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DSLR Scan vs "PRO" scan - test shots, opinions nee
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 6:08 pm    Post subject: DSLR Scan vs "PRO" scan - test shots, opinions nee Reply with quote
Hello,

After some time I decided to come back to film photography just for fun and to make myself to think more about one single frame.
I found the best in terms of quality and price scanning lab in my town which of course also develops negatives and give it a try. Prints came out pretty all right, however scans were nothing special. I read a lot about how a lot of people scan their negatives on flatbeds and with DSLRs and decided to give it a try.

I think DSLR way is better. Sharpness is more or less the same, however in lab scan I lost a lot of details in shadows and highlights. Of course DSLR scan is almost free Wink.
Of course photos need some more tweaking to be prepared as final images, but for 3minutes adjustments they're ok for me Wink.
What do you think? Lab or DSLR?

This is my initial test setup (mobile phone photo and book's are my wife's Wink ) Canon 600d + 32mm extension tubes + Pentax-M 50/1.7 at f/8. Of course I will prepare better setup as this was only to test if it's worth it.



And here are the results. First photo will be always lab scan, second DSLR "scan" with postprocess to take off film mask in Lightroom.








And here are 100% crops:







PostPosted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 6:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I prefer to 'scan' using my camera. For this purpose I have a bellows with a Rokkor enlarging lens that my NEX attaches to. I have great results.

My only problem is getting the colours right and removing the orange mask. You seem to have nailed that. How do you do it?


PostPosted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 6:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I don't know if I nailed it, but thank you for that opinion Smile.
I pretty much followed this guide: http://petapixel.com/2012/05/18/how-to-scan-film-negatives-with-a-dslr/ , the only thing is that I was using Lightroom to play with RAWs. I thing that I will make a few lightroom presets to speed up a few things, but most of the tweaks have to be done for each photo separately.
Oh and this was Fuji Superia 200 film if someone would be interested Wink.

Cheers
Mateusz


PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 4:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Just my 2 cents: take a shot of a 18% Kodak grey card, and color balance by it with color drop tool.

[]s,

Renato


PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 5:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Very very good for a first attempt!
Congrats!
Colors are far from beeing perfect, yellowish is over-saturated and some minor stuff, but "pro scan" isn't perfect aswell.
DSLR scan already looks much cleaner, low noise and low grain but also quite good detail. Only some areas are slightly blown out, I suspect a better and some tweaks with a shade lens could help here.

In my experience medium format enlarger-, repro- or good macro lens should give better results than you got especially in terms of sharpness but also improve contrast and colors. Maybe a you should look for an cheap Micro Nikkor 55/2.8, Rodagon 105/5.6 or another good lens which is flatfield and well corrected for this magnification.

Is your negative holder made of paper? Is it opaque? If not a little aluminium foil to reduce flares caused by scattered light might improve the scans, especially fine contrasts, aswell.

A slightly better lens and some tweaks in PP and you can definately beat the pro scan in all terms!

Last edited by ForenSeil on Thu Apr 03, 2014 1:00 am; edited 2 times in total


PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 6:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thank you guys for kind words!

Renato:
You're right about Grey Card, which I use often while shooting digital but shooting with it on film would be quite expensive Wink. I don't shoot roll of the film in the same or even similar condition, so if I understand it correctly I would need to shoot +1 frame of grey card in every light situation. I may be wrong, so if I am, don't wait to correct me Wink.

ForenSeil:
Thanks for your tips, actually after this first small success buying macro lens or lens from enlarger would make sense and probably I start looking for one. (It would be also good argument for buying macro lens as from some time I was thinking of it Wink )
As for my diy negative holder it's piece of thin glass (about 3mm thick) with thick white paper taped to it. Paper has this frame window cut out and I left as small as possible space between the paper and glass to make sure negative would be kept flat. I cleaned the glass and negatives before scanning them. Behind the glass I placed thin white printer paper as a diffuser and flash set to it's widest setting and 1/4 power.
I must admit I don't get what you mean with aluminium foil. Where should I put it, as in this combination I cannot see place for it.

