scanning

Reaching the Megapixel Limit (for 35mm Camera Scanning)

Since I first started camera scanning, I've always advocated using the highest resolution camera you can get ahold of. (My first camera scans were with the 1.3-megapixel Nikon E2n, so it's been a long road.) That advice is changing.

What’s With All the Poor Negative Film Reviews?

I don't usually go the negative Nellie with anything photo related, sometimes it's best to keep your mouth firmly shut. But I'm not going to take it anymore, I'm as mad as hell, and I'm going to lean right out the window and shout it to the world, enough, I'm done with rubbish samples of film technology on the Web.

Review: The Nikon D850’s Negative Digitizer Isn’t Ready for Prime Time

A couple weeks ago, I got a chance to run the Nikon D850 through its paces as a scanner. The “Negative Digitizer” feature, which can automatically flip negatives to positive got a lot of buzz as the camera was being released, and I was eager to try it out.

A $16,000 Photo Scanner vs. a $500 Scanner

I recently had a few prints made from some medium format negatives. The prints are for a specific purpose so I wanted them to be of the highest quality possible, this meant taking them to a local specialist where the film was scanned with a $16,000+ Hasselblad Flextight X1. The Flextight is about the best quality scan you can get before moving up to dedicated drum scans that can be messy, time-consuming, and expensive.

Wet Mount Scanning: How to Get the Highest Quality Film Scans at Home

Getting high quality film scans usually means taking your film to a local lab or sending it to a not-so-local one if there's not a lab nearby. But there is a way to get high-quality scans done in the comfort of your own home using a flat bed film scanner; it's called wet mount scanning.

How To Edit Color Film Negatives in Photoshop

Scanning colour negative is without a doubt the most irritating part of my workflow.

Since I started to shoot film, it has been the source of great frustration, especially in terms of color rendition. Each color negative I scan shows a dreadful blue or green cast that's a pain to get rid of in Lightroom.

Photomyne Lets You Digitize Multiple Prints at Once with Your Smartphone

Photographers are always telling each other to print their photos, but at the same time, services keep springing up that let you do the exact opposite: digitize your prints. Photomyne is one of these services, a feature-rich smartphone app that lets you turn your old prints into digital files faster than anything else out there.

DIY Film ‘Scanning’ with LEGO and an iPhone

Want to scan some film but don't have a scanner handy? You can actually do some high quality digitization using some LEGO blocks, a smartphone or tablet, and a camera with decent resolution. Filmmaker Zachary Antell uses a method using those components, and his results are pretty impressive.

QromaScan: Digitize and Organize Prints Using Your Smartphone and Voice

QromaScan is a new photo scanning solution that's the world's first to pair smartphone scanning with voice commands for easy digitizing and tagging. It's simple option for people who want to scan their collection of physical prints without having to spend time and money on high-end scanning solutions or services.

Photo Scanning Businessman Being Sued for $90M After Making $120K Per Week

John Rogers was once one of the high flying entrepreneurs in the photo world. After coming up with the brilliant idea of scanning old photos for newspapers and splitting the rights to the digital images, Rogers was on his way to amassing one of the largest photo libraries in the world and was earning a whopping $120,000 per week selling his images on eBay.

Now his empire has come crashing down. Rogers is reportedly being sued for more than $90 million and has lost his business entirely.

ScanMyPhotos Can Scan Your Prints a Priority Mail Boxful at a Time

Have a ton of old prints lying around but not enough time or energy to scan them? Since 1990, Southern California-based ScanMyPhotos has helped customers scan over 250 million physical prints. As digitizing old family photos is catching on as a trend, the company's most popular service is something it pioneered: the USPS prepaid box deal.

It's a flat rate option for scanning large quantities of photos. Pack as many photos as you can into it, send it in, and receive digital versions of every photo.

The Fuel3D Camera is the World’s First Point-and-Shoot, Full Color 3D Scanner

3D printing has made inroads into photography in many ways. From 3D-printed photos, to DIY flash diffusers, to a camera made entirely out of 3D printed parts, there's a lot of photographic applications to the third dimension.

But even as 3D printer costs are dropping, there's still the problem of capturing a proper, high-quality 3D scan of whatever it is you would like to print. The Fuel3D handheld bridges that gap.

How to Avoid Ugly Newton Rings When Doing Nikon Glass Scanning

The Nikon Coolscan 9000ED scanner is an excellent scanner. The included holders are of a very good standard and many extremely useful and high quality optional holders are available. None of them, however, are cheap.

Digitizing Your Film Using Your DSLR

With the cost of my local neg scanner in London being £40/hour for a Hasselblad Flextight, I have been digitising using a DSLR for a quite a while. The results can be extremely good as long as a little time is put into the setup to begin with.

How to Scan Your Film Using a Digital Camera and Macro Lens

Yesterday I wrote a post showing the high level of image quality you can achieve by scanning film using a digital camera rather than a film scanner. This post will describe my personal technique for digitizing film using a DSLR and a macro lens.

Why You Should Digitize Your Film Using a Camera Instead of a Scanner

If you shoot film and aren't much into chemicals (or don’t have a basement in which to keep a gigantic 5×7″ enlarger), you’ll soon find yourself needing a way to import those beautiful pictures you’ve taken onto your computer. What? Why didn’t I say, “you'll need a scanner”? After all, it’s not 1987 anymore -- scanners are as common as toaster ovens.

How to Scan Film Using Your Ordinary Flatbed Scanner

If you've tried to scan film using an ordinary flatbed scanner as you would a piece of paper, you've probably discovered that it didn't turn out very well. The reason is because film needs to be illuminated from behind, while conventional scanners capture light that's reflected off what they're scanning. Before you give up hope and shell out money for a film scanner, here's some good news: you can build a cheap and simple cardboard adapter that turns any scanner into a film scanner!