Shoot Film then scan to Digital

[peter_kervarec]

Hi

I have a Nikon Coolscan V and am wondering whether I will get a better result than digital by shooting film and

then scanning the neg to digital? Currently I am using Nikon 10 & 12 MP digital.

Does anyone out there have any expertise in this area? Is it a wasted exercise ? Comments welcomed and appreciated.

[ronald_moravec1]

Except for some some subtle differences , I thought Leica negs scanned on a KM 5400 were a wash with A Nikon

D200 at low ISO up to 400. That camera is 10MP.

 

Since then I bought a D700 at 12 MP and it is better at base ISO. But the D700 can be used at 800 and I

would not bother with noise reduction until 1600.

 

Don`t fall into the pixel counting trap. There are a whole lot other important factors besides MP count. That

number is nice for advertising, but is far from the deciding criteria of quality.

[mattb1]

What lenses do you have? Good glass is the best way to get good photos. Shooting film and scanning is slow and introduces other issues that are different than all digital or film and darkroom. It will slow you down, and cause you to spend a lot of time that you could spend taking photos.

 

I have a Nikon 9000, and recently bought a 6x9 film camera to replace one that was stolen a couple of years ago. I have taken like 7 rolls of film, but after two months have not found time to scan them. Where as the digital ones I took at the same time have been shared with others.

 

I like the idea of having film, and that I *could* always rescan it, or even scan it once. And that slides in 6x9 look sooooooo good on the light table. However, in practice I don't have the time to scan. And, 35mm film struggles to make larger than 11x14 prints, a good DSLR can make 20x30 prints that look good. My 6x9 can make good 20x30 prints as well. But, it takes a lot more time.

 

That said, I'm still looking at a fluid mount tray for my 9000 that I hope would breath some life back into my scanning.

 

Only you can answer the question. Your subject matter and style could also be major factors in what works best for you. Negative film does have a larger dynamic range than digital, and slide film has such great color. The down side is that scanning is not very straight forward, it has its own focus, color, distortion, and noise issues. It could get a lot better in the future, but I don't think that will come any time soon.

 

Good luck with it.

[peter_kervarec]

Thanks Ronald. I wasnt really worried about the MP or pixel count. Just wondering if there is any overall benefit

for a better result.Better dynamic range, aesthetics etc

[don_e]

I'm not an expert, just a beginner at scanning, and with a Nikon V which I bought a few months ago. My photo.net

portfolio are my 'learning curve' scans from nearly every film I shoot (haven't got to e6 yet, if fact I'm

scanning now)...expert, I'm not as you can see.

 

 

C41, and I assume E6, scan very well. So far, only Reala has required some fussing.

 

Silver b&w is difficult. I'm considering buying a scanhancer (which is basically a diffusion filter) for this

purpose. Two problems, ICE which cleans up automatically dust and scratches on dye-films does not work on silver

film, so you've got to spot in an editor, and there is a...how to describe...grayish dots, not grain, not ccd

noise -- I don't know what they are, however, they are not evident in a 9x12 inkjet print; the surface looks

normal. Mostly they appear in 400 speed films, most obvious in shadows. This might be due to the ccd

illumination of the Nikon V, which is why I'm considering the diffusion filter.

 

If you enjoy shooting 35mm, the V is worthwhile, especially for color. There's a learning curve, but once you've

gotten working methods down, it is not difficult or time consuming.

[benny_spinoza]

There is also the scanning software to consider. I mostly scan color negative film, and I like SilverFast the best. Unfortunately, SilverFast is not bundled with the Nikon film scanner, so you must purchase it separately. Because you already have the film scanner, why don't you just shoot a roll of Kodak Ektar 100 film, scan it, and see if you like it.

[don_e]

An afterthought: the 'grey dots' may be a development issue with silver. There may be an optimal way to develop

for scanning that I haven't worked out.

[janne_moren]

I use both film and digital, and as far as resolution goes either is sufficient for my needs. At 10mp I can do everything I typically want with an image already. Sure, I can't do a double-page fashion magazine spread, but until the time when somebody actually asks me to I'm not going to worry about hypotheticals. I would say that yes, I do get better dynamic range from film. But that's not the reason I use it either.

 

I have three reasons to use film. First, it has a different look than digital, and that look is rather difficult to recreate. Easier to just go to the source to get it.

 

Second, since it limits how much I can snap away, I do so much less, and it results in me getting more good pictures. I'm not a very good photographer so I tend to come away with a bunch of not-very-good images of most subjects. With film I have to stop and think, and that tends to result in one or two rather good images instead of a dozen failures.

