Part I - Update and introduction to the
Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 ED
It’s been a while since I wrote about scanning. I’ve documented my own decade-old scanning journey on this blog because this bewildering and essential part of photography is endlessly interesting to me and because I want to contribute to the shared experience of other photographers out there. I guess, like most people, when I first started scanning I turned to the internet for knowledge and know-how, so now why not add my own? What I have written here and previously has never really been for the experienced photographer who knows all about scanning, it’s more really for anybody starting out and considering getting into scanning.
For sure, scanning can be baffling and I don’t blame any photographer who delegates it to a professional lab. It’s time-consuming, expensive with a frustratingly steep learning curve, but ultimately for me, it was and remains one of the most essential parts of my photographic experience. As a modern film photographer who shoots hybrid analogue, it is the scanner that bridges the gap. I believe that 90% of the visual beauty and charm of analogue photography resides in the film negative. The look and feel that we all love so much is embedded in the emulsion of the films we use. Recovering this is the job of the scanner. These are the machines that translate the images on film into the digital domain and allow all the modern advantages of colour correction, post-processing and sharing of the finished photos onto the digital world of screens, websites and social media.
Not everything is rosy and ideal with this hybrid workflow, because of the dominance of digital screen presentation the photograph sadly, in its most beautiful form as a print has declined, but that’s another story and not one that the scanner is responsible for. After all scanned film photos can be printed and hung on a wall as effectively as any darkroom print.
That original lab scan from 2012, that got me thinking could I do better?
Anyway, back to scanning and scanners. My journey started back in 2012 when I got back a roll of Kodak Ektar 100 developed and scanned by a lab. On the roll there was a portrait, I could see immediately that the photo had potential, that feeling you get when you see a photo for the first time and know that the picture you had in your viewfinder and more importantly in your mind was there on the screen. But sadly for me although the composition, pose and expression was there and even the focus and exposure was good, the scan was terrible. No amount of colour correction, post-processing and adjustments in Photoshop was going to save this photo. I was so disappointed. Looking at the frame on the negative it looked good, not dark or light or strange in any way. It must have been the scan. I must have had an operator who was having a bad day, distracted or not bothered and so the resulting TIFF was simply awful. It was not the first time this had happened and I decided to change lab, but not before exploring the possibility of buying my own scanner. So in a moment of technical confidence or ignorant naivety, I decided that I wanted to be the master of my own photographic future and bought an Epson Perfection V500. An entry-level flatbed scanner to scan my own 35mm and 120 films. Although I have more than once come very close to regretting becoming a scanner owner the reality is I have slowly, over time, mostly enjoyed the challenge, learning a lot along the way.
There are lots of ways to digitise film, from the simplest mobile phone application to high tech drum scanners. On the internet, there is no shortage of advice, tutorials and opinions, including my own pronouncements on the subject. But what there isn’t is a large choice of scanners or the software necessary to drive and invert the scans. The zenith of non-lab scanning was over 20 years ago when professional photographers were converting from film to digital and the commercial need existed for high-quality desktop scanners at accessible prices for professional and amateur use. Dedicated machines made by manufacturers like Minolta, Canon and Nikon were all capable of producing excellent scans that were practically as good as the scans by pro labs. Fast-forward 20 years and the options are much more limited. Epson continues to manufacture their Perfection flatbed series and there are dedicated scanning options from a handful of manufactures like Plustek and Reflecta. An alternative and increasingly popular way to digitise film is DSLR ‘scanning’. By setting up a digital camera fitted with a macro lens to photograph a negative over a light source. Many new film photographers come to shoot analogue via digital and already have very good digital cameras so this is a great way to exploit the equipment they already own to digitise film. It’s quick, if you don’t count the amount of time spent cleaning spots and dust in post and convenient if you don’t mind a miniature oil rig sitting on your desktop. Photographing the film produces very sharp images that are in RAW format and so can be handled in any modern workflow.
The not so perfect ColorPerfect Photoshop plugin. For me at least!
