digital rebel or good film scanner

[chris_patrick]

I have done a lot of research and am very close to making a

decision. I am posting here to get your opinions, which I value

deeply.

 

I am debating on moving to digital. I am an EOS shooter(Rebel and

Elan 7) and have several EOS lenses. I am debating 2 main points.

1. If it is worth moving to digital now or waiting for prices to come

down. 2. would it be better to go digital by buying a camera body

or a good film scanner?

 

In my research I have found that a digital scanner in the $800-1200

range could easily reproduce images from film as good, if not better

in quality than a similarly priced digital camera.

 

I also realize that with the digital camera there are extra expenses,

like additional batteries and cards, initially. On the flip side, I

should be able to save tremendous amounts on developing because now I

will only print the best pictures(theoretically).

 

I am assuming that if I took the scanner route, I would have twice

the archival issues(digital images and negatives). Another drawback

I have thought about is the time factor. Will I be spending a lot of

time scanning and "editing"(because I can) my pictures.

 

If anyone has recently made the switch, let me know your thoughts.

Did you make the right choice. What were some unexpected

blessings/curses that you encountered along the way?

 

I am an amateur that shoots about 200-300 rolls a year. Mostly for

personal family history type pictures. But I am also building a

portfolio of quality pictures that I can one day use for other

purposes-either professionally or at the local camera club.

 

Thank you for your time and again, I trully value your opinions.

[river side]

<p>yet.. waiting for the prices to stabilize a little before I make my plunge.. but i'm sold on the concept.

 

<b>Instant Feedback</b> is the name of the digital game..

 

<p>I don't know how you arrived at the conclusion that scans could rival digital ... the understanding I have is that Digital beats the pants off of regular film in color accuracy and absence of grain; noise removal seems to be needed for both though.

 

<p> More expensive professional film or slide film can probably come closer in color accuracy or reduced grain but do you always shoot that?

 

<p> At this juncture i'd only recommend buying a new film scanner worth over $800 if you have cabinets full of negatives and slides waiting to be archived.

 

<p> the <b>ONLY</b> caveat is the cropping factor.. but someday a noble soul will test the third party wide angles with the digital Canons and we might have more affordable options

[gene f.]

I have a Nikon CoolScan IV scanner and working on digitizing my pictures right now.<P>

Indeed I find quality of digital scans from my SLIDES (I shoot Provia 100F or Astia 100) still much-much better digital pictures I've see so far.<P>

However: My workflow is the following (per roll):<UL>

<LI>Scan roll of slide/film using Vuescan to RAW format - all pictures without even looking which ones are keepers and which ones are goners(40 min. - 97MB per image - this includes 4 channels - RGB and Infrared for dust cleaning)

<LI>Go to Vuescan and this time choose pictures I like (5-10 min.)

<LI>Scan pictures to get final scans with Vusecan - this is done in batch mode, however If you need to do color correction and select right colors - It may take anywhere from 5-15 minutes depending on speed of your computer

<LI>Now you arrived to the same point as you would with digital camera - you have ready-to-go scans. However you already spent 1hr-1.5hr. per roll, spent $4.15 for film+$4.00 for development;

<LI>I open each picture with PhotoShop and correct each image manually (crop, levels, curves, sharpening). However those who work with digital cameras correct me - I have a feeling that you will get more consistent colors with Digital Cameras than with scanned film. Maybe I am wrong;

<LI> The rest is the same as with digital;

</UL><P>

Bottom line:

<OL>

<LI>If you decide to buy scanner now - do not skimp and get the most expensive and fast scanner your money can buy. I strongly recommend Nikon Coolscan 4000 since It does batch scanning (of the whole roll) and can do batch scaning as well (with attachment) - this will save you a lot of time. If scanner of your choice cannot take the whole roll and/or scan batch of scans - do not even consider to buy It;

<LI>Get computer with a lots of storage regardless - 200GB+ and more;

<LI>Consider upgrading your CPU/Memory. FOr image manpulation - specially scanned images (97MB on my scanner) you should get more than 512MB of memory;

<LI>200-300 rolls a year is $800-$1200 for film only! (I am mostly shoot Fuji NPH or Fuji Provia 100F - aprox. $4.20 a roll) + $800+$1200 for development! Wow!

