Inherited my father's old slides & negatives - Questions about usage.

[ABC]

Hello! My mother recently gave me all of my father's slides and negatives and I was wondering if that is something that Alamy would be interested in. His work is beautiful and could have historical value ? He went to the Citadel in the 1940's and there are a lot of images of the cadets and army life.

If so, is there a certain way to submit these type of images? Or do I just do them like my normal submissions? & do I need to do anything special because I did not take the images, my father, who is deceased, is the creator. 

Lastly, does anyone have a good suggestion for a scanner for film and slides that will create high resolution images? 

Thank you so much for your help and suggestions. 

[Cal]

Here is the thread 

Consensus seems to be that DSLR scanning with a macro lens is the way to go - it's faster than flatbed scanning and usually gives superior quality if set up right. You'll only get better either by drum scans or using something like a Nikon Coolscan 5000, both of which are out of reach of regular people.

 

For dealing with negs you can either invert the curves manually in Lightroom or use something like Negative Lab Pro. NLP is quicker and will probably do a far better job, but it does cost in the region of £100. I use the essential film holder, a kaiser lightpad and the aforementioned camera setup. In a dark room with all the light (except that backlighting the film) blocked off you will be able to create archival quality scans. Dust spotting will drive you insane, but it's easier to do on film as all the dust spots are in focus, unlike on a DSLR where they aren't so you can often miss them.

 

Good luck, it's a rabbit hole.

 

 

[spacecadet]

There is an archival route which bypasses QC but you need to apply for it under "additional revenue" on your dashboard. You will need to host a sample of the images and include the link in your application.

There's an extensive thread here about using your camera and a macro setup to scan film- you can search for it.

[Harry Harrison]

If you want to say what camera you use then I'm sure that you might get some recommendations for suitable lenses, not all macro lenses, even good ones, are good for flat field 1:1 copying. Cal's system is just the job and can be adapted for different formats if needs be, I use something similar. However the simplest way in is to go for something like the Nikon ES-1 (35mm slides only) or the ES-2 (35mm slides or negative strips) because this means that you don't need a copy stand (though a tripod can be used) and neither do you have to worry about precise alignment between lens and slide, which is crucial.

 

Since that thread the another option has come on the scene, basically a copy of the ES-2, it's often branded JJC though sometimes unbranded, and they have two offerings, one that includes a small LED. I'd probably prefer to choose my own LED panel but I've seen good reports of the kit in general (well actually one good report but no negative ones) and it comes with more adapters than the official ES-2 kit to work for both Canon & Nikon lenses. Note that the included extension tubes are fine for full frame but for APS-C you'll have to increase the distance between the film and the lens somewhat.

 

https://www.jjc.cc/index/goods/index.html?id=102

 

Edit:

Quite a detailed thread regarding the JJC option on a Fuji with both the XF 80mm and also the Laowa 65mm, looks like it works out of the box.

 

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66914022

Edited March 21, 2023 by Harry Harrison

[Pav]

On 18/03/2023 at 01:44, ABC said:

Thank you so much for your help and suggestions. 

Hi ABC,

 

Almost all my images are slides from my grandpa, archeologist. I applied for reportage/archival usage some years ago (in Additional revenue options). I had to send some examples to verify content, Alamy liked the category. Now, because of the nature of the media - there is no QC on my submissions.

That was also a challenge for me - learning my scanner, software and finally - how to deal with complex restoration of emulsion (have 60y old ones). Now I regret buying an affordable scanning machine (still good), investing a bit more in the hardware would save me a lot of post-processing and headaches as I started to notice how they sell.

 

Pav

[Harry Harrison]

And just today Valoi are launching an IndieGogo fund raiser for their 'easy35' which on the face of it combines the best bits from the Nikon and JCC offerings, it includes a high CRI LED light source.

 

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/valoi-easy35-home-scanning-made-easy#/

 

Valoi is pretty well-regarded in this field with their well constructed holders etc.

