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Nikon D850 Film Scanner


Stealth3kpl

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Interesting the way Nikon want to cash-in on the resurgent popularity of film, but try to keep people on the digital treadmill by pretending it's just negatives from 'ye olde dayes' that photographers want to digitize. 

 

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"from your film days" LOL

Who knows, one day they might even make a scanner again...

 

 

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On the basis of purely subjective and anecdotal evidence among my friends and acquaintances, there a lot of people already scanning or wanting to scan their archives of old family photos. Offline, I don't know anyone who is still a film photographer.

 

Whether anyone wanting to digitise their film archive will get a D850 for this purpose is another matter!

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On the basis of purely subjective and anecdotal evidence among my friends and acquaintances, there a lot of people already scanning or wanting to scan their archives of old family photos. Offline, I don't know anyone who is still a film photographer.

My daughter (who's 8 now) is in a class with 25 kids - two of the dads have switched to film over the last few months.

At a camera 'yard-sale' a few months ago I bumped into another dad from my son's nursery - also a new film fanatic.

When I left my vacation film for developing at the lab the other day I 'cut a deal' with them: slightly longer wait time for a slightly lower price - because they're overwhelmed with demand. 

 

I'm guessing you're not moving in a young enough crowd.  ;)

 

PS: actually forgot that I found out over the summer that another dad at my daughter's gym class is a Leica film user. 

Edited by plasticman
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My daughter (who's 8 now) is in a class with 25 kids - two of the dads have switched to film over the last few months.

At a camera 'yard-sale' a few months ago I bumped into another dad from my son's nursery - also a new film fanatic.

When I left my vacation film for developing at the lab the other day I 'cut a deal' with them: slightly longer wait time for a slightly lower price - because they're overwhelmed with demand. 

 

I'm guessing you're not moving in a young enough crowd.  ;)

 

PS: actually forgot that I found out over the summer that another dad at my daughter's gym class is a Leica film user. 

My young (and old) friends and relations mostly use phones, not cameras!

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My young (and old) friends and relations mostly use phones, not cameras!

Obviously each of our individual, anecdotal data-points is meaningless. But do you seriously think that Nikon has put resources and effort into these 'scanning' products because they suddenly discovered that some old film-users had the odd shoebox of negatives under the bed?

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Obviously each of our individual, anecdotal data-points is meaningless. But do you seriously think that Nikon has put resources and effort into these 'scanning' products because they suddenly discovered that some old film-users had the odd shoebox of negatives under the bed?

Oh, seriously?

I haven't a clue. 

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do you seriously think that Nikon has put resources and effort into these 'scanning' products because they suddenly discovered that some old film-users had the odd shoebox of negatives under the bed?

 

Possibly. The adaptor has a price tag of just $150, so it's not going head to head with a Flextight X5. I think there are a lot of people with a shoebox full of old negs who'll be interested in this. 

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Possibly. The adaptor has a price tag of just $150, so it's not going head to head with a Flextight X5. I think there are a lot of people with a shoebox full of old negs who'll be interested in this. 

 
I was thinking more in terms of the effort and resources that they decided to assign to the in-camera software development. My impression of Nikon is that they wouldn't make these decisions lightly - unless they suspected at the very least a significant level of interest that would give a financial return.
 
As far as I'm concerned, I'm seeing a whole different level of interest in film than when I started around six (?) years ago. At that time, I felt my new hobby was living on borrowed time. Nowadays I can no longer afford the cool cameras that come up on the auction sites, and I need to wait longer to get my negs back from dev. I stand in line at the lab, and I'm usually the oldest person in the queue. I'm looking forward to trying some new-to-market films this year; taking delivery of my Kickstarter-backed Lab Box; having conversations with people at work about how they found a Mju II in a thrift store... 
 
Can't remember last time anyone I know bought or used a digital camera. Maybe some of them might get this latest Nikon... to scan their negs.  ;)
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Is this any more advanced than a simple negative to positive inversion?

Well it has to be a little bit more than that to take care of the orange mask of the C41 film. That said, if it is some kind of generic C41 conversion (rather than film specific presets) the results are likely to be average at best.

Edited by wattsy
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 Is this any more advanced than a simple negative to positive inversion?

I'm software developing now - nothing is as "simple" to get into hardware as one might think.

 

Anyway, the fact that Nikon have introduced both software and hardware to help people scan film negatives is obviously not of interest to some people on the forum, and there seems to be a resistance to admitting it might be to do with a perceived growing need amongst photographers generally. 

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Possibly. The adaptor has a price tag of just $150, so it's not going head to head with a Flextight X5. I think there are a lot of people with a shoebox full of old negs who'll be interested in this.

 

Yes, I had high hopes when this thread opened that I might have more use for my underused D810 (assuming the gadget can be used with any suitable Nikon Macro lens and DSLR, even if you lose the in-camera conversion benefit) but this attachment looks pretty crude and reminds me of the old slide viewers that you stick a slide in and hold up to the kitchen window. Still, as Mani says, it shows that Nikon see a market again for film related products and there may be better products down the line.

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