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5 Feb 2021 - Podcast #729 - (21:34)
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In a few recent programs that have dealt with photo applications, I've used some old family photos. So if you have some old family photos lying around, you might be wondering what options you have to digitize them.
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Several years ago, I sent more than 3000 35mm slides dating back to the 1950s to ScanCafe. I had carefully organized the slides, but the files were returned in no discernible order, so I had to repeat the process of organizing the images. Additionally, the images were all in lossy JPEG format, and that limited my ability to work with them. ScanCafe is located in Indianapolis, but much of the scanning is done in India, not Indianapolis. Scanning to TIFF format would have doubled the price, and that was out of my price range back then. For a considerably higher fee, ScanCafe can perform all processing in Indianapolis instead of India. That reduces the processing time from two months or more to approximately two weeks, but greatly increases the cost.
Despite some frustrations, ScanCafe is a good service — particularly for slides and prints. It's easy to examine photos and color transparencies so you can select only the best images for scanning. Negatives are not so easy, particularly considering my approach to photography. I spent a decade of a former life as a professional photographer, so I learned that more pictures are better. Most scanning services are set up to scan an entire roll of images, and then they'll allow the user to delete 10 or 20 percent of them. But I might have wanted only half a dozen images from 36-exposure roll — so I'd be paying for a lot of images that I wouldn't want even if I could cull 10 to 20 percent of the scans.
Those who had a more modest approach to photography may find that a service such as ScanCafe will work for their negatives. My father-in-law's approach to photography was to use about one 12-exposure roll per year.
If you want the easiest possible option, a service such as ScanCafe will be exactly right.
If you want to do the work yourself, you eliminate the dangers of sending priceless old negatives and prints to a distant processing site. You'll also have complete control of the process. You might use a flatbed scanner for prints. Some flatbed scanners have attachments for slides and negatives. Film scanners are available for color slides and film negatives, but these are usually limited to just 35mm film. It's also possible to set up a digital SLR camera with a macro lens and a device you can build or buy to hold the film.
If you have nothing but prints, and that will almost always be the case for antique photos, scanning them is the only option, and you might think that it would be good to scan the prints even if you have the negatives. It is an option and it's worth considering even though scanning negatives or slides will always produce better results.
Prints exist in three general categories and the print type will have a large effect on the results:
Although scanning prints is never the best option, the results may be adequate. I use VueScan because it works with all scanners and thus provides a common interface no matter which method I'm using. The image at the right shows the multi-scan option that can capture two or more images and save them as separate files.
Prints should generally be the last resort, though, for several reasons:
Although film scans will be better, the process also takes a lot longer. It's good to consider the pros and cons. If you have so many slides and negatives that scanning will take an inordinate amount of time or become so frustrating that you give up, scanning prints will be the better choice because you'll at least have images that can be shared with the family. An old saying applies here: Don't let "perfect" be the enemy of "good". Sometimes "good enough" really is good enough. So don't rule out scanning prints; just keep the shortcomings in mind.
Some flatbed scanners can also handle color slides and film negatives, with varying degrees of success. In general, a flatbed scanner is better for photographs, not film. I have what was a very expensive Epson scanner when I bought it, and Epson claims that it can be used to scan film and slides. It can, but there's a difference between scanning and scanning well.
Flatbed scanners that include the ability to scan negatives usually come with specialized devices for holding the film.
If you're looking for a scanner to handle prints, you'll find adequate models for $100 to $200. Scanners that can also do a decent job on slides and negatives will cost $1000 or more. The problem with scanning film is that the scan area is so small that extreme resolution is required, and that means the scan will be slow. Slow, in this case, may mean several minutes per image.
A decent film scanner will cost $300 to $500 and will handle 35mm film and slides. Film scanners for larger formats are hard to find and will cost well over $1000. The Braun FS120 Medium Format Film Scanner, for example, costs about $2300.
I have a Plustek OpticFilm 8200i SE film scanner that cost around $400. It can handle slides and negatives, but I use a digital camera when I have color transparencies to convert because it's much faster. Scanning a slide or a negative takes several minutes, while performing the same task with a digital camera can be done in a few seconds.
The quality of the film scans is excellent, but scanning even a dozen images from a 36-exposure roll takes the better part of an hour. I can achieve the same results in just a few minutes with a digital camera when I'm dealing with slides. The film scanner is definitely the better choice for quality when dealing with color or monochrome negatives.
Slides are easy to digitize with a camera that has a lens that can focus closely, a high-quality light source, and something to hold the slide or film strip in place.
Although many camera manufacturers make macro-focusing zoom lenses, these are usually not sufficient for this task. Instead, you'll need a true macro lens that's intended for flat-field photography. Canon makes 50mm and 100mm macro lenses, Nikon makes 60mm and 105mm macro lenses, and third-party manufacturers make macro lenses in similar lengths. My preference is for lenses in the 100mm range. Regardless of which you choose, these lenses are not inexpensive.
You'll also need something to hold the camera and film. One possibility from Novoflex involves combining the wildly overpriced Novoflex Small Focusing Rack CASTEL-MINI ($500) and Novoflex Slide Copying Device for CASTEL-MINI ($160). If you're planning to scan a lot of slides, or to perform the service professionally, that might be a good option, but you'll also need something to handle film strips for negatives and Novoflex doesn't offer one.
Photographing slides is easier because they are positive images, meaning that the colors are correct, bright is bright, and dark is dark. Negatives flip that. Bright is dark, dark is bright, colors are reversed, and color negatives have an orange cast.
