phil_gunderson

Good morning, Last night I was shooting some fireworks and noticed what I thought was peculiar behavior of my 80d. In manual focus, bulb mode, f/16, 100 IS0, and single shot mode I noticed about a 1/2 second delay between releasing the shutter and pressing it again for the next shot. Today, I did some experimentation by turning off things like flicker detection and the like to no avail. Long exposure noise reduction was already off. The camera does say "busy" before it triggers the shutter another time. In continuous shot mode, the shutter actuates very quickly up to the 20 raw buffer limit. Shooting with a Lexar Professional 32 GB 633x card, 24-70 f2.8L lens, using tripod and wired remote shutter release (Canon's). Any ideas on what the delay could be? If so, is there anything I can do to minimize it?

With B&W film, ICE doesn't work since the silver in the negatives remains. The nice thing about BW film is that the range should be well within that of all the scanners you've looked at. The 5400, provided you can get a good working model with the film trays, has a nice feature called Grain Dissolver. It's an opaque piece of glass that goes between the CCFL light source and the film to diffuse the light further. It can help reduce the appearance of grain in an image without using software to smear the results. The caveat is that it significantly increases scan times. Given my experience between this scanner and my Nikon, if my 5400 were perfectly working, I'd have never bought the Nikon. To me, it's just that good. Unfortunately, I know very little about the Scan Elite II, though it does look to be a very nice scanner provided it's still in full working order. Before writing off a current scanner, I've attached a scan I did from a roll of Kodak 126 BW film from 1967. I can't say the subject matter is outstanding, but hopefully it can give you an example of what's possible with the Plustek 8200i. The biggest downside besides what I've noted before is that you manually have to move the film carrier between frames which makes the process slower. I haven't applied any sharpening, except what Photoshop itself adds when downsizing the first image from the 3600ppi size to a web size here. These were scanned using the 8200i in Vuescan with no sharpening at 7200ppi and had Vuescan save the result at 3600ppi. I do that because the scanner achieves it's best sharpness by scanning at full resolution and downsampling the picture. The only other thing I did was a curves adjustment in Photoshop and exported for an example. Please note the visible grain in the 100% crop. Full image from negative. 100% crop from scan. For the sake of comparison, here is a scan from Kodak Ektar 100 from a shot I took in 2015 using the Minolta Scan Elite 5400 at full resolution. At 5400 ppi, the limiting factor is the resolution of the film and the lens. In this case, the scanner out resolved what my lens and film combination were able to do; however, at 300ppi output, the full size print would be just over 16"x24" or about 40cm x 60cm. Scan from Ektar 100 using the Minolta 5400 at full resolution (reduced for web) 100% Crop from Minolta 5400 at full resolution. No sharpening applied here. This is what the scanner can resolve. Clearly, the grain is clearer than my lens was able to achieve (and probably my hand held technique).

I can't say that I've seen really poor performance from my FS4000 when scanning negatives. It doesn't do as good a job with slides though due to requiring a higher dmax for dense slides (noisier). The FS4000 does have an IR channel so can be used with Vuescan's infrared cleaning option (a bit like ICE), but it doesn't have the branded ICE software bundled with it. Canon calls it FARE in their software, but it's a similar type of software that detects defects (within reason) and tries to blend them away. Probably the biggest complaint with the Canon I have is it's speed over USB. Supposedly if you use the SCSI interface it goes much faster, but supporting that is more difficult now with modern operating systems. As such, I just use Vuescan with all my scanners so I have a consistent UI with which to work. As it happens, I also have a Plustek 8200i that I use for 110 negatives since I have a holder that was 3d printed for it. The biggest thing with the Plustek is making sure the film is exactly in the prime focus area since there is no auto focus. With negatives, my only real complaint is that the sharpness isn't up to that of the Nikon, though with the custom holder for 110 negatives and some tweaking, I've been getting grain sharp scans of the 110 media (old family pictures from the early 80s). It's not the best with slides (again, Nikon beats it hands down there) but it's the only one of the scanners that's currently being produced and supported (officially). Regarding overall sharpness, unless you're planning to enlarge the pictures to their maximum based upon 300 divided in the total pixel dimensions, a bit of pre-sharpening in your photo editor and post sharpening before output goes a long way in producing acceptable results. The Nikon, Canon, and Minolta (all with auto focus) need less pre sharpening, but all need a little post sharpening when outputting due to lose of resolution when resizing an image down to your destination size. There is (or was anyway) AB Studios that repaired/cleaned the Nikons at least. I had Alex Ketzer from there clean and recalibrate my Nikon when I bought it. What type of film are you planning on scanning?

