After Leica--The Best

[jose_angel]

I own a 750 pro months ago. I find a real pain to scan mounted chromes on it, much more if I want to have a minimum scanning quality... Too much tedious. Wet mount? It sounds even worst to me.

 

Reality is that I`m scanning a few slides only when strictly neccesary (obligation); scans are good enough for my own use. When I want a real high quality scan I send the chromes to a pro-lab with a drum scanner. There is a big difference.

 

My advice is that if you want to scan at the highest "home" quality, 35mm or medium format, buy a dedicated scanner, avoid a flat bed one.

 

I`m glad to read you are thinking about developing your own film... I do it regularly (shame that I`m now making home reforms, my freezer is full of undeveloped rolls!). Give it a try.

[x-ray]

RJ-

 

The Eversmart is a great machine and has been the standard for many years. Deals are around now for some of the older machines that run on OS9 or some of the earlier windows platforms. I found a great deal direct from Fuji on the Finescan 5000 and love it. It's rated about the same as the supreme. Both machines are as close to drum scanning as you can get.

[jtk]

It's true that scanning takes time.

 

It's not true that a DSLR can rival a dedicated film scanner unless one has low (flatbed) aspirations. DSLR's inherently lose data, as of course do the best camera lenses.

 

If you're determined to scan most of what you shoot, you're either nuts :-) or you don't shoot more than a roll or two of film daily. Better to go digital.

 

If you're "old school" and don't expect more than a few significant frames from a roll of 35 you can do your scanning for less than 10 minutes per roll, counting all handling, with a Nikon.

 

It's not true that drum scanners are inherently better than Nikons because many are not well operated or maintained. If the service is cheap it means you're taking a risk.

 

If you've worked directly with magazines that print fine color, you know their scanning departments damage film with regularity.

[michael_londarenko]

Alex,

 

I tried scanning using different brands of "desktop" scanners. In my opinion they all fall short of delivering what I had on original slide or negative. Ironically even though they're supposed to be better at scanning slides I was seeing generally better results with negatives - scan would typically look closer to original negative than original slide. This could be due to image latitude difference between negatives and slides. This could also be due to limited color space of those desktop scanners - too many are just slightly larger than sRGB color space, which is much smaller than that of color film.

 

I'm personally going to try having few of my slides scanned on real drum scanner, like Heidelberg Tango. Imacon is not a drum scanner. It's a "flatbed" in terms of technology, it uses CCD and not PMT like Tango. It's a better kind of "flatbed", but it's not a drum scanner.

It uses that virtual drum arrangement and when scanned with fluid mounted originals it produces better results than typical desktop scanner. With fluid mounting solutions available for other desktop scanners (like from www.scanscience.com) the difference between Imacon scan and other desktop scanner when using fluid mounting becomes much much smaller. Real improvement should happen with drum scanner. I will know in few weeks I guess.

 

In terms of printers - assuming you meant inkjet, I'd say that Epson makes best photo-grade inkjet printers now. Which one you choose will be up to you obviously.

 

Desktop darkroom - Photoshop CS2 is good. Maybe not best, but it's good and it's the most popular one. Which means that when you need help - you can find it. Once you get really good at it you may find other solutions that would work well together with Photoshop making your life easier.

 

Hope any of this helps.

 

 

Mike.

[rj__]

John,

 

I think that you are getting to the real issue, which is partly a matter of experience and partly a matter of time management.

 

I'll use myself as an example. I have a full time job in another field and make photographs as a hobby. If I was using a Creo, it was because I was doing a presentation for a project on which the next step is to engage a professional photographer. I am an amareur, and have no pretensions to becoming a pro.

 

Recently, I started a long term project that involves shooting one or two rolls of 35 or 120 every day.

 

It takes me 20-40 minutes (the first being normal development, the second a two stop push) to process two rolls of 35 or (unless I get a bigger tank) one roll of 120. This assumes that I don't have to spend additional time getting the temperature of the developer, etc. within an acceptable range.

 

The second step is to scan all of negatives (either 36 or 72 of them in 35 and either 10 or 20 in 6x7) to make positives that I can look at on a computer screen. On the Epson v750, at low resolution, and scaning a full strip at a time, this takes me 15-30 minutes depending on volume. At the moment, I am looking for ways to speed this up.

