There are many threads on the forum about "DSLR scanning", also known as "Camera scanning". An active recent example is this one: https://www.largeformatphotography.i...74#post1504274 I was going to add this material to that thread, but decided to open a new thread because I think there may be some value for the community in knowing about the perspective of conservationists (the museum crowd).

Many people on the forum, and elsewhere, have found ways of digitizing negatives and positives using cameras of some kind. Others do it with scanners. It's all good. This thread is about camera scanning, which seems to be the future of digitizing film.

In figuring out how to "camera scan" my 4x5 negatives, I've discovered lots of advice, much of it contradictory, and lots of it based on the personal experiences of other people who have figured things out on their own too... It turns out that photographers who are interested in hybrid workflows (film > digital) are not the only ones thinking about this! Thanks to a tip from a fellow photographer, I discovered the conservationist's perspective on all of this. Lo and behold, there are standards out there!

Long story short, I just purchased an interesting little book called DT Digitization Guide. Digitization Workflows: Transmissive. DT is a commercial outfit that sells equipment and services to the "conservation" world, in other words, museums. Their equipment is WAY outside of my budget! However, this books was only $5 USD, so worth it to me.

The book has two main parts: a general overview of issues relating to camera-based digitization of transmissive materials, in other words, negative and positive film; and instructions that are specific to using DT's own equipment, which includes Phase cameras and Capture One software. I bought it for the first part, which is a nice, not too technically complicated overview of the conservationist's perspective. But even the second part has good value if you're willing to extend the ideas to your own gear. There are also some useful tidbits in the appendix.

The knowledge this little book contains is probably out there on the Internet somewhere for free, but I have not encountered it before, and it's nice to have it all in one place. Here are some highlights:

Conservationists have some concerns that do not necessarily overlap with those of the photographer who is shooting film with the goal of digitizing and then editing of the digital file to make their own "interpretation" of what the camera recorded. Here are a few examples:

* Conservationists seem to view wet scanning (fluid mounting) as a Very Bad Thing. Makes sense: you're immersing the negative or positive film in mineral spirits or some other fluid. However, for someone like me, who is shooting the film to make the digital file, I'm not concerned about preserving the negative for someone to look at in 100 years. I wet scan for the quality improvement.
* Similarly, using tools like ICE (or just spotting in Photoshop) is a major no-no in the conservation world when the goal is to make a "Preservation Digital Object" (a faithful reproduction of the thing).
* One interesting difference between what I need and what a conservator needs is exposure. When making a "Preservation Digital Object", the conservator wants to make an image that is faithful to what the object would look like in real life, e.g., placed on a light table and viewed by someone. In contrast, I need an exposure that gives me high quality data at each pixel while preserving the full tonal range of the image. I don't care if the resulting file is remotely "faithful" to the way a viewer would see the negative on a light table.

Apart from those kinds of concerns, the basics are the same for the person in the museum who is making a Preservation Digital Object, and the photographer who is making a digital file to work on in Lightroom or Photoshop (or whatever software they use). There's lots of good basic technical advice in the book that is consistent with standards that are emerging.

Finally, the book also gets at a common topic of debate on forums, which is the resolution at which to digitize the film. I like their position: it's not about what we can do with the equipment we have, it's what we should do for our intended purpose. For example, in the conservation world, the goal of digitization is to create "a surrogate to the original object, replacing most needs for physical access to that original object". Thus, "the selection of PPI must be based on the content of the original transmissive material." In contrast, my own goal is to balance practical considerations such as the ability of my computer to handle the file with "how many pixels do I need to make a high quality print?" In case you're curious, the FADGI 2016 standard for conservation digitization of 35mm, 645 and 4x5 film is 4,000 ppi at 90% sampling efficiency (which is way more than I can make or need); it's 2,000 ppi at 90% sampling efficiency for 8x10 film.

Rob