Largest best file neg scan to disk

[newindustar]

The Noritsu at my Costco said they can do 2048 x 3072 on their

Noritsu. That is an 18 meg file when open in Photoshop. That is

equivalent to a 6mpix digicam file. Not bad but I'd like bigger. Is

this as big as it comes? What sizes are other retailers offering?

What has your best experience been on scan quality from Frontier vs

Noritsu, etc.? can you specify that they save it as a tif instead of

jpg?

Thanks

[geoff_samuel]

That is about as big as you can get from most Noritsu's AFAIK. You can specify they be saved as tiff, but it does take a lot longer, so it ties up the machine for quite a while so the lab may not offer this. For a bigger, bettter scan you need to look at drum scans, or even a dedicated film scanner such as various Nikon scanners. The quality of scans from Noritsu & Fuji Frontiers are O.K but by no means the best.

[discpad]

More importantly, you want a 16 bit per channel scan.

 

The Noritsu and Frontier scanners can only deliver an 8 bit per (R,G, &B) channel scan, which means the red, green and blue info is one of 256 steps; while better scanners -- And better scanning software -- will extract the info off the film in 12 bits per channel, which is 4096 steps for each of the red, green and blue channels.

[timcorridan]

however, if you find a better deal than costco's $2.99 "high rez" disk, i'll eat my toenails...

[charliexia]

"however, if you find a better deal than costco's $2.99 "high rez" disk, i'll eat my toenails..."

 

I get my slides scanned with the flextight 949 at 3200dpi (60mb tiff) for $1.25. Eat away Tim!

[diegobuono]

Charlie, for Imacon scan here in ITaly they ask 0,60 Euro per Megabyte!!! So a 60MByte scan cost 36Euros!!!! Where do you have a so low price? Just for my curiosity becouse I do not want send my slide overseas for scanning.

[scott_eaton]

<I>That is equivalent to a 6mpix digicam file. Not bad but I'd like bigger</i><P>More proof of my rant that the smaller the film format, the more resolution it's claimed to have by delusional film users who make illogical megapixel comparisons.<P>

 

The Flextight has more resolution than the Noritsu, but it will be significantly more grainy, along with a drum. I hope you're shooting Reala and the operator is running custom print film profiles, dude.<P>I used to get razor sharp Kodak ProPhotoCD scans from 35mm that were 6k x 4k for a song, but the lab long since retired that machine. The Kodak system didn't have a lot of dynamic range, but the print film profiles were far better than the Flextight or a drum, and scans were cleaner. Time to get your own deskop scanner.

[charliexia]

i'm based in Shanghai. and it's Euro 0.002/MB

[charliexia]

actually it should be euro 0.02, not 0.002, that would be just ridiculous...

[charliexia]

re: scott... i think that depends on the format... with 35mm you hit the grain barier quite easily, and I think that's where professional DSLRs have the upper hand. but when it comes to scanning medium format, it's a totally different story. A fine grain medium format negative when scanned correctly can carry a lot more infrmation than a 1DsII (IMHO)

[mike cary]

I currently pay $2.49 per frame or $18.95 per 120/220 roll for 4860x4930 JPEG scans of 6x6 slides and/or negatives. Turn around is usually 2-3 days as the film has to be sent down to the main lab in Richmond VA.

 

Mike

[charliexia]

over here turn around is 3 hours... no wonder why everyone is moving their production center to china =)

[discpad]

Charlie, I tried emailing you: Your email listed here on Photo.Net is "Charlie_xia@****.com" but the "_" underscore appears to be an illegal character in an email address! Eudora rejects it, and the Eudora email app is strictly RFC-822 compliant.

 

Do you have an alternate email address?

[r.t. dowling]

2048 x 3072 is pretty good, actually. Most of the Frontier labs I've been too -- Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Ritz -- give you a file that is about 1500 x 1000 or something like that. And it has that nasty Frontier oversharpened grain distortion.

