Putting film on CD vs. scanning negatives into computer?

Question

I have been throwing around the idea of getting a digital camera. Currently I take alot of 35mm pictures on a film SLR. I have been looking into getting a scanner that I can scan my negatives to my computers. I know that when you get your pictures developed you can get your pictures put onto a CD.

Looking for the pros and cons of both of these options and which would give me the best "picture"

Thank you

Answer 1

I think the bottom line comes down to 2 things:

. How good is the equipment is that creates the digital image for input to computer?
. How stringent are you requirements for digital quality?

Many of the pro photographers still use film cameras, then scan the negs to digitize. Take a look at

http://www.normankoren.com/scanners.html

for some pro comments.

You can spend thousands of $$ on film scanners to get the best of the best results. Some pros (and others) do this, or take their film input to a lab get it done. (The local drug store lab probably does not qualify.)

Many home users have found that the latest flatbed scanners can produce images with more than enough quality for personal use. These scanners are available for under $500, and come with built-in backlighting and frames to hold the negatives (or slides) flat and straight.

This was my approach to getting more prints of my daughter's wedding. We bought the negatives and I got an Epson 4870 for $400. It can scan at 4800 ppi and came bundled with Silverfast dust removal software. It all worked great, and my prints look just as good as the ones that came from the pro photographer. The scanned images have incredible detail!

So I think that is it. Think about your quality goals, about whether you have the time to do your own scanning (my scanner took about 15 minutes per negative with dust removal), and the costs of equipment to do it yourself vs hiring a lab of appropriate quality to do it.

Good Luck

Answer 2

Digital cameras are fine (though I was very reluctant to go digital but finally did) but what about the negs you have now?

Buying a film scanner is all good and everything, and if you can afford a Nikon Coolscan even better but have you used one? They are VERY slow -- depending on the resolutions you want, it could take HOURS to scan a roll of film (res + dust and scratch removal, color corrections, etc).

What you want to do is go to your local high-end photolab and look for a digital printer. Even better if your local photolab has a Noritsu digital lab (model 2901 or higher). These digital systems can scan a roll of 24, render the images in high-quality JPEGs (a little longer for Hi-Res TIFs) and save them to CD for you. All in less than 5 minutes. You can probably get away with 3 rolls of 24 on one CD. You don't even need to make prints. Just ask them to make a CD for you (Hi-Res of course, just to clarify).

This will save you a lot of time and money in the long run and the images will look superb (depending on the maintenance and color balance of the machine of course).

Answer 3

putting film cd scanning negatives computer