Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Soup Time!

Film developing tanks full and ready for processing (Panasonic GF-1 w/20mm f/1.7)
I think there might be something a little wrong with me that the above image makes me smile with anticipation. This plus almost a dozen more rolls of color negatives on their way back from Dwayne's Photo, means a whole lot of scanning and hopefully some good images to post.

While I've recently finished up scanning several rolls of negatives that were shot to test a couple of new emulsions, the resulting images are kind of disappointing and a lot of them were scratched to kingdom come due to my own ineptitude. (Pro tip - read the instructions for using a daylight loader before spooling up several rolls of film incorrectly.) Better hopes for the new group.

2 comments:

vivekg said...

What are you using for scanning your negatives? I tried my flatbed scanner and that was a pain... I've thought about going with Scan Cafe, but am not sure.

Thanks,
Vivek

Ed L. said...

Hey man, thanks for the comment!

When I shot 35mm exclusively, I used a Nikon Coolscan IV ED. Now that I am also shooting medium format, I have an Epson V600 that I have come to really like, but it took awhile for me to get the hang of it. For medium format, I purchased a film holder from betterscanning.com, along with some ANR glass for both medium format and 35mm.

I had originally intended to keep the Nikon scanner for 35mm, but I am getting good enough 35mm scans now from the Epson that I will be putting the Nikon up on EvilBay soon to clear some desk space. The nicest thing about the Nikon was being able to scan a whole 35mm roll at one time, with the Epson being limited to 12 exposures in each batch. The Nikon can pull a little more detail out of a 35mm negative, but the Epson will get you 90/95% there, which would only make a difference on the very largest of physical prints. For the sizes needed for display on the web, there really is no difference at all. If I was still shooting 35mm slide film, the story would be different.

At some point I would love to upgrade to the V700/750, but my bank account says that the V600 is good enough for now.

I have pretty much used Vuescan for the scanning software for all of my scanning since the early 2000s, when I first jumped in with a Minolta Dual Scan II. It also takes some practice to get proficient at it, but I get a lot better and a lot more consistent results than with any manufacturer's software I have tried.

Hope that helps. Probably a lot more information than you were looking for. Cheers!