Scanning Negatives

"mueller" wrote:
Thank you to all for helping me out with this question. Now If I can only
get PS to stop freezing.

There's a "number of history states" (or something like that) setting
somewhere.

Set it to it's _lowest possible value_, which should be 1 or 2.

You'll have to be careful to save copies of states you might want to go back
to.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

mueller wrote:
Hello All.
Let me preface this by saying I know I can probably find what i need
with a google search and a few hours, but I'm hoping to speed it up a
little
I'm getting back into photography and I am playing around with a scanner
and PS instead of traditional wet printing.
What resolution do most of you use when scanning neg's into photoshop.
I've got 4 gig of ram on a windows XP machine and 300 gig plus of hard
drive space and PS CS3
I'm using a Mamiya 645 Pro TL

From affordable to less so (n/i very high end commercial eqt.)

The recent flatbeds are very good (Epson)
The film scanners are great (Nikon 8000, 9000; used Minolta Multi-pro)
The drum scanners are fantastic.

I have the Nikon 9000ED. I haven't had time to expoit it, but just
received the glass film holder and will start kicking out scans shortly
from negative and slides. (This replaced my Minolta 5400 scanner which
could not do MF).

For most film shots 4000 - 5000 dpi is a good upper limit, 'though 3200
(Minolta multi-pro) is adequate for most.

The CPU of your machine will determine how fast scans using ICE will
occur. ICE is a requirement you should not pass up as it will reduce
your time processing and touching up scratched or dusty film.

Cheers,
Alan.

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I can't comment on MF scans as I only scan 35mm at the present, but..

On May 16, 6:37 pm, mueller wrote:
What resolution do most of you use when scanning neg's into photoshop.
I've got 4 gig of ram on a windows XP machine and 300 gig plus of hard
drive space and PS CS3

You need drive space. I have an 800GB RAID setup (2x400 GB drives)
which is almost filled due to 35mm neg scanning with a Coolscan V
(Average filesize is ~130MB/file). I can't even think how much space
I would need with MF negatives.

Your machine should be fine for the task at hand. I got along fine
with 1.12GB of RAM, CS2 and a 733Mhz Macintosh for a few years, and
that was useable -- you'll probably have a much more enjoyable and
productive experience.

I presently shoot film for the band images - I use both 35mm and 120
mm
For 35 mm I use a dedicated film scanner and on medium format film -
6x6 I use the Epson 4990
I got it refurbished from Epson for 300 bucks - no tax or shipping -
got it withing the week.
The quality has been very impressive on medium format but when
scanning 35mm I would rather get the sharper scans from the 35mm film
scanner.
You shooting 6x4.5 may be in a middle area but I would go with the
4990.
I scan my 6x6 at 300 ppi and 14x14 inches.
:-) David6of7

davelez wrote:

I scan my 6x6 at 300 ppi and 14x14 inches.
:-) David6of7

If you're making 14 x 14 @ 300 from 6x6 (56x56) then you're image is at
1905 ppi.

You're probably scanning higher (2400 or 4800) and then down sampling in
the image editor or scan capture s/w.

Cheers,
Alan

Alan Browne wrote:
mueller wrote:
Hello All.
Let me preface this by saying I know I can probably find what i need
with a google search and a few hours, but I'm hoping to speed it up a
little
I'm getting back into photography and I am playing around with a
scanner and PS instead of traditional wet printing.

[...]

The CPU of your machine will determine how fast scans using ICE will
occur. ICE is a requirement you should not pass up as it will reduce
your time processing and touching up scratched or dusty film.

Just in case mueller is talking about B&W film, note that
Digital ICE is useless with B&W film.

I'm in the habit now of cleaning negs before making a high
res scan if I'm concerned about dust. I use Edwal Anti-Stat
cleaner and it has been excellent on both B&W and color film
for me.

Dana

tendim wrote:
I can't comment on MF scans as I only scan 35mm at the present, but..

On May 16, 6:37 pm, mueller wrote:
What resolution do most of you use when scanning neg's into photoshop.
I've got 4 gig of ram on a windows XP machine and 300 gig plus of hard
drive space and PS CS3

You need drive space. I have an 800GB RAID setup (2x400 GB drives)
which is almost filled due to 35mm neg scanning with a Coolscan V
(Average filesize is ~130MB/file). I can't even think how much space
I would need with MF negatives.

You raise a very good point; how to manage all those scans.

