Is this a good scan ?

[teos]

<p>"Your icicle shot looks very cool."<br>

Thank you, Les!<br>

<br />"Back to Teo's samples - the more I look at them the more they look like fairly standard 6MP scans (around 3000x2400 pixels, something like a 2000dpi scan, with indulgence) being blown up by up-scaling to double the dimensions (yielding 4 times the megapixels) but without any additional information."<br>

Daniel,what is interesting is that last years I 've scanned a few films at the same lab and on the same Noritsu.They told me then that the maximum resolution on their machine is 6 Mp ( it was another technician then) .One of the 6MP files ,Canon Eos 300 , Tamron 17-35mm, I don't remember the ISO it was a Kodak</p>

[teos]

<p>a cropped version half of the frame (the full frame is 2048x3089).<br>

So , I suspect that you are perfectly right, those 23,9 MP scans could be in fact 6MP upscaled.</p><div></div>

[StuartMoxham]

<p>You could be right that scan looks a bit more normal to me but I don't really like the look of it. It looks kind of blotchy but over saturated. Almost like some kind of art filter.</p>

[teos]

<p>Stuart, you're talking about this last attchment?</p>

[StuartMoxham]

<p>Yes the last attachment. The red roof is kind of blotchy and the edges of the pointed church roof are kind of fuzzy. Viewing the image at a reduced size it looks better.</p>

[teos]

<p>Yes, this is the 6 Mp scan.<br>

all in all , I am looking to buy a scanner, but I can't afford a Nikon (and to be honnest , the files that I've seen are not so convincing , after all - I am talking about Les album- there is a softness in those scans , but not the too obvious grain of these from the Noritsu.)<br>

those Nikon scans are indeed smooth , almost grainless but too soft for my taste .There is detail , of course , but they lack crispness and for such a result ,the price seems inacceptable to me .<br>

I am curious what a Reflecta 7200 can do with silverscan software. I haven't seen samples scanned on such a scanner.<br>

And also , if you have Epson scans , please post , the best samples , I am curious to compare .Thank you</p>

[StuartMoxham]

<p>Les' scans are straight from the scanner if I remember correctly so they have not been post processed. They are also heavily compressed JPG files to keep the files small for web uploads, I would expect the original TIFF files are somewhat sharper and files that have been adjusted for color, density, contrast and sharpened would also look better. You would likely not use such large files for on screen use as they are way to big to see the whole image at the same time and you would likely not make 50 inch wide prints from 35mm film or view 8x10 prints with a loupe. The Nikon scanner is likely much better than the Refleta 7200 and is much better than the epson V500 that I have for getting detail out of slower fine grained films. To spend the money on the Nikon 5000 you have to be pretty dedicated to 35mm film to really justify the cost, for me it is just too expensive you also need good technique and sharp lenses to really get the most from the Nikon. I chose the epson v500 because it was cheap enough and will scan 35mm, medium format as well as prints but I don't believe the v500 gets the most from the films but it is fine for web size images and smaller prints upto 8x10 inches. Some will say it is not really suitable for 8x10 prints from 35mm film but I find it depends on the film and the subject matter, for detailed landsapes it probably is not but for the films I use and the photographs I take I find it to be OK most of the time.</p><div></div>

[StuartMoxham]

<p>As you can see from this image the 100% crop from a 4000ppi scan is not that sharp. This type of shot is not that demanding of the scanner and an 8x10 print will look quite nice. The epson does not really do 4000 ppi it is closer to 2000ppi despite what it says on the box.</p>

[StuartMoxham]

<p>Now for something different. Here is a D80 that has had grain added. As much as I like the smooth images from the D80 for color I don't really like the look for B&W so I add some grain to break up the smoothness.</p><div></div>

[brian_m.1]

<p>This question has always bogged me. Is the scan of film at X MP look the same as the digital image of the same scene at the same MP? </p>

[swilson]

<p ><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=168767">Stuart Moxham - Finland</a> <a href="../member-status-icons"><img title="Frequent poster" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/2rolls.gif" alt="" /></a>, Mar 12, 2010; 06:34 p.m.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Les' scans are straight from the scanner if I remember correctly so they have not been post processed. They are also heavily compressed JPG files to keep the files small for web uploads, I would expect the original TIFF files are somewhat sharper and files that have been adjusted for color, density, contrast and sharpened would also look better.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>We seem to run into this idea from time to time that jpegs are not going to look as sharp as a tiff file, this is simply not true.</p>

<p>Below is a jpeg, with the same pixel cound as Les' scans and about the same size file, or a bit smaller.</p>

<p><a href=" 5500x3600 image</a><br>

That image manages to be sharp even though it is a jpeg and limited in size.</p>

<p>Just because an image is in jpeg format does not mean it should look even a little bit soft.</p>

<p> </p>

 

[StuartMoxham]

