Process of getting your medium format negatives to the computer.

[nealcurrie]

<p>There are acutally Nikon 9000s available on Ebay right now for a 40-50% markup over their usual price.</p>

[evphotography]

<p>Are you shooting negative film or slide film. I personally would go with low cost scanner for web posting. But if you want to be able to make high quality prints from slides I would send them to Westcoast Imaging in California. The have very reasonable Tango drums scans that are excellent in quality. If you watch for their specials you can get 200mb drum scan for about $35-40.</p>

[Brad DuVall]

<p>I have recently jumped into the medium format realm as well, with a Holga, and was having the same problem. If you are only worried about posting small images on the web, you could have the lab make a contact sheet, about $5 per roll, at the time you get it processed and then use a cheap flatbed scanner to scan each photo off of the contact sheet. You may have to put in a little time cleaning up the dust in photoshop but it seems cheaper than buying a new scanner. <br>

Hoping this help, Brad</p>

[ryepixels]

<p>Faced with the same dilemma about 9 months ago I went with the EPSON V700. Seemed the best compromise of performance vs cost. After about 4 months of frustration with the film holder, I also bought the betterscanning.com film holder. A combination of the holder and practice is now yielding scans from which I have printed crops up to 12x18 using jpgs on a pro lab's Fuji Frontier with pretty good results. I do still get prints done from the film itself for "select" shots.<br>

There is something magic about landscapes on Velvia 50 120 film, and I'm now reworking scans I made when I first got the V700 with vastly better results.<br>

No, the scan is not going to reproduce on paper in the same way as an optically enlarged print, just differently. For posting on web sites as you are asking - you'll get digital file results that are fine for that purpose.</p>

[desmond_kidman]

<p>I will be facing the same decision about scanning thousands of MF transparencies and negs. I have put it off, figuring that the situation will get clearer in the future, but I wonder if, as time goes on, the demand for the really good scanners will diminish and I won't be able to get something good. I've paid for some scans at a good lab, and that would represent $25,000 just for 1000 scans. Ouch. I am really hoping that scans of film won't be going the way of film processing and printing, with fewer and fewer companies doing it and less equipment available as fewer folks shoot film. I don't want to start a debate about this, the future is impossible to tell, just as labs told me 5 years ago "don't worry, we will be doing wet for years and years" yet each that told me that have stopped their wet lines. </p>

[john_biskupski]

<p>Andy,<br>

Just some additional ideas, I find it useful and informative to have a light table and a good loupe for inspecting relative sharpness and look of bracketed film negatives and transparencies prior to scanning, to help selection.<br>

Also, in my view, you'd do better to go with a superior scanner, such as the V700 recommended above, or the V750, because if you one day you decide you want some nice large good quality prints, the better resolution scanner will be the better investment.<br>

I also got into this a little while ago, starting with the Mamiya 7, and then a Hasselblad 503CW, and purchased the V750 to do the scans. Once I had it, I realised that it would also handle prodigeous quantities of 35mm film, scanning sheets of 24 at a run. (So that had me out shooting my old Canon FD and Leica stuff as well, just for fun). So now, with both 35mm and MF scans, I do a low resolution run for general contact sheet and potential web uploads, but before removing the film holders (having done the dust removal chores once) I also perform a high res scan of a very small number of selected negs or chromes, which I keep for printing. Unless you have multiple hard drives, you do not want to be doing too many high res scans as your storage capacity will qickly be absorbed, and worse, your computer slows to a crawl.<br>

In your research, I assume you have seen Vincent Oliver's reviews of the Epson scanners on Photo-i, if not, well worth studying.</p>

<p> </p>

[benny_spinoza]

<p>I bought a Hasselblad some years ago and put together a wet darkroom when I had a sabbatical from work. The relatively large negative made good optical prints easier. But with digital scanning, 35mm can give very good 8 by 10. I suppose if you intend to go MF, you should at least get the V750 pro. But the problem is that you are not extracting all the beauty inherent in MF negative from a Hassy.</p>