 

https://www.valoi.co/products

 

 

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said:

And just today Valoi are launching an IndieGogo fund raiser for their 'easy35' which on the face of it combines the best bits from the Nikon and JCC offerings, it includes a high CRI LED light source.

 

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/valoi-easy35-home-scanning-made-easy#/

 

Valoi is pretty well-regarded in this field with their well constructed holders etc.

 

https://www.valoi.co/products

That looks very useful.

 

Mark

[Pav]

10 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

And just today Valoi are launching an IndieGogo fund raiser for their 'easy35' which on the face of it combines the best bits from the Nikon and JCC offerings, it includes a high CRI LED light source.

 

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/valoi-easy35-home-scanning-made-easy#/

 

Valoi is pretty well-regarded in this field with their well constructed holders etc.

 

https://www.valoi.co/products

 

 

Hi Harry,

 

I would say - stop dreaming and go for normal solutions. This in not the first/last novelty for the popular market, not proved to be useful when medium is difficult/old.

There are still good scanners in production with D factor above 3.5, 10k dpi are below 1k euros/pounds (about 700 on Christmas sales, new).

 

This one is D=4.2 (effectively about 3.7), 10k dpi:

https://reflecta.de/en/computer-required/35-reflecta-rps-10m-film-scanner-.html

 

You can recover deep shadows easily, also works in 16 bits.

 

Pav

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, Pav said:

I would say - stop dreaming and go for normal solutions. This in not the first/last novelty for the popular market, not proved to be useful when medium is difficult/old.

Actually I think that will be a good product and may in fact be ideal for the OP if they are prepared to wait for it, assuming that they only have 35mm to consider, I have no need for it so I won't be signing up for it. Using a camera is just so much quicker than any film scanner and with just a 24MP camera you're getting 4000 ppi RAW files with a high dynamic range that you can very easily work on in Lightroom. There is a learning curve though. Since we're all contributors on here we've probably already got a suitable camera, so add a Macro lens like a 55mm Micro-Nikkor, a light panel and one of these 'ES-2' style adapters then it's actually a relatively cheap, future-proof  and indeed easy way to get through a load of slides quickly.

 

Certainly there still seems to be a demand for film scanners though it must be waning, and I can understand that completely if they are looking to a market where the buyer perhaps doesn't even have a decent camera, or any knowledge of photography. I wouldn't personally consider buying a film scanner now though and that Reflecta is suspiciously cheap when compared with the equivalent cost of the best film scanners from the likes of Nikon and Minolta back in the day. They over claim their actual optical resolution by a large factor as well, it's actually measured at 4300 ppi when confronted with an optical test target. I suppose that's just marketing, Epson have got away with it with their flatbeds for years. Still 4300 ppi is a very good result, probably as much as you can get from a decent slide, let alone one that hasn't aged well, and far more than is necessary for Alamy.

 

There is still a place for film scanners obviously and you do get an IR channel for dust & scratches removal and that may be a very major consideration with old slides. Also the colour negative conversion in the software is probably easier to deal with than NLP, so certainly worth considering.

 

Edit:

I can see that the built in batch processing for an uncut film could be handy if you do your own processing, particularly if you can run it through quickly at low resolution. Digital contact sheets are a problem.

Edited March 22, 2023 by Harry Harrison

[Cal]

10 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

They over claim their actual optical resolution by a large factor as well, it's actually measured at 4300 ppi when confronted with an optical test target. I suppose that's just marketing,

 

Yeah, anything south of 5 grand isn't doing 10,000 DPI, even the Nikon Coolscan devices don't do that. They don't have the optical resolution.

 

That device you linked to looks useful - it solves the common problems with DSLR scanning and the specs on the light source look good too.

 

Film is going through one heck of a resurgence right now which is why I think devices like these are coming onto the market.

[wiskerke]

3 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Also the colour negative conversion in the software is probably easier to deal with than NLP, so certainly worth considering.

 

Not sure if it is any easier, but Vuescan (Hamrick.com) works on imported tif files also.

