Does anyone have any experience using film scanners primarily for black and white scanning of 35mm negs? I have been looking at the Canoscan FS4000 or the Nikon Coolscan 4000, but am wondering , if I'm mainly doing black and white scanning, whether I could get away with a cheaper film scanner, say the Canon 2710, which is really a previous generation - or last year! - scanner.

Also I have heard that some film scanners are not great with black and white.

Any advice, info, would be appreciated.

-- Christopher Goodwin (christopher.goodwin@gte.net), November 16, 2001

Answers

My first film scanner was a Polaroid Sprintscan 35E/S, which I used for 6 years. I replaced it with a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II in October 2000..

Since you can't use ICE or FAR (infrared dust/scratch reduction hardware/software) with traditional B&W films, if B&W is your primary goal you can do without it. The case for higher resolution than 2700-2900 ppi is primarily dependent upon how large an enlargement you want to make and what your point of satisfaction is ... I've made 13x19" prints with 2820 ppi scans that look great as far as I'm concerned. That's the limit of my printer's capabilities so I don't see much reason to go higher than what I have for resolution alone with 35mm format.

The SDII in my testing produced results very comparable to the Nikon LS2000 in dmax and resolution, virtually indistinguishable even with Agfa APX25 film. That's about as high resolution as anything your going to use for general purpos photography, barring Technical Pan.

Some film scanners are more of a pain to use with B&W than others, it's true. I've heard various reports with the Nikons and various versions of their software, same for some of the HP scanners, which would lead me away from them. The Nikon LS2000 light path seemed to increase contrast and highlight dust and scratches; the Polaroid and Minolta are more like using a diffusion head on your enlarger. The Minolta works best with negs that are just a hair thinner than average, its light source is not all that strong and has difficulty punching through very dense negatives.

The Canon FS4000 I haven't heard much about regards B&W, but some people dislike the Canon software.

I use the Minolta with both its supplied software and with VueScan. The Minolta software is far easier to use for either B& W or color, but particularly for B&W; however, VueScan is more reliable with either. VueScan seems to make the image grainier, it's probably an exposure setting issue which I haven't quite figured out yet, then again VueScan's focusing algorithm is more repeatably accurate.

The Canon FS2710 is an older generation unit but it has a good reputation. I moved to the SDII because of the USB connection and improves dmax, higher resolution over the Polaroid. It can also deliver full 16bit/channel scan data, which the FS2710 cannot to the best of my knowledge.

Hope that helps. You can email me for more info. You might poke in my website to see some online renderings, but they do not reflect the quality of the prints possible with this scanner and good use of Photoshop... http:// www.bayarea.net/~ramarren/

-- Godfrey (ramarren@bayarea.net), November 16, 2001.

Actually, B&W negs seem to be more of a problem for many scanners than color. Based on my limited experience (Nikon LS-1000 and Epson Expression 800 Pro), I'd suggest looking at both D-Max and resolution specs. Get as high a D-Max and as much resolution as your budget allows. The tonality range of B&W negs will be a challenge for most less-expensive scanners, with shadow detail being lost on most of them. I'm not familiar with the Canon scanner, but have heard good things about the Nikon Coolscan 4000. The Minolta Dimage also gets good marks, from what I've heard. (I went with the Epson route because I also do medium and large format.)

After picking one that looks to be a good balance between features and cost, post questions about it on some of the various photography forums, and talk to current or previous owners about their experience with B&W negs. I've had the best luck scanning as color positives, and then inverting and adjusting color (desaturating or using curves) in Photoshop to eliminate the sepia tone that color mode imparts. In most cases, you'll want to leave them as RGB images, rather than grayscale - you'll get a better palette of tones that way.

Have fun!

-- Ralph

-- Ralph Barker (rbarker@pacbell.net), November 16, 2001.

IMHO, one of the best scanners for B&W is Polaroid Sprintscan 4000. You get 4000dpi and 12 bits/channel. But no Digital Ice, which is no good with B&W anyway. With $200 rebate it will cost you ~$550 (B&H prices). More expensive options are 4000dpi Canon and Nikon, but if I were doing mostly B&W I would not go there.

...just my $0.02...

-- Alexander Grekhov (grekhov@wgukraine.com), November 16, 2001.

I've got one of the original HP Photosmarts, and use it exclusively for B&W with no problems, but as far as I'm concerned more dpi is better, and I'm drooling over later scanners with more. The HP isn't good right from the start--I had to adjust developing (which is exactly the same kind of tuning I had to do when I had a darkroom, so I'm not complaining) and get used to the interface--but once I straightened out those things it was fine. My point? With a proper attitude probably anything will do the job, but why buy yesterday's technology???

-- Michael Darnton (mdarnton@hotmail.com), November 16, 2001.

regarding poor B&W scanning performance: In this review of the Epson Perfection 2450, you can see how he starts out with what is originally a crummy B&W scan but with some experimentation and deliberation, he gets to a scan which is nearly the equal of the dedicated film scanner:

http:// www.virtualtraveller.org/epson2450.htm

A lot of it simply has to do with how you manipulate the tools...

Godfrey

-- Godfrey (ramarren@bayarea.net), November 17, 2001.

Godfrey,

Thanks for the link to that great review and site! I'm still happy even with the *mere* Epson 1640SU Photo (and I needed that one for SCSI connectivity) - but as the reviewer points out "they are sure to come out with a better one at even less, year by year"... Cheers.

-- Lutz Konermann (lutz@konermann.net), November 17, 2001.

I recently built a computer with the sole purpose of going into desktop publishing/digital scanning. I purchased a Polaroid SprintScan 4000. With rebate, these are now selling for $550, which makes them, easily, an all time bargin. It comes with great software, and I also use PhotoShop 6, although I've heard that Photoshop Elements is almost as good. I scan everything at the highest resolution I can which is 4000 dpi, 36 bit, and then reduce from the orginal for the appropriate medium. Here's an example I scanned last night and just posted. The orginal tiff is 40mb; I posted an 18kb jpg: http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo? photo_id=439281&photo_sel_index=0#photo

-- Leicaddict (leicaddict@hotmail.com), November 17, 2001.