The Nikon D850 can scan film using the new ES-2 digitizing adapter

How much does a 6x6 digital camera cost? They don't do one? Ok... So I could go for a crop medium format for 6k or $300 for a 6x6 and shoot film...
What about a full frame, fix 35mm? $75 for an olympus trip 35. $1500 for a Sony RX1.

That's why I buy film cameras. Not because I don't want to have the images on my computer... But having the same camera in a digital format would cost me 20x more.... And when you want to have 3 or 4 different cameras....

Film has a unique look that is difficult to achieve with a digital camera. It's fun for a change of pace.

Does your D850 capture more details with that sensor from a limited film?
A135 film is already a bottleneck, not the scanners!

Lets go to talk about a drum scanners and 4x5 or 8x10 film sheets and we are talking about something else than D850 can do at all.

"One big difference between it and film scanners is that the resulting file is limited to JPEG."

You can just ignore the built in film scanning "Feature", and the need for a D850 entirely, and just shoot in raw to digitize the slide or negative yourself just like every other slide duplicator and DSLR-film-'scanning' technique everyone else has been using for digitizing film. All it needs is a compatible macro lens, a light source and the slide holder.

Speculation, not! The ES-2 is essentially the same as the ES-1, which I have used to "scan" hundreds of slides, coupled with a Sony A7ii or A7Rii and a Nikon 55/2.8 AIS lens. I have an LS-4000, and the camera scans are as good or better with regard to color, just as sharp and 10x faster to execute.

Probably because the d850 has an internal conversion of negatives to positives and in other Nikon cameras you get to that manually in the computer later on.

In my experience, my Sony A7ii or A7Rii produces better color for slides than my Nikon scanners (4000 and 8000) in a fraction of the time, with the same or better resolution. Color negatives take more post-processing work, but ultimately with color just as good as from the scanner. Negative color is never that easy, even with "automatic' conversion.

I'm using a camera to "scan" film, because so much of my film is unscanned. I could never finish if I used my scanner. It's a difference of 5 rolls per hour, or an hour per roll, respectively.

@Ed Ingold, Thanks for sharing your experience. Almost all my films are negatives. I would like to know how much time, in average, you need to adjust a photo in order to make the color similiar to the output from the film scanner?

If everything goes right, it takes 1 to 2 minutes to open the raw file in Photoshop (via Lightroom), clear the mask with Levels (optimize each RGB channel) and invert the results. That said, each emulsion type is different, and even small variations in exposure affect the color balance, not to mention the light source, or prevailing color in the subject. Unlike slides, you have nothing for comparison. In practice, the conversion process has similar results to a Coolscan scan. The devil is in the fine tuning, regardless of the process.

It seems the process consumes more time than using the scanner. Total time, in average, to scan a frame with 2700 dpi by the scanner (which including manual film focus, pick the grey point, curve adjustment and pre-scan) is about 1.5 ~ 2 minutes.
Since you are using Sony, I am unsure if the D850 can convert the negative instantly and deliver the similar color rendition of the scanner.
Anyway, thanks for your information.

I kind of agree, but still: It is a great idea, and Canon does not have any. If it is good made I will bite and get it. I have the ES-1, and I found it close to useless. Here I see that they addressed some of the issues: We have the screw attaching the adapter steady, and the film adapters. With the ES-1 made results the issue was that every single image was crooked to some extend, and every one was crooked differently.

Great is that the gadget does not have any optics, which might spoil the glass in your hopefully top of the line macro lens. With ES-1 I used the 60mm macro with the K-rings for a DX body.

No. What I am looking at in that photo, even $50 is way more than enough. In fact, for what that camera costs, Nikon should just include it as a bonus and appreciation. The goodwill would vastly exceed any profit on that plastic and may even help sell the macro lenses.

aim it at the sun, son!

I use a daylight LED bulb in a desk lamp. The color is excellent, and there is no heat from it. Since the ES-2 is rigidly affixed to the lens, you don't need a tripod, and exposures of 1/4 second at f/5.6 (typical) don't suffer from camera shake. Unlike flash, you can use automatic exposure. I use manual focus and ISO 400 for consistency, but auto WB. Slides that are a little underexposed or orange from mixed lighting are actually improved in the process.

You need 60mm for FX and even wider for DX. Or stick with the 60mm and add some distance rings. I used combined K4 and K5 rings. Only so 60mm projects the entire slide on a DX sensor. And of course: the negative conversion is a novel and great idea. I wish every body would have that software!!

You would need 3 or 4 inches of extension between the ES-2 and the lens to make it work. Unless you are happy with paper towel tubes and gaffer tape, you need different hardware to use a 105 mm lens effectively, such as a Novoflex focusing rail with an optional film holder, or a copy stand with a light table.

User3397642960, and a camera will? :)

A camera like the D850 - yes, of course. Way, way better. Consumer flatbeds are ok for MF, but uttercrap for 35mm.

Yes, a lot better. You obviously have little experience.

@wolfoid. There are flatbeds and there are flatbeds. One of the best was the old and versatile Canon 9950F, c. 2004/05, which does 35mm (30 negs at a time) up to 5x4. Yes, on roll film and 5x4 results can be stunning, especially in b/w. But what will come as a surprise to most, is that its performance with 35mm isn't utter crap, which I do know is a preconception of many when discussing flatbed v dedicated film scanners.

Given how old these units now are, I'm willing to bet not many today have seen any results from one. No, not up to Minolta 5400 or top Nikon Coolscan quality (what units are?) but I don't have to worry about obsolete SCSI connections or Firewire, or not running on any recent MS platform, as the 9950F will run on anything up to and including W7 without the need for horrible Vuescan. And, yes, I tried it.