I haven't even investigated off-the-shelf solutions for managing
large numbers of high-res image files yet, but I can see one
problem right off the bat; you're using a RAID 0 volume to
save the files. RAID 0 is great in that it generally improves
read/write performance to the RAID 0 volume (the 2 disks basically
work in parallel). RAID 0 has a very serious disadvantage; if
one of the disks fails, *you likely lose the entire pool*.
Depending on who you ask, this could mean your RAID 0 pool is
twice as likely to fail as a single hard disk.

For this reason, I would say you're better off running two
400GB disks rather than a single 800GB volume; if one of the
disks fails, you won't lose all of the contents of both.

[ I do use RAID 1 to create high-reliability volumes, for example,
by pairing a couple of 500GB drives into a single 500GB drive.
RAID 1 is the total opposite of RAID 0; you lose the capacity
of a disk drive in exchange for higher reliability and about
the same performance as a single disk ]

It sounds like you're saving 48-bit TIFF files for every single
scan you make at 4000dpi. Depending on how often you access the
scans, perhaps you'd be better-off archiving them to offline
storage - for example, DVD. A single DVD will hold 35 or so
scans at that res, maybe 36. So it might be convenient-enough
to burn a DVD of each roll of film that's scanned (make sure to
use the "verify" option"). That way, you might not feel so bad
deleting the full-res TIFFs after you've edited the scans and
produced high-res JPGs at 10MB each - you'll still have the
high-res TIFFs on DVD when you need them. I mean, do you really
need all those 5,0000+ scans available as high-res TIFFs all
the time?

MF scans are larger; a 4000 dpi scan of a 6x4.5 frame is around
63MP, or 380MB as a 48-bit TIFF. You'll only fit maybe 11 of those
on a single DVD. 6x6 gives about 81MP or 483MB 48-bit TIFF, and 6x9
is something like 127MP or 763MB 48-bit TIFF.

Just burning a DVD isn't a long-term archival solution, though
it's way better than just trusting a spinning hard-disk alone.
You might want to *also* back-up your disk to an external disk
drive as well.

Since we're talking about scanning negs here, don't forget that
the neg itself is an archive of the image; take care of it,
in case you need to re-scan it someday.

Dana Myers wrote:
Alan Browne wrote:

The CPU of your machine will determine how fast scans using ICE will
occur. ICE is a requirement you should not pass up as it will reduce
your time processing and touching up scratched or dusty film.


Just in case mueller is talking about B&W film, note that
Digital ICE is useless with B&W film.

Good point.


--
-- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm
-- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm
-- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin
-- e-meil: Remove FreeLunch.

mueller wrote:
Hello All.
Let me preface this by saying I know I can probably find what i need
with a google search and a few hours, but I'm hoping to speed it up a
little
I'm getting back into photography and I am playing around with a scanner
and PS instead of traditional wet printing.
What resolution do most of you use when scanning neg's into photoshop.
I've got 4 gig of ram on a windows XP machine and 300 gig plus of hard
drive space and PS CS3
I'm using a Mamiya 645 Pro TL
Thank you in advance
Mike Mueller
My Desire is too scan negs as I'm going to use them. I'm not looking to
keep them on the computer when I'm done printing.
Right now I have the lab process contact sheets since 50% of my shots
are usless. I'm still in the relearning mode. I spent 20 years shooting
35mm mostly. I had a Yasica Mat, that I used through out my Junior and
High School years. The twin lens was fun. Just limited. I played with a
Speed Graphic for while. Loved that for Architectual work.
Getting accustomed too the larger format is taking time. Framing is
different and I'm still wasting 30% of the frame. I need to get closer
to my subjects.
It's all part of the learning curve.
Right now I'm shotting both B&W and color. Part of the process is
learning how too use Photoshop. The freezing problem is just from
scanning my negs at too high of a resolution.
I'll start playing with 2400 and 4800 DPI to see how they enlarge and
print.
I'm probably going too still play in the darkroom, since part of the fun
is developing and printing B&W.
The idea of scanning was to have an alternative to a lab processing
color prints and having control over cropping.
I'm still a fan of doing 90% of the work when the shot is taken. I'm not
interested in using photoshop to fix a poorly framed or exposed shot.
The fun of the hobby is being able to compose the shot before, not after.
Mike Mueller

Mike Mueller wrote:

I'm still a fan of doing 90% of the work when the shot is taken. I'm not
interested in using photoshop to fix a poorly framed or exposed shot.
The fun of the hobby is being able to compose the shot before, not after.


I shoot both film and digital and find that my film shots are generally
better than the digital because I still *think* when I'm shooting film. G