I had hundreds of physical prints of images going back 20-30 years ago and some much older, that were affected by moisture and were ruined. I still have negatives for a lot of these images and am looking for a film scanner that one of you might have had the experience of using. I found a well-reviewed one - KODAK Slide N SCAN but it costs 23k and I’m not looking to spend more than 5-6k, or maybe a bit more if it can get me quality results. I just want digital scans as of now, and printing isn’t a priority.
Have you guys used any film scanners and could recommend one?
The one I used in my office could scan around 6200+ dpi and costed 1L+. I don’t remember the name of that device now. These cheap ones don’t do more than 1080p or 1200dpi. Flatbed scanners etc can’t compare to the real stand alone negative scanners.
Consumer scanners have max 600dpi optical resolution and the extra resolution is through fake interpolation. Prosumer/Pro scanners have a true resolution starting from 600 dpi all the way to max you can afford with lenses, backlight settings etc. If you used a flatbed scanner and a digital camera, you would find out the difference in a few seconds. We tried a flatbed scanner with adapters first but it didn’t give the results we wanted. Then the boss reluctantly bought the real scanner. Normal flatbed scanners are fine for home use. For pro use, never.
I need a solution to this too. If you buy one, please rent it to me once you are done. I will handle the shipping cost. I have so many films too. Asked around locally for Film to digital conversion, but was being quoted silly prices.
Could be, who knows. But I do remember the resolution could go to 2400 dpi, and it would take half an hour or something to scan an A4 page. That’s why, I thought it might work.
Do you mean using a light source like a light table for the film, shooting them with my camera, inverting the colours in post and doing other post-processing? I am considering that, but the amount of effort involved puts me off. If I can’t find anything that makes life easier, I’ll consider giving it a shot.
The document scans I’ve done with my good ol’ cheapo HP deskjet don’t turn out great and there’s a lot of lost detail. But I’ve never thought about trying it with negatives. I’ll see if I can bump up the DPI and get acceptable images.
Damn, mine take a few seconds at best lol
Just out of curiosity, what quotes did you get?
I’m also open to increasing the budget to 10k-ish if it means getting something with an alright resolution and some support, so none of the imported no-name Chinese ones where I’m out of money if it doesn’t work or has issues.
I have done the research on this couple of years ago.
The scanner idea doesn’t work because for negatives you need light coming from BEHIND the film slide, but the scanner is designed to scan paper. So it doesn’t scan the negatives very well. I tried to be clever and placed my phone at full brightness behind the negative, but to my surprise that makes the scans black and white! This is because the light you see coming from the scanner slide is not actually white, it’s flickering quickly between R/G/B, and the sensor can only detect intensity of light, it’s a B&W sensor. So the way they scan color is by quickly switching between R/G/B lights and combining the three B&W values it scanned. So without the scanner controlling the light source, it will not be able to give you a color image.
Because of this reason, the scanners designed to scan transparent material are fundamentally different. Your best bet is giving your negatives to a professional scanning service that has the scanner. This is going to be hard to find, but is worth is because it will only get even harder in future.
The only actual DIY alternative is photographing the negatives with a high quality camera, while they are being backlit from behind. But this is harder than it sounds because photographing a flat surface close to the camera without any DOF blur around the edges is very difficult unless you have a very good and expensive macro lens.
Years ago when I had Nikon camera I rented a Nikon ES2 and a 60mm f2.8 lens to try to convert a few negatives I had. But that solution would be quite expensive if you dont have the camera or a way to rent the lens.
In India you’ve got these options that are realistic.
Buy a dedicated device film negative scanner like the one you’ve mentioned. Getting a new one will most definitely cost a lot. Finding a used one will be more economical. JJMehta forums is your friend.
Get a Epson Perfection V series scanner (most common) that can scan negatives. Again buying it new will be too costly. Finding a used copy for sale will be tricky.
Send the negatives to a film lab to scan them. There are a few in India that still develop film and scan film but it will get very expensive depending on quantity of negatives. Few labs you can check out: Zhenwei Lab, Lazy Lab, photolab_90 & RetroLab
Create a DIY camera scanning setup. Will need a few things to get started but might be the most viable option. Naturally, you need to get a hold of a camera and a dedicated macro lens.
Order of preference: 4>3>2>1
Reason:
These cheap small negative scanners by Kodak and other unknown brands offer basic conversion. Suitable for only viewing and small prints. You can only do very basic adjustments which might not be enough for your use-case (more on this later).
Sending it to a film lab is ideal if you have deep pockets and don’t want to deal (or have time) to DIY scan. One roll can cost from 300-800 (depending on quality). You will very good quality scans and these files can be further edited and printed large. Only issue is cost and time frame for said project.
Epson scanners were the standard for self home scanning before camera scanning was a thing. You will have complete control over the process. You can edit your photos as the way you want to. Issue with these are availability and slow scanning speed. Scanning in bulk will take considerable time.
Camera scanning makes a lot of sense if you have the means to get hold of a camera, macro lens and a light source. There are plenty of tutorials in YT on how you can start. With camera scanning there are multiple methods to get the negative and camera aligned perfectly. You’ll of course have to convert them yourself but this will give you the best possible quality.
Thing to consider (imp)
Many a times negatives are neglected and the condition is not worthwhile to scan. Heck, many didn’t even keep their negatives back in the day. If your photo prints are in good shape, better to scan those with any normal scanner and save them digitally. Also it’s not always the case that scanning them with modern techniques will yield more details. Details depends on the optics of the camera when it the image was shot. If the photos were shot with a SLR then you’d be seeing details that were not seen before but if it was a cheap P&S, nothing new will be revealed. If you have bigger negatives (larger than 35mm negative) then those are worth getting scanned in high quality. These bigger negatives were usually shot in a studio so quality will definitely be good (provided it’s not damaged)
Now comes the biggest issue with old negatives. Degradation/damage. This is bound to happen to negatives if not stored properly. Unless they were kept in cool, airtight space they will have issues. Colour negatives will loose their vibrancy & might have colour shifts. Re-scanning them might not give better results. B/W negatives fair better but you still will have to deal with scratches. Negatives not kept inside their protective sleeves will definitely show scratches in the scans. All in all depending on the condition and importance of the particular photos, you can scan the ones that matter the most first.
As a small trial, send few imp. negatives to a lab to scan them. If you like the results then you can proceed with rest of the negatives with whichever four scanning option to want.
@Syzygy The Kodak scanner is actually your best bet. If you have someone coming from the US or UAE or thereabouts you can probably get one for a decent price. It works well and is fast.
All the other methods I have used have been either painfully slow, or cumbersome or both!
The Kodak scanner is overpriced. It is a rebranded “DigitNow!” film scanner which can be had for half the price of Kodak’s (still not available in India tho).
It’s a convenient option for casual stuff. I personally would not opt for them if I want to preserve old images for long term.
