Are Professional Scans Worth It? 

I considered that scanner but just switched from Primefilm XAS to the Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED. Really nothing better than home scans mostly because you get to tweak scans to your taste.

@@cggg490 The Nikon is a huge flex. I would’ve went with the Nikon, only thing that stopped me was not being about to find a new one. Plustek still manufactures new hardware and releases newer models which is extremely rare to see 🙏🏾

Does silver fast support it now? I always heard that it got really weird colors

@@trippwilsonphoto silver fast ships with Plustek. You can use it for conversions or you can use it strictly for the raw scans…which is what I do. I often manually covert my raw scans but sometimes will use negative lab pro

@@inkaststudio yeah but what I'm asking is if it works now, I had seen a lot of people saying the 120 isn't supported by that software and that it shipped with a different software that cost really weird color casts

Yeah, I refuse to scan 35mm in the Epson. My hands are too big and the trays are too finicky for me to have the patience for 35mm, haha.

Yeah being able to scan from home while working remote is a blessing, haha. Cool to see so many people using a variety of different at home scanners!

Where have you been sending out your film? Same lab for the last handful of years?

@@metalfingersfilm The Darkroom never lets me down - and to be honest, I love their app. Super handy!

Yeah DSLR scanning seems to be very polarizing, so many people saying it's the only way to go, and many people who don't want to go that route. You think the Primefilm scanner has been worth the learning curve?

Wow, totally misread that you just switched to a Nikon. Man, what a beast. Has that been worth it so far?

yea i have the coolscan V, amazing results like the 5000 just slower. Digital ICE is the best. i have a lab in town with 24 hour turnaround so i just develop there and get to scanning. takes about 2 hours in .NEF raw format

Yeah seems to be a digital scanning setup is the move for the future. Thankfully it seems to be more accessible than ever to be using or creating a setup to use!

Seems to be the consensus choice, haha

Thanks for the suggestion Tim! I have a dedicated digital camera scanning video coming soon, maybe I'll compare all three!

Yeah when its serious work or any landscape that I'm going to print, it's going to get scanned on a Noritsu or Frontier. That being said, when I'm just scanning rolls that don't mean as much, I don't mind doing the smaller, less professional scans. I've tried digital camera scanning from a custom built copy setup, and will probably look at that venture in the future, as it seems to render the best results for the price point, in my opinion.

If you have enough digital storage, Tiffs all day.

Thank you for taking the time to reply and that's great to know 😀

I know I know, I keep hearing how much better it is. I think you've all convinced me, haha

​@@metalfingersfilmYea! It is an amazing software. And it is developed by one developer only. You support him and his support to the film community.He gives free software updates aswell.

@@metalfingersfilm it's one of the best $99 I've ever spent. Using it for 3 years straight and there's no competition.

That’s for a video coming soon ;) On a real note, I think there’s a ton of people still scanning on flatbeds, which is what this is aimed for. I’m gonna be checking out some of those other products in a video in the near future!

Also, we're talkign about a >$200 scanning setup versus over $500 with a camera scanner.

@@metalfingersfilm Well, a lot of folks are already going to have a digital camera, and there are many ways to set up a light box to get the scanning done. I also know from first hand experience that an S21 phone shooting raw makes better 35mm conversions than a v850, so even a phone is going offer advantages over traditional scanner. With property tuned height you'll get 2350ppi out of a V600, 2740ppi out of a V850 in terms of optical resolution, so ~7.5mp for the V600, and 10.5 for the 850. I have gone beyond crazy on this stuff - I scanned Adox CMS 20 with and A7R4 on composite mode. I have hands-on with the PIE XAs, V600, V850, PIE Pro 3650, Nikon Coolscan 5000 with Silver fast AI and VueScan. For software I've used *everything*. DxO, Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One, Topaz Photo AI, Luminar Neo, Silkypix and for film inversion featues in particular, NLP, Negmaster BR, Filmlabapp Desktop 3, Silverfast Negafix, and Silkypix Pro. I mention this as some of these may not be on your radar. Negmaster BR, in particular, deserves far more fanfare. Having tested literally everything the last several years as my OCD went nuts, where am I at now for 35mm and MF? PC tethered camera shooting, negatives passed through a Kinetronics staticvac directly into the Easy35 or the Blackbox120 -> Adobe Bridge -> Negmaster BR Inversion -> DxO for final tweaks. I will literally never pay subscription fees and I hate Adobe. Bridge is currently free, and enables Negmaster. I am also really impressed by Filmlabapp Desktop v3, and am close to switching. I don't want to even use the free Adobe stuff, because that could change it any moment. Negmaster, NLP, and Filmlabapp are all excellent. Silverfast, as part of the major deliverables for version 10 release, is updating the film stock profiles for Negafix. As it stands, Silverfast is unusable for inversion. Silkypix is the one I feel like nobody knows about. It as a dedicated subsystem for film inversion, where you pick the film border just like a negative lab pro and it does the inversion. It doesn't tweak things nearly as much as others, but it's a solid alternative, probably owing to the fact that it's a Japanese company. At any rate, my coffee is gone and I need to go use the snow blower now. Hopefully some of that rambling was useful. Have a good one sir.

Wow lots of great information here! Would love to know more about your phone scanning setup! Sounds like a really interesting video idea! Appreciate the comment and time! Lots of snow here in Wisconsin as well, so I feel you there!

Several reason why not the least of which is time. I really hate how snobbish film shooters are. It’s just repugnant. I develop and scan my own film but I’m not gonna judge others for using labs for both.

You can easily get more flat scans from the lab, which allow much more creative freedom, much like a raw digital image.