 

The third step is to select negatives for a higher resolution scan. I can't agree more with your implicit point that it is wise to take an old school approach to this. Anyway, selecting candidates for a full scan can take only a couple of minutes, but it can also take much longer. When it takes longer, there is a point where the likely decision is to do more full scans.

 

The fourth step is to do the full scans themselves. The amount of time this takes depends on the desired resolution and whether one dry mounts or wet mounts. For, say, four scans, it can take anywhere from 1O-40 minutes.

 

Meanwhile, while the hardware (the scanner) is plug and play, the software, if you want to understand it, not to mention how it functions in relation to Photoshop, is a fairly steep learning curve. Plus, in my case (and I am told that this is not atypical), a number of communications with Silverfast technical support about issues like serial numbers that didn't work and an update to which I was entitled (on which, by the way, their technical support was excellent, but that is not my point).

 

I'm going to leave it there, without getting into the whole issue of learning Photoshop and becoming proficient at getting good prints from an Epson 2400 printer. I will say, however, that printing, at least initially, requires a time commitment that makes processing and scanning look like a joke.

 

I think that God invented labs, wet and digital, and master printers, wet and digital, for a reason :) I am actively looking for a way that will allow me to do my real-life job and at the same time deal with one or two rolls of film a day, and I am quickly coming to the conclusion that being my own lab and my own printer is not the way to right path :)

[rj__]

My advice to Alex is this...

 

If you can afford it, just take the photographs and hire professionals to do the lab work and printing.

 

If you want to save money somewhere, do your own black and white processing. The investment is minimal, it is easy (after you have messed up a few rolls, a problem that will be greatly minimized if you know someone who can show you how to load a reel), it doesn't take much time (about 20 minutes total for normal development), it is mindless (you can watch TV or listen to music) and it will save you quite a lot of money.

 

If you want to save even more money, buy a fairly inexpensive scanner (if you need both 35 and 120, the Epson v700 is a good choice), and use it to do low resolution proofs.

 

Don't get involved in doing full scans, Photoshop and printing unless you really want to do it and have a lot of time on your hands to become good at it. If you don't, I believe that you will be much better off if you are very selective about what you want printed and hire someone to do thos prints, recognizing thay there will be a close relationship between what you pay and the quality you get. Good prints aren't cheap.

[Alex_Es]

Dear, dear friends! What a wealth of information! How can I ever thank you enough! Wow!

 

Thank you!

[rj__]

This has indeed been a good discussion, and I am obliged to Alex for starting it because I am in the process of working through the same issues.

 

I hesitated to participate because I started a thread about two weeks ago suggesting that there should be clear information, and transparency, about the w/nw threads. I have since learned that that is exactly what the Nature Forum does. Anyway, one of the moderators got terribly annoyed and banned me from this forum for a month :) So Mike, if you want to delete my posts from this thread, feel free.

[rj__]

An addendum to my views on this...

 

I have a friend who works for a major European lab that does processing and scanning and printing for a few of the world's most high-profile photographers. These photographers spend their time making photographs and deliver their unexposed film to my friend's lab. In the case of one fashion photographer, he does it by limo (I was there and suitably impressed :))

 

I am really inclined to think that the serious amateur photographer, if he/she can afford it, should take the same route. Maybe less the limo :)

 

This means, in part, recognizing something. There is a widespread idea, at least in North America, that one should be able to get a good 8x10 print for $10. However, the reality is that while one's local photo shop will do an 8x10 for $10, that price has nothing to do with the real cost of a good print, wet or digital. Or so I believe.

[dstate1]

In a world where the Leitz V35 enlarger is available for 1/10 its original cost I can't

imagine fighting the scanner/black and white film battle. Buy an enlarger, some

contrast control filters and do REAL prints. It's EASY compared to getting true art

grade prints from a scan of film.

 

Best wishes

Dan

[dankapsner]

Alex, I commend you for developing your own B&W film. Perhaps you will come to like it,

or perhaps it will be a bore. Once you've learned to load film onto reels (I cheated and

used the easy to load plastic ones) it's a matter of time, temperature, and cleanliness. It

only took a few attempts to find a good developing time, and once I found it I

stuck with it as long as I got results that printed well. While I use digital

cameras exclusively in my work, I find that the process lacks the magic of traditional

photography. That doesn't mean digital is bad--it's quick, efficient, and cost effective for

me--but magic? Alas, no. I gave my darkroom away a few years

ago--3 enlargers, all manner of stuff--and now find I miss it at times, although not

enough to replace it. I do shoot a little film for personal work and have a

friend develop it.

