[filmscanners] Re: Canon IDs vs Pentax 67II

["David J. Littleboy" <davidjl@gol.com>]

"Austin Franklin" <austin@darkroom.com> writes:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> Even 4000 dpi Provia scans have noise levels that (while quite
> reasonable and not a problem at all) are off scale compared to
> what digital
> SLRs produce. And Velvia's a joke.

Aren't those slide films?  Slide films have a higher density range than
negative film...and it's that wider density range that challenges most
scanners.  Scanning negative film gives much better results.  I highly
recommend Portra NC.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I haven't tried the Portra films yet, but Reala's clearly worse than Provia
for grain noise, although the latitude is nice. XP2 is a horror, but I did
get one OK A4 portrait out of it. Thanks for the recommendation. I have two
rolls of Konica Impressa 50 sitting here: are they worth shooting???

(Slide films are much easier to deal with, since i can see what I've got.
But that's my problem, not the technology's.)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> The best 8000ED scans I've produced
> aren't really acceptable at 300dpi, and need to be printed at 450
> dpi before
> I get the quality I want.

What do you mean by 300dpi and 450dpi? That shouldn't have a thing to do
with scanning.  You should be scanning at FULL native optical resolution of
your scanner, and outputting without decimating the data, and let the DPI
fall where it may.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I'm scanning at full native resolution.

If I crop so that the resultant file prints at 300 dpi, I don't like what I
see.

If I crop so that the resultant file prints at 450 dpi, I do like what I
see.

What I'm doing is changing the magnification by cropping and then printing
to A4 to determine how large a print I could make when I get around to
acquiring a 2200 or give the files to a lab.

>>>>>>>>>>>
>(I'm not complaining: I bought into
> scanned MF on
> the theory that 645 + the 8000ED would be adequate for 13x19, and my math
> seems to be holding up.)

Yes, it most certainly is adequate for 13x19.  I scan 35mm at 5080 and print
13x19s all day long with no problem.  MF scans at 2540 give very very high
end 13x19 prints, and I have no problem printing them up to 24 x 24.
<<<<<<<<<<<<

A 5080 spi scanner would be nice. A 2540 dpi scan of 645 would be 240 dpi at
13x19. I'd think that'd be a tad soft...

> >>>>>>>>
> With the Epson 950, if I take a large sharp MF scan, gradually downsample
> it, and print at various ppi settings, the appearance only begins
> to degrade
> at under 250 ppi. I find that good quality 250 ppi images max out the
> resolution of this printer.

I would suggest not downsampling it, just do as I suggest above and let the
PPI fall where it does.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Yes, that's how I normally print. But it seems to me that 726 dpi is a tad
overkill. So the question is: assuming I downsample, how far can I
downsample before I notice print quality degradation. The answer to that
question is 250 dpi.

>>>>>>
Remember, I have scanning backs and Bayer pattern backs of the same
resolution.  There IS a difference in image quality, no doubt about it!
<<<<<<

Hmm. The experience here is that Bayer (D60/1Ds) images look very nice at
"actual pixels" on the screen, and that I'm not doing that well with the
scanner. And I haven't seen any scans on the net that were any better than
what I'm getting...

David J. Littleboy
davidjl@gol.com
Tokyo, Japan


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