A big film scanner thread

auntiemaryscanary said:
I've um'ed and ah'ed overnight and today. The Plustek appears a little scruffy in the pics, many scratches on the exterior. Appears to have led a hard life for something only a couple of years old.


Thanks, I've never used Vuescan before and I'd want to be confident it works with that. I'm not even great with EpsonScan to be honest.

Anyway I've decided against the Plustek and am going to collect a minimal financial risk option (£20)- a Canoscan 5600F with the 35mm scanning holder. Yes, I'll need Vuescan with this but I'll just take out a years subscription and see if I want to pay for it as a one next year.

Thanks for the advice everyone.
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I found epson scan 3 to be very simple, and it has to be for me.

put it in pro mode
select negs in frame
choose tiff and resolution
Click preview

Those few simple operations get you to a position where you can adjust B&W points for each image and full scan it or scan them all at once

And its free. Designed to work with their scanners.


I found editing in Darktable negadoctor to give better results than Lightroom for the Tiffs
 
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So the £20 Canon 5600f works plus I'm impressed with how easy to use Vuescan is (free trial only currently).

Sample scans at 1200dpi, nothing else adjusted on them, resolution unadjusted for display here. HP5 I developed in ID-11 yesterday. Pics taken on an EOS 1000fn. First would have been on slow-ish shutter speed (1/30?) and probably f4. Second was on auto.

21204.jpg

21205.jpg

Now to me they seem to have a lot "noise" to me. Can anyone else see that? I've rescanned them at 2400 & 4800 dpi and there is no improvement. The scanner was given a good clean especially the top of the glass. I've viewed the negs on the light table with a 10x loupe and the negs look "clean".

Any ideas what the issue is? Is it worth cleaning the underside of the glass?

After I've cooked dinner I'll scan some lab dev negs to rule out whether it's my deving skills or not. Low res scans (files size approx 500kb) on my V500 are a lot more detailed and less noisy than from this Canon.
 
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auntiemaryscanary said:
So the £20 Canon 5600f works plus I'm impressed with how easy to use Vuescan is (free trial only currently).

Sample scans at 1200dpi, nothing else adjusted on them, resolution unadjusted for display here. HP5 I developed in ID-11 yesterday. Pics taken on an EOS 1000fn. First would have been on slow-ish shutter speed (1/30?) and probably f4. Second was on auto.

View attachment 482827

View attachment 482828

Now to me they seem to have a lot "noise" to me. Can anyone else see that? I've rescanned them at 2400 & 4800 dpi and there is no improvement. The scanner was given a good clean especially the top of the glass. I've viewed the negs on the light table with a 10x loupe and the negs look "clean".

Any ideas what the issue is? Is it worth cleaning the underside of the glass?

After I've cooked dinner I'll scan some lab dev negs to rule out whether it's my deving skills or not. Low res scans (files size approx 500kb) on my V500 are a lot more detailed and less noisy than from this Canon.
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Well the optics on the epson is probably better than the canon?
 
auntiemaryscanary said:
So the £20 Canon 5600f works plus I'm impressed with how easy to use Vuescan is (free trial only currently).

Sample scans at 1200dpi, nothing else adjusted on them, resolution unadjusted for display here. HP5 I developed in ID-11 yesterday. Pics taken on an EOS 1000fn. First would have been on slow-ish shutter speed (1/30?) and probably f4. Second was on auto.

View attachment 482827

View attachment 482828

Now to me they seem to have a lot "noise" to me. Can anyone else see that? I've rescanned them at 2400 & 4800 dpi and there is no improvement. The scanner was given a good clean especially the top of the glass. I've viewed the negs on the light table with a 10x loupe and the negs look "clean".

Any ideas what the issue is? Is it worth cleaning the underside of the glass?

After I've cooked dinner I'll scan some lab dev negs to rule out whether it's my deving skills or not. Low res scans (files size approx 500kb) on my V500 are a lot more detailed and less noisy than from this Canon.
Click to expand...

could it be that the evaluation version does not have full functionality ?
 
It used to be the case that the functionality was the same.

May I recommend thst you scan at maximum resolution saving the raw file (I know that this isn't always optimal) and then use this with different settings. I have found that changing the film between scans of consecutive negatives can give better results.
 
The "Noise" looks to be mostly at it's worst in the dark areas, where the digital scan "Effect" is far more visible than the grain of the film.

Could it be a D=MAX issue ?

Its just not capable of looking so far into the dark areas ?
 
Just checking - when you say "dark areas" do you mean the shadow areas on the print which are the thinnest and most transparent areas of the negative, or the highlights where the density on the negative is greatest?

Have you checked the histogram for spikes?
 
StephenM said:
when you say "dark areas" do you mean the shadow areas on the print which are the thinnest and most transparent areas of the negative,
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Yes.

