scanning film with sd quattro

Alan71410 wrote:

Seriously. Unless you are considering an Imacon or other high end scanner, forget about these things - you have a far better piece of equipment in the sd Q-H. Scanners (up to and including the unsupported Nikon Coolscan 9000ED have a fixed focus and a wide aperture, and invariably inadequate film holders which don't keep the film flat. Unleess you're only copying mounted slides, just about any film will bow to some degree, which means that either parts or all of the grain will lose focus. The camera has both higher resolution thanks to better optics and much better DR than a run-of-the-mill scanner as well.

I did have a Nicon CS8000ED (Nikon no longer support it) and now do have an Epson V700 Photo which is absolutely pathetic compared to the results I get with the pictured setup (sd Q-H, A4 LED light pad, Durst Laborator neg holder with masks for anything from 35mm to 5x4), and my old 35mm copy stand repurposed for the job).

The camera is dead square to the copyboard achieved by bouncing a laser off the sensor from the copyboard - the return dot coinciding with the sending beam ensures the rig is dead level where it needs to be. The neg holder holds film perfectly flat, the 70/2.8 Sigma macro (old version) offers both the possibility of critical focus as well as DOF via stopping down if necessary. If higher resolution is required it is a simple matter to take sections and stitch them - with everything true and level and in focus, the job is easy and extremely quick.

Your setup looks great. I've considered a setup like that. What software do you use to invert negatives? How long does it take to process one of the images?

You are incorrect about fixed focus in the Coolscans. They do focus and because of that handle film at different planes. You can hear them AF at the start of a scan. Case in point, I added glass to my LS8000s film holders (both sides of the negative) and the scanner has no problem at all dealing with that. You can even set the focus point in the scanning software. Biggest downside with the Coolscan is it is *slow* and the Nikon Scan software needs older OSes to run. VueScan runs the scanner but seems to need more fiddling with MF film sizes compared to the Nikon software. Esp. for 6x9 film. Think Nikon Scan had better colors too. I haven't tried scanning in raw from Vuescan and converting in something like Colorperfect though. For 35mm, I typically use my Pakon as it does the whole role in about 5 minutes. If I need more resolution I move to the LS8000.

Shawn