Scanning - The scanner article

I just bought a set of the film holders for this new scanner and am using them with my older V700. Epson says they aren't compatible, but as it turns out the incompatibility is only in the bundled Epson scanning software. I use Vuescan and everything works great. I've only scanned one roll of film so far but was very happy with the flat film, which is very hard to get with any consistency when using the older film holders. I paid just over $100 for the set of four holders. Certainly a lot cheaper than buying a new scanner! I can easily tolerate the longer warmup time of the older scanner so there isn't much reason to even consider buying the new scanner itself.

Hi Bob,

First post here: it is hard to generalize about the relative ranking and capacities of the scanners, in part because there are so many different intended uses for the final scans. At some level, I was surprised that Mark did as well as he did with scans from the V850 as I only use my V700 in its reflective originals mode. But as I noted in the review, many of the prints were very close in quality. Certainly, the Nikon 5000 and Minolta 5400 are capable of extracting rather more information from 35mm film than the Epson flatbeds, but at smaller print sizes, the differences aren't huge.

As for "camera scanning," I have just been testing that method for myself, and the results are somewhat mixed (I will probably publish something on this shortly). On the one hand, with a Sony A7R/Metabones III adapter/Zeiss 50/2 Makro-Planar lens, and a good set-up, the image can be absolutely sharp over most of the frame. However, the old problem of film flatness that plagues virtually all scans that aren't fluid-mounted, or done on an Imacon (which bends, and thereby flattens the film during the scan) certainly applies here. By using the Adobe DNG Profile editor, I built a custom DNG to use in Lightroom to compensate for the fluorescent lamps in my transparency viewer, and then built a custom ICC profile using BasICColor Input and a HutchColor HCT target that I apply by round-tripping to Photoshop. With these two steps, I have to say that the color and contrast of my camera scans of transparencies are gorgeous, on par with the Imacon. But the corners simply aren't sharp, as the depth of focus is so narrow. So it's a great method for more casual scans, but not in my opinion suitable for large, exhibition-grade prints where the grain rendition needs to be entirely uniform.

Christopher Campbell

Edited by C_Campbell - 22 February 2015 at 20:36

Please note that I've updated the comparisons to include one of the top-end domestic film scanners (Minolta Dimage Elite 5400) - I have to say I'm very impressed with the output from this scanner (I now have to look for some film holders of my own, as the scanner I got off ebay did not include them and the ones from the Scan dual will not work with it); the JPGs come out a little flat, but I think that is because of the D-Range provided - there seems to be a lot of detail available in a RAW file.

Worth noting though that for general film scanning work the sub-£50-off-ebay Dual Scan II puts in a highly respectable performance.

Bob - you mentioned Pixmonix is your post, but it looks like they took down the site and are now owned by ScanDigital.

I felt this was good place to put it... even though its a bit old.

Scanning film with Nikon ES-2 and Sony (e-mount) camera+lens
(I am sure this is possible with a-mount gear too, I just haven't looked into it)

Backstory:
Nikon released an update to their ES-1 adapter which only had means to photograph slides and was made for a single lens only with a fixed MFD at 1:1. The new ES-2 was released with Nikon D850 and works with 3 lenses out of the box the Nikkors DX 40mm micro, AF-S 60mm G micro and 60mm D micro lenses. It comes with adapters for all three and 60mm D has the longest MFD (this is relevant for my set up too).
One nice thing about ES-2 is that the holder is designed in such way that it can be moved back forth a little bit to help with focussing before locking into place.

Nikon ES-2:
https://www.nikon.co.uk/en_GB/product/accessories/nikkor/others/film-digitising-adapter-es-2

Costs £180 in the UK or $140 in the US (pre-tax I guess). Thanks to COVID its been almost impossible to source but I lucked out on ebay and German shop sold it to me for 165 euros (+12 euros delivery). Whether this is worth your money or not you can decide. I still feel its an overpriced piece of plastic but it makes my like easier (I have in order of 1000s of film to digitise and then process). It also lets me quickly digitise film on a 61mp body with good lenses plus a really good RAW output so I bought it anyway.

Now this adapter fits 52mm and 62mm thread by default (threads of the supported lenses). Step up and step down rings are cheap and plenty so it can be fitted on to pretty much any lens.

Inspiration:
Sony FE 50mm f2.8 macro - https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1556475/0
Sony FE 90mm f2.8 macro - https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1597233/0

But the easiest set-up is of course to buy one of the officially supported lenses and adapt them to e-mount (or even a-mount for that matter). Nikkor 60mm D is cheapest of the bunch with an aperture ring too so you can buy the cheapest dump adapter.

My set-up:
Laowa 100mm f2.8 macro + 67mm-62mm step down ring + default UV filter that comes with the lens + one think 67mm UV filter (to get spacing for 1:1 at MFD) + the adapter for Nikon 60 D micro + the ES-2 adapter.



While I don't think UV filters have any affect on the image quality in this case I think I will remove the glass from one of them i.e. the cheap Kood UV filter. I will leave one UV filter as it is as it came with the lens.
Also note while I am using EF version of the Loawa (because it gives me electronic contacts and joys thereof) this will work exactly the same way with the e-mount version of this lens.

I got this:


(I am using LR)
First colour balance off a neutral part of the film (helps to have a bit of the sprockets of empty film scanned so you can do this easily)
Then I had to invert the tone curves like so, my picture had bit of a green cast, to correct that I picked the green tone curve and fixed it separately (metered of the face since that's where I really want the colour to be accurate)


Then I got this. If you haven't guessed this is me from 1991-1992


A note about lighting:
For my initial experiment I simply pointed my camera and lens towards the windows and using a white screen to diffuse the hard light and make sure it was somewhat even. Is this ideal? NO. Firstly it didn't really provide much light I used 0.5s exposure at f/8. Secondly its not reliable. But there are plenty cheap light source you can use. Some flashes even have them.

A tutorial on using this from dpreview (TV) - https://www.dpreview.com/videos/6221087123/dpreview-tv-scan-film-negatives-with-the-nikon-es-2

Edited by nandbytes - 27 June 2020 at 09:13

The only one I have found is - https://www.negativelabpro.com/

It costs $99 which I am not keen on spending. But they do have a trial so my plan is to first photograph all my film and then batch convert using that plugin during the trial period.

If there are any other free/cheaper alternatives I'd be happy to try them out.

edit:
For someone who might want to use it regularly the above plugin is probably more worth it than the cheap plastic ES-2!! But once I am done with digitising (our old film) none of this is of much use to me... so any money spent is not going to be made use of longer term.


Edited by nandbytes - 27 June 2020 at 09:46

Thank you

There is some market forces at play - the ES-2 officially is €149,- in The Netherlands and €169,- in Germany

Some questions: Is it really that easy to convert a negative with the orange layer?
I noticed Nikon does not recommend current longer macro's like the 85mm and 105mm, made wonder how the 100mm you use behaves.
Why do you use an UV filter? Does it do anything?

Re. light: I think you want a panel to have even light. Most (all?) flashes do not have a panel, but a few leds - at least my HVL-F60M LED's seem to small to give even lighting to do this well.