StephenM said:
Have you checked the histogram for spikes?
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No, I don't understand what these are unfortunately. My scanning abilities just about stretch to making sure I've checked the right tabs for b&w, dpi, output format and a bit of rotate etc.
 
I've had another play with the Canon and have done a comparison with my V550. 1st image is the Canon, 2nd V550.

2026-05-20-0008.jpg

2026-05-21-0002.jpg

2026-05-20-0013.jpg

2026-05-21-0001.jpg

All sacanned at 1200 dpi.

Another film (lab dev, Kentmere 100) again 1st is the Canon.

2026-05-21-0010.jpg

2026-05-21-0009.jpg

The first 2 sets seem to have a similar amount of noise, third is slightly less noticeable. I think I prefer the images off the V550 overall. I've spent a fair bit of time head scratching and haven't really given myself answers but have come to a few conclusions:

1. The Canon does it's job ok and for something 15+ years old and £20.
2. I like Vuescan and will be buying a copy
3. I really do have to research, practice and get better at scanning overall and be able to do it in RAW and at higher resolutions!

Thanks everyone for your advice and suggestions.
 
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auntiemaryscanary said:
I've had another play with the Canon and have done a comparison with my V550. 1st image is the Canon, 2nd V550.

View attachment 482870

View attachment 482871

View attachment 482872

View attachment 482874

All sacanned at 1200 dpi.

Another film (lab dev, Kentmere 100) again 1st is the Canon.

View attachment 482875

View attachment 482876

The first 2 sets seem to have a similar amount of noise, third is slightly less noticeable. I think I prefer the images off the V550 overall. I've spent a fair bit of time head scratching and haven't really given myself answers but have come to a few conclusions:

1. The Canon does it's job ok and for something 15+ years old and £20.
2. I like Vuescan and will be buying a copy
3. I really do have to research, practice and get better at scanning overall and be able to do it in RAW and at higher resolutions!

Thanks everyone for your advice and suggestions.
Click to expand...
Vuescans a cracking bit of software, but I've had nothing but issues with it (which I am fully prepared to accept are my own fault) and I really struggle to get a decent image out of it. Epson scan, for the most part, is just easier and more reliable (for me).
Something to be aware of with vuescan, you get a years worth of upgrades, after that they expect you to buy a new license if you want to upgrade further.
I'm stuck running 9.6.somethingorother because my license only runs to 9.7.89, and its into 9.8something now. Thats not to say its not worth it, its still chugging along fine, I just have to download an older version setup
 
There is the option to buy a lifetime version of Vuescan but it is several years cost equivalent. Think it is about £150 for the professional edition which includes slide/film scanning. That's about 3 years worth of the normal one.
 
The big plus point of Vuescan has been it's ability to work with a huge range of scanners, so a definite consideration if you're going to buy a few older ones. I use it for my Minolta 5400 35mm scanner, but find Epson Scan to be better for the V700.
 
Thanks for the reminder about a new version. I switched to Vuescan in 2003 (if the date of the download is to be believed) and therefore got in when a licence allowed perpetual updates.
 
I've been using Vuescan on and off for a number of years and through several variations of Mac OSX as well, I have two scanners, a Microteck 120tf and a Nikon Coolscan IV and both work really well.

Like many I have updated the Vuescan software as new versions have come out up 9.8.55 that was released in June 2026.

Well, this software is not great, the scans form the Nikon are now very dark, colours all over the place and several times it has effectively crashed on me and have had to use Force Quit to get out the program, it then failing to restart because the program has something locked, meaning I've had to reboot the computer to get Vuescan working again.
It's been a rather frustrating couple of days because normally Vuescan is fine.

I don't know what's changed and why the sudden poor quality scans, especially when I have scanned the same slides before, without any problems and with better colours.

So I went back to version 9.7.99 and it works fine, it is a little slower to perform the scan as the Nikon makes some odd noises but the colours arenow fine and I've scanned more slides than I have done over the last couple of days all without a crash.

I don't know what the issue is or where the problem lies with the latest software but I'm not going to upgrade for a while yet.
 
Knikki said:
I've been using Vuescan on and off for a number of years and through several variations of Mac OSX as well, I have two scanners, a Microteck 120tf and a Nikon Coolscan IV and both work really well.

Like many I have updated the Vuescan software as new versions have come out up 9.8.55 that was released in June 2026.

Well, this software is not great...
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I've been scanning a few films recently, and have done several updates, currently on 9.8.55.06, and not noticed any particular problems. I'd encourage you to report the problem; Ed Hamrick is very responsive, and others may be having your problems. ISTR you need to supply a vuescan log generated just after the problem, but IMHO it's worth it.

A few years ago I had a weird problem with feather-like anomalies on slanted lines in interpolated scans. We went back and forth but Ed couldn't work out what the issue was. A year or more later I got a notification that it had been fixed. That doesn't sound great, but I think it is; they kept track of this issue over time and fixed it. Not bad for no-cost (then) support!
 
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