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I recently bought a Kodak/Pakon 135+ film scanner and wanted to share some results, which I think are quite interesting. I already have an Epson V550 which I use to scan 135 and medium format film. My work-flow is generally: export a RAW scan, apply a film profile in ColorPerfect and make some adjustments to make things look as good as possible, then import the file into Lightroom and tidy up the scratches, dust, contrast etc.
I find the Epson great for B&W images, but generally a bit of a pain to achieve good colour, even with ColorPerfect helping out. It's also really slow, especially when you have 36 x 135 images to scan. I was reaching the point where I was avoiding my 35mm cameras completely, as the scanning process was putting me right off.
Then I discovered the Pakon.
If you haven't seen one before, here are a couple of reviews:
http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2014/08/01/kodak-pakon-f-135-plus-film-scanner-review-by-logan-norton/
https://jcstreetwolf.wordpress.com/2014/12/21/the-kodak-pakon-f135-scanner/
They were often installed in 1 hour photo shops and designed to be operated by relatively non-technical users. Also, they are most likely the only film scanner that could double as a child's potty. Mine is even more unpleasant to look at, as it seems to have spent it's entire life in the Florida sun, which has turned the cream plastic into hideous shades of yellow.
Last week I finally got it set up (not straightforward as it only runs on Windows XP and requires a careful set up process) and scanned a couple of rolls. It was quite a revelation, both in terms of speed and the quality of results. The Pakon can scan a whole, uncut 36 frame roll in about five minutes!
I put a roll of Ektar through my XA last year which was a bit of a disaster from start to finish. I developed it at home and messed up my Blix time which resulted in some odd colours. Then I decided to manually re-blix it in a tray, strip by strip to see if that helped. It did, but I messed it up again by forgetting to use bottled water for the stabiliser. This resulted in loads of calcium deposits and fine scratches on the emulsion, which I didn't manage to completely remove. When I scanned it with the V550, the colours were all over the place. Very magenta/red and impossibly saturated. It really put me off Ektar. I spent hours fiddling in ColorPerfect and Lightroom, trying to salvage something, but they were still not what I wanted. I tried a non-RAW scan so I could use ICE which removed a lot of the scratches, but the colour was even worse and on some frames the streaks were still really obvious. The one shown here was probably the worst.
I put the same film through the Pakon and have been absolutely blown away. Image A on the left is the original Epson scan after all the processing with ColorPerfect and Lightroom. Image B is a JPEG straight out of the Pakon (+ a small contrast boost in Lightroom). No fiddling, Photoshopping or colour balancing, and to my eyes it already looks much better. Next, have a look at the 100% detailed image. The Pakon is slightly sharper, which makes it look like there is more resolution - there isn't, it's only 3000 x 2000 - but notice how well the digital ICE has worked with the streaks. Note: this is Epson RAW (no ICE) vs Pakon with ICE. I'm not saying that the Epson wouldn't remove just as many streaks, just that it can do it AND get the colour just about right, first time.
Apparently the Pakon reads the film's DX coding and applies it's own profile magic. It also uses all the images scanned in one batch to help figure out the correct colour balance for the whole roll. I've been scanning a few old films, and it's doing an amazing job with all sorts of film types and brands. I'll try and post some more examples on this thread when I get a chance.
Highly recommended if you shoot 35mm colour negative film and value your time away from computer screens.
View attachment 31476
View attachment 31475
I find the Epson great for B&W images, but generally a bit of a pain to achieve good colour, even with ColorPerfect helping out. It's also really slow, especially when you have 36 x 135 images to scan. I was reaching the point where I was avoiding my 35mm cameras completely, as the scanning process was putting me right off.
Then I discovered the Pakon.
If you haven't seen one before, here are a couple of reviews:
http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2014/08/01/kodak-pakon-f-135-plus-film-scanner-review-by-logan-norton/
https://jcstreetwolf.wordpress.com/2014/12/21/the-kodak-pakon-f135-scanner/
They were often installed in 1 hour photo shops and designed to be operated by relatively non-technical users. Also, they are most likely the only film scanner that could double as a child's potty. Mine is even more unpleasant to look at, as it seems to have spent it's entire life in the Florida sun, which has turned the cream plastic into hideous shades of yellow.
Last week I finally got it set up (not straightforward as it only runs on Windows XP and requires a careful set up process) and scanned a couple of rolls. It was quite a revelation, both in terms of speed and the quality of results. The Pakon can scan a whole, uncut 36 frame roll in about five minutes!
I put a roll of Ektar through my XA last year which was a bit of a disaster from start to finish. I developed it at home and messed up my Blix time which resulted in some odd colours. Then I decided to manually re-blix it in a tray, strip by strip to see if that helped. It did, but I messed it up again by forgetting to use bottled water for the stabiliser. This resulted in loads of calcium deposits and fine scratches on the emulsion, which I didn't manage to completely remove. When I scanned it with the V550, the colours were all over the place. Very magenta/red and impossibly saturated. It really put me off Ektar. I spent hours fiddling in ColorPerfect and Lightroom, trying to salvage something, but they were still not what I wanted. I tried a non-RAW scan so I could use ICE which removed a lot of the scratches, but the colour was even worse and on some frames the streaks were still really obvious. The one shown here was probably the worst.
I put the same film through the Pakon and have been absolutely blown away. Image A on the left is the original Epson scan after all the processing with ColorPerfect and Lightroom. Image B is a JPEG straight out of the Pakon (+ a small contrast boost in Lightroom). No fiddling, Photoshopping or colour balancing, and to my eyes it already looks much better. Next, have a look at the 100% detailed image. The Pakon is slightly sharper, which makes it look like there is more resolution - there isn't, it's only 3000 x 2000 - but notice how well the digital ICE has worked with the streaks. Note: this is Epson RAW (no ICE) vs Pakon with ICE. I'm not saying that the Epson wouldn't remove just as many streaks, just that it can do it AND get the colour just about right, first time.
Apparently the Pakon reads the film's DX coding and applies it's own profile magic. It also uses all the images scanned in one batch to help figure out the correct colour balance for the whole roll. I've been scanning a few old films, and it's doing an amazing job with all sorts of film types and brands. I'll try and post some more examples on this thread when I get a chance.
Highly recommended if you shoot 35mm colour negative film and value your time away from computer screens.
View attachment 31476
View attachment 31475
