Scanning the Ancient Archives - Workflow Recommendations / Plug-ins etc.

[Josh-H]

This thread has been extremely useful and helpful. I have taken all of the advice and thoughts on board and have decided to go with the Epson 750V scanner and Silverfast 8. This combination seems to be very powerful, flexible and not overtly expensive. I will make a point to spend a bit of time getting up to speed with the software before I start the scanning process 'for the real archives'. I don't envisage starting this project before January anyway - so that gives me some time to organise and get up to speed with the software.

A bigger headache is going to be sorting out the meta-data.. for that I need to sit with the 'ol relatives' and see just how good their memories really are 

Appreciate all the input - thank you

[degrub]

Take a recorder with you. Maybe there is one that takes SD cards ?
Frank

[AFairley]

Take a recorder with you. Maybe there is one that takes SD cards ?
Frank

I heartily second this suggestion, one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't sit down with my parents and a recorder and go through the photos before they passed away.  There are a whole lot of mystery pictures that mean nothing to us now.

Use an SD card recorder that records in standard WAV format, which will make it easy to manage your files and, if you want, to create audio tags to associate with photos.  The Zoom H2 is a pretty inexpensive but very good quality recorder ($125 from B&H).  Stay away from the personal dictating recorders which may use a proprietary recording format.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I heartily second this suggestion, one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't sit down with my parents and a recorder and go through the photos before they passed away.  There are a whole lot of mystery pictures that mean nothing to us now.

Use an SD card recorder that records in standard WAV format, which will make it easy to manage your files and, if you want, to create audio tags to associate with photos.  The Zoom H2 is a pretty inexpensive but very good quality recorder ($125 from B&H).  Stay away from the personal dictating recorders which may use a proprietary recording format.

I was about to make this very suggestion. The Zoom H2 is very good, small, and just the right gadget for this kind of data collection.

Eric

[dmerger]

Josh, since you’ve already decided on a scanner, perhaps I’m too late with a suggestion, but maybe not.

I know that you’re a talented photographer and already own high quality pro photo equipment.  Have you considered using your digital camera with a macro lens?  I don’t know what photo equipment you use, but as an example consider:

1.   Is the lens in the Epson v750 likely to be as good as a Canon EF 100 Macro?
2.   Is the CCD in the Epson likely to be as good as the CMOS sensor in the Canon 5D MKII?
3.   Is Silverfast likely to be as good as Lightroom, ACR or Photoshop?

One area where scanner software seems superior in my experience is converting a negative to a positive and removing the orange color cast.  If you have few negatives, however, that may not be much of a concern.  You could always hire someone to scan a few negatives.

You may prefer a scanner, but since you already own high quality photo gear, you might want to try using it before buying a scanner. 

[Mark D Segal]

Dean has a point. You could go this route, but it does mean first creating a few set-ups that will work reliably for the different media (colour transparencies, colour prints and black and white prints of differing finishes), including the copy stand arrangement, optimized, even lighting set-up for the various media and surfaces, exposure etc. If you do this, of course you would not need a scanning application, and you would probably be creating presets in the Lens Disortion panel to correct for that. The well-equipped photographers I'm familiar with use scanners for digitizing analog media, as do the various scanning services that I know about. But absolutely no harm experimenting before committing to new equipment.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Slides are easy to do and Nikon do make a slide holder that can be mounted on a macro lens (don't know about Canon).  However, if you have a DX camera, you need to put some extension tubes on to make sure you don't crop the slide.  See this weblink.  I suspect with some practice one you got this set up, slides could be copied faster this way than via a scanner.  It might be possible to jury-rig a negative holder that might work but that would require more work.

[dmerger]

Josh, you may find these old posts interesting.

Can't help with the Minolta part, but here is a B&W negative (Ilford HP5+ developed in Rodinal) that I shot on a Hasselblad XPan (24x65mm) and then photographed the negative with a Canon 5DMkII/100mm macro:

Entire image:


A small crop from the negative:


As you can see, with the dSLR, you can focus down to the grain of the film.  I don't know about the Minolta scanner, but you sure can't so that on an Epson flatbed.  The Epson will give oyu something that kind of looks like grain, but it isn't - it's just noise.

I have the Epson V750, which comes with Silverfast AI in addition to the EpsonScan software, and the glass tray for wet scanning.  I also purchased the VueScan software.  And the wet scanning kit from Aztek.  I have been wrestling with this stuff for a few months now, trying this that and the other, experimenting with assorted film holders, etc.

*NOTE: If you are one of those people that manages to get 36 keepers on a roll of film, stop reading now.  You probably shouldn't be using a flatbed scanner anyways.  But if you're like me and most other people and you have a couple of shots on each roll that you love and the rest is just dreck, keep reading.  Here are my conclusions. YRMV, depending on how much patience you have.