Do you mean the Scan Elite II or the Scan Elite 5400 II? I have the Scan Elite 5400 and, when it works, it is an outstanding scanner. Unfortunately, with all the years of use, it's become a flaky unit where it seems like it wants a longer and longer wake up period. Basically it will start to focus and hang about 80 - 90% through auto focus (using VueScan). If you're talking about the Scan Elite II, the resolution is about 1/2 of the 5400 and less than a CoolScan V. That being said, I scan much of my work at 2700 ppi rather than the full 5400 because the shots simply don't warrant the full resolution of the 5400, so the lower resolution of the Scan Elite II may be just fine. If you're talking about the 5400 II, that is a newer, and supposedly faster version of the 5400 with an LED light source instead of a CCFL light source. That makes scans appear potentially even sharper due to the very direct light source. Another difference is the dropping of IEEE 1394 on the 5400 II, if that makes a difference. If my 5400 weren't on a slow path to it's grave, I wouldn't have bought the Nikon I use for much of my scanning. Another scanner to consider is the Canon FS4000US if you can get one with all the accessories since they're relatively inexpensive. I picked one up for around $150 shipped last fall specifically to scan APS film of my families since it can batch scan entire rolls. The scans, at least with my copy of the FS4000, are incredibly sharp. It excels with negative film but suffers more with slides since it has more noise than the Nikon or Minolta in the scans. Multiscanning (not available in Canon's software that I've found) does help in Vuescan, but the Nikon and Minolta beat it hands down for the old kodachrome slides I've been scanning.

My Minolta Scan Elite 5400 first version is very picky about USB timings. When I used to scan with that one I had to make sure it was direct to my MacBook or the scanner would hang. YMMV depending upon your scanner and the hub.

That's why I was asking too. The scanner doesn't have a transparency adapter so scans made with it will be very hard to make. It can be done with white paper and a bright light source over it but it won't be as good as a scanner with a transparency adapter.

Are you using that all-in-one for the film scanning as well?

<p>To add to what Les said, the dust and scratches on a body like the 80D when I did it took forever to clean. With BW, that was inevitable since IR cleaning doesn't work on those anyway.<br> I did happen to think about something I tried with color negative when trying to do that with a DSLR. I got the best color shooting in RAW and using a tool called MakeTiff from the same developer that does ColorPerfect. Then take the TIFF file MakeTiff outputs and convert it using the appropriate negative film profile in ColorPerfect. It was fiddly to do, but if I didn't have other alternatives, it can be made to work.<br> Doing it myself, I didn't use a slide duplicator. I used a light box designed for viewing slides, made a mask to both hold the film flat and block extra light and shot with a macro lens with the camera on a tripod with live view and remote trigger. Once everything was in focus, I just needed to slide the next odd sized negative into place. With slides, just make sure to have heavy paper with an opening just smaller than the slide. Pop it into place, and shoot. My settings were F8 at 100 ISO 105mm on a Canon crop sensor.</p>

Paul, with slides and BW negatives I've had pretty good results with that method and have used it mostly for odd sized BW negatives that wouldn't fit my scanner. Color negatives never really gave me very good results so I stuck with the scanners to digitize those. The slide shooting method can be quite quick once you have your flow figured out. I would suggest shooting in raw to finish tweaks in your raw editor of choice.