I scan on a Polaroid SprintScan Plus connected to an ancient G3 and make an

occasional B&W print on an older HP Photosmart with a gray cartidge. While not perfect,

they're not bad. I like different types of negatives for traditional darkroom printing and

scanning. In the darkroom a prefer a denser neg, for scanning a less dense one. None of

the tools I use are the best, but they work for me. For my personal work I like the slower

process and forced patience that film requires.

[Alex_Es]

Thanks RJ! And thanks dan and Dan. There is now this question: are the two mediums

mutually exclusive? Can the twain ever meet?

[t_nu_tamm]

"Also, has anyone used a bellows to copy film and negatives into an DSLR? Any thoughts?"

-Almost every image at my blog: http://opsgolb.blogspot.com/ is scanned that way (click on

images to see 800 pixels high versions). I use then VueScan to turn them into positives

automatically.

I think there is plenty of dynamic range in CCD's for copying color negatives, I love the ability

to change exposure for dense negatives and there is no limits to size of original... and it's

fast too compared to desktop scanners.

Drawbacks migt be limited file-size and sometimes noisy highlights...

[rj__]

"Can the twain ever meet?"

 

I believe that the question for every photographer is this; how much time do you want to spend becoming an expert, to borrow a motion picture term, on post-production?

 

For some people, the answer is that they want to do their own post-production, whether wet or digital.

 

There are others who prefer to refer post-production to experts on processing and printing.

 

I happen to be in the latter camp. For me, and speaking only for myself, the only reason to be involved in post-production is financial.

 

It's a peculiar situation where a lot of high end photographers and serious amateurs have a common ground.

[rj__]

To express what I'm trying to say more concretely...

 

About three weeks ago, I visited a printer in NY who does a lot of work for Magnum photographers. As with my friend in Europe, I had a chance to look at several of his prints.

 

This gentleman has made his living solely by making prints for 22 years. The idea that I am going to make prints of equivalent quality after a few hours of mucking around with my Epson 2400 is just plain ridiculous.

 

So the question is, do I want to just hire either my Euriopean friend of this fellow in New York (who is actually, by the way, Canadian), or do I want to spend my time becoming as good as these guys. Realistically, the latter is not going to happen.

 

So if I want to know what the potential is of my photographs, printed, I have to hire one of these people. And the amazing thing is, it is not even particularly expensive.

 

Just something to think about.

 

Still waiting for Mike Dixon to blow his gasket :)

[ronald_moravec1]

Epson 4870 and newer ones make digital contact sheets with the supplied software.

 

I wrote instructions under digital contact sheet about three months ago.

[jtk]

While there ARE wonderful professional darkroom printers, there aren't many and have not been for decades. Therefore, we find ourselves mostly using 3rd rate "prosumer" labs (most commonly mentioned on P.N) or doing the work ourselves.

 

It's relatively easy for a person with good darkroom skills to beat his own darkroom work with a desktop scanner and a decent inkjet (2400 was mentioned, but older 1280 and 2200 were as good in the right hands).

 

Nonetheless, many of us (me) would dearly love still to have the room for wet darkrooms. My Valoy and my Durst are gathering dust, along with some very nice trays.

 

From long practice I find it easy to load my 35 and 120 onto Kindermann SS reels inside a large changing bag. It's a pleasure. Then it's equally easy to process that film (Rodinal in my case these days) and hang it to dry in a bathroom, from a shower rod. My film is immaculate, rarely requiring more than a few minutes dust spotting in large prints.

 

I evaluate my negatives on a large former-Xray viewing lightbox (with daylite tubes)and scan those I like.

 

I knew when I made my exposures when there was something likely to be printed: don't look for happy accidents.

[rj__]

"...don't look for happy accidents."

 

That's a great line :)

[nesrani]

"don't look for happy accidents."

 

Yeah, don't allow life to teach you anything.

[les_lammers]

Alex,

 

Have a look at this: http://www.silveroxide.com/TryOutPage.htm and this daylight developing tank. http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=006XWp I got one on e*ay NIB for $12.

 

I'm not saying not to develop film but software might be fun too. I gotta admit that the software for digital is pretty amazing. I thought I saw another program that simulates FOMA film/grain but cannot find a link right now.

 

Les

[Alex_Es]

Thanks, Les!