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XF Transparency Kit for Slide Scanning

SergeyAV

New member
Our office have received a few thousands of 35mm BW negatives and Color Slide positives to be scanned. This is a part of our archive.
After a long research I have come across this forum and found a few threads that have given me some good idea about scanning with MF digital backs.

Is here someone who can share his experience with XF Transparency Kit from Phase One ?
 
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SergeyAV

New member
Maybe someone has used the set -
Phase One XF IQ3 50MP vs Schneider Kreuznach LS 120mm f/4.0 Macro Lens
to scan the slides
 

dougpeterson

Workshop Member
Doug Peterson in 3...2...1...

:ROTFL:
Did someone put out the Digitization Bat Signal?

Some background-reading about CH Film Digitization is here: https://dtdch.com/film/
Our Film Scanning Kit is detailed here: https://dtdch.com/film-scanning-kit/
A (slightly outdated) Webinar is here: https://dtdch.com/cultural-heritage-webinars/film-scanning/

There are many other (less expensive) ways to do film scanning. But nothing else will match the quality, consistency, speed, flexibility, and material-safety of our system.

We have many institutions using it for their film scanning including:
- Center for Creative Photography
- Library of Congress
- Disney Archive
- New York Public Library
- The Getty
- The Smithsonian
- Design Commission of NY
- The Oscars
- The Gates Foundation
- The Mariners Museum
- National Library of Norway

Plus many universities such as Yale and Ohio University (I take any chance I can to mention my alma mater in the same sentence as Yale).

It's being used to digitize the largest collections of work by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Irving Penn, Dorthea Lange, Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, Max Yavno, Louise Dahl-Wolfe etc.

We also have a small number of private owners using the system to digitize their own life's work. That's especially viable when they already own a Phase One digital back.

Glad to answer your questions here or via email ([email protected]).
 
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dougpeterson

Workshop Member
That's gonna be very expensive. Just buy a Nikon D850 and their transparency kit
Most Cultural Heritage Institutions abide by standards such as FADGI and Metamorfoze, for which commodity cameras are ill suited.

Don't get me wrong, you can do a pretty decent job of film scanning with just about any camera and transmissive light source. Heck, I've done some pretty good quick-and-dirty scans using my iPhone and a window with a piece of paper behind the film (and a D850 would obviously be much better than that). But if you're charged with preserving the history of your country/people/institution your standards need to be set at a commensurate level. Otherwise, at best, you'll be redoing the work in a few years and, at worst, the material will be too degraded for you to try again.

CH Digitization is a rather niche world which is hard for general-purpose photographers to understand without diving deep into its unique needs. For anyone that has a few hours and is particularly interested, our Digitization Program Planning Guide makes a pretty good primer. It explains why your statement is actually completely backwards; doing CH digitization with general-purpose equipment is actually far more expensive.
 

Smoothjazz

Active member
Doug,
It looks like a very impressive system, but for the photographer that just wants to digitize a few favorite negatives, or prints, could I also use your transilluminator light source, and a 120mm Schneider macro lens attached my XF body, with an 80mp or 100mp back?

Thanks,

John
 

dougpeterson

Workshop Member
It looks like a very impressive system, but for the photographer that just wants to digitize a few favorite negatives, or prints, could I also use your transilluminator light source, and a 120mm Schneider macro lens attached my XF body, with an 80mp or 100mp back?
If you have "just a few" I'd actually suggest just sending them to us to scan. We provide a limited range of high-end scanning services in house, using the highest-end form of our system.

If you have a "few hundred" then we'd be the first to tell you that our full system is unlikely to be cost-effective (unless, for example, you plan to offer scanning services to other, or simply have a sufficient budget that cost-per-item is not the driving factor). ''

All of our system components are available for purchase separately, and we're glad to help you understand the pros, cons, and alternatives for each component so you can prioritize and create a system within your budget. For example, an XF with a 120LS BR Macro isn't quite as good as an DT RCam with Schneider 120 ASPH (both in terms of quality and workflow), but either camera can be used with our system so if you already own the XF/120 it's definitely worth seeing how you get on with that system before you consider an upgrade.