Here's what the Epson is really good at:  batch scanning at 1200 dpi quickly so that you can evaluate your images and pick out the couple of gems.  This is best accomplished by using Epson's software in full auto mode, and with Digital ICE turned OFF so keep things moving along quickly.  If you establish good dust control habits, a couple of clicks with the clone stamp in your favorite photo editor for stray dust is all you'll need to produce scans that are perfectly acceptable for e-mailing and posting on the web.

Silverfast.  What can I say about Silverfast.  If you're the type of person who enjoys activities such as pushing water uphill with a fork, Silverfast was absolutely made for you.  However, if you have a life outside of film scanning, Silverfast just seems like a really bad joke.  It's klunky, slow, and the UI is terrible.  And unfortunately, it does not have any magical powers that will turn your Epson flatbed into a Nikon Coolscan.  If you want to try it, go ahead.  But just remember these four little words:  I TOLD YOU SO.

VueScan is a little less user-unfriendly than Silverfast, and I admit I have managed some pretty nice B&W scans after considerable effort.  But then again, I have managed some pretty decent scans using the Epson software with very little effort.  VueScan is DEFINITELY faster than Silverfast when scanning at the same resolution.

So, after batch scanning and picking out my couple of gems, what do I do?

I take my picks and put them in a negative carrier from an old Beseler enlarger, and set it on top of a lightbox.  Then I photograph my negative with my Canon 5DMkII and 100mm macro lens, and import the file into Lightroom.  For slide films, I make any adjustments needed in Lightroom.  For B&W negatives, I desaturate and take care of any stray dust spots in Lightroom, then send it to Photoshop for inversion, levels and curves adjustments.  The quality level of the final result is just so far ahead of what the Epson can do, it's not even funny.  I haven't really been doing this with color negatives, mainly because for whatever reason, I never seem to take any really worthwhile pictures with C41 film.  But I have a Photoshop plug-in called ColorPerfect that will take care of the inversion & correction for the orange mask, and has a bunch of assorted film profiles.  It seems to work just fine, but I haven't really put much time into evaluating it.

The Epson flatbeds are good scanners if you have reasonable expectations.  They are versatile and a good value for the money.  But they do have their limits.

[Mark D Segal]

All the comments about SilverFast are dated because the software released last month has been redeveloped from the bottom up and the GUI vastly improved. You won't need a PhD in rocket science to use it successfully. It will scan images as quickly as you scanner, resolution and multi-exposure settings allow. It's preview system is smart and rapid if used properly. The use of iSRD for dust and scratch removal requires one scan for capturing the infrared channel, and it's infinitely faster than any other means of removing crud, dust and scratches from transparent colour media without impairing image detail.

The Epson V750 will deliver very satisfactory image quality from reflective media and medium format transparent media. Depending on the stringency of your requirements, it will deliver adequate sharpness from 35mm media, but not as crisp as that from a Nikon 5000 dedicated film scanner which is no longer manufactured and can cost in the range of USD 2500-3000 on the resale market. The Epson V750+SilverFast 8 is a good choice for someone who wants the combination of decent image quality, productivity and all-round flexibility with batch scanning capability for both reflective and transparent media. Yes, you may well get crisper finer detail using a very well calibrated DSLR set-up, but I remind that you'll need to pay close attention to the lighting, alignment, lens distortions, with set-ups differing depending on the media; as well, depending on what scanner is being compared with what camera, native scanning resolution may well be higher than that from a DSLR. As usual, it's really not either/or. There are compromises in all of this, and any of these techniques and approaches can be suitable depending on the user's needs and objectives. Professional photographers with excellent digital cameras also use scanners. However as I said above, no harm testing a camera-based approach to see if that's for you before buying a scanner.

[AFairley]

One thing that has been pointed out elsewhere is that the apparent difference in Epson v750/700 vs Coolscan scans has to do more with light source than resolution, akin to the difference between prints from the same negative made with a cold light enlarger and a condenser enlarger. 

BTW, one advantage to the camera method is that (once you have your setup dialed in) it is FAST.  The downside is that you have to be meticulous with the setup vis a vis alignment.  For transparencies, I like using a TTL flash on an extension cord for the lightbox illumination myself, since that takes camera movement out of the equation.  For prints, I think fact that the scanner removes lighting and flatness issues make that the preferable solution -- the scanner's resolving power is not an issue when it comes to digitizing prints.  But to each his own.