Applications such as Adobe Lightroom Classic have added controls to work with negatives. The process is fairly basic in that it simply involves inverting the tone curve so that light parts of the negative are rendered dark and dark areas are rendered light. You'll also have to deal with the orange cast, and there are many YouTube videos that show how.
We'll take a look at the primary scanning options when you have print and negatives next in Short Circuits.
Three primary options are available for digitizing images when you have both prints and negatives. The two variables are time and quality. Scanning prints is fast, but the quality is less than what you'll get with a good film scanner. A dedicated film scanner offers the best quality, but film scans take more time.
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I scanned a print from the 1980s and also scanned the negative in a dedicated film scanner and a flatbed scanner that has a film-scan function. I imported the images into Lightroom classic. These are the images directly from the scanner with no modifications:
Now let's take a look at the results after some minimal processing in Lightroom.
Flatbed Film ScanThe image is a bit soft and, although there is some detail even in the whitest parts of the white fur, the values are approaching pure white. This was one of eight images in the bracket that holds the film. Scanning time for the eight images was slightly less than an hour, so around seven minutes per image.
Film Scanner ScanOverall the image is better, and the film scanner handled details in the light areas and dark areas better. Even with the lower resolution, that VueScan selected, this will be the easiest of the three images to work with. The scan time was about 90 seconds, but if I had set the scanner to the resolution I normally use, it would have been around four minutes.
Scanning film is clearly the most time-consuming option, but also the one that yields the best quality.
Flatbed Print ScanClearly, this is the worst of the three options. The image is somewhat muddy and the contrast is too high. Also note the many white specs at the right of the bear. These white specs are the result of dust that the photo processor didn't remove from the negative when making the print. Neither of the film scans has these imperfections, so some time needs to be set aside for cleaning the scan from the print. That's the main reason that I scan at 800 samples per inch. The scan time is about 20 seconds per print.
I have been using a hybrid process when I have both a print and the negative it was made from: When good enough really is good enough, I scan prints; but if the print has significant imperfections and when I believe that the image has special importance to the family, I take the extra time to scan the negative.
Have you ever wondered why that is almost always the first question tech support people ask? The answer, of course, is because doing that solves a lot of problems. But why does it work?
Has anyone who owns one or more electronic devices not fixed a problem by turning it off, unplugging it or removing the batteries — or possibly unplugging it and removing the batteries, plugging it back in, and then restarting it? This works because it clears the device's memory. That solves the problem when information in the computer's memory has been damaged. With millions of bits flying around inside these devices every second, we probably shouldn't be surprised when one of them goes awry and causes the device to become unresponsive.
Not every bit that goes away causes problems. Supervisor functions in software and firmware watch for known problems and usually can resolve them without bothering the user. So if you've ever seen an alert about an "unexpected error" and muttered to yourself "Are there any expected errors?" the answer is Yes. The system knows how to deal with most expected errors.
Perhaps you've seen the screen on a Windows 10 computer go blank for a moment and then return to normal. That's an example of an expected error. The graphics driver has crashed, but Windows 10 knew what to do about it: It shut down the driver and restarted it. Back in the days of Windows 95, you would have seen the blue screen of death, work would have been lost, and you would have needed to restart the computer. That doesn't mean the blue screen of death no longer appears, it's just happens less.
So before you call a support line for help when an electronic device seems to be malfunctioning, a good initial first-aid step involves turning it off for a minute or two and then trying again.
When Walter Isaacson was a tech journalist for the Wall Street Journal, I always enjoyed his articles. His 2014 book, "The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution", reminds me that many people were thinking 30 years ahead when I was in high school and college. Here he describes Bob Taylor at the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency:
Three things at IPTO struck Taylor.
Yes, in the old days, people had to take jobs to the computer, and that computer might be hundreds of miles away. If you have time for a massive 1500+ page book about technology that starts with Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, who were thinking 150 years ahead, expect to have a delightful time learning about the people who invented the future. The book is probably available at your library (as a paper book or an ebook) and at Amazon. Both Amazon and your library are accessible online because of what Taylor and many others were thinking about in the 1950s and 1960s.
Attention to disinfection during the covid pandemic points to techniques that may be essential when the current problem has been solved.
Most surface disinfection with sprayed or wiped-on liquid disinfectants was and is a common practice in health care and food service environments, but there are problems with liquids around electrical devices.
Ultraviolet disinfection is used, but it can be inconsistent because many of the devices are underpowered and training is often lacking for users. Newer generations of high-intensity mobile UVC systems that require trained and certified operators should make workable surface disinfection more commonplace.
Covid is airborne, and product manufacturers often make wild claims for their devices, some of which have been designed with few safety measures and no government oversight, limitations, or certification.
What's needed now is more research and development to find methods that will work safely to reduce the threats poses by viruses. If we're lucky, somebody might also find a cure for the common cold, which is also caused by a coronavirus.
In early 2001, American Express thought offering free internet access to cardholders would be a hit. "At a time when most companies are closing down their free Internet access," I wrote, "American Express has started testing a service that would give its card holders free access to the web.... [B]ut the company has chosen a name that sounds uncomfortably close to America Online — American Express Online. Unlike most free services, AmexOL.net will provide a home page that has the American Express brand displayed, but no other ads."
AltaVista had shut down its free services, as had Kmart. The plan was available in the United States and American Express had plans to expand it to Canada if it was successful here. It wasn't exactly a success. AmexOL.net no longer exists, and it never had enough success to even be mentioned in Wikipedia.