Topic: Dirty Little Secret

[beck]

Information taken from one of my favorite websites. Retrothing.com.

http://www.retrothing.com/cameras_optics/

I have the hardest time scanning 35mm film. And even having prints made from the lab often times look bad. Real bad...

"What you might not realize is that your 35mm film negatives are being digitally scanned at fairly low resolution and printed using the same digital printer that outputs the "better" digital prints."

Not like I am going to pick one of these up any time soon, but it looks like a neat gadget to have.



Plustek OpticFilm 7200 film scanner

"A unit such as the Plustek OpticFilm 7200 film scanner retails for under $200. It captures 35 mm negatives or slides at a resolution of 7200 dots per inch with 48-bit color depth. It includes a USB 2.0 interface for fast data transfer to your PC and the film holder accepts up to 4 mounted slides or six negatives at a time. The quality is good enough for most amateur applications. The CCD scanning process will take a few seconds per frame and produces a far better image than your corner photo mart. Once your film has been scanned, you can manipulate it with a photo editing package and print it just like you would a digitally produced image."

[Heather]

Yeah minilabs scan and then print from film... however, upping the DPI isn't necessarily going to give you better quality. You actually need very little dpi to make the standard 4x6inch colour print. This is why high MP digital cameras are generally stupid for consumer use and aren't a sign of quality in any way. I've gotten prints from my 1.3MP digital camera and they looked pretty good at 4x6 - that's because it's a decent camera with a good lens and I'm finding that impossible to find on newer cameras so I just use this nearly 10 year old digi instead.
Quality comes from finding a lab that fine-tunes their saturation/contrast/brightness settings to suit the film. Otherwise they all use the default whack-up-the-saturation setting which looks crap.

[beck]

Quality comes from finding a lab that fine-tunes their saturation/contrast/brightness settings to suit the film. Otherwise they all use the default whack-up-the-saturation setting which looks crap.

Yes. I should have said in my previous post that the lab I use generally does good with prints, even though they lack specific software for editing.....it is the drug stores that really produce bad quality. The 35mm disposable I used, prints were bad and as you've described...whacked up, with blown out contrast and this horrible red color cast here and there for black and white film. To be expected I guess considering the source. Might one ask for specifications when using a 5 & dime store? Probably not...

[Francois]

Actually, quality of the prints nowadays has a lot to do with the operator of the machine and it's software.

The best prints to be had in the region are at a grocery store. Staff is quite competent considering the place and they have a fairly new Fuji Frontier machine...

3.99$ per 24 exp. and 0.19$ per digital print.

[db]

damn you beck. That is one cool website, and the photo section is OK as well.  Just what I needed- somewhere else to waste time..

[Ed Wenn]

damn you beck. That is one cool website, and the photo section is OK as well.  Just what I needed- somewhere else to waste time..

Agree with Don....this is a nice little site, Beck. I wasted more time on it than I did watching that awesome Void video you posted for me on MySpace!! Jacqui wondered where her early morning cuppa had disappeared to:

"Sorry darling, I'm just watching Void tear it up at Wilson Centre back in the day"

...so she got her tea a few minutes late. It has to be said the video didn't exactly help my hangover, but it was still much appreciated.

Now, back to this website...I do fancy one of those stereo 3D cams. Yummy. I love Lartigue's stereograms - found them very moving - and vowed to start taking snaps of the family that could be viewed in 3D in years to come.

I dabbled with lenticular 3D stuff a few years ago, but the only printer I could find in the UK was a complete deadbeat and has had my films for 6 years without processing them, so I've given up on him. Stereo may be a safer fall back position.

[beck]

I hoped that video would get your panties all in a bunch. Those were the days. I wonder if John actually has a voice left today. Unfortunately and sadly, the drummer died recently of a heart attack. Not sure what the rest are doing these days....

[beck]

Edward, I tried to find Faction, Why Save the Whales, for a laugh....but could not find. What a funny song. You and I need our own topic for such videos. At least we know they are shot on film. 

[outofcontxt]

My first reaction when I saw this was "Wow! This is too good to be true! An uber affordable 7200 dpi film scanner?" Then I checked out their website. And it is too good to be true. The reason why it's so darn cheap is that the dMAX is pretty low -- only 3.3. The lower the dMAX, the less shadow detail you can scan. And dMAX is extremely critical with film, especially 35mm. The Nikon CoolScan film scanners -- just as a point of reference -- are more expensive (the low-end CoolScan V goes for US$500 or so) but their dMax is rated at 4.0 -- and that's a huge difference in terms of quality.

Personally, I'd love to see a review on this with a side-by-side comparison with the Nikon models as well as the medium to upper range Epson flatbed scanners. Still, it would make a nice entree into 35mm film scanning if you've been having bad luck trying to scan with a flatbed.

[outofcontxt]

Forgot to mention that retrothing.com is a really cool site. I lust after that Super8 camera. I wonder if it's a Beaulieu? <pant>

[lost_samurai]

Wow. Another cool site. Bookmarked!