Modern film 35mm scanning recommendations for student photo lab?

[m_schubb]

My daughter is heading back to school asked my advice about upgrading the scanning options in her university's photo lab where she is the paid darkroom assistant.  Pre-covid, students developed and proofed their own 35mm film.  Now the lab is closed to students due to Covid lockdown and she is the paid darkroom assistant.  Students put film rolls in the drop box, she alone develops the film, scans each roll and forwards the files students. 

Her boss (and teacher) says they can afford an upgrade but has no idea what to get.  Current workstation is an older iMac and no-longer made Epson flatbed with a film holder, not a high end model. 

Would welcome any advice or suggestions for improving the speed while still getting decent (student) quality!  Am assuming flatbed scanners are the fastest way to batch scan a whole roll at one time. Is this true?   

>>> Might a higher-end model like an Epson Epson V850 help?  Or just a new V600?

>>> Would aftermarket software make this faster?  Vuescan? Silver fast?  ___?

>>> Is an older iMac maybe a bottleneck?

Thanks in advance for any wisdom or advice!

[degrub]

As long as they don’t want to enlarge too much, an epson 850 is likely the cheapest option.  There is one brand of film scanner still made ( pacific ?.?), but not likely much better than the epson for students.
Other options include old Nikon 5000 scanners, but those are much more expensive.

Silverfast has a steep learning curve and is expensive and tied to the specific scanner. Vuescan is good and will work on any scanner. Get the pro version. 

Either way, if she is not familiar with scanning it will be a steep learning curve to scan and use the software.
Epson scan is perfectly adequate, btw.

[Alan Klein]

What the school's budget?  Then call B and H for advice.  It sounds like some sort of automation is required or she'll never get out of the lab.

[langier]

Thinking pragmatically, a good-quality light table, 24MP or higher digital camera, macro lens 1:1 and a copy stand. With good craft, good quality prints can be made from good digital photos of the film. Using a camera instead of a scanner is usually faster if you set things up properly and fairly good-quality and large prints can be made this way.

It's not quite as good as a scanner for film nor is it without other issues such as conversion from color negative to positive image, but dust and scratches are usually minimized without a specialty scanner with IR channel to sense these defects. But shooting the images in raw still creates pretty nice files overall. If the students are shooting other formats than 35mm, this would still cover the bases allowing copying of film up to the size of the light table (just thinking about my college days where we shot from 35mm up to 4x5, depending upon the assignment.)

For a school, this may be one of the best bangs for the buck and it probably wouldn't require any updates to either their existing Mac nor software. Simply shoot the roll, download to the Mac, copy the files to a flash drive and return the film/flash drive all in the same package.

I've used this method many times and prefer it over over taking the time with my dedicated film scanner since I didn't want to take up to 20 minutes for a single image depending upon sampling rates, film size and scan resolution. I love these scans but don't love the prep time nor scan times.

[degrub]

+1
and there is at least one thread with links to a tutorial on how to do the setup and capture.

[Stephen Ray]

Pre-covid, students developed and proofed their own 35mm film.  Now the lab is closed to students

Thanks in advance for any wisdom or advice!

If the students are not developing and proofing their own film, what is their lesson?

The teacher (boss) needs to instruct the students to outsource their film to a photo lab just as they would need to in the real world. That temporary exercise would be the lesson.

If the teacher (boss) is intent upon teaching real-world film photography for advertising and / or fine art, I can offer up a Scitex Eversmart Supreme scanner with 35mm full roll template and Mac workstation at a fair price. The native oXYgen software provides RAW 16-bit DT, RGB, and CMYK files. I'm in the southern California area where some trendy commercial photographers are still using film every chance they get, surprisingly to me anyway.

[Richard.Wills]

We're doing processing and scanning for a number of local arts schools, which have temporarily closed all their facilities.
I'm sending through high res scans from 35mm and 120, scanned on our Noritsu S1800. 5x4 gets scanned on the Imacon. The colleges are footing the bill.

The Noritsu can can scan an entire roll faster than we can do digital contact sheets on the Epson 10000xl (or analogue contact sheets in the colour darkroom). Decidedly far from inexpensive, and requiring a PC to run it, the results are about 80% of the quality of the Imacon. I'd not have the patience to do this on a coolscan! Noritsu scanners are not fun to set up - the instructions are tortuous - I ended up joining facebook, to join the Noritsu scanner users group. But the results, with a little dialing in are remarkably good.

