scanning film with sd quattro

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.

Roger wrote:

Have you tried a Epson V800 wet mount? Although I have to admit I've never tried your way.

Well what ever works.

Have fun

Roger J.

I can see zero reason to start wet mounting negs when there is a far better, quicker and zero mess way. There's still the problem of a film scanner's fixed focus - if the emulsion isn't exactly in the plane of focus, wet mounting will do little other than render the whole image evenly out of focus.

Of interest might be the scan from one of my first B&W negs after a 5 year hiatus from film after I started using it again late last year, first is a 100% section from the V700 Photo using its standard 120 film holder, the second a 100% section using the sd Q-H as above, obviously best viewed at full posted size. Following this the Epson is now a paper weight wasting desk space with no real purpose in life except occasionally scanning documents, which is what scanners were originally designed to do, after all.

100% section Epson V700 Photo scan

100% section Sigma sd Quattro H

Thanks for posting.

Impressive results.

I did lots of scanning (of MF images) until I bought an SD10.

With the sdQ I have something about equivalent to the MF images. But of course, not quite.

Richard

The "scan" from the H seems better indeed. I have the V700 as well; scan 6x17 Velvia 50 with special holder and anti-newton glass; and then I print panoramas myself at 16x48 inches. Looks fantastic.

But to make a catalogue of smaller slides and negs, like 6x9, 6x7 and 6x6, the SDQ will do just fine. I would use my EX50mm Macro. Or 105 Macro. I have to experiment with both.

These are two first trial sampels with the SDQ and 50mm EX, from Fuji Velvia slide film, including plenty of free dust. Lol.

Any pointers anyone can give me are very welcome. What is the Kelvin value of a typical lcd lightpad, or use AWB?

I shot these images in DNG format.

6x7 Plaubel Makina 80mm,  cropped copy; first experiment with SDQ as slide copier with 50mm EX Macro

Same as above; free dust included; no extra charge. Not totally convinced by results.

adegroot wrote:

The "scan" from the H seems better indeed. I have the V700 as well; scan 6x17 Velvia 50 with special holder and anti-newton glass; and then I print panoramas myself at 16x48 inches. Looks fantastic.

But to make a catalogue of smaller slides and negs, like 6x9, 6x7 and 6x6, the SDQ will do just fine. I would use my EX50mm Macro. Or 105 Macro. I have to experiment with both.

These are two first trial sampels with the SDQ and 50mm EX, from Fuji Velvia slide film, including plenty of free dust. Lol.

Any pointers anyone can give me are very welcome. What is the Kelvin value of a typical lcd lightpad, or use AWB?

I shot these images in DNG format.

6x7 Plaubel Makina 80mm, cropped copy; first experiment with SDQ as slide copier with 50mm EX Macro

Same as above; free dust included; no extra charge. Not totally convinced by results.

Those aren't perfect, but it's not bad for the first try. I suggest using the 105mm lens, because it probably offers a flatter field (less field curvature). It looks like the bottom of the second photo is a little out of focus to me. See the dust? (It looks like most of the dust is blurred out, and the large dust particles, like hairs, appear to be a little out of focus).

Shawn67 wrote:

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

I use Photoshop to invert, but I stitch the negs before inversion in AutorPano Giga or PTGUI software, depending on my mood at the time (If using Bridge as my browser at the time it is far quicker to send the images to APG directly rather than PTGUI which requires drag & drop. Adobe Photomerge can also do the job, but isn't as good at times in matching the pieces, particularly things like sky areas. For a four-segment 120 neg it takes around 30 seconds to do the "scan". I batch process the 3XF files in SPP, and save as TIFF (I have a preset for this saved in SPP now) and APG does the stitch in around 30 seconds to a minute start to finish (i7, 64GB ram). Then a few seconds to open and invert in Photoshop, apply curves to suit and save.

It's so long since I used my 8000ED that I'd forgotten the AF bit at the beginning. A component in the circuit board failed in my scanner around 2009 and Nikon couldn't supply a replacement, plus the fact that they had stopped making and supporting the scanner as well meant that I went looking for alternatives, although I've only just started getting back into film (B&W only) so I really wasn't in a hurry to do so. In the meantime both the sd Q-H and those nifty light panels appeared and the solution became obvious to me.

