Photographer's Corner - equipment

[Walt34]

I have a Cannon CanoScan 9000F which came with an abbreviated version of Silverfast software. I like it. It also has trays for mounted 35mm slides (four at a time) 35mm film negatives, and one larger size film negative, I forgot what size.

The reviews I read about it were accurate, it's a good scanner but if you have thousands of slides/negatives it would get tedious.

I don't shoot film anymore but I have several hundred slides that my father took in the '40's - '60's. My avatar photo was shot by me ~1976 and is from a slide.

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronstar Yep I now see it does jpegs just like raws. Haven't messed with lens corrections yet, but its good to know that it recognizes the iPhone. I found an old scanned in photo of DW (more than 50 yrs old) that had a bunch of spots, etc. I fixed it up a little in Lightroom. I may have to spend the winter cleaning up the old scanned photos

The color correction for photos like that (red shift in the photo of your DW) are easy to do with either the right scanner software or later in Lightroom, Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. This is one of me and my HS prom date in 1968 that needed color correction. I used my jacket to establish a white point.

[Ronstar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walt34 The color correction for photos like that (red shift in the photo of your DW) are easy to do with either the right scanner software or later in Lightroom, Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. This is one of me and my HS prom date in 1968 that needed color correction. I used my jacket to establish a white point.

Thanks for posting this. Good job on the color correction. I assumed that people were doing color correction on their scanned photos, but I haven't tried it. I'm just using the scan software that came with my scanner and I haven't looked into it to see how it adjusts colors. I have played with Lightroom's color adjustments, but in the case of DW's photo, I can't seem to get the redness out of the background without changing the color of the dress. I'll have to dig into this - I have a Lightroom book that explains it.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronstar Thanks for posting this. Good job on the color correction. I assumed that people were doing color correction on their scanned photos, but I haven't tried it. I'm just using the scan software that came with my scanner and I haven't looked into it to see how it adjusts colors. I have played with Lightroom's color adjustments, but in the case of DW's photo, I can't seem to get the redness out of the background without changing the color of the dress. I'll have to dig into this - I have a Lightroom book that explains it.

A friend of mine bought a Nikon film scanner which he is very happy with. He said they have a process that can sample a blank are of the film, and it uses info from that to determine the aging and color shift of the film, and provide the proper corrections (it has a data base of all the film types). This was a few years back, I assume they've got even better since then.

-ERD50

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walt34 The color correction for photos like that (red shift in the photo of your DW) are easy to do with either the right scanner software or later in Lightroom, Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. This is one of me and my HS prom date in 1968 that needed color correction. I used my jacket to establish a white point.

Walt - I'm not convinced your jacket was in fact white. Looks more like cream to me as otherwise your skin tones and other things have a pretty blue cast. This is using auto white balance in LR5, along with a few other tweaks for contrast and vignetting.

Please excuse my presumption, but I knew it needed at least a little work on the contrast/clarity. Nice picture!

[meierlde]

Quote:

Originally Posted by M Paquette Anyone here shoot on film and scan it in for digital processing and printing? I'm interested in getting a film scanner of some sort, primarily for 35mm, but possibly (if the costs aren't too high) for 120 and 4x5 film. .

I have an epson 4490 and have scanned in over 9000 slides (mine my fathers and grandfathers). One question is how many slides you have, the epson v.500 perfection does 4 slides at a time, so it does take a while for about 4x the price you can go with the epson v.700 which does 12 slides at a time.
All the Kodachrome and Etkachrome from as far back as the 1960s looked good but purchased slides from 1962 on eastman color film had gotton red I had to make them black and white.

[donheff]

OK, lets keep playing with Walt's photo. Using the curtains as a neutral gray gets a nice effect:

[photoguy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by M Paquette Anyone here shoot on film and scan it in for digital processing and printing? I'm interested in getting a film scanner of some sort, primarily for 35mm, but possibly (if the costs aren't too high) for 120 and 4x5 film.

How large a scan do you want?

If you go with a flatbed you'll be able to do 120 and 4x5 but the actual resolution will be much lower then a dedicated 35mm scanner. On my Canoscan 9000f flatbed I was getting something like 1200dpi (whereas the spec sheet lists 4800dpi) using a test target.

On my minolta dimage I actually got the rated resolution (5400 dpi or even a little more).

Quote:

I'm looking for something I can afford easily, so wet mount drum scanners are Right Out. I expect I'd mostly be shooting with the Ilford black and white films. I like the tones, and as I recall, the film lay nice and flat compared to Tri-X.

Another option may be to setup a copy stand on a lightbox and take high res pictures with a DSLR.

[photoguy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by meierlde I have an epson 4490 and have scanned in over 9000 slides (mine my fathers and grandfathers).

Wow. You're the man (or woman).

