Hot answers tagged scanning
27
You probably didn't find much because you were searching on the wrong term. The phenomenon isn't commonly called 'The Newton Effect,' it's usually called 'Newton's Rings.'
Briefly, Newton's Rings are an optical property of physics that occurs between two pieces of glass when one piece of glass is convex and the other piece is flat and there is airspace ...
17
Do you have money to throw at the problem? Because the fastest way is undoubtedly to have someone else do it. And there are plenty of services just waiting to take your business. ScanCafe is one, but there's others as well, almost certainly including your local photo shop.
15
Its better to scan the original slide/negative as its better to reproduce from as close to the source as possible meaning quality of reproduction goes down in this order:
The source (whatever it was you actually were shooting)
The slide/negative or digital camera file
A print of the photograph.
It essentially comes down to every stage of recording ...
14
If you want to use it for documents as well, you're looking at a flatbed scanner, and there are a few options. The two I hear recommended most often are Epson's v-series (in particular the v700 and up) and PlusTek. I have a slightly-older Epson 4990 (the immediate predecessor to the v700s), and have been perfectly happy with it.
For printing, most flatbed ...
13
What DPI do I need to use when scanning a 35mm to get an equivalent of say 8 MegaPixel digital photo
You can calculate the reolution from the megapixels like this:
ppi = sqrt(mp * 1000000 * 3/2) * 25.4 / 36
Which gives you:
6 mp = 2117 ppi
7 mp = 2286 ppi
8 mp = 2444 ppi
9 mp = 2592 ppi
10 mp = 2733 ppi
11 mp = 2866 ppi
12 mp = 2993 ppi
13
In theory you can get more out of a negative than a print. However, in practice you are more likely to have access to a flat bed scanner that can give a wonderful scan from the print. A good film scanner is much more expensive and slower.
Considerations are similar for larger format film. But the costs go up even more, since the consumer-level film ...
11
A modern scanner of typical resolution should be able to do a reasonably good job on old photos if well used. Method of use can make a difference. See references at end for some tips and guidance.
A 6" x 4" print at 300 dpi corresponds to 1800 x 1200 pixels ~=.... 2.5 megapixels
A 6" x 4" print at 600 dpi corresponds to 3600 x 2400 pixels ~=..... 9 ...
8
Scanners are effectively digital cameras so they do introduce noise but not very much, what you're seeing is the film grain. ISO400 film is very grainy when compared to ISO400 on a modern DSLR. This often gets forgotten when comparing film to digital (resolution or otherwise).
Grain aside (which as already stated isn't always objectionable) the photolab ...
7
A better negative scanner (like my Nikon Coolscan V) has one tremendous advantage:
dust/scratch removal (ICE - Nikon, FARE - Canon)
That is (in my case) done by an extra IR-lightsource that adds the information of bumps and scratches that can't be part of the picture. I once tested it with a now about 40 year old dia-positive of my father: without ICE it ...
7
There are a number of important details missing from your question:
What resolution do you require?
Color or black and white?
Does the scanner have to be able to handle a mix of sizes simultaneously, or can you sort them ahead of time so that all the photos in a given stack are the same? (Sheet feeders typically work best when the sheets are about the same ...
6
You can certainly get much better results than you're experiencing now, but it's going to take a bit of fiddling around to do it.
The "real world" has a lot bigger range of light-to-dark than typical ink on paper. The paper isn't nearly as white as you think it is, and the ink reflects a lot more light than you probably think it does. In pictures of the ...
6
the blue splotches are from surface contact with the negatives. If you don't want to use the film mask try putting strips of thin cardboard on either side of the film strip. Part of the reason for the film mask/carrier is to prevent just this thing from happening by providing space above and below the negative so there is no surface contact.
6
If you don't know the crop boundary then you can use Fred Weinhaus's multicrop script (this script also uses Imagemagick). The script also handles different photo sizes and rotated images.
Example (book covers):
Scanned image (input.tiff):
multicrop input.tiff output.tiff
Result:
output-0.tiff:
output-1.tiff:
6
ISO 400 film is almost always going to have grain that's at least somewhat visible. I can't really tell if you underexposed the picture or not, but underexposure will generally make the grain much more apparent.
Different scanners show grain to (slightly) differing degrees. Basically, the smaller the light source, the sharper a rendition of the finest ...
6
Once you have the negative you use an enlarger to create your prints. An enlarger has a head containing a bulb, a negative holder and a lens. The head is on a column attached to a base. You can raise the head away from the base to make the image larger (or turn the head to project the image onto a wall for large prints)
If you want to do a contact sheet, ...