<p>High quality JPEGs will be sharp but when they are compressed too much they lose sharpness. High contrast areas lose less sharpness than low contrast area.</p><div></div>

[swilson]

<p>

<p>You are going to see artifacts long before the image starts to look soft if you over compress a jpeg, I don’t see that in Les’ photos. I might buy into the idea that the images have not had any sharpening done to them, it is hard to tell from looking at them how well that would work, but I don’t think you can blame the softness of the images on the fact that they are jpegs. If he was trying to reduce the photos down to less then 2MB I might by into it, but they seem to be running in the 4-5 MB range, which should be more then enough for images that size.</p>

</p>

[teos]

<p>Scott, that jpeg you attached is a digital camera file , with good sharpness indeed.<br>

the problem is : can we get this kind of sharpness of a 35mm frame( even vith a little grain)?</p>

[swilson]

<blockquote>

<p ><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=5778915">Teo Sirbu</a> <a href="/member-status-icons"><img title="Subscriber" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/sub1.gif" alt="" /></a>, Mar 13, 2010; 05:15 a.m.</p>

 

<p>Scott, that jpeg you attached is a digital camera file , with good sharpness indeed.<br />the problem is : can we get this kind of sharpness of a 35mm frame( even vith a little grain)?</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>

<p>This depends on your definition of "sharpness", if you mean the smallest detail captured then film can do very well indeed, as long as the detail has high contrast. If you mean "sharpness" in a more subjective way, which is how I tend to take it, then different people will often disagree on which photos look sharper, it is after all somewhat subjective. I have film scans that I have done that so a fair bit of detail but still look way soft to my eye. This is a good example<br>

<a href="

 

<p>That is not typical of a slide, I think the processor messed up on the development, but it shows how a photo with a fair bit of detail can look anything but sharp. My old 3MP digital was producing images that looked a lot sharper then that, but at the same time captured less detail.</p>

</p>

 

<p>

<p>　<br>

For full disclosure my 5500x3600 pixel image is a composite, make up for a number of digital images stitched together. The point of my photo was not to show digital vs film but rather to show that a sharp image is going to look sharp even as a jpeg.</p>

</p>

</p>

 

[teos]

<p>Hello, Les , thank you for the answer, your referring about the <strong>focus ,color fidelity ,contrast,cleanliness </strong>seem to be important aspects of scanning.<br>

Example of files that seemed to me soft are for example the Fuji Reala 01_23 jpg or the Fuji RVP01_06 jpg (not softer than others).There are 5500x3600 files exactly like the Scott's digital file.<br>

They look ok on the monitor with the image "fit to window", but when expanded at 100% (image actual size) that softness is obvious to me.It's not as crisp as I am accoustomed with the digital files.</p>

<p> </p>

[StuartMoxham]

<p>I thought the Fuji Reala 01-23.jpg looked pretty good. The RVP01_06.jpg shows up the limitations of using 35mm to photgraph a landscape with lots of small details. The same image shot on 6x7 and scanned to the same pixel dimensions would look better due to the larger film area. Remember that when viewing these at 100% that is like looking at a 55 inch print at around 100ppi and viewing it from around 2 feet away even if you could print 35mm through a magic lens that did not degrade the image quality further you would find the 55 inch print really would not look all that hot from 35 mm film if you viewed it that close it is just too much of an enlargement from the many 35mm films.</p>

[swilson]

<blockquote>

<p ><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=696354">Les Sarile</a> <a href="/member-status-icons"><img title="Subscriber" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/sub7.gif" alt="" /><img title="Frequent poster" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/1roll.gif" alt="" /></a>, Mar 13, 2010; 09:35 a.m.<br>

<br />Scott, you once posted a red/pink hibiscus image from a digicam but it was downsized. Would you happen to have that full res image available? The none multi framed & stitched version of course . . . ;-)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well, I am not sure which one I might have posted, do you recall what thread this might have been from?<br>

 

<p>The only one I remember posting was a yellow one in the no words forum</p>

<br>

<a href="http://www.photo.net/no-words-forum/00TdJh">http://www.photo.net/no-words-forum/00TdJh</a><br>

Mine is down about 7<br>

I have up loaded a full size version here, this was taken with a 300mm lens, hand held.<br>

<a href="

Even at f/11 the DOF is pretty small.</p>

[lex_harris]

<blockquote>

<p>can we get this kind of sharpness of a 35mm frame( even vith a little grain)?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>My previous post was to give some idea of what fine grained film actually looks like at high resolution, as a comparison to the OP's Noritsu scans. The examples posted were unsharpened.</p>

<p>Normally some sharpening would be applied to the final product, the amount depending on what the image is being used for. To answer your sharpness question, here is a 35mm Kodachrome 25 scanned at 6300ppi (approx 50MP, 8542 x 5871) and then resized to approx 21MP (5529 x 3800). The series of 100% crops below the full image show increasing levels of unsharp mask. The left column has no noise reduction, the right column has some Neat Image noise reduction.</p>

