 Wonderful. Can I follow you please? Ah great, it works. So you all know the old camera, your parents had. You have maybe, your grandparents had. The thing where you open a lid and put in some stuff where the images are stored on. It's not a digital memory, it's an analogue. It's a chemical process. It's not danned, it's quite alive. It's again more and more used. There's still some progress in development. And Mimoya and Dasha are talking about. Mimoya comes from an IT background and instead of, you know, this meme, how to get into woodworking, you start working in IT. She came to working with Silver. Silver Halogenite to be precise. Yeah, with Dasha she made a talk in 2018 on the MIMCD as well about analogue photography. So they both have a bit of background. Yeah, a warm welcome to the two and to the talk about analogue photography. Well, hello everyone, I'm glad that so many people are here. I have to say I was kind of uncertain whether this topic would even be interesting to the crowd and I was not certain, like, who to address, like people who have already a lot of knowledge, people who might be new to the topic. So I hope there's something interesting for all of you. First of all, before I start talking about the actual topic, I want to say, like, I'm going to talk about the state of analogue photography, recent developments on the market, which I've been following the recent years because it's interesting and of course I want to know what nice stuff I can get for myself to use. And later Mimoya will talk about how to scan a film because it might seem straightforward, it is quite the opposite and she's been nerding out quite a bit about this topic and it's very nice. So before I start with the actual topic, I want to say a short disclaimer. I'm going to mention various companies who make film, who make cameras, even an online store, which I sometimes use. I'm not affiliated with any of them. This is not meant as some kind of advertisement. I'm just talking about the stuff I use. So yeah, if it seems like there's affiliation, no, there is not. I wanted to say that. So it's 2022. Why would we actually want to use analogue photography? Is it cost reasons maybe? Not anymore. I would have actually argued like this a few years ago because film cameras were dirt cheap on the used market and they are already outdated. So they kind of don't age and digital cameras do age. They are outdated after a few years. So it might even be cheaper to just buy a lot of film every now and then. But I would not argue like this anymore because it's become more expensive actually. So is it maybe quality reasons? Well, that depends on the definition of quality. I mean, photography is art. So yeah, ask 10 people, get 11 opinions. And you have technically measurable aspects like resolution and you have aesthetic reasons, which are the important ones for me. In most regards, I would say digital cameras are better in the technical specs. So that's maybe not an argument. I thought there are a few exceptions like ultra-large format, which we see here because if you have a 8 by 10 inch sheet of film and you scan that with a very high resolution scanner, well, maybe they are digital sensors who can compete but you will have to look for them. It's not easy. So this ultra-large stuff is actually maybe a reason why you want to use it. Is it practical reasons? Well, I can't think of much except one because if you use film, you can use a camera which doesn't require batteries, which can be very handy. I have some batteries last for like a year and digital cameras you have to charge like every two days or something or carry a lot of batteries. So yeah, that might be kind of an argument. So maybe technical reasons. Well, somewhat because if you are shooting analog, you can do true back and wide, which you literally usually can't because you always have this RGB pattern in the sensor. You can create stuff like process your film with the wrong chemicals. I have in my notes unpredictable creative shit like multiple exposures over time, intentional light leaks, web scaling, which is exposing the film on the wrong side. You can do a lot if you want to and you could also use some DIY just for educating yourself like if you want to learn about the process, about the history of it could be interesting. So yeah, might be a reason. Or is it aesthetic reasons for which I would say hell yes. And I would say it's like you can draw digitally and you can draw on the canvas and then probably digitize it like scanning or something. And both are valid. It's not like drawing digitally is better or drawing on the canvas is better. No, that's not the case. And neither is superior or inferior. So I want to avoid some hipster analog is better because it's always what you like and what you want to do with it. And also it is about artistic expression not self-portrait at least for me. Personally I like it better, like the images speak to me, which digital images usually don't. I also like black and white photography a lot because it's kind of easier for me. I have less factors to worry about. Like is the white balance right? Do I need to filter or something? No, it's just black and white. And I also love the aesthetics and haptics of old cameras, like using them, handing them when you want the film. It just feels nice to me. I just enjoy it and it's about fun. That's really the point for me. I don't do it for money. I do it for fun. I