 

Noritsu labs are almost impossible to find where I live, so consider yourself fortunate!

[newindustar]

Well I guess I'd better catch up here.

 

First about the max size scan it seems from the responses that the base16 2048 x 3072 is about it. I have seen far more complaints about the quality issues with the Frontier scans than the Noritsu so will try the Costco option.

 

Second regarding the 8 bit scans from my experience in the real commercial graphics printing world it does not make much diffeence unless you are going to do heavy maniplations on the file. Assuming the scans are reasonable and levels and sharpness and channel mixer are the extent of the post processing it may be not that significant. I would be happy to hear exactly where the 8-bit scans fall apart. Likey there is an exhaustive thread on it somewhere. I have never be able to see it on screen or in printing.

 

Third would be to calm down Mr. Eaton. I don't recall saying anything about film vs digital nor made any resolution assumptions. I was talking FILE SIZE. If I open any of my 6 meg digicam files (I do have a D2H and a D70 as well as various 35 mm and medium format cameras and a Dicomed 4x5 digital scanback) in Photoshop they are base16 to the tee. 2048-3072 files are 18 megabytes uncompressed tifs. So in terms of file size base 16 and 6 meg digicam files are exactly the same.

 

By the way some shooters actually shoot both film and digital for their various merits, some people appreciate film grain and the look of old lenses. They will never be the same medium and one will never replace the other. Scott did you completly abandon film after all that background? Is that not like an mixed-medium painter saying oil is better than watercolor and never painting watercolor again?

 

Lastly I have a $40000 Screen Cezanne, a Minolta Multi-Pro, a Nikon Coolscan IV Ed which I quite like at it's 2900 dpi. and an Epson 4700 so I don't think I need to go scanner shopping right now.

[newindustar]

"More proof of my rant that the smaller the film format, the more resolution it's claimed to have by delusional film users who make illogical megapixel comparisons"

 

 

I guess all the assumptions in this remark bugged me.

 

 

The reason I was considering Noritsu scans is for the time savings and access to a possibly much higher quality negative scan than the desktops scanners. I think everyone has had some struggle with negative scans on many films.

 

The Screen Cezanne is optically great but ours needs a major clean and platen replacement which probably won't be justified cost wise. It also is not very freindly to negatives. The Minolta Multi Pro is great but also has a hard time with all negative films I have tried except Kodak UC400.

 

I am focusing on film more again because I frankly get tired of the digital look (depending on the subject)and also because I want to be prepared for an adventure trip. I can't imagine traveling light with digital, I would never consider bringing a laptop or even one of those viewers. The other big problem is power. I guess the only way to do it is make a big investment in cf cards. With the D2H in raw I get 144 raws on a gig card. That is 4-6 rolls of film per gig card. A trip of a few weeks would probably be 30 rolls minimum if you don't shoot junk and are in a great environment. I guess that would be about min of 6 gig cards for a short trip. That is not so bad but I would feel much better with a F100 backed up with and N80 or N90 perhaps and no power issues. How do you all feel about relying on CF cards in possibly adverse conditions?

[discpad]

You can use the 4-6 gig MicroDrives from Hitachi, which are quite rugged due to a redesign from the technology they bought from IBM. Avoid the generic stuff (MindStor) from China, though, as they are junk; and also make sure you buy the retail, not OEM ones pulled out of iPod & other MP3 players.

 

If you use a 6 gig drive, that's 864 RAW files; and you don't even need to take the card out of the camera at all. There's a $50 rebate on them, so the delivered price is $136 -- See eBay item 7603826172 for a dealer.

 

[DISCLAIMER: I just pulled this up; and the dealer's rating seems pretty good.]