[M Paquette]

Quote:

Originally Posted by photoguy How large a scan do you want? If you go with a flatbed you'll be able to do 120 and 4x5 but the actual resolution will be much lower then a dedicated 35mm scanner. On my Canoscan 9000f flatbed I was getting something like 1200dpi (whereas the spec sheet lists 4800dpi) using a test target. On my minolta dimage I actually got the rated resolution (5400 dpi or even a little more).

I have an older CanoScan, the 8400F, with a dead backlight. I have trouble imagining how it gets those amazing resolutions from a CCD with lower resolution (even if you pretend that each R, G, and B element is a pixel, and convolve the cr*p out of the signal). Your 1200 DPI result sounds pretty reasonable for that particular sensor.

I'll take a look and the Minolta Dimage scanners. Some of the Nikon ones looked as pricey as a used Hell drum scanner.

[FIREd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by M Paquette Anyone here shoot on film and scan it in for digital processing and printing? I'm interested in getting a film scanner of some sort, primarily for 35mm, but possibly (if the costs aren't too high) for 120 and 4x5 film. This would let me use all my funky old gear, without having to set up the huge and even funkier old enlarger and build a wet process lab (which DW might just possibly not care for...). Film I can process with a changing bag and a sink. 11x14 prints, not so much... I'm looking for something I can afford easily, so wet mount drum scanners are Right Out. I expect I'd mostly be shooting with the Ilford black and white films. I like the tones, and as I recall, the film lay nice and flat compared to Tri-X.

I use the Canon CanoScan 8800F. I have scanned 35mm slides and negatives as well as some 120 film and have been pretty pleased with the results. The 35mm scans were very good using the provided tray. But the 120 negatives required some homemade rigging to get sharp results.

[explanade]

There is a scanning service, name escapes me at the moment.

They send slides and prints to India and it takes a couple of weeks.

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 Walt - I'm not convinced your jacket was in fact white. Looks more like cream to me as otherwise your skin tones and other things have a pretty blue cast. This is using auto white balance in LR5, along with a few other tweaks for contrast and vignetting. Please excuse my presumption, but I knew it needed at least a little work on the contrast/clarity. Nice picture!

No offense taken.

I knew it wasn't quite right but didn't take the time to play with it. You're quite right about the blue cast, but then it made the jacket too orange. I'm sure it was white, but it has been a while.

It might be better to go into Photoshop with it and correct each color channel separately.

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by donheff OK, lets keep playing with Walt's photo. Using the curtains as a neutral gray gets a nice effect:

Nice! Yes, it certainly looks as if the curtains might be neutral gray. But there are all sorts of random color shifts/artifacts in the photo that make me think of aging film or print plus there were probably lighting issues in the room . I figure the best you can do is try to get the skin tones and hair looking about right.

[audreyh1]

Lightroom has a cool WB feature, in that you take your WB tool and scroll it over in areas you think are neutral, and the top left image gives you a preview of what your color correction will look like. That way you can hunt for your "best" white or gray area in the image.

Love LR's non-destructive editing

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 Yes, it certainly looks as if the curtains might be neutral gray. But there are all sorts of random color shifts/artifacts in the photo that make me think of aging film or print. I figure the best you can do is try to get the skin tones and hair looking about right.

I suspect old film is the main issue with uneven color shifts, otherwise the jacket would have more consistent color. I'd have to dig up the slide but I think it was a film from Montgomery Ward, which means the cheapest they could find. The lighting is from one or two tungsten photo lamps; my father also used an 8mm movie camera and had a set of photoflood lights (as he called them) and he used those sometimes for still photos.

[meierlde]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walt34 I suspect old film is the main issue with uneven color shifts, otherwise the jacket would have more consistent color. I'd have to dig up the slide but I think it was a film from Montgomery Ward, which means the cheapest they could find. The lighting is from one or two tungsten photo lamps; my father also used an 8mm movie camera and had a set of photoflood lights (as he called them) and he used those sometimes for still photos.

While it may not be possible to know it is possible that the film is daylight film (white balanced for the sun) not tungsten film (balanced for incandescent lights) Essentially there was a white balance issue in the old days, and you had to know what light sources were to be used to pick the best film. (This is why the old flash bulbs flashed looking whiter that lamps, because they emitted light at a higher temperature.

[Chuckanut]

I have an old Canoscan 9000 which I used to scan many old slides and negatives so as to digitize and preserve them. (Yes, I kept the original film.) It did a pretty good job overall. It also convinced me that if I was going to go to a digital darkroom, there was no point in shooting film anymore. Original digital photos were significantly superior to scanned film. Perhaps had I had professional drum scanning done, that may not have been true, but I could not afford that.

[Chuckanut]

FWIW, here are Thom Hogan's nominees for mirror-less interchangeable lens camera of the year.

Camera of the Year Nominees | Sans Mirror ? mirrorless, interchangeable lens cameras | Thom Hogan

[seraphim]

Yea, read that article. I was perfectly happy with my Nikon DSLR until this thread came up. Now I want that Leica, which I can't justify. Am considering the AW1, as we canoe a lot.