The state of dedicated film scanning is so bad these days, especially for larger than 35mm formats that it seems most people still shooting film are resorting to using a digital camera and a macro lens with something to hold the film.
Seems a pity.
Seems a pity.
Personally, I've been scanning my own 35mm negatives for the past few years with both a Full-frame DSLR and an APS-C Mirrorless camera, and get much much better results than I'd been getting via my local film processing lab and their scanning.
Scanning negatives with a modern digital camera still retains a lot of the filmic quality that we've come to expect via shooting film. Obviously you lose the "resolution" and ability to blow those images up once scanned, but you can 100% still see the grain, color reproduction, and analog anomalies that we're used to by shooting film.
I recently got a camera with "pixel shift" technology and using that the files have 96mb and really show off the grain. Plus it's just faster than scanning ever was. I am really very happy with the setup.
What I do for my part is just use an enlarger to which I attach my digital camera with various tubes and adapters to get the distances right, and an enlarger lens. These lenses are infinitely cheaper than "regular" planar lenses and they're just made exactly for the job, and the whole assembly is rigid and aligned so it's easy to get the whole negative right.
I'd like to see some better FOSS options but images are a lot better quality than they were using cheap desktop film scanners in 2005.
As others have mentioned here I am also looking into trying to fauxscan with a DSLR and a macro lens, but I'm also wondering if there is enough of a market/interest in a more DIY/FOSS scanning project.
I've considered trying to build something more standard that could be printed or manufactured, that combines some small pointgrey (CV) cameras and macro lens, a light, and some film rolling mechanism to keep the film tight - the idea being that you could basically "scan" the film as a moving roll, scanning a whole 120mm roll in seconds. Pointgrey cameras also have a great api, so you could actually build software on top of it.
I've long thought about putting time to this, but the intersection of pro film shooters and programmers is so small that I'm not sure it would be worth it. If anyone else is interested in the idea, I'd be happy to collaborate on it!
https://petapixel.com/2017/02/14/wet-mount-scanning-get-high...
Can you really get 80% of the detail like with the Hasselblad X1 with your phone?
For the wet scanning is it a regular consumer grade scanner or something specific / special? How do the results compare to the X1?
Wet scanning is worthwhile if you have a higher-end flatbed scanner like the Epson V700, 750 and 900(?) because they use higher-quality sensors and real lenses.
I almost bought a drum scanner a decade ago but would have to maintain a Mac Quadra for it to run. For large format film, a wet mount scan on an Epson V750 with VueScan software is great.
If you want film scanned today to individual files per frame, it's still a bunch of money if you can find someone to do it... and good luck getting it done right.
It used an 8K line array CCD, and pulled a film frame across by locking the frame in a gate and moving the gate with a servo.
Indeed, 6 figures for one of these machines.
https://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/support/documents/other/legacy_...
I was considering trying to build one out of an inspection microscope, but gave it up and just had my most-important reels scanned to TIFFs.
justifying the cost of the people that did not give up and made an actual product. "if this shit was easy, everyone would do it!" is something i remind myself all the time
Also the opposing viewpoint to remind yourself of is that hey, SOMEBODY was the first to make one of these things and started a company to do it! I've given up on ideas before starting because of the manufacturing technology required, only to see a company like GoPro come out of nowhere and own a market segment.