Having recently done a few 6x6 negs using the 70mm macro at full 1:1 extension and 12 overlapping frames (around 1GB file size, 13,200 x 13,200 px), the resulting images were about as close to actually printing them in my point light source Laborator 1200 enlarger as I could ever want with 400 ISO film; with 25 ISO film that's still not enough to properly resolve the individual grain, though, so the resulting "scan" shows the grain appearing bigger than it would be on a bromide print via enlarger.

Having a macro lens with both manual focus and an adjustable aperture makes a huge difference in keeping the image focused all over at film grain level. The critical thing is getting the camera dead level to the light panel/film holder in the first place, after that it's plain sailing. At present I am constructing a jig to enable shifting the neg holder around for the stitch segments that will keep the tracking straight and therefore make stitching even more accurate. Keeping things true by eye alone starts to become a bit haphazard when doing 12 or more segments at 1:1.

Having pulled the 800ED scanner down a few times between 2002 and 2009 (the period I used it - the 45° angled mirror that directs the image to the lens faces upwards and collects dust, which both depleted contrast and encouraged flare at high contrast edges), the way it was put together didn't inspire confidence and definitely didn't justify its rather impressive price tag, either. Also there was the perennial problem of having to use glass in the carrier in order to keep the film flat enough for the fixed aperture lens' extremely narrow depth of field to keep the film in focus. Anti-Newton ring glass or not, the fact is that it adds four more surfaces into the scanning sandwich which just means more work retouching extra dust afterwards.

Scottely:

I was looking for color accuracy first and at this point only; focus accuracy to come later as well perfect horizontal alignment of camera. That has to come second for me.

I used Adobe Camera Raw to invert the DNG files from my sdQH. You can load at least 300 files at a time into ACR and invert them en masse by using the Curves tool (in points mode).

I am satisfied with the results from the sdQH on 35mm B&W negs. Examples I have seen posted by owners of the Sony A7r2 seem equally good.

I had previously copied my 35mm colour slides with an older Sony camera, and the colours seem to me to be better than I have had on a few tests with the sdQH. The Sony cameras have a built in HDR feature which is ideal for slide copying. However, the Sony 42 Megapixel cameras are much more expensive than the sdQH.

D Cox wrote:

I used Adobe Camera Raw to invert the DNG files from my sdQH. You can load at least 300 files at a time into ACR and invert them en masse by using the Curves tool (in points mode).

I am satisfied with the results from the sdQH on 35mm B&W negs. Examples I have seen posted by owners of the Sony A7r2 seem equally good.

I had previously copied my 35mm colour slides with an older Sony camera, and the colours seem to me to be better than I have had on a few tests with the sdQH. The Sony cameras have a built in HDR feature which is ideal for slide copying. However, the Sony 42 Megapixel cameras are much more expensive than the sdQH.

I just do the invert by using a batch action invert/save via Bridge in Ps. Same thing ultimately, and you don't have any limits to the number selected. Having an invert function in SPP would make this unnecessary, of course, maybe Sigma will get around to that eventually (or simply supply a proper curves adjustment that isn't anchored at each end).

I bought the sd Q-H specifically for B&W photography and copying, so colour is really not a consideration for me.  Used in B&W mode there is no interpolation messing with definition like there always is with Bayer sensors. As the "equivalent" crowd mention constantly, that apparently makes the 25MP sd Q-H sensor easily equal to the Sony 42MP sensor; stitch and the uninterpolated pixel count gets right up there and maybe even betters the best medium format efforts of the Bayer sensor Hasselblad H6D 100C camera in multi-shot mode, not that this means much other than a $1,000 camera equalling the potential of a $30,000+ camera, which as far as I'm concerned is where the argument simply ends.

An unsampled, uninterpolated stitched sd Q-H "scan" of a 120 6x6 B&W neg (one taken on proper B&W film, not that horrible mushy chromogenic faux-B&W/colour-process XP2 rubbish) really has to be seen to be fully appreciated.