 

Third, I like the kind of cameras I have available with film - square format in general, and my 6x6 TLR especially. Cameras - tools - do matter; they shape how we work. For me the wide-format eye-level SLR is not the best tool for photography, but unfortunately that's the only thing on offer on digital.

 

Either film or digital gives me all the quality I need. I choose the tool according to the "job" I have (it's all just a hobby of course). For instance, I normally don't do flash photography with film; it's too error-prone without the quick feedback. On the other hand, street photography is much better with film for me. Because of the look of BW film, because I need to limit my shooting so I spend more effort finding the view, and not the least because people react differently to an old-school TLR or folding camera than to a big, black digital SLR.

[stwrtertbsratbs5]

I shoot digital, but I still shoot film mostly because I love B&W darkroom work. I also shoot some color film because I have a Nikon CS 9000 that I use to scan my archive. Some folks hate scanning, but I don't mind it. And I really like to use negative film in high-contrast lighting.because of the graceful way that film handles highlight detail.

[ronald_moravec1]

Dynamic range is about the same with pro Portrait film and digi cam set to low contrast settings.

 

I have increased DR with both. Digi I can use blended exposures. With film, I can make two frames or use a single frame scanned twice. On the second scan, I overexpose the scan to get the overbright highlights correct, then blend the two files. This is essentially the same as twice processing a digi file.

 

If there are registration problems, set the blend mode to difference and use the arrow keys to move the top image so all you see is black. Start by using the move tool, v, and hold down the shift key to mate up the two scans. Then use difference mode if you have to.

 

I have two scanners, an Epson flat bed and a MK5400. I put 24 pics on the flat bed and come back in 15 min and have proof scans of all the frames made. The winners are then put thru the 5400.

 

http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/tutorials-video.htm

 

http://www.davidclapp.co.uk/articles.php

 

Two nice resources, slightly different

[sknowles]

I've been using film for nearly 40 years and digital about two years now. I shoot both (digital and film cameras in same

bag). I still like film's look and getting the slides/negatives, although digital convenience and immediacy for images,

makes it's 4-5:1 ratio of shots. I can put the secondary, usually wide angle, lens on the film camera and shoot away

while letting the digital do the main work with the other lenses.

 

I use the Nikon 5000ED Coolscan and went to Silverfast's software. It's far better, but expensive (less if you own other

versions or with other scanners - I use it with an Epson V750), and it will outlast Nikon's (who has said OS-X 10.5 is the

last) for Mac's. My only issues are occasional slides don't scan well. My goal is to make the digital image match the film

photo (slides) and sometimes it just doesn't happen and require additonal post-processing. But overall that's about 5-10%

of the slides I scan, the rest are pretty much straight-through photos to images.

[dallalb]

Hi, I'm currently shoot film and I have a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED: I agree with many upper opinions about film. I think the first reason to shoot film is that with film I have a "full frame" medium and a "full frame" camera with its advantages and I can "change" my "sensor" every time I feed my camera with a different type of film, achieving a different taste and image rendition! The main drawback is that shooting film and scanning is time consuming and the learning curve is longer towards digital but I prefer working on quality than quantity: I don't mind taking millions of shot, but I would take THE shot. Look at my portfolio if you want some examples: there are photos taken with different type of films, all scanned with Nikon's scanner.

I use both Nikon's software and Vuescan, but ofter I prefer the former because is simpler and I use it with non adjustments than digital ICE.

Regards, Alberto.

[peter_kervarec]

Thank you all for your interesting and varied responses. There truly are some very passionate people out there.

Regards, Peter

[Ed_Ingold]

Peter,

 

Why do you ask others when you can make direct comparisons yourself? Everyone's needs and expectations are different.

 

For the benefit of those who don't have a scanner AND a 10+ MP digital camera, I can say that if you shoot film then a scanner will give you the better results than you can get from a darkroom or from a minilab. It takes a lot of skill and practice to get consistent results and it is very time consuming. However, time is not the essence of an hobby, rather look for personal satisfaction.

 

From my part, I haven't shot 35mm film since my first decent digital camera, a Nikon D1x (5.5 MP). The results at 11x14 inches an up were superior to film and more consistent. I do continue to shoot medium format film (Hasselblad), but even that is hardly worth while compared to a D2x (12.3 MP) unless you seek enlargements bigger than 16x20 inches. If you decide to enter the medium format world, then a Nikon LS-8000 or LS-9000 scanner is about the minimum requirement if you wish to do better than a modern DSLR or 35mm film with an LS-50.

