Scanners and Scanning

Clearing Storm, Lookout Mountain

In my post on February 15th, I wrote that you can't get away from digital. If you shoot film, you can't post your photos online or publish them in a magazine or book without converting them to digital images. The process for doing this is called scanning. You can make prints of your film photographs if you have a darkroom or access to one, and show them to your friends or even have a show of your prints in a gallery, but if you want to reach a larger circle, they will have to be scanned.

The very finest scans are made with an instrument called a drum scanner. The photographs in my book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era were made with a drum scanner. However the process is expensive and not available to most of us.  

I use two instruments to scan my film photographs. The first is a Minolta-DiMage 5400. It only scans 35mm slides and negatives, but makes very fine scans -- almost as good as a drum scanner. The second is an Epson Perfection 4990 Pro. It's a flatbed scanner, similar to the one on your printer, but better. I use it for transparencies and negatives larger than 35mm, and also for scanning prints.

A third way to digitize film images is to photograph them with a digital camera. A few years ago, friend (although we've never met in person) and fellow photo-blogger, Dennis Mook, bought a full-frame Nikon camera (he normally shoots with Fujis), a macro lens, a lightbox, and some other accessories for close-up work, and spent a summer digitizing his entire collection of film photos in this way. (Check out his blog at www.thewanderinglensman.com/.)

 I haven't done this yet, but have most of the equipment I need. I plan to get started once we're moved and settled in our new home. Scanning with the Minolta-DiMage or the Epson is slow work. The digital camera method will certainly be quicker, and, I hope, will give even better results.

A good scanned film photograph is never quite as sharp or clear as an original digital image, but in any size print you're likely to make, you'll never see the difference unless you examine it with a magnifying glass. The photo of the little barn at the foot of Lookout Mountain was made with a Canon EOS A2 camera and 80-200mm f2.8L lens on Fujichrome 100 film and was scanned on the Minolta-DiMage scanner. It has been printed 36 inches wide and looks great. 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.