Scan Film/Slides and M Series Mac

[eawmp1]

I have read through numerous tutorials, and combed the forums. My head is spinning.

I have quite a lot of 35 mm negatives (sleeved) and Kodachrome slides spanning several decades I finally want to digitize. I am trying to settle on the best option (compromise on price, quality, time/effort). I have an M3 MacBook Pro.

1) commercial - quickest/easiest - prohibitively expensive with the amount of work
2) film "scanning" - cheapest, faster "scans", ? quality compared with true scanning
3) scanner - higher quality, longer scan time, better ability to edit/correct.

Optimally could batch/auto-feed with simple and fast correction tools.

I really am torn between option 2 which could be "good enough" and 3 to be able to restore precious memories. The other wrinkle is the ARM chip. I am seeing this is a barrier in supporting certain scanners/software (e.g. the Plustek scanners).

I appreciate any help in noodling through this.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

You might want to review the first part of this thread.

Nikon Z50 First Impressions.

I bought this camera primarily to speed up digitizing a huge whack of 35mm slides, B&W negs and colour negs. I chose to go with the 50mm ƒ-2.8 macro and the 18-140mm zoom. Preferring a single lens to cover my ordinary shooting range. I have an old Epson scanner which does really well with...

forums.macrumors.com

I chose APS-c over full frame, partly because of cost and partly because the macro lens was not at its extreme, which allowed auto focus to work well. BTW I shoot with emulsion up which gives me a reversed image which then has to be flipped post process.

 

[Ben J.]

I'll just paste my reply in another thread here, as I think it's relevant:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/inherited-a-relatives-gear-and-lightroom-catalogues-where-do-i-start.2425218/

Post #31:

Scanning solutions are mostly very time consuming and lots of work, so if you can find a solution to use a camera, remotely controlled from the mac, it will be night and day in the time it takes. My solution nearly twenty years ago, to digitize my ca 4000 mounted slides was to set up my Nikon D200 in a room without windows, directly above the projector lens projecting on a small canvas, and control both the camera and projector from the adjecent room, on the mac. Click next slide on the projector remote control - click expose on the nikon software on the mac - check the exposure on the screen, and repeat. All done in seconds. And I'm still very happy with the results.

Nowadays, I'm using the Opticfilm scanner in my signature for scanning negatives and unmounted slides. Very laborious and time consuming.

 

[apostolosdt]

With your Kodachromes, be—once more?—selective and have the keepers scanned in a pro lab. If you’ve kept contacts of your negs, be picky (sorry, unavoidable) and digitise them massively with a digital camera.

Home-run scanners require good software and lot of scanning experience for acceptable results.

 

[mattspace]

I have read through numerous tutorials, and combed the forums. My head is spinning.

I have quite a lot of 35 mm negatives (sleeved) and Kodachrome slides spanning several decades I finally want to digitize. I am trying to settle on the best option (compromise on price, quality, time/effort). I have an M3 MacBook Pro.

1) commercial - quickest/easiest - prohibitively expensive with the amount of work
2) film "scanning" - cheapest, faster "scans", ? quality compared with true scanning
3) scanner - higher quality, longer scan time, better ability to edit/correct.

Optimally could batch/auto-feed with simple and fast correction tools.

I really am torn between option 2 which could be "good enough" and 3 to be able to restore precious memories. The other wrinkle is the ARM chip. I am seeing this is a barrier in supporting certain scanners/software (e.g. the Plustek scanners).

I appreciate any help in noodling through this.

It only arrived yesterday, and last week respectively so I haven't put them into service, but a combination of a Nikon ES-2 film / slide scanner attachment, and a D850 with the appropriate lens is likely to provide a higher quality capture (52MP) Vs something like a Nikon Coolscan slide scanner (effectively tops out around 24MP), and also to bring it in as a RAW image, so there's more room for pulling the maximum tonal range out of the image, as well as non-destructive adjustments. Also, a lot faster than scanning.

Either build a similar setup, or rent that exact setup (the AFS 60G Micro is the lens the system is designed around) might be an option, if you can stand doing it all in one hit.

 

[okkibs]

Is the first option that expensive considering it's a once-in-a-lifetime occurence? I had the same situation years ago and considered whether to spend money on the gear and do the work myself (including all the editing) or ship it to a business to do it for me. The few grand it cost me were well worth it and went to a local business. Every photo looked fantastic even the ones with defects were restored and that was before AI helped automate such tasks.

 

[mollyc]

I use a Nikon Z6 and a tripod upside down with some other various hardware pieces to scan film. It's a very hands-on manual process though, and then you still have to have a software solution to convert the negatives to positive.

I know we've talked about scanning some in the massive film thread we have, but it's over 20 pages, so probably more than you want to read.

@bunnspecial knows a lot about individual scanning setups.