My brand new digitizing workflow using a 25 year old film scanner
blog.vladovince.com
My brand new digitizing workflow using a 25 year old film scanner
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Re: My brand new digitizing workflow using a 25 year old film scanner
#2Nice setup. $50 for a used LS-2000 is a steal! I used the Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II for many years until it broke down, at which point I could not afford a replacement. I stopped shooting with film almost 15 years ago but for a long time had my eyes on a used Coolscan 4000 for those eventual few moments where I found a forgotten slide or strip of film I hadn't scanned, but eventually settled with the Reflecta CrystalScan 7200. Though it's not quite as good I find it an entirely acceptable film scanner on a budget.
Re: My brand new digitizing workflow using a 25 year old film scanner
#3I can’t contribute on that exact setup since I only used windows xp / usb film scanner for a similar but much less dpi setup but setting up a vintage Mac OS 9 system is not that hard. The hardware an iMac g3/g4 are still accessible and cheap enough on eBay and you can make them more reliable. A laptop also makes it easier out of the box. Emulation also works.
SCSI isn’t scary. It wasn’t scary in 2006 and it shouldn’t be scary today.
I share the same age as this writer, if not very close since the life events are similar e.g. high school in mid 00s. I find having a dark room and using proper technique and developer, or even Lightroom processing 10-50x more complicated then running a vintage Mac OS 9 or diving into scsi hardware.
It should not deter anyone and it had the same languish by people in the same time period.
After all these years I think manually mapping IRQs or having pop the side of the case off to move jumpers around for IRQs to be more challenging. I’m just surprised to read that SCSI is annoying. I wonder when I’ll be reading similar Context about using IDE drives or serial ports (okay baud rate issues can be annoying).
By all means not to be negative, article is excellent. I just see it as a trope: “scsi is hard”
Re: My brand new digitizing workflow using a 25 year old film scanner
#4Nikon CoolScan devices work flawlessly with SANE on modern linux btw.
Re: My brand new digitizing workflow using a 25 year old film scanner
#5Nikon CoolScan devices work flawlessly with SANE on modern linux btw.
Linux scanner support is amazing. I have a >10 year old printer/scanner/fax machine that I still use for scanning and faxing sometimes. Getting scanning to work in modern MacOS or Windows is ... an adventure. It's possible! But an adventure for sure.
I was delighted when I opened the scanner tool in fedora/gnome for laughs and it showed the (networked) machine as a scanning source. And I selected it. AND IT WORKED. I never even had to set it up!
Re: My brand new digitizing workflow using a 25 year old film scanner
#6VueScan rescued my Epson 2450, the interface is a bit clunky but it works.
I would love for more efficient workflow to scan the few thousand slides I still have.
There must be some 3D printing plans for film holders on the flat bed.
It would be handy to take it apart to clean the bed glass, but I daren’t if it breaks.
Re: My brand new digitizing workflow using a 25 year old film scanner
#7I've been using a Coolscan 8000 and a 2007 iMac for 17 years (prior to that, I used a Mac Mini for a short while) and only last year had to replace the scanner motherboard after an international move. To continue to use Nikon's software, the iMac is still on 10.6 Snow Leopard.
I shoot 35mm and medium format and the Coolscan pulls extraordinary detail from the negatives - vastly better than the best flatbed scanners I've ever used.
Re: My brand new digitizing workflow using a 25 year old film scanner
#8I've heard great things about drum scanners (and seem some amazing comparisons). I'm hoping to send some of my medium format film to get a 100MP-level scan.
Amusingly enough, I found that my B&W Ilford film shots (on all three different film types I tried) have way less detail (or "resolution") than standard iso400 Kodak color film.
Re: My brand new digitizing workflow using a 25 year old film scanner
#9I'm not surprised at all about having to use an old computer to get this thing to work. This will become the norm with scanners unless someone with more money than sense decides to enter the market.
Nearly all of the good consumer-grade scanners (i.e. those that use CCD sensors) are out of production and use software that is no longer maintained. The main market for scanners has become receipts, which has lead to a switch to cheap CIS sensors since quality no longer matters.
Outside of expensive specialized scanners, the Epson V600 is pretty much the only scanner in production still using a CCD sensor and it came out in 2009. It has nearly doubled in price over its lifetime to $350 due to lack of competition and I presume inflation. It is the de facto scanner used in the trading card world because of the output quality and ability to create templates within the software (I 3D printed my own brackets to be able to scan/crop 4 cards at a time perfectly every time). But last I checked MacOS support is pretty much gone and even Windows is barely tolerable. Its days are probably numbered, too.
Re: My brand new digitizing workflow using a 25 year old film scanner
#10I'm not surprised at all about having to use an old computer to get this thing to work. This will become the norm with scanners unless someone with more money than sense decides to enter the market. Nearly all of the good consumer-grade scanners (i.e. those that use CCD sensors) are out of production and use software that is no longer maintained. The main market for scanners has become receipts, which has lead to a s…
I feel like you could totally emulate though, with enough effort