7 years ago with a low res camera. The only reason to scan at higher magnification than whatever you have is if you need more resolution. There definitely is a law of diminishing returns. For your use, an old macro lens in the 50-75mm range would likely be the best bang for your buck.
    “You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
    ― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know

  2. #12

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    Re: DSLR Film Scanning

    Quote Originally Posted by CreationBear View Post
    Excellent, I was meaning to ask you: IIRC, you were using an Panasonic S1 (~24 MP with pixel shift) for a while--if you did a one-shot "scan" of a 5x7 negative with it, how big of a print do you think the file would support?

    At any rate, my working theory is that 5x7 is the new sweet spot for a hybrid workflow--hopefully you're finding the same.
    I have been digitizing my archive of 5X7 negatives since last December with an a Sony a7r iv with 16 shot pixel shifting. This gives an image file size of about 19000 X 12000 pixel at 350 ppi with one shot. The resolution with this approach is about 50 lpi, which is about what you can get with an Epson V750 or V850, and this allows a vey large print of about 50X35" at 350 ppi from the 5X7 negative. The results don't quite match up to a drum scan, but for this format it is plenty good enough.


    With three-stitch using 16 shot pixel shifting I get file size of about 28000 X 19000 pixel, which allows print size of about 80 x 55" at 350 ppi. Unfortunately the work flow with three or more shots with 16 shot pixel shifting is rather challenging as the processing takes a long time in computer due to the large file sizes, but in image quality it beats my drum scanner, and takes a lot less time.

    Sandy
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  3. #13

    Re: DSLR Film Scanning

    Quote Originally Posted by sanking View Post
    This gives an image file size of about 19000 X 12000 pixel at 350 ppi with one shot.
    Excellent, I definitely won't come anywhere near those limits--though on the processing end, the new Apple Silicon chips (M1 and upcoming M1x) start to make a lot of sense.

  4. #14

    Re: DSLR Film Scanning

    Quote Originally Posted by CreationBear View Post
    Excellent, I was meaning to ask you: IIRC, you were using an Panasonic S1 (~24 MP with pixel shift) for a while--if you did a one-shot "scan" of a 5x7 negative with it, how big of a print do you think the file would support?

    At any rate, my working theory is that 5x7 is the new sweet spot for a hybrid workflow--hopefully you're finding the same.
    I would defer to Sandy re his scanning advice generally but I use a S1R, 47mp or 189 with pixel shift. I usually downsample my pixel shifted scans to 100mp as I think it cleans up the file a bit and doesn’t ask so much of the film or the lens. Given that I’ve never in all my years made a print larger than 30” in the long dimension, I’m doing just fine. As Sandy said, stitching is time consuming and can be difficult.

    I like pixel shift as much for the resolution as for the fact that it vastly decreases noise. I’ve recovered shadows from chromes to a remarkable degree. For my 100mp usage you could tell me that a drum scanner is better but I’d be hard pressed to imagine how it could be.
    Last edited by sperdynamite; 3-Jan-2021 at 19:10.

  5. #15

    Re: DSLR Film Scanning

    Quote Originally Posted by sperdynamite View Post
    I usually downsample my pixel shifted scans to 100mp as I think it cleans up the file a bit and doesn’t ask so much of the film or the lens.
    Excellent, that's a useful piece of advice I think.

  6. #16

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    Re: DSLR Film Scanning

    Quote Originally Posted by sperdynamite View Post
    I would differ to Sandy re his scanning advice generally but I use a S1R, 47mp or 189 with pixel shift. I usually downsample my pixel shifted scans to 100mp as I think it cleans up the file a bit and doesn’t ask so much of the film or the lens. Given that I’ve never in all my years made a print larger than 30” in the long dimension, I’m doing just fine. As Sandy said, stitching is time consuming and can be difficult.

    I like pixel shift as much for the resolution as for the fact that it vastly decreases noise. I’ve recovered shadows from chromes to a remarkable degree. For my 100mp usage you could tell me that a drum scanner is better but I’d be hard pressed to imagine how it could be.
    My comments comparing the high resolution pixel shift files with drum scanner is not about resolution, but what I would call micro-contrast, especially noticeable in the low tonal values. Drum scanners are superb at this because there is very little flare in the system, virtually none in fact. Early CCD scanners, and ones like the prosumer Epson, by contrast, allow a lot of flare.

    Flare is also a big challenge with DSLR scanning. On the other hand, the dynamic range of modern digital camera sensors is incredible, and with careful baffling to control flare they can give great results in digitizing film.


    Sandy
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  7. #17

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    Re: DSLR Film Scanning

    Quote Originally Posted by CreationBear View Post
    Excellent, I definitely won't come anywhere near those limits--though on the processing end, the new Apple Silicon chips (M1 and upcoming M1x) start to make a lot of sense.
    Memory and high speed disk are going to be more important than CPU for a task like stitching very large images together.

  8. #18

    Re: DSLR Film Scanning

    Quote Originally Posted by grat View Post
    Memory
    No doubt I'll never be considered a "power user" but I'll be interested if there's a consensus that emerges regarding the "sweet spot" in terms of RAM and SSD capacity in the new Apple machines for the kind of processing we're discussing. (Of course, I'm sure Apple will charge an extortionate amount for each...)

  9. #19

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    Re: DSLR Film Scanning

    Not sure-- I've got an AMD 8/16 core system with 16gb of RAM and my working disk is a 500gb NVMe SSD. It does pretty well on high-resolution stitches of medium format, but I haven't thrown a 7000 PPI 4x5 stitch at it yet-- which, I admit, is ludicrous.

    Most of the major operations (all under Affinity Photo-- I haven't used Lightroom or Photoshop since the days of dual-core systems) utilized all 16 cores, and I suspect that greatly sped up operations. Memory consumption for 12 images at 30MP each (I said it was ludicrous) was hitting 12-15GB while stitching, framing, inverting, etc.

    FYI, stitching took 15-20 seconds, and rendering the final image took about 35 seconds, so just under a minute to auto-stitch all 12 images.

    The image history for the medium format image got pretty ugly, and I started swapping if I was doing full frame copies instead of snapshots.

    I have had an out-of-memory error with 6400 PPI scans under Epson Scan 2, though (That was Epson scan itself).

    I would suspect 32G is probably a bit overkill for most situations, but 16G might be a little small. Since it's very difficult to get dual or quad channel with 24G, I'll probably upgrade to 32G the next chance I get.

  10. #20
    Peter De Smidt's Avatar
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    Re: DSLR Film Scanning

    My laptop has 32 gig of ram and decent ssd drives. Those make the biggest difference in my experience. It's an Eluktronics RP-17. It's not fancy, but it's fast and affordable.
    “You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
    ― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know

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