All (and especially Paul T.),

Can anyone tell me about film scanners and/or point me to some good links for such items? Paul has what I think are EXCEPTIONALLY nice pics on his website (http://polymer.bu.edu/paul/konica/ and follow the links if you haven't already seen 'em)! And I suspect using a film scanner (as mentioned in a recent posting and on his site) makes a Noticible Difference in posting computer-readable digitzed pics.

BTW, I also just got back my first couple of rolls of film I shot with an FT-1 and some of the Hexanon Lenses I've picked up. I was really pleased with the results, but PARTICULARLY pleased with the results fom the 135mm 3.2 Portrait Lens. That is one Very Nice Lens!

-- tm Thawing out in COS, CO

-- Anonymous, April 03, 2001

Answers

reply to: Tell me about ... film scanners...

dear tom. thanks for your kind words. however, i fear that my lack of specifity on some of my picture pages may have led you to believe that all of these were film-based pictures that were then scanned in. i am sorry to tell you that many of my daughter's photo galleries are from a cheapo fixed lens digital camera (an agfa e-photo 780 to be exact). even though the resolution is quite low (the max resolution of this camera is well under a megapixel), they "look good" at the resolution they are displayed on (a little over 200x300). even though my slides have much higher resolution and my film scanner has 8 million pixel reolution, it's not trivial to get perfect scans. i have had this scanner for a few months now and i am still learning. the first mistake i made was to not clean the slides adequately. consequently, i have compressed air now and an 15 dollar anti-static brush. BIG DIFFERENCE. then i read some techniques for improving image quality (sharpen mask, etc) and now i am moving in the right direction. if you want to learn more about how to scan (i still haven't fully digested the info yet), you should check out:

Jeff Cunningham's site... he uses a minolta dimage scan dual (same as mine, certainly not high end, roughly 400 USD scanner). he offers some nice tips on scanning and image manipulation:

http://24.0.232.44/cunningham/sitemap.html

also, chris breeze's site has a ton of pictures (all taken with SLR's) and some tips on scanning:

http://www.breezesys.f9.co.uk/

also, photo.net will have lots of info/reviews on scanners. the bottom line seems to be that for web publishing, there's no need to get a high-end film scanner, since you are publishing at a low resolution. i hope this helps.

paul.

for web resolution (displaying at roughtly 100x200), the pictures from the digital camera are sharper than

-- Anonymous, April 04, 2001

Film scanners... the other extreme

Tom & Paul...

I've been toying with the idea of converting to a digital darkroom (especially since my old darkroom has no place to live, except in cardboard boxes)... recently read about the new Super Coolscan Nikon going to be offering... 4000 dpi multi-format (APS, 35mm & medium format)... let's see, a single high res file from 35mm format will be about 55MB and the same from a 6x9 will be 760MB!!

Gee, I guess I'd better upgrade my computer with a RAID array of hard disks for storage and throw in another gigabyte of RAM before I try to open one of those! Anticipated price on the scanner is $3000-4000. (Polaroid already has a 4000dpi/35mm film scanner on the market for around $1350.)

Guess I'd better come back down to earth... or sell the car & house to afford more camera equip. AND the digital darkroom!

Alan Myers San Jose, Calif.

-- Anonymous, April 04, 2001

digital darkrooms

ahh... certainly the other extreme alan.

my approach to digital has been to use it strictly for publishing on the web. for this application, of course, one doesn't need a 4000dpi scanner. so, for me, a not high-end film scanner was the way to go.

the problem i have with going the other extreme is that the technology advances so quickly and you end up in this never- ending battle to keep up with it. this is why i was so attracted to the konica's in the first place. in our world, we can have a 35mm SLR that captures photographs as good as modern SLRs and lenses. you suffer a little with lack of autofocus and all the extras, but the core tool is solid.

with digital this isn't the case. at this point, we're not talking about just the extras changing. instead, the core tool is what is changing. resolution gets better and better, etc. so, for me, i'm going to wait a bit until the technolgy levels off a bit.

what do the rest of you think?

paul.

-- Anonymous, April 05, 2001

Digital Darkrooms

As with all computers, next year's generation will be twice as good at half the price. I would be happy if Konica would see fit to build a 4-6 megapixel digital that would use the K\AR mount lens. Nikon and Canon have done this for their customers. Probably a better chance to just get them to build a sucessor to the FT-1.

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2001