[gary_yeowell]

My lab has now been scanning my Kodak Portra 160VC negs from medium format up to 6x12 using the Noritsu for the last year and i have been very happy with the results. We did some very extensive testing, comparing results from their Imacon and Noritsu side by side and came to the conclusion that for negs the Noritsu did a better job overall, giving better shadow detail and less grain but with exceptional sharpness, than the Imacon. However the reverse was true with transparency, so for the rare occasion i shoot with transparency i will continue with the Flextight. Given that the Noritsu only scans in 8 bit i am convinced that my scanning guy really understands how to get the very best from the Noritsu, but like everything, a lesser experienced person may come up with different results.

I too am still not convinced by digital, and as a pro travel shooter i still shoot film, although i own a 5D to keep my toe in so to speak. The results obtainable from big pieces of colour neg are very hard to beat in my opinion, giving a look that digital cannot match especially for long exposures and mixed light.

[gary_yeowell]

Just to clarify my previous post, the scans i have done are between 50 & 75MB tiff files with no sharpening, but they sure don't cost a couple of bucks. I use these files for 'Getty' and have no problems, in fact the Getty digital guy comments how good they are. To put this into perspective, last week i demo'd a Leaf Aptus 65 back for my Hasselblad which is a 30MP 16bit capture device and again after some extensive testing and file manipulating, both myself and my digital guy concluded that the results we are getting from colour neg, 6x6,6x7,6x12, scanned on the noritsu are preferable.

[gary_yeowell]

Les,

I don't have anything to hand in terms of direct comparison that i can now show you as these tests were done some time ago, however you can look at my work on: www.gettyimages.com

If you go to the 'creative' section and type 'yeowell' in the search box provided you will see that 269 images appear, a 100 or so of which are scanned with the Noritsu, others are drum scanned or Imacon. You will only be able to see them at web res but i think that the colour and contrast will be indicative of the final result.

[gary_yeowell]

Les,

 

Just to note that some Noritsu machines may differ and the lab i use is a professional photographic lab, not a Costco, we don't have them in the UK. The lab use the Noritsu out of preference to the other scanners for negative because of 1) ease of use 2) digital ice 3) dynamic range 4) lack of grain (LED light source) 5) sharpness.

As i previously said the operator is key, but this all takes time and these are not cheap scans, i have chosen these over both drum and Imacon as the results are at least as good overall.

[newindustar]

Thanks for putting up those scans Les. It is really too bad they have to compress them so hard, I think that has a lot to do with the hit they are taking. I was hoping for better. I will see if there is any way for them to tif them at my Costco.

 

On the other hand Gary's images show it is not an inherent fault of the scanner, likely it is settings. It was also very interseting that the digital back and Imacon fell short of the Noritsu in professional hands. It will be sad if such a valuable and cheap to access scanner becomes useless becaus of the way the run it.

 

I am thinking the bigger the Micro-drive the scarier it becomes in case it fails just like hard drives. Maybe a stack of smaller cards would be preferably for travel, having less eggs in one basket. The bigger ones save some money but....

 

I have seen a link somewhere where Kodak claims that 2048 x 3072 is all there is in 35mm film. Was that a valid Kodak reference?

[newindustar]

I stopped in at Costco and had a chat with the operator who was able to converse well enough about this subject. He said with there older software they offered 16 x base scanned tifs however with the new software they can only do 16 x base jpgs. I actaually saw a drop down box on his control screen that offered tifs but he said he still gets jpgs even if he choses tif. I find this hard to believe but either way he was unable or unwilling to do tifs. I still am waiting for my F100 so have not tried it yet. By the way local Costco have dumped all Kodak film and now just have Fuji 400. I don't know if they will add more speeds or not. This operator was biased towards Fuji film.

[newindustar]

Oh by the way, I was trying to find out if it was true that Kodak claims base x 16 was the real limit of information in 35mm film, not if it does or not necessarily. I would just find it interesting to know if it is Kodaks opinion or not.

 

A scan at around 3000 dpi which yields a 35 meg file, over double that of base x 16 is often considered where the maximum is obtained diminishing rapidly after that at higher dpi's.