The maximum resolution you will get from the best slide film (eg Velvia) where the image is taken with optimal technique is around 4,000dpi. Most slides will be significantly less than that. All colour negatives will be significantly less than that. Black and white negative films will vary greatly but the best (eg Panatomic X) might be better than 4,000dpi.
Recent flatbed scanners such as the Epson V700 tend to have a stated resolution of 9600dpi but this is a theoretical resolution. Actual resolution is probably no more than 2,000dpi, maybe 2,400dpi if you're lucky (there's a German site that gives accurate tests but I don't remember what it's called). This is not as bad as it sounds because the resolution of most images on film will be significantly less than 4,000dpi. The V700 can give a digital image that will produce a sharp print at A3+.
I'm sceptical about the claims for low resolution of the scanner. If he just grabbed a scanner to use for the test it's likely he didn't know what he was doing. For example, the V700 has two lenses, one for slides in holders, another for slides on the glass. If he used the wrong lens his results wouldn't be surprising.
Scanning is more difficult with colour negative and there are even traps with black & white negative. Quality of results will depend on choice of software and your skill in using it as well as the physical properties of the scanner. Generating or obtaining (eg from Wolf Faust) scanning profiles for different films may also help. Silverfast is likely to be the best software for colour negs and black & white negs but you need something like Silverfast
AI Studio and that's not cheap. I would guess that scanning colour negs in Silverfast is likely to lead to better colours than copying with a digital camera. However, for digital copying, if you still have a film camera and access to the right kind of colour negative film you could shoot a Colorchecker target and generate an import profile in Lightroom, which might well give you accurate colour. Where your film has deteriorated with age, Silverfast and Vuescan have easy interfaces to recover from that which work well (at least in the case of Silverfast); manual corrections in Lightroom or Photoshop might not be as easy or accurate.
His claim that you can't get good quality from scanning with a V700 is probably wrong. And even though scanning is always time consuming, it is likely to be much faster than digital copying because with a good flatbed scanner you can scan around 36 images at once (if they're in strips, less if in slides).
However, what he says about scanning doesn't invalidate his claims for digital copying. Also, the blending method in the first link is not necessary if you have a D800. A 35mm slide is 1x1.5" and a D800 image corresponds to 1x1.5" @ 5,000ppi - more than enough provided you can come close to filling the frame. Conversely, an image from the 12MP D3s corresponds to 1x1.5" @ 2,800ppi which should be sufficient, certainly good enough for an A3+ print. You could combine multiple images if you really felt the need but in most cases it would make no difference. The 16MP D7000 yields 1x1.5" @ 3,300ppi which should also be fine. For copying 6x6, 6x9 or 5x4 there might be more of a case for combining exposures if you want optimal quality. Even with the D800, a single exposure to copy a 5x4 only gives 1200ppi which may be OK but is considerably less than full resolution.
An option if you want to copy film using a digital camera is to pick up an old Bowens Illumitran. Quite a few of these are available on EBay. They were designed for duplicating slides and have an internal flash light source. I have one that accepts 5x4 film and perhaps the time has come to make use of it. Other
models may only accept 35mm film. The ES-1 adaptor would be an easier way to go but the Illumitran would give you a standardised light source.
One last thing: I wouldn't believe his implication that shooting RAW is optional. You don't want to clip colours and tonalities.
Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2012 3:01 am