6
I would scan at the max of 600 dpi - however if the print resolution is so low that printing artifacts are visible at this resolution (e.g. small colored dots), then the result should either be downscaled or a median filter should be applied to eliminate them (or both). Don't go under 300 dpi no matter what or you won't be able to use them to reproduce new ...
6
Any decent camera with some degree of macro capabilities will be a feasible slide/negative scanner, but, tthere are some other factors that incide a lot in the results.
The first is an adequate backlighting device. Can be as complicated or as simple as you wish, as long as it allows you to get good exposure. I have tried different combinations of flash and ...
5
Based on the Epson specifications:
Feature | v300 | v500
-----------------------------------------------
Native DPI | 4800 | 6400
Optical Density | 3.2 | 3.4
Slide Support | 35mm | 35mm & Medium Format
Reliability | 10,000 cycles | 36,000 cycles
Features of the v300:
Achieve exceptional ...
5
First, I strongly recommend Ctein's book on photo restoration. It's got all of the gory detail work and techniques in it that are needed for this: Photo repair .com site
Not sure what scanner you are using, but modern scanners, even really inexpensive ones, are pretty good. I've done a fair amount of recovery work of family photos using under $100 Canon ...
5
That's obviously very low — both too low to be useful at beyond 4×6 prints, and much lower than technology allows.
I had the same thing happen at a local camera / photo shop, and when I complained, they explained, in the most condescending way possible, that that resolution was completely fine for "all normal uses", and that if I wanted higher-resolution ...
5
Long-term degradation of film depends on a few different factors including the type of material they were stored in, along with temperature and humidity of the storage environment.
That said, from the four types of film most people are exposed to (pun intended), B&W negative and Kodachrome slide film are perhaps the least affected by age.
B&W film ...
5
"Best" is arguably a purpose built negative / slide scanner.
Good ones will provide resolutions in excess of what your original contains, and will not be cheap. without checking I'd guestimate many hundreds to several thousands of dollars.
There is a whole world of low to middle quality scanners / USB connected imagers etc. The cheapest probably start in ...
4
I did this last year, using equipment I already owned - tripod, DSLR and a macro lens - rather than buying a scanner. I used a little lightbox for negatives and soft diffused daylight for prints. I wrote up my experiences on a flickr thread that can be seen here. I managed to get through about a hundred an hour without much difficulty.
4
Well, sure there are devices for scanning APS film. You can get an APS adapter for a Nikon Coolscan IV. I have a couple old Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dual IIs that accept APS.
You can use a flatbed (V700 is probably the best) with an uncut-120 film holder, secure the film in the holder, then cut the images in Photoshop (scan software, GIMP, whatever) as you scan ...
4
The quality from a DSLR photograph might rival a scanner if you get the macro lens properly positioned, but I'd say the big thing you'd lose is time. Hours and hours of time. It will take forever to line those slides up properly for each frame, and then you're going to have to spend some time on your computer rotating slightly, cropping, and doing lens ...
4
What DPI do I need to use when scanning a 35mm to get an equivalent of say 8 MegaPixel digital photo
In terms of buying scanners, the DPI that manufacturers provide can be a bit misleading, and the actual image resolution you can get from the scanners is quite a bit lower.
The common wisdom is that most consumer flatbed scanners top out at an effective resolution somewhere around 2000-2400dpi, despite reporting numbers as high as "4800x9600" (like my Epson ...
4
looking around, I've found the Canon 9000F which looks pretty good for what you're looking for.
it's got a resolution of 4800*4800 for docs and 9600*9600 when scanning films. It's MAC compatible and it's got also some auto correction functions:
Auto Document Fix:
Auto Document Fix delivers beautiful and easy-to-view scan results by advanced image ...
4
Let me answer your direct question first:
The document imaging folks have been doing this for ages. They typically are used for huge image scanning projects, like the US Census form processing. I've never seen one for photos, but that is really just a difference in pixel density -- everything else would be the same.
These are insanely expensive to buy, and ...
4
If the TIFF files are only 8bit and the resolution is the same then there will be very little (unless the JPEG compression is set very high). The only difference will be slight artefacts in high frequency areas and potentially lower colour resolution if chroma sub-sampling is used on the JPEGs.
Additionally if the scan resolution itself is high compared to ...
3
I'm the originator of the flickr discussion, and I'm flattered that it's thought to be worth reviving here :-) I went through the process mainly for archiving purposes. The fear of losing these personal negatives was much more important to me than technical quality. Whatever I did, it had to be fast so that I could do every single one of my negatives. I ...
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