 

wim

[Harry Harrison]

41 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

Not sure if it is any easier, but Vuescan (Hamrick.com) works on imported tif files also.

I haven't tried very hard converting colour negatives with Vuescan, I find the interface pretty minimalistic, spidery histograms etc., I must try harder I suppose.

 

I do seem to get good results with NLP fairly easily but I haven't gone in to it very deeply. I can get a half-decent result in Photoshop but NLP is much easier than doing that. He (Nate Johnson) is very committed to improving it and has a new 'Version 3' coming out soon. Actually as with Ed Hamrick he seems to be a one-man band. Many on the NLP forum would like to see a solution that was independent of Lightroom and the Adobe subscription in particular but i think that is very unlikely to happen, he says as much. He does seem to have an extraordinary knowledge of colour technology. I can't help but be influenced by my memories of RA4 colour printing and how the various films were meant to look but his main new young customer base really just look to the results that they've been getting from digital mini-lab scans and so he purposefully has Noritsu and Frontier settings for that reason.

Edited March 22, 2023 by Harry Harrison

[wiskerke]

1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said:

I haven't tried very hard converting colour negatives with Vuescan, I find the interface pretty minimalistic, spidery histograms etc., I must try harder I suppose.

 

I do seem to get good results with NLP fairly easily but I haven't gone in to it very deeply. I can get a half-decent result in Photoshop but NLP is much easier than doing that. He (Nate Johnson) is very committed to improving it and has a new 'Version 3' coming out soon. Actually as with Ed Hamrick he seems to be a one-man band. Many on the NLP forum would like to see a solution that was independent of Lightroom and the Adobe subscription in particular but i think that is very unlikely to happen, he says as much. He does seem to have an extraordinary knowledge of colour technology. I can't help but be influenced by my memories of RA4 colour printing and how the various films were meant to look but his main new young customer base really just look to the results that they've been getting from digital mini-lab scans and so he purposefully has Noritsu and Frontier settings for that reason.

Yes I've noticed. Only had the test version of NLP though. My experience with Vuescan goes way way back, but at that time we were glad anything actually worked. Later with the Coolscan I only scanned slide film.

 

wim

[Allan Bell]

20 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

And just today Valoi are launching an IndieGogo fund raiser for their 'easy35' which on the face of it combines the best bits from the Nikon and JCC offerings, it includes a high CRI LED light source.

 

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/valoi-easy35-home-scanning-made-easy#/

 

Valoi is pretty well-regarded in this field with their well constructed holders etc.

 

https://www.valoi.co/products

 

 

 

I noticed that they are putting the film through shiny side to the lens. Would it not be better to have the emulsion side to the lens and not shooting through the film base.

 

Yes I know the images would have to be flipped during processing but that would not take up much time if it were done in bulk using synch.

 

Allan

 

[spacecadet]

56 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

 

I noticed that they are putting the film through shiny side to the lens. Would it not be better to have the emulsion side to the lens and not shooting through the film base.

 

Yes I know the images would have to be flipped during processing but that would not take up much time if it were done in bulk using synch.

 

Allan

 

Er, you're still shooting through the base whichever way up it is, but I wonder what makes you think it would help.

[Harry Harrison]

56 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

I noticed that they are putting the film through shiny side to the lens. Would it not be better to have the emulsion side to the lens and not shooting through the film base.

 

Yes, normal practice would be for the emulsion to face the camera but to be honest testing with Vlad's Test Target I can't see a difference so it is pretty unlikely to show up with an actual slide. Film curvature with a mounted slide might be more significant but they are using negatives in the clip.

[Harry Harrison]

3 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Er, you're still shooting through the base whichever way up it is, but I wonder what makes y

I think the theory goes that any scratches or irregularities in the film base would be between the lens and the image formed on the negative rather than between the light source and the image. Probably six of one and half a dozen of the other.

[Allan Bell]

2 hours ago, spacecadet said:

Er, you're still shooting through the base whichever way up it is, but I wonder what makes you think it would help.

