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A modern 35mm film scanner for home

(www.soke.engineering)
251 points QiuChuck | 9 comments | 11 Nov 25 19:48 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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sbszllr ◴[11 Nov 25 20:35 UTC] No.45892481[source]▶
As someone who has a mirrorless scanning setup for my film, and pondered getting a dedicated scanner... the price of this is quite steep given how inflexible of a tool it is.

A second hand DSLR setup is going to be roughly the same price or less. I'm also not sure what kind of workflow improvements it actually offers. If you want fancy and experimental, filmomat has arguably a more interesting but pricier offering.

But naysaying aside, I hope they manage to find a niche that allows them to survive as a company, and keep the analog photography revival alive.

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deinonychus ◴[11 Nov 25 20:55 UTC] No.45892703[source]▶
I almost missed the price. Wow you're right that's a lot! And the final retail price is 1599 euros. I have a good Plustek that cost me $300 or $400. Automated transport and unantiquated software sounds nice, but those features are not worth an extra $600-1,100 to me.

Am I missing something or is this supposed to be in another tier of image quality?

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1. ZeWaka ◴[11 Nov 25 21:07 UTC] No.45892857[source]▶
It's actually a lower DPI and no IR sensor.
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2. gorgoiler ◴[11 Nov 25 21:57 UTC] No.45893445[source]▶
Honestly I feel like anything beyond 5 megapixels per frame is pushing beyond reasonable expectations with 35mm. This is certainly the case with any kind of available light or high speed work in silver-halide process, the area where I figure most people are going to be using this device. Lab-work in C41 and E6 is definitely possible at home but must account for single digit percentage of the home analogue market.
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3. gsich ◴[11 Nov 25 22:10 UTC] No.45893584[source]▶
Never. 20 Mp if you want "lossless".
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4. gorgoiler ◴[11 Nov 25 22:16 UTC] No.45893634{3}[source]▶
I think I see what you mean. It’s the difference between having an image showing the shape and texture of each film grain, and an image which looks like what I saw in the camera and which isn’t going to be any sharper. The former has value but the latter was always good enough for me and, surprisingly, rather low in resolution compared to subsequent DSLRs and mirrorless cameras I bought in the 2010s.

Ilford Delta 400 pushed two stops to 1600 ASA in a 1970s Asahi Pentax SP1000 was always going to produce… artistic results, requiring as much imagination as acuity to appreciate the subject. (Read: see past the blur.)

5. ZeWaka ◴[11 Nov 25 22:19 UTC] No.45893657[source]▶
You are right in that a lot of advertised DPI over 5MP is interpolated and not actual sensor DPI.
6. jaffa2 ◴[12 Nov 25 02:13 UTC] No.45895651[source]▶
I digitise a lot of 35mm.

A 36Mp camera is not enough to best a 4000ppi scanner. You need about 60-70 mp to resolve the detail of a scan to similar level .

Even a layman can see the difference at 100%

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7. turnsout ◴[12 Nov 25 03:51 UTC] No.45896214{3}[source]▶
A 4000 DPI scan of 135 gives you 21 megapixels. So 36MP with a good lens will easily resolve just as much detail. There is not 60-70MP of information in a 4000 DPI scan, period.

For most films, anything beyond 4000 DPI is just going to help resolve the grain particles or dye cloud shapes. You have to be shooting slow fine grained BW with the best lenses to need more.

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8. buccal ◴[12 Nov 25 07:15 UTC] No.45897222{4}[source]▶
For me real grain looks much better than digital smoothness. That is important for big prints.
9. hilbert42 ◴[12 Nov 25 10:53 UTC] No.45898650[source]▶
"…beyond 5 megapixels per frame is pushing beyond reasonable expectations with 35mm."

Well, as I mentioned elsewhere old fashioned Kodachrome resolves ~100 lines/mm and some newer color emulsion are considerably higher, and of course B&W ones have even higher resolutions.

Given that a 35mm frame is 36x24mm even Kodachrome achieves 8.64 megapixels. OK, let's allow for an overgenerous Kell factor of say 0.8, this figure will drop to ~6.9 megapixels. Given the ready availability of emulsions with higher resolutions, especially the best B&W ones then a figure well in excess of 5 megapixels is relizable in practice.

Of course, that doesn't take into account the image chain as a whole, lenses, displays, compression, etc. which would reduce the effective resolution. That said, these days the typical image chain can easily achieve much higher pixel throughput than 5 megapixels before bandwidth limiting so the effective Kell derating factor could easily be kept quite small.