In final version I have in mind some kind of sledge which connects my frame and my camera to ensure everything is as parallel as possible. What's more I'm thinking of replacing glass with some white-translusent acrylic board (like in the guide I post link to) or piece of glass which is not scratched like this one Wink.
Oh, and you're right about the blown out yellows, it's just as I said - it was about 2-3minutes of adjustments per photo and I just wanted to see if it's possible to achieve results at least as good as lab scan.

Cheers
Mateusz


PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 6:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
PhantomLord wrote:
....
ForenSeil:
Thanks for your tips, actually after this first small success buying macro lens or lens from enlarger would make sense and probably I start looking for one. (It would be also good argument for buying macro lens as from some time I was thinking of it Wink )
As for my diy negative holder it's piece of thin glass (about 3mm thick) with thick white paper taped to it. Paper has this frame window cut out and I left as small as possible space between the paper and glass to make sure negative would be kept flat. I cleaned the glass and negatives before scanning them. Behind the glass I placed thin white printer paper as a diffuser and flash set to it's widest setting and 1/4 power.
I must admit I don't get what you mean with aluminium foil. Where should I put it, as in this combination I cannot see

Thx!
I mean that you should frame your negative with somthing opaque like aluminium foil to improve contrast.
Many lenses would actually cover large format at these magnification ratios and the light spread by the white area around the target would scatter inside lens/tubes/housing and lower contrast.

Little explanation with MS Paint Wink


Instead of aluminium foil you could of course also use thick cardboard, black plastic etc., I only suggested alu foil because you can find it easily.

With some lenses (esecially with good dedicated macro lenses) difference isn't big but with other many lenses the lightproof framing can improve final picture drastically!
As you don't have to add that contrast later in PP the colors are improved aswell and more fine details and nuances (less blown out areas) can be captured, which have been overshined by diffuse scatter light before.
For example my beloved Rodagon 105/5.6 - it's already very good without shade but with shade and at F8 it even beats all my "real" macro lenses for this purpose.

PS: Does your camera has good magnified live view for focusing? Otherwise it might get hard to focus correctly with such a slow lens and I won't recommend the Rodagon to you.

Last edited by ForenSeil on Thu Apr 03, 2014 12:55 am; edited 5 times in total


PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 6:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
PhantomLord wrote:
Thank you guys for kind words!

Renato:
You're right about Grey Card, which I use often while shooting digital but shooting with it on film would be quite expensive Wink. I don't shoot roll of the film in the same or even similar condition, so if I understand it correctly I would need to shoot +1 frame of grey card in every light situation. I may be wrong, so if I am, don't wait to correct me Wink.


Mateusz,

What I sad is to take a shot of the 18% gray card at the begining of the scan session, to reference the temperaure of the gray card as WB starting point.
In B&W I make this procedure, due that gray card is not only color balance, it can be used also as contrast starting point,

Cheers,

Renato


PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
PS:
That's how my setup looks, except that I'm now using a more steady stand.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/54671350@N02/7865515678/in/set-72157631274470436/
My negative holder is made from a slide cutting+viewing device (did cost 1€ on Ebay) and backlight made from cheap LED video light with variable brightness.
Pro of continuous light against the flash is that you can focus much easier due brighter image and correct exposure is easier (especially if you don't have TTL flash), con is that vibration can be more an issue.

Resolution is awesome
https://www.flickr.com/photos/54671350@N02/8402261973/in/set-72157632694574367 --> 100% crop:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/54671350@N02/8402257689/in/set-72157632694574367

Before that DIY-solution I was using an 15x20cm light table and no holder, but had slight problems with low contrast due over-coverage of my lenses like mentioned above and haptics were worse.


PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 9:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thank you all for replies.

