jack
jack

If this scanner ever dies I may have to stop shooting 35mm film.

|
Embed
Progress spinner
oyam
oyam

@jack I use HP ScanJet G4050. It’s probably not as good as your Kodak, butningotnpretty good results out of it. It came with film adapters and has a backlight. It’s a flatbed though, so little more work.

|
Embed
Progress spinner
In reply to
jack
jack

@oyam Thanks. I have a decent Epson flatbed that I use for 120 and 4x5. It works for 35mm but it's just that the Pakon makes things so much easier. Scans an entire roll at once in under 5 minutes, and it nails color negatives without any fuss. I struggle with color otherwise. The big downside is that it only works with its own (pretty terrible) software using a VM of Windows XP. Some day I'll have to give it up but I'm not looking forward to that day.

|
Embed
Progress spinner
oyam
oyam

@jack Oh I bet, having the ability to scan whole roll automagically is the best thing ever when scanning film. Most reviews for the G4050 were not great, but I never had issues with negatives as long as I use the backlight with the white screen, and place the film scanner template in properly so the calibration holes line up properly (this can destroy colors if it's off). Also I mostly used the built-in macOS scanner app or Photoshop, as opposed to the bundled application. Have you tried using VueScan? I hear good things about it as far as colors go when scanning negative film.

|
Embed
Progress spinner
jack
jack

@oyam For color film, I've waffled between Vuescan, Silverfast, and the default EpsonScan apps. All of them are terrible at scanning color negatives. Or I'm just using them wrong. I don't have a great eye for color, so that makes it harder for me. I've settled on Silverfast, which has the worst UI of any app I can think of, but it gets me closest by default.

|
Embed
Progress spinner
adamprocter
adamprocter

@jack we have had Vuescan with Nikon scanners in place at work for a while as basic scanner kits which seemed good but the main piece of kit used for this is a Hassleblad Flextight which is considered the right choice although overall use is much lower nowadays (obviously).

|
Embed
Progress spinner