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Scanning 35mm B/W negatives


leica dream

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As ever, very grateful thanks to everyone for sharing your wisdom, experience and support.

I have thought much over night and decided to take on board everything you have all contributed and work through your contributions step by step, first take the lens off the camera and examine and clean etc., while looking at every aspect of the camera I can. Then load another film and try shooting again over the coming weeks, while practicing my scanning options in parallel.

I'll sign off for now then come back when I have something definitive to report. You guys are real stars affording such patience to my cause. Thank you.

Richard

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Someone pointed out that there are little shims on the Epson negative carrier to adjust distance of negatives from the scan lens. Absolute news to me, but I decided I must test out as supplied, lower and higher settings. An amazing difference which showed in my case that by removing the shims, therefore setting closer to the sacn lens, improves sharpness of scans noticeably. A good positive step.

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Given the shims are positioned in the centre spot from the factory adjusting them one way or the other is not going to make much difference to the photo of the blurred house, they are for fine adjustment, not to get the negative into the ballpark. But it would be good if you can show your updated scan.

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Thanks again 250swb. I do realise that one can never produce better results than the original blurred input. I have abandoned that film completely and just reported that checking the negative holder shims has improved  results for other "good" negatives. I used the car image as the test.

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I use a Plustek 8100 for 35mm and I strongly recommend it. Time wise, it's not as fast as load the load film into a scanner but you can load an entire strip which is kinda helpful.

I tried all sort of DSLR 'scanning'....pxl-latr, recently Lomo DigitaLiza...they all a pain in the # if you ask me. Whilst it's quite fast to get an entire roll shot, the film never sits really flat (even if you put glass on top of it), also it's easy to get perspective slightly off and overall a nightmare to set it all up (and then pack down - who wants to have tripods and stuff around the house?!).

Here's something I scanned with the DSLR. Light leaks through the left side of the frame...slightly soft overall

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and here the same image scanned with Plustek:


 

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10 hours ago, jonnyboy said:

I use a Plustek 8100 for 35mm and I strongly recommend it. Time wise, it's not as fast as load the load film into a scanner but you can load an entire strip which is kinda helpful.

I tried all sort of DSLR 'scanning'....pxl-latr, recently Lomo DigitaLiza...they all a pain in the # if you ask me. Whilst it's quite fast to get an entire roll shot, the film never sits really flat (even if you put glass on top of it), also it's easy to get perspective slightly off and overall a nightmare to set it all up (and then pack down - who wants to have tripods and stuff around the house?!).

Here's something I scanned with the DSLR. Light leaks through the left side of the frame...slightly soft overalla

and here the same image scanned with Plustek:


 

There are two fairly obvious problems in your workflow. The first is that you are meant to 'scan' the image area as much as possible with your DSLR and not the entire negative, which in comparison with your Plustek scan means the DSLR is using what looks like only 50% of its sensor to record the image area. The second is that the image from the DSLR needs to be adjusted for contrast, post processing being something that is needed nearly 100% of the time in any form of scanning. For example your Plustek scan is also flat but only looks better because the DSLR scan is very flat. Increase contrast to normal levels and both scans will appear sharper.

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Yeah the post process was different in both those images - I didn't mean to dive into that.

The details are fairly similar in both images. The workflow (to capture the image, not the post!) is completely different and I find a much pleasant and tidy operation using a Plustek.
That's just my 2 cents.

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DSLR scanner here. I use a film holder that keeps the film flat enough to get 100% sharp images with the 70mm Sigma Macro @ f11. The SL2-S DNGs are super flexible and allow for any imaginable adjustments. Scanning 36 pictures takes 5 minutes, literally. As I’m doing this process a few times per week, speed matters to me as much as quality. 

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