If you have a "few thousand" or more then the cost of a full system starts to make very good sense. Especially if you otherwise already own or would value a Phase One back, which is a big driver of the total cost.

Beyond that (e.g. "few hundred thousand" or more) the cost becomes an absolute no-brainer. Disney, for example, has several of these systems and part of their project is to digitize several million historical publicity and BTS slides captured of their movie properties over the years.
 
To bring this conversation back down to earth...you can chase "better" until you buy a Heidelberg Tango or end up waiting until Phase One releases the NEXT back with even MOAR megapixels! But as someone who owns a lab, scans thousands of feet of film weekly...there is a bit of the law of diminishing returns operating here. If you have a normal 35mm Tri-X frame, there isn't much left to pull out than what you're getting from a D850. Heck there isn't much left after about 20mp. Just a closer inspection of grain clumps really. If you can already make pretty enormous prints from a D850 capture, what else do you need? Museums and institutions have their standards, and more importantly budgets for this kind of thing. I wouldn't take their workflow as something to model yours on unless you have a rather large grant. When it comes to film like color negative, I don't see a significant difference in actual detail between scans from an IQSmart3, a Coolscan 9k, and a Fuji Frontier SP-3000. In most cases I prefer the scans from the Fuji because it nails the color, even though they're only 8 bit tiffs at best. I've seen my clients make spectacular 30x40 prints from 30 year old C41 negatives that I scanned on one of our Fuji Frontiers. Long story short, another vote for the D850, or A7R3 with a good macro. If you're truly not satisfied with the quality that you get then I'm not sure 35mm was the right choice. :)
 

dougpeterson

Workshop Member
To bring this conversation back down to earth...you can chase "better" until you buy a Heidelberg Tango or end up waiting until Phase One releases the NEXT back with even MOAR megapixels! But as someone who owns a lab, scans thousands of feet of film weekly...there is a bit of the law of diminishing returns operating here. If you have a normal 35mm Tri-X frame, there isn't much left to pull out than what you're getting from a D850. Heck there isn't much left after about 20mp. Just a closer inspection of grain clumps really. If you can already make pretty enormous prints from a D850 capture, what else do you need?
FADGI standards for film scanning collections of cultural value only call for 4000ppi for 35mm film. So even the number of pixels in a D850 is overkill in terms of pixel-count-only.

However:
1) There is far more to "resolution" than pixel count. The standards are quite picky in this regard.
2) Resolution is just one of 13 image quality factors that are evaluated for compliance.
3) It's very rare that an archive ends up exclusively scanning one type of material.


Museums and institutions have their standards, and more importantly budgets for this kind of thing. I wouldn't take their workflow as something to model yours on unless you have a rather large grant.
Most of the corporate archives we have consulted with are doing exactly that. Why should their founding documents, important correspondence, institutional history, records of landmark achievements, and other valuable materials be held to a lower standard than a public museum, library, or archive? They are, in fact, archives. If anything, the budget we see provided at corporations for the proper maintenance and digitization of their archive is higher than at the majority of museums/libraries, because they can often leverage their collections in marketing, advertising, research, legal battles, and other functions that provide a more definitive Return on Investment. We speak about this in our Digitization Guide.
 
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yaya

Active member
Our office have received a few thousands of 35mm BW negatives and Color Slide positives to be scanned. This is a part of our archive.
After a long research I have come across this forum and found a few threads that have given me some good idea about scanning with MF digital backs.

Is here someone who can share his experience with XF Transparency Kit from Phase One ?
It looks like you are in India? If you would like to have someone arrange a demo of that specific kit please get in touch and we can put you in contact with the right person.

BR
Yair
 

LaurentMartin

New member
I am sharing some steps which help to scan slide.

There are a couple of options when trying to convert images stuck in slides to a digital format:

Professional scanning
The do it yourself route
Image quality
Scanning speed
Compatibility formats
Comparison shopping
Consider renting or buying​
Bootstrapping
 
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