Scanning Geekery!

excalibur2 said:
you could do one thing is to rescan your neg to 9600dpi or the max on your V500 and see if it make any difference in the details of your shot.
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The detail in the V500 output isn't limited by the scan resolution, it's limited by the way the scanner works. Resolution and detail aren't the same thing. I could scan a frame at 6400dpi on the V500 and it still wouldn't have the kind of detail a 2000dpi drum scan would!
 
PMN said:
The detail in the V500 output isn't limited by the scan resolution, it's limited by the way the scanner works. Resolution and detail aren't the same thing. I could scan a frame at 6400dpi on the V500 and it still wouldn't have the kind of detail a 2000dpi drum scan would!
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Ah that's my point, as I'm saying a Asda scan matches my V750 for detail, but you can make an Asda scan LOOK better in Photoshop (that's the difference).
And while I can get a good A4 print from an Asda scan it's not much use over that size (because of the low scan) now this is where the V750 comes in as although the scan in detail is equal, you can set (or software fiddle) to scan higher to get less pixel breakup so your print looks nicer and still sharp looking for say 16X20 print.

Shame this site is temporarily down as IIRC it compares scanners..now if a Asda scan (Fuji Frontier) was added it would give an idea on what to expect.

http://largeformatphotography.info/index.html
 
PMN said:
Are we now specifically talking about file sizes for printing? This is getting harder to follow by the minute...
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:LOL: No...it's only ever about the ability of any scanner to get detail off a neg. The drum scanner is at the top and there is the pecking order below.
 
ChrisR said:
I guess it becomes important at some point when printing; could you guess at what sort of size that extra detail becomes an issue? (This is complicated I guess, as we tend to view larger images from further away.)
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Sorry for not responding to this Chris, I was too busy getting confused! To be honest I've never really done any printing and my knowledge of it could be written in large letters on the back of a postage stamp, maybe someone else more knowledgable with printing can help on that one? :)
 
PMN said:
Sorry for not responding to this Chris, I was too busy getting confused! To be honest I've never really done any printing and my knowledge of it could be written in large letters on the back of a postage stamp, maybe someone else more knowledgable with printing can help on that one? :)
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Fair enough and me neither!

From my point of view it is a critical question, however. I've resolved to try to get more of my own images printed, so that I can enjoy them in a more traditional way than locked into the bowels of my computer, or in Photobucket's gallery. I've recently had a few images printed by Peak, and it has shown the first issue: they are much darker than I had expected (of course, I'm used to viewing them with transmitted light on my screen rather than reflected light on the wall). So I've got a lot to learn about preparing my images for printing. The two I have on the wall right now aren't limited by resolution, but the other one I got printed but have not yet hung may be.

Getting stuff printed at >A4 size is expensive enough, but drum scanning adds to the cost. Hence the question.

However, I suspect it's the wrong question. Thinking about eh Kodachrome discussion we had earlier, it's probably more about contrast, tonal range, extracting detail from shadow areas, etc. So a drum scan is probably going to add a lot of value to a print, anyway. At least, once I've learned how to prepare my image properly!
 
For critical sharpness in a print the accepted standard is 300dpi which should give a sharp print from 12" away.

Its just simple maths from there really as far as guidelines are concerned.

As an example say you scan a 6x6 medium format image on a V750 at 2400dpi (the generally accepted actual figure for the scanner) 6x6 is approxiamatley 2.25" x 2.25" so 5400 pixels a side divided by 300 will give you an 18" print

For 35mm very approxiamately you would end up with a 12" x 8" print.

This was scanned at approx 1600dpi I've printed it at 36" and 42" at 42" its about 288dpi but looks ok.

You could do better than 2400dpi with a suitable scanner of course but multiple factors might limit the useable resolution you can get anyway / film type / motion blurr / film flatness etc.

Generally you can not print the full dynamic range of many images anyway and as for digitail photography any value judgments you are trying to make require that your screen is calibrated as should the scanner be and of cours the printer profiled for the paper.
 
abbandon said:
For critical sharpness in a print the accepted standard is 300dpi which should give a sharp print from 12" away.

Its just simple maths from there really as far as guidelines are concerned.

As an example say you scan a 6x6 medium format image on a V750 at 2400dpi (the generally accepted actual figure for the scanner) 6x6 is approxiamatley 2.25" x 2.25" so 5400 pixels a side divided by 300 will give you an 18" print

For 35mm very approxiamately you would end up with a 12" x 8" print.

This was scanned at approx 1600dpi I've printed it at 36" and 42" at 42" its about 288dpi but looks ok.

You could do better than 2400dpi with a suitable scanner of course but multiple factors might limit the useable resolution you can get anyway / film type / motion blurr / film flatness etc.

