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A modern 35mm film scanner for home

(www.soke.engineering)
251 points QiuChuck | 4 comments | 11 Nov 25 19:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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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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KaiserPro ◴[11 Nov 25 22:14 UTC] No.45893614[source]▶
I bought some time on a hasselblad medium format scanner (took fucking ages)

The results are good, as you'd expect. However can I tell the difference between that and me putting the negatives on a decent softbox and using a fancy camera to take a picture? yes, but not by much.

I think the main issue is film registration, that is getting the film to be flat and "co-planar" to the lens so the whole frame is sharp.

My negatives are slightly warped, so they really need a frame to make sure they are perfectly flat. But for instagram, they are close enough.

However scanning more than a few pictures is a massive pain in the arse. If I was scanning film regularly, then this is what I'd want, and its cheaper than the competition.

Assuming that its actually any good, I haven't seen any scans yet.

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1. atomicthumbs ◴[12 Nov 25 01:45 UTC] No.45895453[source]▶
It'd be nice if they were able to adapt the Hasselblad/Imacon "virtual drum" concept and curve the film underneath the sensor for side-to-side flatness. I wonder if that's feasible with a 2D sensor.
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2. buildbot ◴[12 Nov 25 04:28 UTC] No.45896383[source]▶
You could, but it probably makes more sense to do focus stacking in that case
3. KaiserPro ◴[12 Nov 25 09:22 UTC] No.45898078[source]▶
Thats a good question. I wonder if the "virtual drum" was there to get over film holding issues (as in it physically bends the film) or that its a line scanner

personally I think that technology has come on enough to move on from the imacon/hasselblad: https://emulsive.org/articles/opinion/scanning-film-the-20k-...

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4. leejo ◴[12 Nov 25 12:51 UTC] No.45899521[source]▶
> Thats a good question. I wonder if the "virtual drum" was there to get over film holding issues (as in it physically bends the film) or that its a line scanner

Both.

> personally I think that technology has come on enough to move on from the imacon/hasselblad: https://emulsive.org/articles/opinion/scanning-film-the-20k-...

It's not - the issue that still remains is keeping the film flat, and this is especially problematic with smaller formats. With current solutions you can get the resolution but not the flatness, or you sacrifice something to get the flatness (e.g. ANR glass holders). It's the old glass vs glassless carrier debate, applied to a modern workflow.

I repeat myself: focus, DPI / resolution, dynamic range - these are the solved problems. In fact, modern medium format digital cameras are superior on all these factor. Keeping the film flat, however? Only drum scans and the Imacon "Flextight" solution do this well.

Of course, it depends on what you plan to do with the scans and for 99% of people the solution in the link above is more than good enough.

I've written about this previously https://leejo.github.io/tags/scanning/ # I'm going to add the fourth, and hopefully final, part in a couple of months time.