Kodak Digital Film and Slide Scanner

[uncle grinch]

I happened across a video on the Kodak Digital Film and Slide Scanner and thought it may be a way to lower my film obsession costs. Thought I may get my film processed and scan and upload for myself. Is this a gimmick or does it really offer an alternative way to archive my negatives?

 

[webestang64]

A customer brought in scans from one of those and made 4x6 prints. They looked OK but no where near as good as our scanner does but then our scanner is a pro unit that cost $25k new.
And then there is the time you have to invest feeding those negs through the scanner.
BUT you scan only the negs you want vs the entire roll from a lab.

Our base scan is 2000 res and you can make a 16x24 from a 35mm neg ($13.95 per roll dev/scan). That Kodak scanner? Good luck getting close to that size.

IMO, that scanner would be OK for reference scans, making small prints or post on the web.

 

[uncle grinch]

Thanks for the info. I figured it was not going to give as good a result as a professional scan. It might be ok for a non-enthusiast to archive old negatives.

 

[AlanKlein]

Thanks for the info. I figured it was not going to give as good a result as a professional scan. It might be ok for a non-enthusiast to archive old negatives.

If you only intend to archive the scanned file and not use it to print or show on the web, I wouldn't waste my time with them. Just store the negatives in a safe place. If later you want to print or display the image, then have an outside scan company get you a good scan of the one or two images you're going to use.

 

[DigiFilm]

Just use a camera and a copy stand. I bought one of those cheapo scanners and copied all my old slides and photos, and what few negatives I could find. (I was awful about keeping that stuff together back in the day). Unless you spend decent bucks on something like an Epson photo scanner, those cheap scanners turn out poor results. I redid everything with a copy stand I found on eBay and digital camera. If you shoot in RAW, you get a raw image you can play with to some degree. I use this same setup to scan negatives when I shoot film, rather than develop images in a darkroom.

They key to this setup is the right lens so you can fully fill the frame with whatever you're scanning, otherwise you have wasted pixels. This is going to happen with different formats regardless, like 120 film Vs. 35, etc. You can minimize it with a close-focusing lens.

For doing negatives I bought a cheap LED light table from Amazon. Trick: Take a shot of the LED table by itself first and use it for white balance. For photos use multiple indirect lights to avoid glare.

Lastly, shoot at an aperture that provides enough depth of field so that any waviness in old photos or negatives that you can't flatten out will be in focus. A razor-thing DOF here is your enemy.