also like that analog cameras usually do not have menus because I really, really hate menus when I just want to take pictures and I'm filling with a menu and maybe my picture subject is gone when I have found the right setting. So yeah, I do not like that. So the market situation is what I want to talk about mainly because of course you need suppliers for your cameras and also you need the cameras yourself. First of all, I want to talk about the makers of film where we always had and still have like the big three companies which are Kodak, Fuji and Ilfo. They've been like around... It feels like forever. They're all still around. They're all still making film, never really stopped. There are smaller manufacturers. For example, Adox, which is a German company, Ferrania, which is an Italian company. I think they're also in the business again. There is Orvo. Some of you might know them. It was a film manufacturing plant in the German Democratic Republic. They still exist and actually they are starting to make camera film again, like in canisters that you can just buy. They used to just make a cinema film but you can now pre-order and next month they actually want to ship a camera film that you can just put in your 35mm, 35mm camera. And when I read that, I checked like three times if that's true because I think that's awesome. That a small East German company now does more stuff again and realizes there's a market. Oh, no, I was too quick. We also still have aqua but they only make technical products like not for still photography, more like for aerial photography. Sometimes they are repackaged by third-party manufacturers and there are also a lot of resellers which makes the market situation at the supply chains often kind of unclear which I'm unhappy about because I just like knowing what I'm actually putting in my camera. Yeah, the low pound of the market has been quite overcome. At this point I would have loved to show you like some graphical display of a curve that is going up again. Sadly, I could not find any data that would be presentable like really facts not just oh yeah, it's going up again. What I can say is that the demand is actually exceeding the supply. The codec who have of course downscaled the film production when people went digital they can't make and especially can't package film as quickly as it is sold. It's often sold out these days because they just can't make it as fast as people are buying it which I think is quite amazing. I wouldn't have thought that a few years ago. Also they sometimes now have supply chain issues like they can't get the film canisters or metal parts are missing. This is actually a current problem I just read about that. Manufacturers downsized their capacities to keep it viable and now people are buying more film again so they have kind of a problem. Now what formats of film can you still buy? Oh yeah, that was my point. I should have prepared better. You can buy still black and white film you can buy C41 which is color negative which probably most of you still know those brown strips you get back from the lab. There's E6 which is the positives DIA film in German. It also still exists though expensive and you can get these films at least as 35 millimeter which is what we see on the right most of you know it and you also have the 120 format which is I think it was introduced in 1901 it is still around and is still quite popular and you can also buy sheet film for like these large format cameras I showed you earlier. Yeah, so most decent cameras built in the like last 70 years can still be used because you can still buy the film you need for them and they're also most irreparable. What also still exists for example a cinema film which is a bit different I do not want to go into detail about that right now you have 110 which is these like small cartridges more for toy cameras but it still exists some people like it why not and you also have instant film like these polo white things they are also still around or again around I just can't really tell you about it because that's something I personally don't use so yeah I don't want to just tell something which I don't know about cinema film is sometimes unofficially repackaged for still photography use some companies who build it are sin still or silver sides I still want to try that but yeah I haven't so far of course we've had a price increase especially in the last few years everything has gotten more expensive and so has film which for example is due to increased prices of raw materials of course like I said everything gets more expensive you have ecological reasons for example some companies can't manufacture the film according to the recipe they used to use for it because yeah some chemical is now prohibited and they have to re-engineer their stuff which of course doesn't make it easier and doesn't make it cheaper usually of course there's inflation I don't have to tell you anything about it you know that but the really interesting thing is if you compensate for the inflation film nowadays is not really much more expensive than it was in its heyday which we can see in the graphic I hope it's self-explanatory so yeah that's also an interesting point it's not expensive now it just used to be dirt cheap and of course we all laughed at but now it's like now it's at the point where it's viable again which is nice because companies can do research and development which is of course in