How long does it take to film scan? What else?

[david_smith12]

Sandy's recent post regarding scanners has me asking several extra

questions.

 

Other than the scanner, what else do you need? I have a computer and

monitor and a USB port and printer. I also have photoelements 2.0.

What other hardware/software is required.

 

My digital camera has a tiff feature. Also JPEG. When you scan film

are you scanning Tiff/Jpeg? If not what?

 

How long does it take to scan a print? A roll of film? Do you need

to scan the entire roll, or can you scan one pic at a time? Can you

preview your scan and toss the bad shots? How long does the preview

take?

 

My only experience with scanning is with my $89 Microtec 4700

flatbed. That takes some time per scan and is only useful scanning

pictures. Making digital repro's from my original film pic's does

not give me sufficient quality for my tastes. I prefer the digital

camera.

 

Sorry about the many questions. I searched the archives but didn't

find a great summary so any provided links to other threads will be

welcome.

 

When you provide answers please cite the type of scanner so I may

better compare products.

 

Thank you very much.

[matt_m__toronto_]

david,

 

1st off, you do not need to scan an entire roll, you can pick and choose frames.

 

2nd. How long??? depends on how fast your computer is, the scanner you are using the resolution you are scanning at. Obviously a Mac G4 will scan and receive an image faster than a pentium I. and scanning at 300dpi will be quicker than 2400dpi.

 

cheers,

 

m

[eric_stevens]

I would also like to add that you should always scan to TIFF, not JPEG format, since JPEG is "lossy" compression and will not give very good image quality. I would also strongly suggest that you should look into an actual film-scanner. Any of the Nikon scanners will work well.

[lutz]

David, I'll give you a case example.<p>I have an iBook with 700MHz processor (to give you a rough idea: to open Photoshop 6.0 takes 10 seconds on my machine, Photoshop 4.0 takes 7 seconds, Word98 4 seconds...). Scanning times basically depend on the resolution you scan at. Scanning a color slide @ 2900dpi with a Nikon Coolscan IV ED thru a USB 1.1 connection roughly takes me 1 minute scanning time. But that is for the raw scan without any adjustments(!). Tweaking scans before scanning with the help of the scanning software (which comes along with the scanner) plus fine-tuning the scan in Photoshop (or PhotoElements, which will work just as well) can take another couple of minutes, depending on how far you want to go with your corrections. I sometimes spend up to half an hour on just one scan, if the neg or slide is difficult and/or full of dust specs and I want the result to be final for printing. Color can be even more delicate. Saving in TIFF or JPEG is a matter of file size vs. quality. TIFF image quality is better (although JPEGs at a low compression rate rival TIFF quality) as you won't loose any information to artefacts. JPEGs are much slimmer in file size and therefore mandatory for web (or email use). If you can afford it, spacewise, always save a TIFF of your raw scan before you start working on it. You can always get back to it while downsizing, cropping and tweaking the image for individual purposes.<p>For quick-an-dirty (just web) purposes, scanning at 720dpi is generally sufficient (giving you 10 times screen resolution, i.e. 240x360mm). That will save you a lot of time during the whole process since 2900dpi scans are more than 16 times heavier and add to the delay not only while scanning, but also while adjusting and saving(!). Keep in mind that you should nevertheless always work on a larger format and only downsize your final result as your second but last action - the very last action (before saving) being the "unsharp mask" to restore "bite". Make it a 0.3 to 0.5 point @ 100% here (while applying a 125 point unsharp mask @ 10 to 20% in the first step of the tweaking process may yield very favorable enhancement of the overall contrast).<p>If you want to dig deeper go <a href="http://www.scantips.com/">here.</a>

[lutz]

Addendum re the "preview" question: a preview takes roughly 6 seconds, add another 10 for taking the neg out of the scanner, readjust the slider and put it back into the mouth of the scanner. So, more or less 20 seconds of handling time per neg. Of course you can toss/skip whatever you're not interested in scanning definitely. There are neg strip feeders (even roll feeders) for some scanners which automatically produce thumbs, but generally those thumbs are too small to decide on the technical quality of a neg (sometimes even the previews are...). Cheers.

[jean_david_borges2]

This may be redundant and in that case, my apologies. I do all my printing digitally after scanning, have been for about 3 years and in that relatively short span, I have drawn some conclusions:

1-load your computrer with as much memory as it will take and you can afford.

2-Don't be stingy with the resolution setting when scanning i.e scan as large as the scanner will allow. You can always reduce later.

 

3-The elapsed time for scanning is dependent not only on the image contents but on the two factors above. I have scanned a transparency accidentally at the max resolution and it yielded a 1.7 gig image that took forever to load into PS but with an amazing amount of details and subtleties. It had to be reduced but was a revelation.