ForenSeil, great diagram and you are absolutely right about need of stopping unwanted light. For my final setup I was thinking about making long lens hood out of black cardboard which will cover all the space between lens and negative, however your idea of blocking light with alu foil is more convenient. I'm thinking I try both solutions.
As for focusing, of course I'm using magnificaton by 10x while focusing with boosted contrast at the same time, so focusing is piece of cake even with extension rings and thin DOF.
To be honest prices of Rodagon 105 are quite high and I have to wait with it at the moment, but I think I'll go for it at some time.
Your setup looks great and the results are even better (this 100% crop really shows it) Smile, however I would prefer 'horizontal' setup rather than vertical Wink. As for continuous light, well I have no problem with focusing and while my flash has E-TTL, I use it with manual settings which are more reliable and I have total control over exposure Wink. I could set up flash strength with 1/3EV increments so there's no problem with proper exposure either. I prefer flash light as it is more similar in temperature to normal daylight and for me easier to correct and it freezes all the movements.

Renato, so you mean to shoot grey card with digital camera? I don't know if that will help as I need to tamper with white balance a lot to get rid of negative orange mask and having neutral grey but in positive image would not be any help. Of course if I would use grey card while shooting film and then use it as a reference point will make a lot difference, but lighting conditions have to be the same throughout whole roll.

I'm gathering materials needed to stabilize my scanning setup and hope to come up with something by the end of week. Maybe I look around for the pieces of old enlargers or/and cutting/viewing devices as ForenSeil did.

Cheers
Mateusz


PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 9:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
An additional hood wouldn't harm of course.

Cheap used slide cutting devices with backlight are easy to find these days
http://www.ebay.de/sch/i.html?_odkw=%28dia+schneideger%C3%A4t%29+%28slide+cutter%29&LH_Auction=1&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR3.TRC1.A0.H0.X%28dia+schneideger%C3%A4t%2C+slide+cutter%29&_nkw=%28dia+schneideger%C3%A4t%2C+slide+cutter%29&_sacat=0


PhantomLord wrote:
...
To be honest prices of Rodagon 105 are quite high and I have to wait with it at the moment, but I think I'll go for it at some time....

Last two on Ebay.de went for 40€ and 36€ only, usually there are going a few per month for 35-60€, is that "quite high" for you or did you mistake the prices with buy-it-now fishing offers or Apo-version etc.? Considering IQ it's price is awesome imho it's worth much more. With some patiance you can get one for less than 30€.

Here are some samples when I tried the lens as macro (all except that last few made without hood btw. and nearly all are high iso) Wink http://forum.mflenses.com/rodenstock-rodagon-105mm-f5-6-on-bellows-new-pics-added-t57001.html

Other upper class (6 elements and more) medium format enlarger lenses like Meopta 80/4, Rodagon 80/4, Componon 105/5.6, El Nikkor 80 or 105 and other's should work nice aswell (but I suspect the Rodagon 105 and the Nikkors are best of these).

PS: Most (even very good) enlarger lenses with ~50mm don't work well at around 1:1.5, as they generally have very asymmetric design not well corrected for ratios of 1:<4, but they could be used to digitalize larger formats than 35mm, for example digitalising prints or large format negatives, if your bellows/helicoid/tube allows to focus far enough.

PPS: Micro Nikkor 55/2.8 (usual macro lens) was often said to work quite nice for digitalisation and it's one of the cheapest good macros you can find.

Last edited by ForenSeil on Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:20 am; edited 1 time in total


PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 6:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Hi,

As for 40€ I agree it's not that much, I've seen those for prices around 100€, nevertheless I spend some money on lenses in the last month and I would have to wait before purchasing Rodagon Smile.
Slide cutting devices/light tables etc. - I will be looking for ones locally as there no sense of buying item for 1€ and adding next 10-15€ of shipping Wink.
Thank you for your involvement and good advices.

Mateusz


PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 4:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Although some scans can be quite good, never lose sight of the fact that there will ALWAYS be something lost in the translation. I am in agreement with you, those lab scans are nothing special, in fact several of them are pretty awful. The best, and cheapest in the long haul, way is to scan them yourself. Either by buying a scanner or as has been mentioned, use a bellows and negative/slide attachment and copy them with a digital camera.
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