Question
A flickr discussion, pointed in an answer to another question, got me excited in scanning old slides & negatives with a tripod, lightbox, macro lens and a DSLR (or with a similar set).
I have rather minimal experience in scanning with a flatbed scanner and non-existent experience with slide or negative scanner. So: what would be missed from a dedicated scanner when digitizing with a DSLR (if one already has the sufficient gear)? What generally are the major drawbacks? Or will a DSLR excel in some aspects?
Resolution is something that my Canon 450D probably wouldn't match to the 4000+ dpi that scanners offer, but that's probably something I could cope with (or is it?).
I'm aware of the possible alternatives mentioned in older questions, but I don't consider them as interesting right now.
To summarize strengths of a scanner so far:
- ICE & Multi-Scan
- IR-based ICE: definitely will be missed. Can't be easily DIY-duplicated — though this just means more time will be spent on the post-processing.
- Multi-Scan: doable with image stacking
- Slide holder & even lighting
- Slide holder: DIY-doable.
- Even lighting: might be hard to set up, but doable.
- Time
- More human intervention is needed.
- Setup time is longer and scan time per slide is probably shorter with a DSLR, but scanning won't be a background activity.
Is this it? Are there any other technical aspects that are commonplace among scanners, but hard or nearly impossible to MacGyverize (like IR-based ICE) for a DSLR? I would suspect there is, as the scanning techniques are drastically different — then again, I don't have much scanning experience with a scanner. Is there any impact on the image quality? Would a scanner capture some details that a DSLR couldn't? Or the other way around?
I'm offering a cake for some more details.
I found some good info on comparing the density & dynamic ranges on ScanDig and scantips.com. I have a hunch that in terms of the density range, devices would be ranked:
flatbed scanner < DSLR < negative scanner < drum scanner. Unfortunately, I don't currently have deep enough understanding to form an answer based on those articles — and my hunch may as well be incorrect.
Do the negative/drum scanners excel my DSLR, that has a dynamic range of 10.8 EVs? (And would my DSLR actually be better than a flatbed scanner when scanning negatives/slides (= transparent material)?)
Answer
I'm the originator of the flickr discussion, and I'm flattered that it's thought to be worth reviving here :-) I went through the process mainly for archiving purposes. The fear of losing these personal negatives was much more important to me than technical quality. Whatever I did, it had to be fast so that I could do every single one of my negatives. I would say that if you have the space to leave the tripod and camera set up for a day or more, it's a decent solution for large numbers of 35mm colour negatives or transparencies. I'm not sure the resolution is sufficient for medium format colour or even 35mm fine-grained black and white film. I'm also not sure it's ideal if your intention is to display or print the majority of them. While the dslr raw files are flexible and high resolution, producing a decent print from one does take a fair few minutes of post processing. But as I said in the original thread, once setup it's very quick. You can rip through a 36-exp film in a couple of minutes.
tl;dr: Good for archiving large numbers of 35mm colour negs. Not ideal for fine art purposes or ongoing digitisation of new films.
Check more discussion of this question.
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