</OL><P>

I shoot using Canon EOS system and 80% of my shots are done with 20-35L f/2.8. Scanned slides look gorgeous!!! I still think no pro-sumer grade camera (excluding Canon 1Ds) can rival properly shot Fuji 100F scanned on a good scanner. However I shoot only about 100 rolls a year. And once something like Canon 3D come out (I am waiting for smaller multiplier) - I am first in line to trade my Scanner and Canon Elan 7E for the new camera. <P>If you decide to buy digital camera - I would wait a little until prices fall. Looks like Digital Cameras are like computers - prices fall every 6 months :)!

<P>

I hope I helped a little.<P>Best of luck!

[glen peterson]

Chris,

 

I went through the same process a few years back when the D30 came out. At that time 3000$ was a bit more than I would have like to spend, so I went with a film scanner. The benefit of the film scanner at that time, was 1)cost. I bought an Acer 2740, at ~$350. and 2) I was able to scan film that I already had in storage. Over the next year, I scanned thousands of negs/slides. Going back to ones that my parents had from the 50's maybe earlier.

Eventually I did buy a used DSLR, and a new film scanner. So I now enjoy both worlds..

Pick what is best for you, I just wanted to share my experience.

 

By the way, if there were a Digital Rebel at $900 at the time I made my choice, I would likely have chosen the Rebel.

[majid]

I have both, a Nikon Coolscan IVED, which I use primarily for B&W negative scanning, with the odd roll of Velvia or Provia thrown in, and a Canon 10D.

 

Scanning is excessively slow and labor-intensive. It takes me about an hour to scan a 36 exp roll of B&W film (I do this to produce annotated contact sheets and identify which frames I will print in a conventional darkroom).

 

Scanned Velvia will beat a DSLR, but not by much. B&W film is opaque to infrared and the Digital ICE dust removal doesn't work, adding a laborious spotting phase (Photoshop clone and heal tools). The DSLR will beat pretty much any other kind of film in overall quality, if not in absolute resolution (but you've figured out by now that megapixels is not the only factor in image quality). This is because of lack of grain and better color fidelity.

 

I would recommend you get the digital camera first, and the scanner second, if ever, probably mostly to scan you existing negs. Prices will fall further, but with your current film and processing costs, investing in a 300D or even a 10D will pay for itself in less than a year.

 

The DSLR is also a much better learning tool. I went to a presentation where two professional photographers hooked up a D100 to a TV, and demonstrated how flashes and professional studio lights work with various settings. There is simply no way such a course could have been conveyed otherwise.

[jay_.]

I've got a D60, I rarely use it and only for shooting relative's parties so I don't have to foot the bill for processing, I just give them a CD with the digital files. I've got an obscene amount invested in classic Nikon, Leica, Hasselblad which I've decided to hang onto and go down with the ship so-to-speak, because I just don't like digital cameras or Photoshop or anything to do with digital. But if you aren't averse to plasticky cameras with menus and screens and custom functions and don't mind playing for hours on the computer massaging photo-quality out of what the camera spits out, I wouldn't drop another dime into film anything, including a scanner.

[digitmstr]

I debated the same and decided to go for a 10D - I have sold my EOS3 bodies as well as my 'old' EOS1000fn. The quality from the 10D is very good and and you can do large prints (and even posters with the appropriate software) of excellent quality. Assuming you have a computer already, you have virtually no extra costs other than the CF card, a card reader and printer. I bought a 'cheap' Canon S820 which I use for proofs and/or prints (up to 8x10) and that was $72.00; the card reader was $30.00 and the 1g card about $250.00 after rebate.

 

Since I bought the camera bout 2 months ago I have shot over 2 thousand pictures, you do the math about the costs and savings.

 

I still have a Bronica ETRSi but, havn't used it in over 9 months...

[ted_marcus1]

I have used a "hybrid workflow" (Elan II and HP Photosmart film scanner) for nearly five years. With the arrival of the D10 and now the Digital Rebel, and the onset of senility in my scanner, I carefully considered what I wanted to do.

