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Comment by antiterra | Hacker News Reader

I assume the author knows their stuff about why consumer scanners aren’t good enough, particularly around dynamic range. However, for black and white film, I’m generally able to make out the crystal grain on 35mm with my consumer scanner and included tray, so I don’t know what more there is to resolve.

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I used to own the scan he is talking about and various epson scanner, you cannot imagine the difference, Epson is fine and you are happy with it, then you see what an Hasselblad scanner can do for the same negative and for the rest of yout life you will think that Epsons are garbage.

I "used" to own it because it had some small hardware problems and i was unable to fix it or find someone who could repair it. I bought a digital back and never did film photography since.

Bouncing on that last bit: do you find digital to match/exceed your experience of film+hasselblad?

I have a Nikon Coolscan 4000 from days of old. I was able to scan a 35mm at about 20 megapixels of data... and it fixed scratches and identified dust (my father has used it for the past several years to scan all of the old family photos - including those from his parents) and it works very well.

The big difference was in the amount of data in the blacks of a good slide film that you could pull out with a scanner. You can get a really wide dynamic range on the film by scanning it and pushing more or less light through it depending on the film.

There's also something... tangible or natural that film grain captures that I just don't feel with for digital.

For example this https://www.deviantart.com/shagie/art/Provia-400-grain-no2-1... is a detail of https://www.deviantart.com/shagie/art/Black-Sea-Nettle-Provi...

https://www.deviantart.com/shagie/art/crop-of-golden-gate-ca... is the cable (that you can see) from https://www.deviantart.com/shagie/art/Golden-Gate-Tower-50mm...

For its time, 35mm + a good scanner was not something you could get near with digital cameras. The good DSLRs are there now for 35mm... and then I can argue with myself about the difference between the curves on film vs doing it in post in photoshop and the ease taking multiple photos vs getting one shot (or a bracket) and hoping and the cost of a good digital camera vs the cost of processing film... its arguments that you can see fought out in my camera bags.

And this is where I've scanned with an Epson scanner. I've got an older epson photo scanner. Its lid has a light in it (so it can transmit - and scan film). And it has a tray so that you can put 120 or 4x5 film in, secure it (without having it touch any of the glass and scratch) and scan a flat plane.

And it did fairly well. I used it to scan my xpan shots (since the Nikon scanner won't do that). https://www.deviantart.com/shagie/art/Sunset-Marin-Headlands... is one such photo.

The thing I liked about film, was I knew what I was getting out of the box, and the images would largely take on the look I wanted based on my choice of film.

Yes, the quality is better, you lose the film "feeling" but everything else is so much easier...

What is a "digital back"?

Edit: Wow! Thanks for all your replies! This sounds intriguing, but only tangentially related to scanning.

Now if you could turn a film camera into a high-quality scanner.. wouldn't that be something :)

I'm in the ignorant camp where I've been satisfied with Epson consumer grade scanners because I had no idea what I was missing.

Cheers.

I think in some film cameras, you can replace the part of the camera where film is exposed with a digital image sensor. Then you can use the same camera, but instead of exposing chemical-based film, you're recording digital images.

https://www.hasselblad.com/de-de/h-system/h6d-100c-digital-b...

You love the feel of your camera, its optics, and you don't want to throw away 20000 dollars? Pay a few thousand more and it's now a digital camera, everything else stays the same.

The large format approach is often a scanner - which works fairly well with a landscape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_scan_back

It takes a bit of rethinking since the shutter speed should be thought of as exposure speed since it is the speed at which the scanner moves - not the duration the shutter is open.

Replaces a film magazine with a digital sensor

Has been made since the late 80s in various forms.

Phase One is the “premier” brand, with hasselblad closely following, then you have the defunct brands such as imacon, leaf, megavision (maybe around still), Sinar (around, part of Leica), Fuji made one, Rollei also made some. Dicomed made an actual 60mmx60mm one for a full frame 6x6 camera, still unique to this day.

Others have already explained, but many medium format camera systems were made to be modular long before the advent of digital. The viewfinder, lens, or the bit at the back which holds the film could all be hot swapped if you wanted to switch to eg a waist level finder or different film.

> I've been satisfied with Epson consumer grade scanners because I had no idea what I was missing.

Every time I meet someone who is expert in something I enjoy I have learned to tread carefully. It can often ruin perceptions - sure, it leads to a better result but it’s often very pricey.

Coffee, computers, networking, storage, backups, automation, tools, etc etc.

My life is a lot better and things a lot more reliable for the help I’ve had, but I’m poorer.

The silver particles in the film aren't very transparent and you can see this for yourself with a microscope. All tonal representations of B&W film, whether a scan or traditional enlargement, depend on limitations of resolving power to blur or alias the grain into a tone.

Correspondingly, you will see a difference in apparent grain from different scanners at different resolutions. If you think there is nothing to be gained by scanning on a drum or virtual drum, pick one of your best negatives and pay to have it professionally scanned!

I’ve definitely had plenty of medium format negatives drum scanned and I have found consumer scanners to not be great for color slide film. But, scanning a grainy/gritty film like HP5 or TriX doesn’t seem like quite the same kind of challenge.

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