A Guide to Good Quality Film Scanners
What do you do if you have an archive of colour negatives or slides that you wish to transfer to your computer? You could pay someone to do it for you in which case you’d have no control over the results and you’d have a big hole in your wallet if you have a significant number of images. Another option would be to buy a flatbed scanner, fiddle around with it for a few hours whilst keeping your fingers crossed that the film is held flat, spend yet more time removing dust and scratches from the scanned image and then tell yourself that the results aren’t that bad considering the scanner was cheap.
There are many options on the market for cheap film scanners costing from as little as £30. These film scanners work by simply taking a photograph of the slide or film with essentially a very cheap digital camera inside a film scanner-shaped plastic box. The resulting images from these film scanners are usually not very high resolution so the fine details in your negatives will not be rendered with any decent clarity. Rather than defined foliage in your landscape photos or flowing hair in your portraits you may end up with smeary patches of colour. These cheap film scanners also struggle to capture the full range of brightness within the negative or slide so you’ll end up with blown out skies and blocked up shadows even when your original frames had plenty of detail. Whether you have beautifully exposed slides and richly saturated negatives or subtle gradations of black and white from your monochrome rolls these are probably not the results you really want from your film scanner.
Well there is a third way…Get yourself a dedicated film scanner. Now before you dismiss the idea out of had as too costly and specialist, take a look at the Plustek range. The three models in the OpticFilm series are proving very popular with those photographers who need digital files but still appreciate the specific rendition available from shooting film rather than digital.
PlusTek Film Scanners
To begin with Plustek offer the 7400 available at under £200. For this money you get a smart looking unit about the size of a two-slice toaster which is capable of scanning at 7200dpi, generating 10205x6803 pixel images from a 35mm film frame, equivalent to a 66 megapixel camera. The detail achieved is quite astonishing but one of the great advantages of shooting film is the way it handles contrast, specifically the highlights and shadows of an image so it’s important to have a scanner capable of making the most of this. The ability to accurately record the tonal range is dependent on the dynamic range of the scanner measured in Dmax. The Dmax of the Plustek 7400 is 3.6 which is already wider than most films and slides can capture and this can be extended to 3.9 with the use of Multi-Exposure, a function of the included SilverFast software that combines a second exposure of the film of slide from the scanner.
The scanner is very simple to use, you simple push the film strip holder to the next frame manually when the first scan is done. This avoids complicated and often unreliable mechanical systems. The scanner works by projecting light through the film and recording the image on a CCD. Unlike many alternative devices the Plustek range uses LED illumination which has two distinct advantages. Firstly LEDs are consistent so it is easy to use the inbuilt ICC profiles to ensure accurate colour reproduction and secondly they emit very little heat. This is important as higher heat source bulbs can cause the film to warp which will produce poor results and damage your negatives.
As you can see the Plustek 7400 offers a lot for the money and the results are superb. If you wish to save yourself hours of time in front of the computer removing dust and scratches then the next model up in the range is well worth considering. The 7600i SE includes an extra scanner set at angle to the film surface which uses infra-red light to detect scratches or dust on the film. This system enables the included SilverFast iSRD software to automatically retouch the images to remove the blemishes as you scan which can be an immensely time consuming process to complete manually.
The flagship product in the range is the Plustek 7600i Ai. The hardware is identical to that of the SE model but it includes the more advanced SilverFast Ai Studio software which offers enhanced imaging features useful to professional users. Both scanners include built in ICC profiles but the 7600Ai also includes an iT8 Target for the most accurate possible colour calibration to really make the most of the subtle nuances of your favourite film stock.