[andyorr1982]

<p>Thanks again for everyone's kind replies. I appreciate you taking the time to offer an opinion and suggestions.<br>

I'm still waiting to hear on the final quote for the Hassy so once I obtain it I'll have really have to figure out what to do next. :-)</p>

<p>Take care,<br>

-Andy</p>

[Robin Smith]

<p>Andy,</p>

<p>I scan my MF negs and slides with an Epson 2450. It works - with luck I can get a good 12 x 12 print. It works surprisingly well with silver B&W films. The look is very true to film. Not something that is always true with a dedicated film scanner such as I use for my 35mm. However, it is not really a very enjoyable process. The newer flatbeds such as the Epson V700 may be better, but I suspect not to be honest - it does not take much fiddling with them to see all the potential flaws (dirty glass, Newton's rings, lens distortion, warped negatives etc etc) even with the third party negative carriers. The best approach is to use a Nikon 9000 or one of the Hasselblad scanners, but they are expensive and I have to say I feel also that the Nikon's will be orphaned products soon (I hope I'm wrong).</p>

<p>As an encouragement though if you take the MF shots as a style of photography and not just as a way to get bigger, better prints then a flatbed can be quite satisfactory. If you shoot square anyway, you cannot go as large as with a rectangular format without cropping, so large prints are not really a big concern for me as I would have to get a larger than 13x19 printer.</p>

[richard_fateman]

<p>Here's something else. <br>

Print the picture on paper, say 8X8 inches<br>

Scan it on an ordinary flatbed scanner at 300 dpi (easy to do). You now have 2400X2400 pixels to fiddle with, sharpen, change contrast etc.<br>

Is this going to lose detail, dynamic range, etc? Sure. But you plan to put this on a web page, so maybe it is good enough.</p>

 

[stefan johansson]

<p>I Just got my V700 and scanned a couple of 4x5" and some old 6x7 and 6x6 and I must say that I am very impressed with the quality. If I had owned this scanner I probably would not have sold my last Hasselblad a couple of years ago. I´m not certain that You need a Hbl for posting pictures on a website, but if You intend to make this Your main camera, the V700 will give good quality for the money.</p>

[tinysmall]

<p>Apart from my digital outfit, I also like to shoot medium format film. I use a mamiya rz67 pro 2 (6x7) and scan them on an epson v500 as there are no real pro labs around me. Ignoring the grain issue of film (just about any digital camera these days has better control of noise than even the most grain free film), on the v500 I can scan files upto A1 size that quality wise (not grain, thats dealt with in post) are as good as if not better than files from my D200 with MUCH more shadow detail and the images are sharper, and if I don't mind loosing a bit of quality, I can go much larger. Im sure that getting pro scans would improve this further. Im not saying this in a film versus digital way but just to point out that the flatbed scanners of today are much better than people give them credit for. I would honestly feel comfortable showing A1 prints scanned on the v500. There is a lot to be said for that.</p>

[kelly_flanigan1]

<p>To post on a web site requires very little. Our old trusty Epson 1200U flatbed for this is just a 1200 dpi device is overkill; it is from almost a decade ago. MF 6x6 negative shown below. You need to define what actually you want you scan to do; ie its purpose.<br>

<img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/biker/tripods-498.jpg?t=1235394137" alt="" width="510" height="544" /></p>

<p>Here is a 35mm tri-x negative from the late 1960's scanned with our Eposn 2450 scanner; at 2400 dpi; it is really about a 1600 to 1800 dpi device. The negative below was scanned with the stock Epson film holder and stock cannned software. We actually scan many MF negatives for clients with this unit still; many complain the files are too big; thus we also provide downsized versions of the images for web usage; and to not give away their image to the web too.<br>

too.<img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/teletach/tripods-244.jpg?t=1235394514" alt="" width="585" height="384" /></p>

<p><img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/teletach/tripods-189.jpg?t=1235394564" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/teletach/tripods-190.jpg?t=1235394599" alt="" width="569" height="472" /></p>