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>There is no way to compare scanners and different films without performing adjustments on the results. That's the secret of getting good, consistent results. When you drive to the store, do you hold the steering wheel or just let the car decide which way to go?</p>

[ted_marcus1]

<p>"Hybrid workflow" is the fancy term for acquiring images on film, scanning them, and doing everything else digitally. I had a hybrid workflow for something like seven years, scanning my old slides and negatives and shooting new pictures on ISO 400 color negative film. Then in 2005, the Canon Rebel XT (350D) came out at a price point that made the switch to digital irresistible. With one exception, I feel no desire to go back to film.<br /><br />If you're into pixel-peeping and megapixel counting, the digital camera was a step down. My 4000dpi scans from film work out to 21 megapixels, while the camera is only 8 megapixels (newer cameras, of course, have more pixels). But that's not really a fair or useful comparison. The film scans will provide some amount of additional detail if you use Velvia (or maybe Ektar 100?) with a professional-grade lens and mount the camera on a sturdy tripod. And that detail may only be noticeable in enormous prints. But the way I normally shot film (hand-held with ISO 400 color negative film) the extra megapixels were largely "aliased" film grain. Whatever loss of detail went with the switch to digital was more than made up in convenience.<br /><br />I found that scanning film was a time-consuming hassle. Even with infrared cleaning ("ICE" or "FARE"), scans always ended up with "hickeys" (a printing industry term for dust and dirt) no matter how carefully I cleaned the film. Scans needed tedious painstaking manual effort to find and clone/heal out before I could do any actual work on them. Digital images don't require this step, and I definitely don't miss it. With a good raw converter like Adobe Camera Raw, images emerge from the "acquisition" step much closer to the finished product than the "raw" output of a scanner. Digital images at normal ISO settings also don't have noise comparable to the "grain aliasing" of film scans. So noise reduction is easier.<br /><br />I haven't really noticed the supposed aesthetic advantage of film, but film does have the advantage of archival stability and "future-proofing." My first scanner was a 2400dpi HP PhotoSmart. When I replaced it with a Canon FS4000US, I went back and re-scanned many of the slides and negatives at higher resolution and with better color. I've had an analogous situation when I've gone back and processed raw digital images I took in 2005 with the latest software to noticeably better results. But the resolution can never be better than what the sensor provides, and I'm not sure that my digital files on CD, DVD, or hard disk are anywhere near as durable as film. The archival benefit of film might be a reason to use it (shoot Kodachrome and store it in the dark if you want truly archival images). But that might not outweigh the hassles of scanning film.<br /><br />I do occasionally shoot film. I sometimes have situations where a small point-and-shoot camera is more appropriate than my DSLR kit. This doesn't happen often enough to justify buying a small digicam, so I load my old Minolta Freedom Zoom Explorer with some Kodak 400UC from the freezer. Then I have the negatives processed at a local minilab without prints, and use VueScan's batch capability to make 1500dpi "proof" scans from which I choose the negatives I want to scan at full resolution. This exercise is a useful reminder of why I don't miss scanning film.<br /><br />So the real answer to your question is that you have to weigh the advantages and drawbacks and decide whether a hybrid workflow would suit you better than pure digital. <br /></p>

[peter_kervarec]

Hi Ted thank you very much for your very informative answer. Pretty well spells it out as it is. I scanned my film library about 6 months ago and discovered that even though i kept all my negatives in sleeving and in a dustproof zone, there were batches of negs that were way more scratched than others.In most cases the ICE removal worked well but with some I could have spent an hour on each fixing scratches that werent removable with ICE. Some neg images that i had sold regularly were the most damaged from film lab handling.Then I realised that some films were "harder" than others or the processing labs had failed to use film hardener at the processing stage. I also discovered that film labs handle films differently. I kept the prints in their original wallets and noticed that when I scanned the negs, a certain store had way more scratches over a time period than others. If you are using film out there anybody, make sure your precious negatives are treated with total care. If I could have seen into the future, I would have examined those negs with a magnifying glass and moved on to a new store real fast.This would have saved me many hours of cloning ! I am getting super results with digital, with HDR techniques and photoshop, dynamic range really isnt an issue anymore. The cloning aspect you mention, Ted, is the biggest drawback to film and possibly colour balance/ISO as well. Thanks

[Uhooru]

<p>I tend to think in situations like this you just have to go head and head and decide for yourself. I think I would scan some film, take some digital in different situations, lighting, color, B/W and then look and compare your own results. Otherwise, I think there are a ton of threads that discuss this very topic, and people have done some pretty extensive tests. Have you tried a search here and on google? I'm pretty sure people have compared higher end digital cameras and Nikon and flatbed scanners.</p>