This site seems kind of pointless. There are no examples of the product's output or any demonstration of how it compares with other film scanners.
A modern 35mm film scanner for home
51–60 of 198 posts
Re: A modern 35mm film scanner for home
#52I scanned a lot of 35mm film, of various kinds, using a high-end flatbed scanner (EPSON V700 Photo). The biggest problem is not the optical quality, but mechanics: flatbeds can only scan strips. And if your film is very old and has been stored in a roll, you might not want to cut it, and even if you do, getting the strips to stay flat is nearly impossible.
I tried various fancy holders, but in the end decided that I'll likely have to make my own holder from aluminum or steel sheet metal. And even then you run into the problem of lengthwise curvature. For those that are unaware of the problem with this, these scanners have a very limited depth of field, in the range of 1mm or less. So if your film is bent, some of it will always be out of focus.
I can't see much on this fancy webpage, because they made it so fancy that some of the images do not load and those that do load are oh so mysteriously dark. But if their scanner can scan both heavily curved rolls and strips, I will be buying it.
As to optical quality, if you can get your film to stay flat, this is a solved problem, that Epson mentioned above can produce fantastic results (more pixels that you want, generally).
Re: A modern 35mm film scanner for home
#53Hmm, does seem pretty expensive but sounds interesting. I've got an old Canon FS4000 for 35mm, which works ok for me. I'm curious what people recommend for 4x5 film. Is there such a thing as a cheap drum scanner.
The Epson scanners are supposed to be nice but they stopped making them and they’ve shot way up in price second hand.
Yeah I do remember hearing good things about the Epson scanners, will have another look, thanks.
Re: A modern 35mm film scanner for home
#54Archive link for those who, like me, are unable to scroll on that page
https://web.archive.org/web/20251111210606/https://www.soke....
PS to add more - I am unable to scroll, all I see is the picture with the dark background. If I use arrow keys instead of the touchpad, I can scroll a bit then after a second or so the page snaps back to the top. I have Firefox on MacOS.
(I know the HN rules say that we should focus on the contents rather than criticising the technical aspects of a website, but in this case the contents are not accessible).
Re: A modern 35mm film scanner for home
#55I scanned a lot of 35mm film, of various kinds, using a high-end flatbed scanner (EPSON V700 Photo). The biggest problem is not the optical quality, but mechanics: flatbeds can only scan strips. And if your film is very old and has been stored in a roll, you might not want to cut it, and even if you do, getting the strips to stay flat is nearly impossible. I tried various fancy holders, but in the end decided that I'…
Seems like an obvious question, but why not sandwich it between panes of glass?
Re: A modern 35mm film scanner for home
#56I’ve got a decade’s worth of 4x6 pictures and negatives from my childhood. Would something like this help me digitize them?
Presumably the negatives, but not the pictures, as this is intended to scan only negatives. You'd probably have better luck with a cheap flatbed scanner that comes with adapters for slides and negatives. (I've used both dedicated film scanners and flatbed scanners to scan thousands of rolls of film and prints taken over a span of 50 years.)
Re: A modern 35mm film scanner for home
#57I thought you use a camera on stand is the common way now. Did one in Edinburgh and ordered one back home waiting for delivery. After decade of epson it is not comparable for speed and option …
for just contact sheet fast … you can just move and push the blue tooth button … for one particular treasure slow … you can do pixel shift and focus stacking …
Re: A modern 35mm film scanner for home
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually a lower DPI and no IR sensor.
Honestly I feel like anything beyond 5 megapixels per frame is pushing beyond reasonable expectations with 35mm. This is certainly the case with any kind of available light or high speed work in silver-halide process, the area where I figure most people are going to be using this device. Lab-work in C41 and E6 is definitely possible at home but must account for single digit percentage of the home analogue market.
Never. 20 Mp if you want "lossless".
Re: A modern 35mm film scanner for home
#59Granted, I got sick of doing this myself so I ended up happily forking over the money for the local lab to do it on their Macon
Re: A modern 35mm film scanner for home
#60As someone who has a mirrorless scanning setup for my film, and pondered getting a dedicated scanner... the price of this is quite steep given how inflexible of a tool it is. A second hand DSLR setup is going to be roughly the same price or less. I'm also not sure what kind of workflow improvements it actually offers. If you want fancy and experimental, filmomat has arguably a more interesting but pricier offering. B…
> A second hand DSLR setup is going to be roughly the same price or less. And if you get one with Pixel Shift, you can get way higher resolutions than the 22MP they're offering (e.g. my cheapo Olympus gets 40MP JPEG or 64MP RAW from a 16MP sensor.)
The Olympus pixel shift bodies are underappreciated stand cameras. The quality is just bananas.