 

Shooting/ focusing directly on the image in the emulsion instead of shooting through the base layer might give a better result in the digitised image.

 

Allan

 

[wiskerke]

2 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

Shooting/ focusing directly on the image in the emulsion instead of shooting through the base layer might give a better result in the digitised image.

 

Allan

 

In a film scanner the emulsion faces the sensor.

In my camera setup, the emulsion also faces the camera sensor.

 

wim

[Stephen Dwyer]

Hi Folks, On the subject of scanned negatives, I have had a bunch of old colour and monochrome medium format negs professionally scanned. Each image is a Tiff and ranges upwards of 35mb in size. All has gone well so far but just a couple of the monochrome ones appear completely black when i go to import them into Lightroom Classic. They open fine in Photoshop so i know the scan is ok. Any thoughts on how to get around this?

Edited March 24, 2023 by Stephen Dwyer
typo

[Flo Smith]

On 21/03/2023 at 20:35, Harry Harrison said:

And just today Valoi are launching an IndieGogo fund raiser for their 'easy35' which on the face of it combines the best bits from the Nikon and JCC offerings, it includes a high CRI LED light source.

 

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/valoi-easy35-home-scanning-made-easy#/

 

Valoi is pretty well-regarded in this field with their well constructed holders etc.

 

https://www.valoi.co/products

 

 

Hello Harry, these scanning kits look good, much less faff than an Epson flatbed. Would any or all of them work on a Fuji X-E1 with a 16-50 lens, it has a macro setting too?

Also, I presume you can use the camera in RAW mode? The Nikon one looked like it's inbuilt camera software produces just Jpegs?

[Harry Harrison]

1 minute ago, Flo Smith said:

Hello Harry, these scanning kits look good, much less faff than an Epson flatbed. Would any or all of them work on a Fuji X-E1 with a 16-50 lens, it has a macro setting too?

Also, I presume you can use the camera in RAW mode? The Nikon one looked like it's inbuilt camera software produces just Jpegs?

Hello Flo, the Nikon ES-2 was pretty pioneering but their built-in software did indeed just create jpegs. Nothing to stop anyone using it to shoot RAW though, which of course they should and NLP is probably the way to go for colour negative so long as you use Lightroom. Personally I wouldn't have very high expectations of a 16-50 Macro Zoom though I imagine it could be made to fit. Better to get a 55mm Micro-Nikkor f2.8 really

 

[Flo Smith]

38 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Hello Flo, the Nikon ES-2 was pretty pioneering but their built-in software did indeed just create jpegs. Nothing to stop anyone using it to shoot RAW though, which of course they should and NLP is probably the way to go for colour negative so long as you use Lightroom. Personally I wouldn't have very high expectations of a 16-50 Macro Zoom though I imagine it could be made to fit. Better to get a 55mm Micro-Nikkor f2.8 really

 

Thank you for that. I don't use Lightroom, just CS6 & Bridge, I find it simpler. Is that Mirco Nikkor a manual focus/is it easy to use a manual lens on these scanners? Was thinking of changing my D700 for a lighter D750, then could use that lens more easily.

[Harry Harrison]

8 minutes ago, Flo Smith said:

Is that Mirco Nikkor a manual focus

Yes, absolutely, one of Valoi's recommended lenses in fact, you have to pay a lot to get equivalent quality from a modern AF lens for this application.

 

60% of their total raised with 28 days to go, nice going.

[Flo Smith]

52 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Yes, absolutely, one of Valoi's recommended lenses in fact, you have to pay a lot to get equivalent quality from a modern AF lens for this application.

 

60% of their total raised with 28 days to go, nice going.

Great, love manual focus lenses, old school. Merci B

[marc]

Just picked up on this thread. The Valoi looks like a good solution. I have a Sony 90mm macro lens used with full frame Sony A7 series.  Would the  Valoi system work with this lens?  Can't see any reason why it would not, but thought I would check from wise heads in here.     I don't shoot film but would like to scan my old 35mm negs and slides to good quality. 

Edited April 8, 2023 by marc