[degrub]

Also, last i saw there were differences in optical resolving capability between the two as well. Something in the low to mid 2k ppi for the Epson 750 and around the mid 3k ppi for the cs5000. The other apparent difference seemed to be the dof available. In the Nikon it was very limited compared to the Epson flat bed. And, as you mention, the light  sources were different as well - LED for the Nikon and CCFL for the Epson.

Frank

[Mark D Segal]

One thing that has been pointed out elsewhere is that the apparent difference in Epson v750/700 vs Coolscan scans has to do more with light source than resolution, akin to the difference between prints from the same negative made with a cold light enlarger and a condenser enlarger. 

BTW, one advantage to the camera method is that (once you have your setup dialed in) it is FAST.  The downside is that you have to be meticulous with the setup vis a vis alignment.  For transparencies, I like using a TTL flash on an extension cord for the lightbox illumination myself, since that takes camera movement out of the equation.  For prints, I think fact that the scanner removes lighting and flatness issues make that the preferable solution -- the scanner's resolving power is not an issue when it comes to digitizing prints.  But to each his own.

The resolving power - for clarity I define as the PPI the scanner can deliver at its optical resolution - is relevant to the size of print one wants to make from the scanned file at a decent inkjet print resolution. The perceived sharpness and detail of a scanned print is of course limited by the sharpness and detail of the original media being scanned, which in the realm of family photos developed by photo-finishing services is usually below what we have been accustomed to in the digital era.

[Mark D Segal]

Also, last i saw there were differences in optical resolving capability between the two as well. Something in the low to mid 2k ppi for the Epson 750 and around the mid 3k ppi for the cs5000. The other apparent difference seemed to be the dof available. In the Nikon it was very limited compared to the Epson flat bed. And, as you mention, the light  sources were different as well - LED for the Nikon and CCFL for the Epson.

Frank

Frank - when you speak of optical resolving capability, are you talking about the observed resolution as measured with a bespoke target, for example the USAF 1951, or the manufacturers' stated optical resolution of the device?

[TimG]

Get the V750 - you won't be disappointed.  I recently tested a Hasselblad Flextight X5 and compared the scans to the V750, blog post with samples here:

http://www.timothygrayphoto.com/2011/09/hasselblad-x5-vs-epson-v750-comparison/

FWIW, I've produced, exhibited and sold 20"x24" archival pigment prints from 6x7 slide film (RVP50) scanned with the V750.

Just be sure to invest in IT8 targets and properly calibrate the scanner.  I use the built-in profiling feature of Silverfast in conjunction with their IT8 targets for both Kodak and Fuji.

[Mark D Segal]

Get the V750 - you won't be disappointed.  I recently tested a Hasselblad Flextight X5 and compared the scans to the V750, blog post with samples here:

http://www.timothygrayphoto.com/2011/09/hasselblad-x5-vs-epson-v750-comparison/

FWIW, I've produced, exhibited and sold 20"x24" archival pigment prints from 6x7 slide film (RVP50) scanned with the V750.

Just be sure to invest in IT8 targets and properly calibrate the scanner.  I use the built-in profiling feature of Silverfast in conjunction with their IT8 targets for both Kodak and Fuji.

Timothy - yes, your results confirm testing I've done and had done using USAF targets for a number of scanners including the Hasselblad. As well, I have made 13*19 inch prints from 35mm transparent media scanned in my Epson V750 (one of the four scanner models I own - the other three being dedicated film scanners) - while they need a bit more sharpening than the same slide scanned in a Nikon 5000 SC, the outcome was very acceptable and likewise for other stuff I've tested  - for professional purposes. As Josh will also be scanning prints, unless he wants to try setting up a camera-based workflow, or spend a big chunk of money on a film scanner and a flatbed, the Epson V750 is a very practical all-round solution, why I recommended it.

[degrub]

Mark, when did anyone trust the marketing department of scanner manufacturers ? 

My old web links to some of the tests are dead, but what i found here is consistent with what i remember - and yes, the old  USAF target

http://www.filmscanner.info/en/EpsonPerfectionV750Pro.html

http://www.filmscanner.info/en/NikonSuperCoolscan5000ED.html

regards,
Frank

[Mark D Segal]

Yes, that is a very good resource on scanning and scanners.

[Josh-H]

unless he wants to try setting up a camera-based workflow, or spend a big chunk of money on a film scanner and a flatbed, the Epson V750 is a very practical all-round solution, why I recommended it.

Nup - I dont fancy a camera based workflow. The collection is a real mixed bag of prints, negatives and a few trannies to throw into the mix. I don't need the ultimate in image quality for each image; just a good clean result. And since this is a family project I want to keep my workflow simple and my costs low. The Epson V750 with Silverfast 8 will do for me I think.