<div></div>

[swilson]

<p>For Les,</p>

<p>A cat photo from a Sony A900, not my photo but one that is sharp, I am not a fan of the flash used in the photo but it does show better what the A900 can do them the<br>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/13093780@N04/3989881905/sizes/o/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/13093780@N04/3989881905/sizes/o/</a></p>

<p>Your link to the cat photo does not seem to be working, but also from DPReview is this photo from the Sony A900<br>

<a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/masters.galleries.dpreview.com/110549.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=14Y3MT0G2J4Y72K3ZXR2&Expires=1271131173&Signature=wHl4iSdUDkea0YK5Di0yHi%2bI4tY%3d">A900 photo</a><br>

To my eye that is what a sharp image should look like, I have never seen a 35mm color film scan that comes close to looking that sharp.</p>

<p> </p>

[teos]

<p><strong></strong><br>

<strong>Stuart</strong> , of course , one shouldn't look at a photo in this picky way , but I wanted to have the freedom to crop a little without loosing sharpness .<br>

<strong>Les</strong> , I took your advice of comparing files of wthe same size , it seems you convinced me, even if your sonycat link doesn't work .I didn't look very closely at 24MP files before you're right .<br>

Your own cat doesn't want to open .It's sunday and has the shop closed !!!<br>

<strong>Lex</strong> helped a lot with his last excellent series of images. But 50MP !!!! > 21MP !!!<br>

What scanner is that? I am just curious.<br>

By the way , <strong>Scott</strong> ,your "<strong>A900 photo</strong>" link doesn't work , either ! But the cat you brought here is very sharp, indeed.<br>

Now, comparisons should be done with the same lens under the same conditions , for absolute conclusions.<br>

Returning to my scans, it seems that they are some 6mp upsized , very grainy .The lenses , I think ,were good ( they are in tests ,too, I have no previous experience with them either).<br>

The Coolscan V is too costly for me , so the options would be :<br>

Konica Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 Film-Scanner second -hand ( at least cheaper)- is it any good over<br>

Epson V750<br>

Plustek 7600<br>

Pacific Image (Reflecta) Proscan 7200<br>

or should I sent the film to have them scanned on coolscan 5000 ? I have some 100 films already exposed and developed and I don't want to stop here. The scanner is at 500 km and 100 films would cost 500 E !!!</p>

 

[swilson]

<p>Less,<br>

<a href=" is the image</a><br>

That was taken close to 6 years agos, and as you noted with my Sony F828. The photo really shows why I love to shoot in raw, the colors look like they went out of gamut in places if I had a raw file for that shot I would pull the colors back in, as it is that is not much to be done with it.</p>

 

[lex_harris]

<blockquote>

<p>But 50MP !!!! > 21MP !!!<br />What scanner is that? I am just curious.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That slide was scanned on an Imacon Flextight 646 at 6300ppi. I started scanning my legacy Kodachromes with a Nikon 5000ED but encountered problems with scan quality and ended up abandoning the Nikon and moving to an Imacon. See this thread for the full story:<br>

<a href="../digital-darkroom-forum/00CTcF">http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00CTcF</a><br>

But I think my 5000ED must be a lemon, because even though there are other users reporting the same problems, there are also many users who DON'T have these problems. Les Sarile for example, who consistently produces excellent scans from all sorts of films including Kodachrome.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Wish I had tried some Kodachrome 25!</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, I regret not using more K25 when I had the chance. I wasn't scanning my slides back then and didn't fully appreciate the difference between K25 and K64. If I knew then what I know now I would have used K25 exclusively! BTW that image is 27 years old and like all my Kodachromes going back up to 40 years shows no evidence of fading or deterioration.</p>

[lex_harris]

<blockquote>

<p>I hope you were able to take advantage of the more then doubling of the price of the 5000 since it's discontinuance!</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Les, I kept the Nikon and as prices have risen it was probably a good decision. Despite the problems I have with Kodachrome (and to a lesser extent with E6) it does an excellent job with 35mm colour negatives, in fact I find there is little advantage in scanning these on the Imacon. There are even disadvantages - the Imacon does not have ICE and is a lot slower than the Nikon. I also use the Nikon for rapid proofing of Kodachromes (easy to assess IQ on your monitor at 4000ppi!) and for E6 where ultimate quality is not critical. </p>

[StuartMoxham]

<p>Teo as you have asked about cheaper scanners. I made this scan for you. I scanned this slide RDP100 from around 15 years ago on my V500 at 6400ppi. I resampled the image to around 21 mp so it could be compared with what Lex uploaded above. I pasted the 100% crops onto the image but you will see that the v500 wont get close to better scanners and if you want the quality that Lex has shown then you will need to get the more expensive scanner. Anyhow here is the pic I hop it is some use to you.</p>