![]() ![]() There’s usually some automatically programmed thing you have to turn off, some slider you have to push back every time to get to the one setting that really should have been there from the start. Scanners come with a variety of different programs Epson flatbeds come with Epson Scan, Plustek scanners come with Silverfast, and whoever objects to either of these programs inevitably ends up buying VueScan.Īll three of these programs have their own weaknesses, but the main thing is that these programs don’t usually offer a simple, streamlined way to provide a pure scan of a negative. This could all be avoided if manufacturers cut the crap and actually reported the true maximum dpi of their scanners and officially agreed upon best practices for scanning for different films and film formats.Īnother confusing thing about scanners is that the programs used to scan are often poorly designed. What’s worse is that nobody can seem to agree on what resolution you should scan at because everybody has different scanners and is scanning different types of film and some scanners scan really slowly at 6400 and some people need to drop their kids off at soccer practice so they’re going to scan at 3200 because it’s faster and… Christ what a mess. Perhaps this is an attempt to make up for the fact that flatbed scanners generally can’t resolve film grain (an essential quality to any film scanner), but it’s a terrible solution.īecause those companies can’t be trusted to report their product’s actual capabilities, forum warriors on the internet often recommend scanning negatives at the scanner’s “true” dpi, which is some depressing number like 6400 or 3200, a full half or three-quarters less the original reported dpi. ![]() Certain popular flatbed scanners which boast a max 12800 dpi only really get to that number through interpolation, which artificially creates extra pixels to increase the perceived resolution of an image, kind of like cutting a hard drug with a cheaper, even deadlier drug to lower prices. To start, the raw capability of scanners are often wildly overstated by the manufacturers. What we have instead is a field that is mired in strange unofficial rules that are developed in response to the failings of scanners, rules that nobody can seem to agree upon. ![]() And yet it’s rare to find a scanner or a scanning software that does any of those things today. And just for comfort’s sake, these programs and scanners should be straightforward to use and designed with clarity in mind. If changes need to be made, the software should be flexible enough for users to make adjustments and simple enough for the average photographer to understand. It should be handled automatically by both the scanner and the scanning software, with room for minimal adjustment by the scanner. In an ideal world, scanning should be easy. It’s Unnecessarily Confusing (and the Software is Terrible) And at the end of the day, I’d much rather be out shooting a classic film camera than watching an Epson V550 gurgle its way through half a roll of film. It’s easy to find something enjoyable at every single stage of making an image on film, but conspicuously difficult to find pleasure in scanning. It’s an admittedly surface-level argument, but I think it’s a good place to start my complaining. Even the cream-of-the-crop Noritsu LS-600 is about as visually interesting as a late ’90s Toyota Camry, an equally effective but bland machine. They’re boxy, monochrome, and just plain boring. Scanners themselves are hardly attractive devices. It’s about as interesting as filing taxes or accounting, which is probably why most of us prefer to pay somebody else do it. Scanners simply convert a photographic negative (or positive) into a digital file. Scanning, on the other hand, is not cool. And when you print, you’re playing God and throwing light through a cool looking enlarger to recreate a moment of time on paper. When you develop film, you’re mixing up chemicals like a mad scientist and using all manner of beakers and tanks to make an image magically appear. When you take a picture, you’re freezing time with a camera, a device that is at once a feat of engineering and a symbol of history. Think about it every other step of the photographic process is pretty cool, or at least interesting. Scanning film is the least interesting step in the film photography flow. I’ve got five talking points to prove it, too. It’s not “mildly uncomfortable,” or just “an annoying step of the process,” or even a “necessary evil.” It straight up f**king sucks, and we all know it. ![]()
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