I have been throwing around the idea of getting a digital camera. Currently I take alot of 35mm pictures on a film SLR. I have been looking into getting a scanner that I can scan my negatives to my computers. I know that when you get your pictures developed you can get your pictures put onto a CD.
Looking for the pros and cons of both of these options and which would give me the best "picture"
Thank you I think the bottom line comes down to 2 things:
. How good is the equipment is that creates the digital image for input to computer?
. How stringent are you requirements for digital quality?
Many of the pro photographers still use film cameras, then scan the negs to digitize. Take a look at
http://www.normankoren.com/scanners.html
for some pro comments.
You can spend thousands of $$ on film scanners to get the best of the best results. Some pros (and others) do this, or take their film input to a lab get it done. (The local drug store lab probably does not qualify.)
Many home users have found that the latest flatbed scanners can produce images with more than enough quality for personal use. These scanners are available for under $500, and come with built-in backlighting and frames to hold the negatives (or slides) flat and straight.
This was my approach to getting more prints of my daughter's wedding. We bought the negatives and I got an Epson 4870 for $400. It can scan at 4800 ppi and came bundled with Silverfast dust removal software. It all worked great, and my prints look just as good as the ones that came from the pro photographer. The scanned images have incredible detail!
So I think that is it. Think about your quality goals, about whether you have the time to do your own scanning (my scanner took about 15 minutes per negative with dust removal), and the costs of equipment to do it yourself vs hiring a lab of appropriate quality to do it.
Good Luck It looks like you really have more than one question. Most of us have a lot of 35mm transparencies and negatives left over from the day before there were professional digital SLR's. Most of us have not spent the large dollars to purchase a film scanner because unless there is a special purpose to digitize any of those images, they continue to be useful just as they are.
Those of us who have film scanners, rarely use them. I use mine about twice a year and mostly to get a quick and dirty image I can print 4x6 as a sample of a style or location for a client when I don't already have some stored in my archives from the last five years of shooting digitally.
I am getting the sense that you are attempting to decide whether you should buy a scanner and convert all your film to digital files as you go or spend the money (about the same) and get a DSLR that will work with the lenses you already have on your film SLR.
Looking a the work-flow generated by digital cameras vs. film cameras + scanning, the scale seems to lean toward getting the digital body. Having the processor transfer your film to CD is too iffy. What kind of controls do they use to ensure accurate contrast/brightness and color control? Is each lab a little different? How much more will it cost over a 100,000 image run?
My first DSLR had over 140,000 images through it when I converted it to an IR only digital SLR. My other two have over 50,000 between them. I have accomplished this using less than $600 worth of film (two 4gb CF cards and four 2GB CF cards) Each card should allow me to use them for over 20,000 cycles (fill, download and format). Compare those figures to similar numbers using film and you get a hint of some of the reasons professionals are shooting mostly in digital.
I will leave out the discussion of the environmental impact the film cycle has when compared to digital and the ease of switching from ISO to ISO or color temperature to color temperature "mid-roll". Digital cameras are fine (though I was very reluctant to go digital but finally did) but what about the negs you have now?
Buying a film scanner is all good and everything, and if you can afford a Nikon Coolscan even better but have you used one? They are VERY slow -- depending on the resolutions you want, it could take HOURS to scan a roll of film (res + dust and scratch removal, color corrections, etc).
What you want to do is go to your local high-end photolab and look for a digital printer. Even better if your local photolab has a Noritsu digital lab (model 2901 or higher). These digital systems can scan a roll of 24, render the images in high-quality JPEGs (a little longer for Hi-Res TIFs) and save them to CD for you. All in less than 5 minutes. You can probably get away with 3 rolls of 24 on one CD. You don't even need to make prints. Just ask them to make a CD for you (Hi-Res of course, just to clarify).
This will save you a lot of time and money in the long run and the images will look superb (depending on the maintenance and color balance of the machine of course). |
