Good things take a long time...

I spend a few hours watching the NFL playoffs and playing with JBs scanner. In some ways I'm impressed with the film (aka negative) scanner. I'm not sure exactly how good the scanner is. I would say it it does beat scanning a print using my flat bed scanner. But it took me 30 seconds to scan the print using my flatbed and it took 5 minutes to scan the negative. If you have selected negatives to scan then the film scanner could be the way to go. But if you are wanting to scan a few thousand negatives then this is not the way to do. Even the preview scan takes a minute. I'm retired and I'm not willing to spend the next year scanning negatives.

So here is a sample quality comparison. The image on the left is scanned from a print. The one on the right from the negative. I did not correct or post process either. I let my flatbed scanner software to its thing and ditto for the negative scanner. Yes the flatbed scanned picture is darker. The print was dark to start with and that's how it scanned. But notice the tie. You can't even tell that the tie is a paisley tie on the left, but it's clear on the right it is. The negative has more range of exposure, and finer detail. I would say the negative scan is a bit over exposed. I remember that suit. It was a light gray-blue with a slightly contrasting weave. About one notch darker than what the negative scan produced.

I have a lot of negatives that I don't have prints for, and some negatives that are not with their prints. It's hard for me to look at a negative and tell if it's one I want to scan or not. I'm going to see if I can just put the negatives on the flat bed scanner and scan them in mass. Then invert them and see what they are. Pick the ones I really want to scan using the film scanner and ignore the rest. In effect create a contact sheet. The film scanner came bundled with PhotoShop Elements and I think it can invert. Stay tuned.

Well I caught up last night on my reading. Maybe tonight I can actually get ahead.