Speaking of which, as well as a shortage of contemporary scanners there isn’t much choice of software to control them either. If a scanners primary job is to hold a negative flat in its holder so that it can be focused on to achieve sharpness, while the transports stepping motor and lens scan the film, then the software that drives it completes the second important phase. The inversion and accompanying processing controls that allow for colour and tonal correction before output. If you’re using an Epson machine it comes with EpsonScan, a basic but competent software that works and until very recently I still used it for black & white. Other than that there are two choices. SilverFast and VueScan. Both products have been around for a long time, both have their fans and detractors. I’m not going into what they are all about here, there’s plenty of information on the web about each of them. I’ve used them both and through gritted teeth over the last 3 years opted to scan on SilverFast. It’s an ugly place to be but it produces good results and that’s what matters, that and not speaking to the company who make it, LaserSoft imaging, which is almost always an unsatisfactory experience. If you can’t tolerate the confusing interface of SilverFast or the rudimentary boxes of VueScan then you can spend less time in them and produce linear scans as DNG’s or confusingly in the case of SilverFast HDRi. That’s High Dynamic Range ain’t it? No, it’s a SilverFast’s RAW scan! With all the controls of the software turned off the scanner creates a pure scan with no influence from the scanning software, a negative scan produced like this still has its orange base it is scanned as a positive. With these types of scans, there are many ways to invert them. You can use Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom or probably any other photo editing software. Inversions done like this are far from automatic and require a fair amount of colour knowledge to build the contrast and colour tones from the initial washed out presentation. An alternative to manual inversion is the Lightroom plugin Negative Lab Pro, more about that in a moment, and the Photoshop plugin ColorPerfect. ColorPerfect like SilverFast is neither intuitive nor attractive. I used it for some time and found it frustrating and not so perfect. It gave me inconsistent results and in the end, I gave up on it. I do know some photographers who swear by it, but it’s not for me. Negative Lab Pro is the popular and game-changing Lightroom plugin that has allowed the whole DSLR ‘scanning’ scene to flourish. It was designed to take advantage of RAW files created by digital cameras and the RAW workflow offered by Lightroom. In its second updated release, NLP supported DNG liner scans and so became practical and useful to scanner users as well. I have tried NLP on several occasions, the inversions made by this plugin are very good. Colours and tones are generally great from the moment of conversion and the plugin offers a range of simple to use colour controls in a nice pop-up user interface. I can see why this software is rightly popular but it has never become a part of my scanning process. Not because of its inversion and image quality but because I could not live with the convoluted workflow, it just wasn’t for me. Having said that, I honestly think that anyone starting out scanning should investigate Negative Lab Pro.
Back to my scanning story, after 5 years using my Epson V500 I upgraded to a V800. The difference between an entry-level flatbed and the very best flatbed was enormous. I was happy and dived into rescanning my entire archive. Although Epson flatbed scanners have no way to focus on the film the company have developed over the years scanning frames that are height adjustable, whereby you can fine-tune the focus for optimum sharpness. Film flatness is also a critical part of any scanning and there was some improvement here also but it was somewhat limited in the case of 35mm strips, really curved film never sits that flat in the Epson holders. For 120 I bought an aftermarket holder from a company called Betterscanning.com. This is a brilliant product and if you use a flatbed and can get hold of one, do not hesitate. The frame has anti-newton glass to keep the film strip flat and has infinitely adjustable nylon screws to fine-tune the focus height above the scanner lens. Brilliant, just a shame they no longer appear to be available. Having and using the Epson V800 was always a good and practical way to scan film, but I knew there was a better way to scan and always dreamed of a dedicated turn of the century scanner. A Coolscan of course.
This summer I managed to get my hands on a beautiful Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 ED. The 8000 was Nikon’s first combined 35mm and 120 film scanner and was manufactured between 2001 and 2004 when it was superseded by the in-demand Coolscan 9000, their last combined format machine before they left the market completely in 2008. My unit is in very good condition for a 20 year old machine, recently having its mirror cleaned and a full CLA (clean, lubricate and adjust) by a specialist, a good find, I hope. I looked for an 8000 because and anyone who knows about the 9000 will know that they fetch extraordinary figures. The 8000 is very good value by comparison. There are differences and I’m sure the 9000 is better being quicker, quieter with apparently improved shadow detail but the 8000 is ostensibly the same machine but at a third of the price. The question I had to ask myself is paying three times more worth that? Not for me, it wasn’t. But the real question is a dedicated 20 year old machine better than what I’ve been using for the last 4 years? But first, how do I plug it in?