Generally you can not print the full dynamic range of many images anyway and as for digitail photography any value judgments you are trying to make require that your screen is calibrated as should the scanner be and of cours the printer profiled for the paper.
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Well yes and thanks for your imput..but in Paul's comparison scans if I printed either of his crops it would show the difference in detail...and no matter how I put "makeup :) " on like:- colour casts, hue, vibrance etc on either of his scans, underneath the detail is still there to compare......so if you have an Asda scan, remove all the colour casts, over sharpening, over saturated colours (or whatever people complain about)..the detail is there, which IMO is good and comparable with a good flatbed scanner......so for me I don't bother much using my V750 because I can correct the Asda scans in photoshop and get the same results without the bother of using my V750, also with extra goodies from Asda (on top of dev) like an index, neg sleeves in handy folder to put on a shelf, and a CD...all for £3.

Oh forgot: I been testing my new (S\H) Epson 2100 printer and you can get a good A4 print from these low 35mm scans, but don't know how good unless I have a lab scan and print..... to compare.
 
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Deleted as too far off topic.
 
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I'll be honest, Brian, unless I say the images you've posted look incredible you're probably going to disagree and I think this thread has now been pulled so far away from what I intended it's become kind of pointless. All I wanted to do was show the difference between a good and popular consumer scanner and something a little more serious, I thought it might be interesting to show how well the V500 compares on small edits and just how much detail the drum scanner can pull out for larger stuff, I didn't want to get drawn into discussions about high street scans as they played absolutely no part in my comparison. If the Asda scans serve your purpose then continue using them, the examples you've posted aren't good enough for me personally so I'll stick with scanning my own.

I'm sorry to sound harsh, I'm just a little irked at how this thread has been sidetracked.
 
No problem Paul, but if the thread was about a V500 ver a drum scan it would have been end of story after about 5 posts :) in side tracking it does open up for any newbie or lurker from google to gather some info about things, knowledge is always useful.
Hey and someone might like my shots :) but it doesn't matter as the most important thing about this hobby is that you like your own pics and hopefully your family..and if anyone else likes them it's a bonus :)
 
excalibur2 said:
Hey and someone might like my shots :) but it doesn't matter as the most important thing about this hobby is that you like your own pics and hopefully your family..and if anyone else likes them it's a bonus :)
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I more mean sidetracked like this. There are plenty of other threads where you can show your photos and see if people like them, I didn't want this thread to be one of them hence me calling it scanning geekery rather than photographic artistry!
 
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what's the make of the scanner that you have? The examples are pretty awesome and its piqued my interest in getting one.
 
PMN said:
I more mean sidetracked like this. There are plenty of other threads where you can show your photos and see if people like them, I didn't want this thread to be one of them hence me calling it scanning geekery rather than photographic artistry!
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Well my shots were not about the subjects but about the quality of scans tones, detail, colour, or whatever is important to someone....I'm stuck with a V750 or a supermarket (don't fancy paying for expensive lab scans) and they will never be as good as your drum scanning, but if I can get near in my own way, I'm happy...and if any one else lurker or whoever thinks that they don't have to pay lots of dosh and can get good results from supermarket results (cos they like my shots) then surely that makes a wider audience happy also......but it's your thread. :exit:
 
Have you tried comparing a drum scan and flatbed scan to the same neg held up to a window and photographed using a digital camera? Does it make a big difference if you use a torch instead? 'cos sometimes I work late and it's dark when I get home.

Have you tried comparing either to psychic imaging?
 
what im still trying to understand is why when the drum is at 2000dpi and the flatbed at 2400, we know the v500 can do 2400, the drum resolves more detail. A dot is a dot after all and if the flatbed is doing 400 more of them why isnt it more detailed? An ungodly blending of physics and black magic no doubt.
 
essexash said:
what im still trying to understand is why when the drum is at 2000dpi and the flatbed at 2400, we know the v500 can do 2400, the drum resolves more detail. A dot is a dot after all and if the flatbed is doing 400 more of them why isnt it more detailed? An ungodly blending of physics and black magic no doubt.
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Imagine a cheap soft lens and an expensive high end lens, the expensive one will (hopefully) be sharper than the cheap one and this will be the case regardless of what body you mount those lenses on. You could mount the expensive lens on an 8 megapixel body and the cheap on a 24 megapixel body, the most detailed images will probably come from the 8 megapixel camera because the lens itself is seeing more detail. The resolution of the camera sensor doesn't really affect this.

It's kind of similar but in reverse with scanners, the drum scanner can resolve more detail because it's only recording tiny parts of the image at a time so it sees contrast much better than a flatbed which illuminates a large strip of the image at a time. Changing the scanning resolution doesn't allow the scanner to extract any more sharpness, it just makes the image bigger or smaller. There's an argument for higher resolutions hiding flaws when the image is resized smaller but those flaws (for want of a better word) will still be evident at larger sizes.

Hope that made some kind of vague sense, I'm writing this on my iPhone heading to work so may not have worded it too well!
 
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What about something really challenging.

In reality, something really challenging is probably a cocked up slide that doesn't warrant a scan at all.

I'd be interested to see how it deals with under exposed detail in the blacks, most flatbeds and dedicated scanners I've seen that can't see the detail, introduce all sorts of weirdly coloured hashed lines/dots.
 
I have an example we ran through the D4000 of some fairly heavy shadow lifting. There was a hint of detail visible on the lightbox on the side of the building but the bottom, where it starts to taper in was completely black to our eyes

 
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