A 24 MP camera has the same resolution as a Nikon scanner, and is better at rendering color and correcting for exposure and white balance. Flatbed scanners have half that resolution or less. The pixels in a flatbed are subject to overlap, cutting the actual resolution in half the purported optical resolution. Plus, flatbed scanners are agonizingly slow when copying film.

@guyfawkes, I have the 9950F too and the resolution is better than the epson scanners I have used. I think the scanner has enough resolution for most negative films, scanning negative film at higher resolutions is pretty pointless imo. So yes, this is a cheaper way to scan film than buying a macro lens, unless you already have one.

Fujica, there are people still shooting film... Yes, even when they have high end digital cameras at home...

guyfawkes will this be faster than a neg scanner? If you use it to shoot raw, you still have to do the inversion after and that's not always easy to get good colours.
If you use the camera to do the conversion, how accurate will it be? I use a scanner and I have to adjust levels when scanning. If the camera does the same job as a scanner guessing how to adjust levels, there will probably still be some extra work needed. But you're working with a jpeg...

If this was $40, sure. But it costs as much as a scanner... Can it really get more detail out of the negative?

@ PAntunes. Will it be faster? You and I both use film scanners (I've posted elsewhere here on this) and the initial capture will certainly be faster with the Nikon. But how much faster, overall, taking into account post processing which I'm sure anyone with an interest in getting the best image capture will do, may even things up somewhat. As I've already posted, the Nikon won't be able to deal with dust or physical damage to the emulsion, or even defects in the emulsion itself and which show up as white spots at 100%.

So, whilst initial scans may take several minutes depending upon the settings chosen for correction, it may be more problematic and time consuming removing them later in PP. And my two scanners, a Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II and my Canon 9950F can selectively crop at the scanning stage, something most film scanners can do.

Could you tell me why it should be worse when copying films than when shooting real life ?
Considering the very high resolution of the D850 compared to the film resolution, I doubt that the Bayer filter will create any issue here. Three will be plenty of sensor pixels to encode a film "pixel"...

These days I use a 50MP DSLR to scan film (plus a light table and 100 L macro lens) as it's just so much faster than anything else. Also any film I've ever used doesn't have anything like the resolution people claim and even photographing two images at a time you'd get far into the grain, resolution-wise (I usually do one, but don't take it to the frame limits, which helps with DoF too).
I think the main plus of scanners is if you have one with infra-red dust detection, although no dust is better. (I do have a scanner somewhere behind me, but it's too slow and the camera has more resolution.)

You're so right. Normal film has the resolution and noise of the Nikon 1 (10mp) which is why I find it funny that people complained so much about the smaller sensor. Films probably a little noiser too. 20mp is plenty to photograph a negative so 47 will be overkill.

Dr_Jon and what about color with negatives? For slides, I've used the camera and I'm super happy, but for negatives, the color correction of the scanner software is amazing. Haven't been able to get the same colours with a camera...

Lots of people.still use film. If anything it's in a bit of a renaissance.

@trungth, not necessarily about "current" film users - many have yet to "digitize" their collection of old slides and negatives, and this provides an easy way to do it with top-notch results.

The camera itself does the color inversion for negatives, no post-processing required on a PC. Not very difficult to implement, but a nifty convenience nonetheless.

The Nikon announcement made me think about buying a simple Nikon-Sony EF adapter and the recommended 60mm lens and using the ES-2 on my Sony alpha FF. The two posts about fixing the white balance of negatives are very helpful. Thanks to both of you for posting!

If nikon suggests the 60 mm it will be probably fine, but I had a better luck with a 100 mm lens: my 50 seems to have a slightly curved focus plane (at least in 1/1 reproduction). Another thing to remember is that at those magnifications there is usually some focus shift as you close the aperture. My suggestion is to focus in live view with the aperture closed down to the working value!

You can use it on almost anything. You just screw it onto the filter threads. You will probably need extra spacers, though. For details see mine and especially Ed Ingold's posts on this page.

And you need LESS magnification, not more, on an APS-C camera.

I have built one by myself, even pretty good, but if I would have a possibility to buy a perfect one with tight tolerances, made from the lens manufacturer specifically for my lens, for as low as 150$, I would buy it.

The camera, lens and ES-1 or ES-2 form a rigid assembly. You don't need a tripod, and there is no camera shake, even at 1/4 or longer exposures. It takes less than a minute to set up, and no gaffer tape is needed in the process.

As long as the sensor resolution is enough to record the smallest details of the film, this is not the sensor resolution that is an issue regarding dust. What matters is the size of the dust specs compare to the smallest details of the film. If the sensor resolution is much higher than the film resolution, you will not enlarge the digital copy at 100% anyway... Practically, it is better to downsample the copy so that the digital resolution matches the film resolution.

With a strong cross light, you can see particles as small as 5 microns. Most particles come off with a conductive (graphene) brush. I have not found it necessary to use canned "air.". Even so, I have an air brush compressor to do the job.

Dust and its IR-based auto-removal (ICE, or the Vuescan method) are a big deal for film scanning; unless you have a clean humid room, dust bunnies will always be ES-attracted your just-cleaned film :-)

@rfsIII. But dust isn't the only issue, scratched emulsion or other film damage can mostly (depending upon how bad it is) be removed during the scan as well. When I look at a straight scan from my Minolta film scanner, Dimage Scan Elite II, about 2001 vintage and just 2820 dpi, I am amazed at just how much detritus the scan reveals at 100% on screen. I am really impressed with just how useful the dust, scratch and grain reducer tools are. I can tell you now, simply looking at the slide/neg you won't see any of these defects with the naked eye.

So no matter how easy the initial capture may be with the Nikon, if it can't address all of the issues that those who regularly scan via scanners know only too well, there is still going to be a fair amount of time spent in PP.