[Peter McLennan]

I recently did some test scans of 35mm slides with the macro settings on my phone.  The Samsung S20 FE was able to resolve the grain on the source image in JPG mode.  The Samsung also shoots RAW, but I’ve not yet pursued this option.

[PeterAit]

Have the students shoot digital. Money and time saved, problem solved. Of course, maybe daughter out of a job!

[chez]

Thinking pragmatically, a good-quality light table, 24MP or higher digital camera, macro lens 1:1 and a copy stand. With good craft, good quality prints can be made from good digital photos of the film. Using a camera instead of a scanner is usually faster if you set things up properly and fairly good-quality and large prints can be made this way.

It's not quite as good as a scanner for film nor is it without other issues such as conversion from color negative to positive image, but dust and scratches are usually minimized without a specialty scanner with IR channel to sense these defects. But shooting the images in raw still creates pretty nice files overall. If the students are shooting other formats than 35mm, this would still cover the bases allowing copying of film up to the size of the light table (just thinking about my college days where we shot from 35mm up to 4x5, depending upon the assignment.)

For a school, this may be one of the best bangs for the buck and it probably wouldn't require any updates to either their existing Mac nor software. Simply shoot the roll, download to the Mac, copy the files to a flash drive and return the film/flash drive all in the same package.

I've used this method many times and prefer it over over taking the time with my dedicated film scanner since I didn't want to take up to 20 minutes for a single image depending upon sampling rates, film size and scan resolution. I love these scans but don't love the prep time nor scan times.

The problem with the camera approach is it consumes 100% of your time. Even if it is faster than something like the V850, you would get exhausted pretty quickly after dealing with dozens of rolls of film. Cameras are fine for a few rolls, but I would not go down that route if one is doing the entire classes scanning for them.

[chez]

I recently did some test scans of 35mm slides with the macro settings on my phone.  The Samsung S20 FE was able to resolve the grain on the source image in JPG mode.  The Samsung also shoots RAW, but I’ve not yet pursued this option.

It's not just the ability resolve to the grain, but also colour accuracy and how well the darks preserve their info.

[Peter McLennan]

It's not just the ability resolve to the grain, but also colour accuracy and how well the darks preserve their info.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious.

Colour accuracy was adequate for my use, as was image contrast.  I'm not a museum curator.

[m_schubb]

Thanks for all the ideas and advice.  My daughter appreciates all the advice, except sending students to a commercial lab -- because she needs her part-time job.

If the students are not developing and proofing their own film, what is their lesson?

Teacher does want students to develop, proof and print, but the covid lockout is temporary.  But I have also found that -- even without darkroom work -- students learn a lot more about exposure, light and composition using a manual camera w/ prime lenses.  Makes them think harder, especially having no instant preview and wondering if they did it right.

Loved the Noritsu idea, but that is more of a project than they can immediately handle.  Made me want to set one up and redo everything I scanned years ago on my Minolta Dual Scan IV.  (Stopped myself!)

And did talk to someone very good at B&H and came up with some solutions.

>>> Epson V850 w/ a 4.0 DMAX ($1150) is considerably faster than current model film scanners.

>>> Epson V600 ($230) has a 3.4 DMAX but could still do decent student quality scans. Not as fast as V850 but still faster than film scanners

To speed up scan processing time, his other advice was to:

1) check the RAM on the workstation and possibly increase to at least 16GB, more would be better
2) Write scan files to an external SSD (so not the same drive running the software)
3) and buy extra film holders -- so one set is getting loaded while another set is scanning.


Thanks again.  And still welcome more thoughts or ideas!

[Alan Klein]

Regarding item 3) The V850 comes with two film holders for each format included in the original purchase. That allows you to load the next group while the current group is scanning.  If you need more, they can be bought from Epson's parts dealers. 

Regarding item 2) my Windows 10 system splits my hard drive into two Drives - C and D.  I keep the program on C and the photos on D.  I back it up to an external hard drive (traditional drive, not SSD). My SSD is internal.    But I don't understand what's the advantage of using an external SSD.  It won't speed up scan operation and why would you mount it externally?

Regarding 1) scanning uses little memory.  I can scan and run Lightroom and Adobe Premiere Elements at the same time and never went over 12gb.  Get the extra memory for future stuff.

[Richard.Wills]

From my perspective, go for the fastest available option. If the 850 saves the operator from waiting, then for the extra money, it's worth it. If three or four sets of holders allows to batch line up operations, that is worth it.