I have a Canon FS4000 that I picked up just to scan APS film my family has. I can't say for sure how the FS2720U will perform for sure but if the optics are like the FS4000 I think you'll be quite happy. I used to scan a lot at 2700ppi on my Minolta until it started giving me fits when it was time to scan. The OpticFilm allows scanning at 7200ppi as that's the max resolution of the sensor. That being said. Just because the sensor has that capability doesn't mean the lens can deliver. In the Plustek it can't deliver that high a result. It maybe hits about half that if the film is entirely within the scanner's depth of field. Since the Plustek has no autofocus, there isn't much way to optimize it. Along with sharper optics, the Nikon's autofocus capability gives it an edge for detail. Basically I use the OpticFilm as my scanner to do old instamatic/auto camera stuff. The Nikon for my SLR stuff that has more detail to it. The Canon for the APS. My Minolta, when I can get it to work, I use for the highest resolution scans when conditions were perfect for the film to achieve the best sharpness I could. Sadly that scanner is probably not long for this world unless I can figure out how to fix it. How large are you hoping to print?

I have a few different scanners and each has their benefits and their problems. With the OpticFilm 8200i I have, it does a serviceable job. I find it does a better job with negatives than slides. It isn't as sharp as the older Canons, Nikons, or Minoltas, but unless your needs are grain sharp huge enlargements, the scanner does a pretty good job, albeit slowly. The Coolscan V I have scans at least 3 times faster, in part because it does the IR channel in the same pass as the rgb scan. The OpticFilm does two passes to get IR data and rgb. Lately I've been scanning very old c22 negatives with the OpticFilm and been fairly pleased with the results. The pictures aren't so grain, okay dye cloud, sharp like the others with autofocus would have been, but the pictures I'm scanning aren't so sharp as to need it either. You mentioned large scale printing. Do you mind elaborating on that? A 4000 point scan of 35mm film yields around 12x18 @ 300ppi output. Depending upon final output resolution, you can go up or down from there. On the plus tell, I scan at full 7200 points sensor resolution and down sample to 3600 on save as I've found it's a bit sharper and avoids the stair step artifacts I was getting scanning at 3600 directly. YMMV on that one. People talk about flatbed scanners a lot as well. They can yield some great results, but for me with 35mm or smaller, the dedicated scanners do a better job. Again, this is just my experience. I use a flatbed for anything larger than 35mm but don't scan much higher than 1800ppi since, on my scanner, I don't pull any more detail beyond that. The nice thing about having a currently manufactured and supported scanner is that it can be more easily serviced, and you can get spares like film holders for reasonable prices compared to the high prices of, say a holder for 35mm for a Minolta Scan Elite 5400. What you'll probably find is that all of us scanning film have our own preferences and expectations.

I couldn't get consistency out of it so I jumped to vuescan. Silver fast se outputs in 8bit only so maybe the conversion is causing trouble. If you like give Vuescan a try. It's free to try but will watermark pictures until it's licensed. It will output 16 bit and then you could compare Lightroom output.

At least your scanner isn't cutting off the bottom 4mm of the frame like mine was before I sent it in for service. Back to the issue at hand. When you export from Lightroom do you have any resize, sharpening, or other options enabled? That threw me the first few times when I was starting. Not sure if silver fast has it or not but in vuescan one can skew the scan to fix the slight angle. Perhaps that's something available to you in silver fast in the rotation option.

<p>With the scanners I have, Nikon included, Vuescan alters the exposure based upon the exposure requirements. Depending upon the scanner, it may increase the exposure time or the gain applied, both of which are applied before the scanner returns data to the client. Last week when I scanned some particular dense negatives, the raw preview histogram was all clustered in a small area. When doing the final scan after the exposure and gains were adjusted (I manually increased gains on 2 channels to help with the color balance of the negative) the raw histogram Vuescan showed as the scan was taking place was much more spread across the range.<br> The Plustek scanner seems to adjust it's gain rather than exposure time, but not nearly as much as the older dedicated film scanners allowed.</p>

Thanks for the info. It's the first time I've seen the effects of heat degradation look quite like this. For the developing to only cost $1 at the local lab, I'll keep shooting through the rest of the film to see what I get. Interestingly when I had originally inquired about the cost to just process the film, the manager told me the cost, probably saw the look of shook on my face, and then added, "I should probably raise that."