Anyone have much experience scanning in their own film negatives? I’ve played with scanning negatives and slides a couple times, evaluated SilverFast vs VueScan etc, but never really committed to it, always having lab scans as my backup/main copy.
I just sent 3 rolls of film off to Memphis Film Lab to ONLY develop and send the negatives back, not scan - so it’s time for me to brute force my way through mastering this.
The current methods I plan to compare:
- ~$200 Kodak film scanner
- Epson V600 flatbed scanner
- 45MP raw via my Canon R5 C
- Minolta DiMAGE 3200 film scanner
I might also be picking up a PrimeFilm XE film scanner locally to throw in. I also want to test the claims I’ve seen that it’s actually better to use your phone screen blasting white light instead of a dedicated LED panel (for camera scanning method) due to the phone supposedly providing “full spectrum light” instead of just white, which… I find dubious, but worth investigating.
I have the frames and LED panel for camera scanning, but I haven’t acquired a good mounting thing yet for the perfect right angle.
I will be testing both what produces the best quality (which is most likely the camera scanning) but also what will provide the best value of quality for effort, diminishing returns, etc.
Many good things have been said about these old film scanners, but I’m not quite sure if I expect them to hold up.