Film scanning

[richards1052]

[url]I'm going to be starting to work w. the Minolta DiMage film scanner in the coming days. I've never done anything but photo scans and have also worked from cds.

Can someone using film scans give me some sense of what to expect. What steps do you go through bet. loading the neg. in the scanner & saving the jpeg image in yr. pc?

I'm assuming that since film scan files will be pretty big that I'll only want to save as large files on my hard drive those specific pix which I want to print out. Otherwise, I'll prob. save smaller & more compressed images for use on the web. Right?

Any other pointers?

Richard

PS this new forum technology is miles better than the old forum. But it is hard to figure out where the old forum archives are located. Wish they could've somehow been integrated into the new forum.http://www.pbase.com/richards1052/

[qleap]

Richard,
I've been using the Minolta Dimage II for more than a year. Here's my recommendations. First, read & follow Slug's methodology for scanning.
http://forums.pbase.com/post?post_id=279
I brush and blow the slides before scanning to get as much dust off as possible (get the brush at a photo supply store). Always do a pre-scan so the scanner knows the proper exposure level. Minolta provides tools for auto and manual correction of exposure levels & color. Experiment around with them; it takes a while to learn how to scan well (I'm still learning). I scan at 1410 dpi and it produces a 2.3 megapixel image on a standard 35mm frame. Good enough for the web & medium sized prints. If it is a great shot, you may want to use a higher dpi.

Save your scans in TIFF format. When JPeg is manipulated and saved it degrades the image quality so when you go back and crop and adjust colors and take out scratches you will lose image quality. Treat the TIFF as your digital negative and save the manipulated image as a JPeg. I use a numbering systems for names and append an "-E" or enhanced images and "-R" for reduced images (for e-mailing and posting on PBase ). Disk space is incredibly cheap. A 120GB drive costs <$100 so each saved image (TIFF) costs about 1/2 cent. Your time to scan is worth that price to store the higher quality (and sized) image.

Buy an extra hard drive to backup your images. Burning CDs is OK, but I find them to be a pain to keep track of what image is on what CD. I've had 2 drives crash in the last year, so they do fail and then all that work could be lost. Perform backups often.

Scanning can be fun but tedious. It is very time consuming. Do a little at a time to avoid burn-out.

Visit http://www.pbase.com/qleap/afghan_1 for samples of scanned slides using the Minolta. Happy scanning and I look forward to seeing your work on PBase.

-Clayton

[tastyorange]

I want to purchase a film scanner. Has anyone compared, say the Epson 4870 (less than $500) with a dedicated scanner such as a Minolta Dimage IV or the Nikon V ED?
The Epson has a DMAX of 3.8. Do I really need more than that... can I tell the difference between something with a DMAX of 3.8 and one of 4.8?

What about color? The Epson has 48 bit color and the Nikon V ED has 42 bit? What's the difference?

The Minolta had a few too many bad reviews in Amazon.com, so the Epson and the Nikon look good.

I'd like to see a sample comparison chart.

Thanks for any advice,
Gary

[toddk]

I had a dedicated film scanner then purchased the Epson 4780. All the photos in my gallery are scanned by the Epson. Here is an example

http://www.pbase.com/toddk/night

[tomnan4000]

You can't beat the quality of the Minolta Scan Dual IV for the price paid ($260USD from NewEgg)

Here are some samples:



http://www.pbase.com/tomnan4000/scans_from_canon_at1