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Flatbed scanned 35mm negative film is about equal to a 3 or 4 mp digital P&S camera...that is it. I'm sure the film fanboys will not agree. But put up or shut up fanboys. I don't pull this stuff out of my ass, as the kids like to say. I shot film for 3 decades starting in 1969 and digital from just before 2000. I also work extensively with film in the Archive. But more important than that, I test and test. My ego does not say...the tests say. Here is a minuscule recreation of some of the 'film vs digital' tests I had done many years ago. Tumblr deleted all my websites in 2019, so the material is all lost. But luckily, I had it on optical disc with the tests, as it was deleted a long ago from my drives. I didn't test any chrome films. Someone else will have to do that. Being a documentary photographer, I pretty much used negative film because it has more forgiving exposure latitude when grabbing fast shots on the street or available light photography. Most of my work was with Tri-X, Plus-X, Ilford FP4, HP5. Once in a while I'd shoot some Panatomic-X. Two Blind Beggars Hollywood, CA. 1972 - D.D.Teoli Jr. When you are doing fast, candid work you have no time for exposure meters. You guesstimate and shoot. That is not a good formula for shooting chromes. Whether film is not as sharp as digital does not matter that much...unless you demand maximum sharpness. For film has a certain character that is hard to reproduce with digital. You can use all the digital grain you like in post...but it is not organic and does not look the same as film. But you can come close sometimes. So, film and digital both have their pro and con qualities. Here are a few of the tests comparing Epson flatbed scanned 35mm film to digital. I've shown the full image taken with a crop sensor 6.1mp camera. A few of the close ups will follow. To see them all go to the link below. The film may have come out slightly better with a drum scan, but a better scan just shows the grain sharper...it does not magically make the film super sharp unless the sharpness is there. These tests were done with what the average prosumer person may use, as most people don't have a drum scanner. All tests were done with a tripod. Epson R-D1s 6.1mp Zeiss 35mm f2 Epson R-D1s 6.1mp Zeiss 35mm f2 cropped Kodak Easyshare C653 6.1mp P&S cropped Leica M8 Kodak Ektar 100 film Zeiss 50mm f2 cropped Leica M8 Tri-X film Zeiss 50mm f2 cropped (Note: This scan was done by a professional photo processing service and is a sample of the type of scan they give you when they develop your film.) Leica M240 24mp Zeiss 50mm f2 cropped I put a handful of the test photos at this link. I had hundreds of tests at the Tumblr covering close up, medium and long-distance comparisons. They all showed the same results...film is pretty low res stuff. Sample images from 'Camera Comparisons' website deleted by Tumblr D.D.Teoli Jr. : D.D.Teoli Jr. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Here is an interesting timeline of Kodak film... History of Film | Kodak <><><><> Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Small Gauge Film Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Advertising Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. VHS Video Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Popular Culture Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Audio Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Social Documentary Photography

I've just finished up cutting up about 11 feet of oversize magazines like Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post, Pictorial Review, Modern Priscilla and others. I wanted to collect the advertising and any special articles. I use a large format sheet fed scanner (if I can) and cut off the binding to run the individual pages through the scanner. But it all depends on if the stock is coated and has gloss black ink. If it does not, the pages have to be flat bed scanned as matte black ink or gloss black ink with uncoated paper stock, fouls the scanner rollers. Anyway, as I would cut off the magazine bindings, I would get inserts and coupons that fell out. After a spell it occurred to me to archive them. It the 60's they used magnetic ink to sort the coupons as well as punch card holes. Pretty interesting...well maybe interesting if you are an archivist. Punch card coupons. Magnetic ink coupon You'd also see some die cut coupons. <><><><> Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Small Gauge Film Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Advertising Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. VHS Video Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Popular Culture Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Audio Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Social Documentary Photography

I knew of this guy from way back in my early days of getting into infrared flash photography. He had experimented with IR flash as well and I studied what he had done. I had spent 4+ years trying to perfect IR flash photography, then one day it all came together. I could have just as easily given up a day before the breakthrough success, but luckily I was too stupid to quit. Recently he put up a video about someone giving him a Heidelberg Tango Drum Scanner for free. The person had to hound him for a year to take it. He got it going with the help of a consultant that charges $200 an hour and it is pretty impressive. I had read here that people give away $$ cine' film scanners for free. I could not believe it. ...well, apparently people do give away $$ scanners for free.