 

<p>I ended up spending $625 (with shipping) for a new Canon FS4000US scanner. For the time being, I consider this the most sensible and cost-effective option. First, it lets me keep the wide-angle capability I now have with my Elan II. The lack of affordable wide-angle lenses is an Achilles heel of affordable small-sensor DSLRs. That may not be a problem for people who shoot mainly portraits or wildlife, but wide-angle is important to me and it's just too expensive for DSLRs.

 

<p>Second, the image quality of a 4000dpi scanner with Hamrick's VueScan is at least as good as an affordable DSLR. While I haven't had the new scanner very long, what I've seen is that for all practical purposes it can capture all the detail that's on a negative. The infrared cleaning, while not the Philosopher's Stone, is certainly miraculous enough to reduce the hours of drudgery I'd spend "spotting" my scans to a few clicks of the clone brush. Avoiding this pain was one reason to consider digital, but infrared cleaning is a good enough analgesic.

 

<p>Third, continuing to use film means I don't have to lug a laptop computer or a "digital wallet" on a trip to upload full-resolution RAW or TIFF files. Storage is another problem with today's digital cameras, particularly if you're taking even a one-week trip. Film is compact and reasonably immune to the effects of jostling. However, I have sworn off flying for the time being, so I wouldn't benefit from the advantage digital has of avoiding concerns about airport security x-rays (but it increases the concerns about theft or damage during the security process).

 

<p>That said, I fully expect to convert to digital in the future when the cost comes down and the wide-angle and storage issues inevitably get sorted out. Digital has too many advantages to rule out, especially if the final image is to be digital. But I consider current technology too expensive and too immature, despite its advantages. I figure it would cost at least $2000 to replicate what my Elan II now provides (that would cover a Digital Rebel, a Sigma 15-30 zoom, and some storage cards; it doesn't include the laptop computer). I don't see the point of spending that much. The scanner is a good, cost-effective stopgap while I wait for the right time to jump on the digital bandwagon.

[erb_duchenne]

300 rolls of film is almost like a roll a day except Sundays and public holidays.

 

You can get an awesome scanner for less than the price of a digital rebel. At 3200dpi the resolution is certainly better than the rebels'.

 

But there have been other issues people constantly bring up againts the digital rebel. I think if you're predominantly an Elan user, you might find some gripes with the digital rebel. But if you're comfortable with the film rebel, you could just love the digital rebel.

[gary_a._hill]

The "family history" angle is interesting. If you found some 40-year old negatives in your grandparents' attic, you could print them, even though the format might be long obsolete. If your CDs with digital images are unearthed 40 years from now, will anyone be able to get images from them? I've been in the computer business almost 40 years, and I wouldn't bet on it.

[dano1]

""The "family history" angle is interesting. If you found some 40-year old negatives in your grandparents' attic, you could print them, even though the format might be long obsolete. If your CDs with digital images are unearthed 40 years from now, will anyone be able to get images from them? I've been in the computer business almost 40 years, and I wouldn't bet on it.""

 

I know what you mean. My mother wrote a book in the late 80's about our family geneology. We used a Tandy 2100 computer and saved them on 5-1/2" floppy disks. (That's when they really were floppy). My father backed up the floppies every now and then onto the new 3-1/4" disks at his workplace. Somehow we never backed up the final book, and all the ones we have left are nearly scambled due to age. We have no means of loading the 5-1/2" floppies, but I bet you a dollar to a donut they would be too degraded to use anyway. It was about 4 years of my mother's work, and all the family history. What we have left is the tested and true technology of ink on paper. She made 50 hardcover books, and those will probably last a couple hundred years.

 

 

As for the whole digital film thing, I have had a long battle with that. In 2002 I got my tax refund back, a whopping $500. I had just fallen in love with my father's Fuji A201. So I went online and did a good deal of researh and found that a local store in town was having a sale on a camera that had all the features I wanted. It was an Olympus D-370. It cost me $130, +15 for the 32mb smartmedia card (half off), and my father paid for the warrenty and the camera case.

 

I took about 2,000 photos with that camera. I took it everywhere. It was also my very first camera, btw. It had no zoom, it was 1.3mp. After about 6 months, I began joining the forums and started to see what everyone else was doing with photography. Quickly I became very dissatisfyed. I moped around for a few weeks, not knowing what to do. Thinking that I would need a 3mp camera to get good results, and a 3x optical zoom, I realized that I did not have the $400 dollars required.

