Buy Nikon 5000 for 35mm films or hire FlexTight?

[bill_kotsias]

<p>Hello. I am looking for other opinions on this matter :</p>

<p>I have 35mm film photos which I intend to use for a photo exhibition. I am also considering to publish them in a book. The films are Kodak TMAX400 and Fuji Superia 200.</p>

<p>I am now in the "digital remastering" step and I have two choices : either buy a new Nikon Coolscan 5000 or hire someone to scan them with a FlexTight, which I don't know if it's X1 or X5. The price of the hardware is equivalent to 600 hired scans, which could be compensated within a couple of years.</p>

<p>Question 1 : the only FlexTight which is better than the 5000 is the X5, right? AFAIK the 5000 has slightly less DPI resolution than the X1 but higher DMAX (4.8 vs 4.6).</p>

<p>Question 2 : even if it's X5 they use, will there be any quality difference if I print at large sizes like 48 x 72 cm? Will the X5 capture greater detail or is the film grain the real bottleneck anyway?</p>

<p>Question 3 : how do 5000's multiple-passes compare to X5 with high-contrast photos? (very dark + over exposed areas)?</p>

<p>Many thanks in advance,<br>

Bill</p>

[roger_smith4]

<p>Dmax should be essentially the same between the two (4.8 or 4.6- who's counting?) and Dmax is irrelevant for color negative film and somewhat relevant for silver B&W film. Multisampling helps reduce noise which shouldn't be an issue to begin with for negative film.<br>

I'd be more concerned about film flatness with the Coolscan.</p>

[rob_wall]

<p>What Roger said. </p>

<p>The Coolscan is superb for large-volume scanning at very high quality. I have seen Flextight scans and believe they may have a slight edge, though negative films ar enot the most demanding on scanners.</p>

<p>Operator skill will be crucial wrt the FlexTight. Speaking of which, where can you get a FlexTight scan for $2? That sounds pretty good.</p>

[bill_kotsias]

<blockquote>

<p>To Rob Wall : I live in thessaloniki greece, new Coolscan 5000 = 1300euro, FlexTight scan = 2.5euro (for many scans)</p>

</blockquote>

[leicaglow]

<p>I play with this issue all the time. Comparing drum scans with those from my 4000 dpi scanner, I can't justify the difference in price. I've rather concluded that if you capture grain sharply enough, there isn't much more you can do with it but create larger files. I would encourage you to have a scan made of a single "typical" image or two with various scanners and determine for yourself which direction is the right one to take.</p>

[silverpixel]

<p>Michael is right (mostly). The Flextight isn't really a drum scanner, although it does scan very, very flat. Where a drum scanner beats others is in film flatness, dust and scratch reduction as a fringe benefit of fluid mounting, and the prodigious dynamic range of PMT sensors (photomultiplier tubes), which read film one pixel at a time, also reducing crosstalk common in the linear CCDs used almost universally elsewhere. The dynamic range figures published by manufacturers for non-PMT scanners usually include software processing, rendering them somewhat meaningless. Scanning above about 5500 dpi is usually pointless regardless of equipment, for other reasons. The downside of true drum scanners is the long learning curve - it's a specialist's craft.</p>

<p>IMHO, the Nikon does a great job for the price, much faster and without the graduate degree in scanning, although knowledge certainly helps. The Imacon does visibly better with some images, and a drum scanner will grab shadow and highlight detail that the other two might not see. How much is enough depends on your standards for image quality and on the characteristics of your film images.</p>

<p>I would probably use the Nikon for most of the scans because I like to keep control, and send a few tough (high contrast) slides or negs to the Flextight to check the results, and maybe drum scan the really tough ones if the other two fail to deliver the quality you want. That way you minimize cost and still get the benefits of higher tech where needed. Of course, no scanner will recover detail where there is none.</p>

[jtk]

<p>In the end your images will be handicapped by the book's printer and by the printing skills of whoever prints your exhibition. </p>