I've been lurking here for some time, reading and doing some research. I have thousands of hours of Super 8mm home movie footage taken from 1967 to 1990 that I am looking to get transferred. I'm dealing with amateur footage that is naturally shaky from the handheld camera, has occasional focus problems, lots of panning around etc. LOTS of poorly lit indoor shots. The film itself is *ok* but it has some dirt, scratches, etc., that you would expect from 30-40 year old films that have been handled / stored by Average Joes. It also has lots of splices. After doing some research here, I came to the conclusion that my choices for the best scan of these old Super 8mm home movies was between the LaserGraphics ScanStation and the DCS Xena Dynamic Perf 4K. I took some sample 50ft reels to Frame Discreet in Toronto and got them to do a flat scan at 5K and 2K resolution, in 16-bit DPX and ProResHQ 4444. I was very impressed with the quality. I did a number of frame-by-frame tests, and I could not justify the additional scanning cost, or the storage/data handling requirements of going with a 5K scan instead of a 2K scan - at least on the Scanstation. I have a couple of questions: How does the DCS Xena Dynamic Perf 4K compare with the ScanStation for Super 8mm home movies with lots of poorly lit indoor shots, splices, shaky footage, and the rest of the problems listed above? Are there any other scanners I should be considering? I really liked the fact that I could scan the entire film area, including the sprocket holes with the ScanStation. I hate cropping and actually kind of enjoy the "raw" look that the entire film with sprocket holes provide. Does the DCS Xena Dynamic Perf 4K scanner allow this? The Super 8mm film with sound was shot at 18fps and I'd like to get both a DPX + WAV as well as a ProResHQ 4444 outputs. Although I could find workarounds, it would make my life a lot easier if the image dequence/video was set to 18fps and the corresponding audio was synched accordingly. The ScanStation seems to do this fine, but just checking to make sure that the DCS DCS Xena Dynamic Perf 4K can do this as well. I did not like the sound quality of the samples I got, but I have no idea if it was due to a) the camera's sound recording ability at that time, B) the film and any possible degradation of the magnetic soundtrack, c) the scan from the ScanStation or some combination thereof. For the record, I did a few different configurations of sound formats, all lossless (i.e. WAV). I tried various combinations of bit depth and sampling rate, ranging from 24 to 32-bits, and 48 to 192 kHz. Does the DCS Xena Dynamic Perf 4K have better sound capture from old magnetic Super 8mm film? I don't hear too much discussion about Super 8mm home movie sound capture quality. Is this as good as it gets? Below are two sample screenshots from the footage I got back from the ScanStation @ 2K. I took screenshots from an indoor frame and an outdoor frame for comparison. To show off the scan in its best, I tried to pick out frames that were the most steady, for the clearest image.

Hi All, Wasn't really sure where to post this, let me know if I should move it. I have a "Retro8 Pro" and a "Retro16 Pro" scanners for sale from "Moviestuff.tv" Practically NEW, I transferred 5 rolls of S8 and 2 of 16mm. Still under manufacturer's 1 year warranty until Feb. 2016. I'm selling them because I bought the new one (all in one). These scanners are the best out there, I had a roll of film transferred at three different top notch post houses in LA, none of them came even close to what these little guys can do. Roger from Moviestuff has really done an excellent jobs designing these machines. I'm asking $2800 for each or $5000 for both. Let me know if you're interested, no low ballers please.