Anyone hear using film and then customizing with scanner and

I was curious if anyone is using a film camera and is scanning the negatives then manipulating in a photo software application. I currently have a Canon D-60, but regardless of the settings on my camera I am not getting that true color of feel of the photograph. Granted, I don't have any of the Canon "L" lenses yet and that may be the problem, but I honestly think that the digital picture still does not hold the same quality as a film snapshot. My pictures are fine for most people, but I want the best, I would rather please myself before I please others.
Just curious, JR92

I have been scanning slides & negs for a number of years with film/slide scanners. I would work on the better images in Photoshop & print on Epson printers. The results, I thought, were good.

I was shooting 35mm slide & print filem.

I bought a D60 2 weeks ago and am shooting raw. using Breezebrowser, Photoshop & some sharpening actions/plugins on the better images.

The D60 is giving me much much better results on final images.

I believe that you'll find several different camps of photographers out there now. One camp is film, strictly film, and they don't need any of that digital crap. The opposite camp is purely digital, and they don't want to discuss film or anything like it. However, there is a third camp that sits squarely in the middle, and they go both ways.

If you are in learning mode, then it is much cheaper to shoot digitally, view your mistakes, learn a little, print a little, and move on. If you are beyond learning mode, then you might shoot film. Then take the negatives or prints to the scanner. I believe that many pros will scan prints rather than scan negs. Once in digital form, then the image can be corrected or composited as necessary. But if some publication asks the pro to send in the original, he has a negative. The variation on this is the pro who shoots slide film, so he scans the slide into digital, but he has the original slide to send in for publication, should that arise.

When I am shooting in non-serious mode, I shoot my D60. But then, if what I preview shows me that I am into something good, then I pull out the Canon film camera and load up the fine-grain film.

---Bob Gross---

I like digital now. I own a G2 and love the fact I can shoot volumes of pics at little cost. However I do like my SLR film camera and have tried scanning negatives with disasterous results. Ritz did the processing and gave me back a CD, but the images seemed contrasty, and dirty. specs of dust on the negative, etc.

I then tried scanning the prints from film but again not very sharp.

Wonder if anyone has a recommendation for either scanning negatives or film or slide. what equipment are you using?

On the digital end, I desire to upgrade from my G2 to D60.

Finally, film seems to have more lattitude than digital, shadows are less likely to lose detail and highlight are less likely to be washed out on contrasty images.. would anyone agree with that statement?

I posted this yesterday, but it seems to have been lost.

I shoot digitally primarily, but when I get into something really good, then I pull out the film camera and load up the slide film. The processed slides are sorted and then scanned in my Canon FS4000US film scanner. I have never scanned negatives with it, only slides. Right now, I have it hooked up for USB only, but when I find the time to get the SCSI cable going, that should make it much faster. It has a number of automatic features which I have turned off. I have the maximum resolution (4000 lines) cranked up with the maximum color depth. That makes digital files of about 100-150MB per slide, so bring along lots of disk space.

---Bob Gross---

I shot a basketball game last night at 7:30pm, game was over by 8:45pm, images where in my editors hands by 9:15.

For me, digital means more money. The faster I can turn images in, the better for me.

I think digital has its place. I still like shooting film and will continue shooting it and getting high res drum scans of my best work.

BUT.

For deadline work...digital takes the cake.

I used to scan film, mostly slides. It took so much time I would literally dread having to sit down, scan and clean all the spots and/or small scratches from even a small job.

Now this was still a slight improvement over making the prints in the darkroom, but it was still eating up way too much time, which was why I went that way in the 1st place.

Since getting the D30, I'll never go back. Now I just crop, fix a few blemishes here and there and wait for the prints.

Not saying it is wrong to go the scan route, just wrong for me.

BobbyC, I hear what you are saying. I had scanned a bunch of 35mm slides, maybe twenty. I noticed lots of dust specks in the digital files, despite the fact that I had cleaned off each slide before scanning. I had already spent about 5-10 minutes per slide with dust edit, so that was wasted. I cleaned off each slide again, and then re-scanned. Still, there were dust spots, and they had moved around somewhat. More time wasted. Finally I am getting them clean, but there is a static problem here in the dry winter months, and that is complicating my life.

Is there some kind of magic slide-cleaning solution, or do I have to set up my computer room with a dustproof airlock?

---Bob Gross---

I developed my own slides using only bottled water, going right into a drying cabinet out of the processor and would still get a few specs here and there on at least every 2 or 3 frames. I don't think you can ever eliminate it...unless you buy a D60 or the like.)

BobbyC wrote:
I developed my own slides using only bottled water, going right into a drying cabinet out of the processor and would still get a few specs here and there on at least every 2 or 3 frames. I don't think you can ever eliminate it...unless you buy a D60 or the like.)

I did. To this day, I am constantly flip-flopping between film and digital.

Film is great. Scanning perfectly is difficult. Dust edit takes time. But I've gone to digital for day-to-day stuff. I carry the film camera around, just in the event that I am into something serious that might be published.

---Bob Gross---

I would tend to agree. I was more happy with my digital shots and I can immediately see what I have and edit without a long process. The only draw back is shooting action with my G2, the shutter lag time is awlful. Much has been written about tricks to shorted the time, but it seems like a real weakness.

Do you find shutter lag to be a problem with you ?

I don't think there is any shutter lag problem with me.

Nor do I think there is a shutter lag problem with my D60. The exception is if the camera is on and it has gone to sleep mode. When the subject then pops up, and I get on the shutter button, I have to push it about 3-4 times before it wakes up and is ready to go by the fifth press. But once it goes, I am typically getting off five or six frames in my first few heartbeats.

---Bob Gross---

Just to add a little more comment to my original reply.

I have already gone through 2 generations of slide/film scanners.

When I was considering buying a D60 I also was considering an alternate of buying a really good slide scanner.

My finally convinced myself (rationalization) I could start shooting digital now and wait a year or two for the good slide/neg scanners to come down in price. I could then go back and rescan the older images.

Getting the workflow down for shooting raw isn't something that jumps out at you. Read the forums for this.

The Nikon LS-4000 scanner with the batch adapters works great. I have been using it to scan slides from the 50s and 60s and then processing the good ones in Photoshop. The batch adapters are necessary if you want to do any real quantities. I can setup 50 slides at a time and walk away. The same goes for film. I have the film developed-only no-cut which I can then feed in to the roll adapter and scan all 36 images.

In terms of which is better that's an interesting question. Using the same Canon equipment other than the bodies, EOS-3 & D60, the picture sharpness is identical; however, there are so many processing steps in each of the workflows (film vs. digital) that, the results are very subjective. When you find an image which is really great, the amount of time you can put into scanning and post-processing is similar with both. At the end, you can come up with the same quality output for images within the printing range (200-300 dpi).