Look at the ergonomics of the work space - would a 12x16 light panel help for loading the holders? Make space for, and buy one on the LHS of the station. Would another light panel help for checking the out feed to the neg sleeves? Make space for, and buy one for the RHS of the station. Space for films waiting to be loaded / post loaded. That really helps.

Twin checks on the films/ work orders - no questions about file naming. Saves time and thought. Fast computer running the scanning, with fast drives and plenty of ram. She'll be going between scanning S/W, PS / LR / finder / browser (wetransfer, dropbox, whatever). Any time the operator is waiting for the computer is time lost, is energy lost, is focus lost. The computer doesn't need to be a monster, but going cheap and tapping fingers never leaves you feeling good in a production environment.

Post C19, light panels can be repurposed, the scanner can still be used, and the computer will be current.

In my little production area, I have a 6' desk with my main mac and a coiuple of screens. Behind that is a standing desk with the Noritsu scanner. Desk is only 4' wide - should be 6' or more. My office is too small for what I'm doing. If she is the only connecting link between students' analogue capture and their images, then hopefully the school will make the relatively small expenditure to help her function most efficiently.

A bonus feature would be having dedicated storage for all the film holders, envelopes, and gizmos she might need to work efficiently. A clean compressed air line is a real benefit for making sure the glass and film is clear of dust.

[NortheastPhotographic]

It all comes down to budget and needs here...

If no-one is shooting 120 then...

Mini lab scanners are the way to go.  You can burn through rolls far faster than a flatbed.  35mm Minilabs would be Fuji SP500, Pakon 135+, Noritsu LS600.  These are getting expensive but still less than a prosumer DSLR.  If they have considerably more the school can purchase a Fuji Frontier SP3000 or 2500.  The 2500 will be a lot cheaper but lacks digital ICE so hello dust spotting for eternity.  The SP3000 is a brilliant piece of engineering for volume work.  I have two of them, and they're workhorses.  You can get them from private markets or from sellers such as PTS, who charge a premium but deliver the easiest route to getting a working machine. 

For a school, I'd recommend finding a Pakon or a Fuji SP500.  That way you'll be spending less than about $2500.

The DSLR scanning route is promising but once you get through buying all the required parts to do it well you're at the price of a Pakon at least, so IMHO I'd just try to minimize hassle. 

[Alan Klein]

What's the school's budget for the scanner, computer, and associate equipment needed?
How many rolls of film at one time?
Per week?
Color or BW?
When needed?

[Richard.Wills]

If no-one is shooting 120 then...

Mini lab scanners are the way to go.  You can burn through rolls far faster than a flatbed.  35mm Minilabs would be Fuji SP500, Pakon 135+, Noritsu LS600.  These are getting expensive but still less than a prosumer DSLR.  If they have considerably more the school can purchase a Fuji Frontier SP3000 or 2500.  The 2500 will be a lot cheaper but lacks digital ICE so hello dust spotting for eternity.  The SP3000 is a brilliant piece of engineering for volume work.  I have two of them, and they're workhorses.  You can get them from private markets or from sellers such as PTS, who charge a premium but deliver the easiest route to getting a working machine. 

For a school, I'd recommend finding a Pakon or a Fuji SP500.  That way you'll be spending less than about $2500.

The DSLR scanning route is promising but once you get through buying all the required parts to do it well you're at the price of a Pakon at least, so IMHO I'd just try to minimize hassle.

60%+ of the student films I'm scanning are 120.

The only camera scans I've offered were before we got the Noritsu - Just a 5dMk3 on a light box with a macro lens, for producing digital contact sheets. I made these with the film in clear sleeves, kept flat in a couple of sheets of glass held in a jig. Newton's rings were present, but not much more than in a traditional contact sheet. Once I got it dialled in, shooting tehered to LR, I could do 100 or more in an hour. If you are conditioned to think of a contact sheet as an editing tool, then the quality is acceptable, and it has the advantage of not bringing out information in heavily over/under negs, so helps with the learning process.

I've heard good things about the Pakon scanners, for the money, and like the Noritsu or Fuji machines, it's a load and leave process (though the Noritsu can scan as fast as I can load, judge, cut and sleeve, at mid resolution)

In the UK, home students are paying £9000/year for tuition and facilities, overseas students, over £20k. That's a fair whack, and where the facilities part of the equation (no darkrooms, studios, equipment stores...) is removed, the students are asking for, and the colleges putting in place, the best that they can (don't think any of the colleges here have an account with lensrentals...). In London, many of the colleges have suspended technician supplied services, hence we're getting a welcome boost from the film process side of things. Doesn't make up for the lost year of student shows, but...