This last twelve months I have started using 35mm film again. Initially I had the lab where I got my film developed scan the negatives. The results were absolutely diabolical – and this was from one of what is considered the better labs in Western Australia. So I needed a scanner. The market had changed considerably since I bought my last one in 2005. Canon and Nikon have exited the market and Epson  has only the V850 flatbed (only $1600 AUD “cough”!) available in Australia. What is available at more reasonable prices are the Plustek range, which seem to be largely differentiated by the software bundled with them. While the price is attractive they are somewhat under specified. The advertised maximum resolution of 7200 dpi is somewhat optimistic as it really doesn’t resolve more that 3200 dpi in real terms. The density measurement of 3.6 D is pretty mediocre and they are incredibly slow in in use. I then figured the second hand market was the place to look. Back in the day the undisputed market leader for consumer dedicated 35mm film scanners was Nikon. Now Nikon stopped production in 2009 so I thought a late model with USB connection would be the way to go and the Nikon Coolscan 5000 seemed to fit the bill with a true resolution of 4000 dpi, autofocus lens, adapters available for scanning whole rolls of film, and a density measurement of 4.8 D (anything over 4 is the mutts nuts). Unfortunately the current film resurgence has meant that these are selling for $1800-2100 AUD for a working model. 

I had an ask around and was quickly informed that camera scanning was very popular. I watched a load of YouTube videos on the subject and saw everything from DIY Frankenscanners to very swish $6500 setups. I dipped my toe into the pool by making a negative holder from a scrap of matt board, an LED light diffused by tracing paper as the light source and set up a camera with a macro lens on a tripod. With a lot of trial and error (mostly error) I got some reasonable results – better than those I got from the lab. This was encouraging and it gave some idea of what I was looking for. I didn’t want to have to set up a camera on a tripod and then align the negative so it was parallel to the camera sensor plane and centred on the axis of the lens. It had to be compact and quick to set up and breakdown. Most importantly it had to work with one of the camera and lens combinations I already owned. Perusing the inter webs I found two set ups that fit the bill:

• The Valoi Easy 35 at $380 AUD for a complete scanning solution
• The JJC Film Digitising Adapter And LED Light Set for $130 AUD

In crudest terms both are just a tube that attaches to your lens and at the other end is a film holder and an LED light source. Both offer a wide range of compatibility with different cameras and lenses. The Valoi looked very slick and well designed, the JJC looked a little more rudimentary. I plumped for the JJC as I wasn’t sure at that stage how much use it would get.

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JJC Film Digitising Adapter And LED Light Set

 

 

In the box you get a series of short threaded tubes, several step down rings, a negative holder, a holder for mounted slides, a holder for the negative and slide holders, an LED light, a diffusion panel and a USB power cable with switch. There is a comprehensive instruction sheet and a sheet detailing the necessary combination of parts needed for each camera and lens combination. It was all very straightforward and I was up and running in a couple of minutes.

 

 

 

 

The build quality is OK. It’s made out of plastic, but it fits together quite well. The negative holder does a good job of holding the film flat. The only thing I don’t particularly like is that the step down rings bind very tightly to the filter threads of my lenses and it can be a bit of a struggle to remove them.

 

 

Before we get to results we must deal with the elephant in the room – lens compatibility. JJC list a total of 15 compatible macro lenses from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus and Laowa covering micro four thirds, APSC, and full frame. Initially I used the lenses from the list – my Canon EF 100mm f2.8 IS L on my Canon 6d, and my Olympus 60mm f2.8 and EM1 mk ii. Both camera have a 20 Mp sensor and both worked very well. What I really wanted to use was my Sony A7r2 and Sigma 105mm f2.8, but the lens is not officially supported. I tried various combinations of the tubes until I found one that worked – a combination of large tubes listed for the Canon EF 100mm f2.8 L macro with the step down ring for the Nikkor Z MC 105mm macro. It delivered excellent results. So if your lens is not listed then it could be worth playing around with the tubes. Do you have to use a macro lens? For best results I’d say yes. It’s not just close focusing capability that’s important. Field curvature is as well. In simple terms an ordinary lens when photographing a flat object ie a film negative cannot bring the whole subject into focus. The centre is sharp and then that sharpness falls off towards the edges of the camera sensor. Macro lenses have inbuilt correction to achieve a flat film plane ie where the image is sharp across the whole frame. Some would say stop down and the problem goes away, and to an extent that could work depending on how acute the field curvature is because if you stop down too far then the diffraction kicks in and the image softens. Having said that if you don’t have access to a macro lens then there is nothing to stop you using a 50mm lens with 2 x 25mm extension tubes to see how you get on. Personally if you’ve got a mirrorless camera I’d look on EBay for a second hand manual focus macro lens and get an adapter so you can mount it on your camera. You don’t need autofocus to scan film.

 

 

Results. Well I compared the results from my three camera and lens combinations with some images I’d scanned using my old  Canoscan 9900f. On comparing them all the camera scans were better than the flatbed scanner. There was more detail in the highlights, there was finer detail in the whole image, subtle tonal roll off, and the images weren’t over sharpened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now you’ve got a memory card full of digitised film what happens next. Well I’m using Adobe Lightroom so I ingest the images into the Lightroom catalogue. What happens next depends upon the film stock. With black and white or slide film no special software is required and you can process entirely in Lightroom. It’s really not difficult. With black and white just invert the tonal curve and with colour slide it’s just a case of making small scale adjustments to the colour balance, unless the slide is old and experienced a colour shift then the adjustments are bigger and you may have to do contrast masking. With colour negative things are harder due to the orange colour masking. Now it is possible to do this manually yourself, but you’ll save yourself a lot of time and frustration if you get a Lightroom plugin to do it for you. I tried once doing it myself because I once considered myself a fairly competent colour darkroom worker. I mean with with red areas appearing cyan, greens appearing magenta, and blues appearing yellow, and vice versa just how hard could it be? After an hour of chasing my tail on one negative I happily plonked down the money for Negative Lab Pro. It’s easy to use and the money is well spent as it preserves sanity.

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Conclusion

 

 

Six months and a couple of dozen films in how do I feel about camera scanning? Well to be honest if I could get a modern version of the Nikon Coolscan 5000 with up to date software, drivers and a USB C interface I’d buy it in a heartbeat (Nikon are you listening?). The reality is that there isn’t and it is unlikely to happen. So I guess I’m a camera scanner with reservations. With a good macro lens and good post processing skills it is a viable alternative to the dedicated film scanner and is streets ahead of what flatbed scanners can achieve.

 

 

As to JJC Film Digitising Adapter And LED Light Set I think it is good as a low cost entry to camera scanning.

Pros

• Cheap – $130 AUD from Amazon
• Quick to set up and quick to scan
• Easy to use
• Adapts well to a range of lenses and cameras
• Better results than a flatbed scanner when using a camera with around 24Mp
• Good documentation making it easy to get started

Cons

• It can only scan 35mm film
• On paper it is only compatible with a limited number of lenses
• Black and white negatives and slide film can be processed with no special software, but colour negative will require a plugin such as Negative Lab Pro
• Expensive if you don’t own a digital camera and macro lens
• The negative and slide holders are sloppy as is the holder insertion slot on the LED. They wobble and rotate as you feed the film through. Also the locating notches on the holders are not accurate so it is not a quick or smooth process when you put the film through and it requires fiddling with to ensure accurate framing

For the time being I’ll continue using it and work around some of the quirks as the price was right. Let’s put it another way. My lab charges $11 to scan a roll of film. Scan 12 rolls of film and the scanner has paid for itself.