Analog film photography and cameras

After a long hiatus I finally did take some pictures again - finished rolls that have been in cameras since before the pandemic, and got them developed his week.
To my surprise the cost for dev only didn't increase, alas the price for a roll of Portra 400 doubled 😅

Went to pick up the developed film today

went home and it took me a while to actually find the scanner as I had not used / seen it in quite a while..
..proceeded to dig out and dust off my trusty 10+ years old Sony laptop that I almost got rid of, but thought I might actually need it to scan film in the future as it has a working version of Silverfast AI Studio on it!

Booted up the thing and then it hit me like a brick:
I had installed Windows 10 on the machine about a year ago.

Took me a good while to find the fucking Silverfast installation CD, but evetually I did - and nicely wrapped, complete with the IT8 calbration slide, plus serial number in original packaging

Realised the CD-ROM drive in that laptop did break and I actually threw that in a bin, and actually I do not have any computer left with a CD/DVD drive, nor an external one anywhere in the house as I also did sell my old mac (which also had a working Silverfast AI Studio Version on it)

So now I'm like installing fucking Parallels on the new mac, installing Win 10 onto that, installing some Silverfast Version I found on that, but of course it's not the one tailored to my scanner, and doesn't even "see" the scanner..
..also tried VueScan again for 2 minutes and remembered why this never was an option.

what's wrong with vuescan?

I do not have any computer left with a CD/DVD drive, nor an external one

This caught me out. I have a hundreds (maybe thousands?) of discs of scanned negs. No drive. My negs are relatively organised, the actual digital media is a mess. And my lightroom library export was a disaster because SSD drives are fucking tiny and useless.

I might start storing stuff on filed SD cards.

External disc drive is only around £20ish

Why not in the cloud? Out of curiousity

Cloud is fine if you start there. My collection pre dates the cloud by 20 years. Big upload.

Anyone looking for a Rollei35?

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Kinda, been on the lookout for one for a while, price dependent really!

Think I bought it for £200 but looking for a quick sale. £150 posted.

It's in great nick.

what's wrong with vuescan?

I was never happy with the quality of the scans it gave me.

Only thing you ever need is a 16bit raw scan and do the conversion in photoshop. It's a lot better
than the murky dull crap from Silverfast.

I was very happy with the quality of the scans SilverFast Ai Studio gave me.

I mean it sure is a pain to use, no doubt about it, but once I dialled it in to my needs (basically 4-pass / 3600dpi scans with tweaked profiles for the couple of films I tended to shoot) it was all good.
I did try raw scans and conversions in Photoshop a couple of times but for me it really wasn't worth the faff.

I did some comparisons years ago and found Silverfast to lose too much colour fidelity and their business model is borderline fraud.

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..finally got it running

Never thought I'd be so happy seeing that fucking SilverFast UI again!

Also first scan is of a cute red car, kinda picking up where I left, haha..

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Anyone looking for a Rollei35?

Those look so cool, I always wanted one back in the day.. bet I'd love that Tessar .
Scanning a roll I shot with a 40mm prime on my Pentax and gotta say that focal length just feels "right".

Won't be getting another compact rangefinder though as much as I like them - it's just when you wear glasses most of the time it doesn't work out so well (you'd really need to press the glasses against the viewfinder window properly to see the frame well and adjust focus).

Hope somebody on here gets that and has a lot of fun with it though!

Is it an actual rangefinder or just a viewfinder window?

Yeah? These are viewfinder / zone focus cameras. Hamish at 35mmc.com loves them. I just need the cash :( near offers welcome!

Yeah, a bit too much for me right now (doesn't reflect the price, just my lack of cash/regret I didn't buy one when they were cheaper).

Is anyone selling a neg scanner? My wife is after one. I did look at them a few years back but can’t remember what my hours of internet research came up with as being the best scanners for budget (sub £200)

Lovely, glws.

couple sidewalk still lifes

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sub £200

Honestly, I probably wouldn't bother with something sub 200, rather try and find a place that does dev & scan for an ok price and have them do it.
At that price range scan quality is mediocre at the very best and it's still very very time consuming / a faff.

We’ve got somewhere in Bristol that does it, but I think she just wants to be able to digitise individual negs without having to drop them in to somewhere the other side of town. Possibly make digital prints etc.

What do you reckon is the cheapest ‘worth it’ option (Second hand)?

You can get something good for 200-300 second hand - I use one of these.
Beware there's similar models that go for half that - but for a reason (slower, worse image quality, no software included etc.)

Another option is to "scan" negatives with a digital camera.
You'd need a small but good light table, some sort of tripod for the camera - which should have macro capabilities and as high a resolution as possible.
If I already had a digital camera that offers this I'd probably go that route instead of buying a scanner.

Both options should allow you to make proper 20x30cm prints from your 35mm negs (assuming this is what you have) at the end of the day.

and finally some mattresses again

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