 

Then one day I was in the basement. I saw this old camera hanging on the wall. I took it down to ask my father what the history was behind it. I opened it up and was shocked to find an SLR, a 1972 Minolta SRT-101. My father showed me how it worked, and the next day I bought, and loaded, my very first roll of film.

 

I took about 400 photos with it, but something was missing. I was born digital. I learned how to use DOS at the age of 5, and installed my first hardware at the age of 8 while my father was at work. I needed good digital files to edit and share. Doing some reseach online, I started looking at my options. Just then my brother gave me $100, just for the heck of it.

 

Then I made a decision that I will both one of the worst, but also one of my best that I have made in a long time. I worked my butt off doing odd jobs, gathered up all the loose change, and went over to my local camera shop and bought a Canon A70.

 

I took about 2,000 photos with that camera, over the course of 3 months. I learned an awful lot about photography with it. But as fate would have it, it broke down after just 3 months. I sent it into my camera store, who sent it to Canon. It was going to be 4 weeks before it was back. I was quite sad.

 

So, I needed something to take pictures with so I pulled out the old SRT. Meanwhile, I got some negatives scanned at my grocery store. I realize now that the scans were crap, but the resolution was good. I was truly impressed with the amount of detail in that cheap $1.60 a roll film I was buying. Lets just say I haven't taken too many digital pictures since. I bought a used film scanner, a Minolta Scan Dual for $84, and I love it. I am constantly beating any digital camera under $800. The dynamic range is huge, and the dof is shallow, just the way I like it.

 

Some day I will go digital. But that will be a few years down the road. I am an unemployed full time college student. The economy in our town is in the tank, especially in the field I chose to get my degree 3 years back. I have seen the photos from the Digital Rebel, and they are quite nice. The digital rebel may just be one of my next cameras, unless something better/cheaper hits the market in the next few years.

 

I have learned quite a lot about the quality of film vs. the quality of digital. I believe digital still has a long way to go. It is still in it's infancy, I mean, heck, 2mp cameras where the norm just a few years back, and they were high end just a few years before that.

 

Film has many advantages over digital. My big favorites are the tonal range, cheap lenses, and the forgiveness. Now, these aren't the best lenses, but I have bought several used lenses on Ebay, they average about $15. Ever over expose a digital by a stop and a half? It's not that big a deal with film.

 

Well, I guess I've typed too much,

I hope you make the right decision, whatever that should be,

Dan O.

[theoldmoose]

Gene made some good points about batch scanning. I have about (wild guess) 1000 negs and slides (mostly family history) taken over about a twenty year period (most early on, as I just about quit taking pictures over the last ten years, because of film costs and hassle to get processed).

 

So. Checking with a couple of job houses that would scan all my stuff for me (completely auto, with no chance to tweak anything during scans, I would expect) made me realize that it would cost me close to $1000 to get everthing scanned and burned onto CD.

 

Comparing this with buying a scanner (at least for me) would come out about even, and I'd end up with a useable scanner to use in the future, should I ever get the bug to shoot film again (who knows? with a digital scanner, I might find something likeable about being able to control my film forays more closely).

 

When I checked a few months ago, though, I found that the difference between and under-$1000 scanner and ones costing about double that, was what would make the difference (for me) in useability. I found that I would need to spend at least $1200 or more to get the IR dust removal, and at least $1800 PLUS and additional $500 (for a bulk slide feeder attachment?!) to get the bulk processing that Gene refers to.

 

At that point, it just didn't compute, at least for expected usage pattern. So, I went digital, to give me something to play with in the meantime 8-). First a P&S digicam, which I quickly outgrew, and now the Digital Rebel.

 

In the meantime, new scanners have come out that have dropped the price of getting IR dust removal way below $1000, but I still have yet to see any one of them that takes our time seriously.

 

Why can't we get an affordable (less than $1000) solution for non-production use that lets one drop a roll (or a stack of slides) into the scanner, instead of having to load filmstrips or slide carriers every few minutes?

 

Maybe what I need to do is find someone that bought the $2200 solution last year, and is now done scanning all his old stuff, and is moving completely over to digital for all new work, and needs to unload his old (working, please 8-) scanner?