I 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'…
Optical quality is kind of a problem with a flatbed; even with it perfectly flat, it looks a lot better coming out of a Coolscan.
It’s a cancer on the web. Apple started it and I hate them for it. And I’m an Apple fan. If I wanted to wait 1/2 second for each part of the page to load I’d have stayed on dialup.
Wasn't the NYT that started this?
The first I ever saw of it was the NYT story about the deadly avalanche at Stevens Pass in WA state. I liked it for that story but not so much for this product site.
You’re for sure exceeding the linear resolving power of 35mm film at 40MP or 64MP. However , a Bayer-filtered sensor has lower color resolution, since each pixel only sees one color. So the pixel shift really helps quite a bit here since the sensor (and Bayer array) are shifting relative to the film multiple times per exposure. High-quality film scanners maintain color resolution by using linear sensors without Bayer…
Some modern 35mm emulsions can record ~500 megapixels worth of detail, but good luck getting all that detail in a digital scan. https://www.adox.de/Photo/films/cms20ii-en/
The scan is the least of the problems - good luck getting to that level of detail with mostly vintage lenses, balancing depth of field and diffraction, keeping the film perfectly flat, on a stable enough tripod with no vibration whatsoever; developing perfectly in the dedicated developer. Yes, it's impressive but no, it's not relevant to the average user or hobbyist.
> Yes. We’re collaborating with several film labs in Berlin to benchmark Knokke against Fuji Frontier and Noritsu scanners.
> Sample results will be published before the Kickstarter campaign, so you can make a fully informed decision.
I don't care how cool your scanner looks or how "modern" the workflow is - it's samples or nothing. Additionally, if they were really smart, they'd collaborate with a well known film photographer instead of using someone's walk-around point-and-shoot photos.
> 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.)
You’re for sure exceeding the linear resolving power of 35mm film at 40MP or 64MP. However , a Bayer-filtered sensor has lower color resolution, since each pixel only sees one color. So the pixel shift really helps quite a bit here since the sensor (and Bayer array) are shifting relative to the film multiple times per exposure. High-quality film scanners maintain color resolution by using linear sensors without Bayer…
Scanning 135 format at home is pretty much a solved problem right? The home made solution to this costs $0 if you own any DSLR and some other basic photography gear. I think the product would be more compelling and worth it or even a good deal at the price they are offering if it offered drum scan-quality for larger formats.
The workflow for this scanner would allow you to thread an uncut roll of 35mm film through it. You'd have to spend more than $0 to get that kind of speed on a DSLR rig.
> 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.)
You’re for sure exceeding the linear resolving power of 35mm film at 40MP or 64MP. However , a Bayer-filtered sensor has lower color resolution, since each pixel only sees one color. So the pixel shift really helps quite a bit here since the sensor (and Bayer array) are shifting relative to the film multiple times per exposure. High-quality film scanners maintain color resolution by using linear sensors without Bayer…
All the current Nikon Z bodies (and probably other brands too) have different levels of pixel shift where it’ll take 4 or 8 images and basically cancel out that it’s a bayer sensor. The bayer array is a 4 pixel pattern, so it moves one pixel to the right then one down and then one back to capture all 3 channels for each individual pixel. For things like film scanning it works flawlessly, I use it all the time.
Then it’ll do a 16 or 32 shot stack in order to do the same thing but with more resolution.
As 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…
I almost missed the price. Wow you're right that's a lot! And the final retail price is 1599 euros. I have a good Plustek that cost me $300 or $400. Automated transport and unantiquated software sounds nice, but those features are not worth an extra $600-1,100 to me. Am I missing something or is this supposed to be in another tier of image quality?
I wondered what the price was. 1599 seems pretty decent.I was expecting about 4k This is about the price of a venerable Nikon 5000. Some of the setups use film mounts that cost as much as this whole unit.
Any suggestions for a scanner meant for bulk scans of old family photos (think a few thousand images)? I bought, what I thought, was a reasonably solid scanner, the Pacific Image Powerfilm scanner but the software is so janky that it hangs every two strips and has to be restarted making the entire process super labor intensive. Also the entire "bulk feature" where it's meant to pull the strips one at a time iis not even close to working.