our interest and they don't have to operate at smallest profit margins anymore until something breaks because sometimes even film companies had to stop production of some product just because the machine broke and they made so little profit that they couldn't afford repairing the machine is not nice either so I have some price examples these are for 35 millimeter film so you'll get 60, sorry, 36 images usually per film back and right you can get for around 4 euros which I think is pretty cheap and it's not crappy at all you can pretty much use these cheap films a color film has gotten more expensive now it starts at like 7 euros and often it's sold out there is slide film which is expensive, you don't have much choice and also few reasons to use it there are reasons to use it but also that's something I don't want to go into detail about right now so is this a rich people's hobby? I actually wouldn't think so I mean you have seen the price examples I used to shooting digital and I think oh I want to take 500 pictures a day I don't know, I don't have that problem my problem usually is oh god I still have like 10 images left but what do I shoot, I want to develop this film I want to have it done so yeah, I think one gets used to it of course we also need cameras to put a film and some of you might still have them some just want to start out you and of course you need a camera the major manufacturer of an analog camera was Nikon I wanted to show that because I thought they would still manufacture that model but it was Nikon F6 if anybody knows that one I'm a Canon user usually so I'm not familiar with it and this was discontinued in 2020 sadly yeah, like I said we have Lumography who do do creative film stuff and also build cameras some of them are like cheap toys but you also can get some more decent cameras from them if you like this kind of stuff there are some small scale manufacturers which of course are expensive but hey it's nice to exist and then of course that's the used market oh sorry, I was too quick the used market has quite increased in price too I'm following it a bit but there are still lots of cheap options if you're not so picky and as an example I've just looked for like a Canon EOS series cameras with the lens already on eBay like I said that's no advertising at all it's just an example they are also somewhat compatible with modern lenses which might be important for some people and yeah, I mean you see the prices you can get like a camera for 20 to 40 euros and you can just have fun with it I'm not saying these are the greatest cameras but they are cameras, you can take photos with it what more do you want? now we have film, we have the cameras we have taken photos, hopefully and we want to process it for color film it's still pretty easy you can just go to the drugstore drop it and get it back like a week later it used to be like next day stuff that is not a thing anymore but still if you wait a week you can get it for like 3 euros per roll which is dirt cheap, if you ask me there are some special apps which I would prefer because you can actually talk to the people who run the machines they put your film in I like that they usually start like from 5 euros a roll for development only actually more of these apps seem to be emerging again I'm getting like advertisements for that and many of them also offer scanning of films so you just drop it and you get your digital images and you do not have to do what Mimoja does which is of course also part of the fund but I mean sometimes I just don't want a little bit of scanning I just need my images quick I don't want to use digital anyway so yeah that's a nice option and yeah you can also home develop color film but it's not really viable for anyone because if you don't have at least like I would say 4 to 6 a month it just isn't viable chemicals will go bad faster then you can use them and they're not that cheap for black and white film there are also special apps which I would recommend drugstore development for black and white isn't really a thing it might work out I wouldn't try and actually and of course there's home development which can be really really cheap depending on the chemicals you use I can easily do it for way under 1 euro per roll and cheap developers does not equal to bad developers the image quality is rather decent it's really just more a question of preference not of quality like you don't get much higher quality with a much more expensive developer it's just a matter of taste so yeah that's what I usually do and I have screenshotted like again no affiliation from a major german store for these kind of things and they sell you like the canister you need to put the film in for development and the chemicals like everything you need to start out for 45 euros you can of course get it used but I mean that's a one-time investment I'm still using the tank about like 15 years ago it's perfectly fine so yeah that's kind of affordable I think so now the classical way to reproduce a negative would be to use an enlarger most of you probably know what that is I'm not going to explain it now but of course we also want to show around our images digitally because like we are in a digital age stuff gets distributed on the internet so we need a digital copy of it and yeah like I said in the introduction scanning film isn't as straightforward as it might seem because there is not a right or wrong way to do it and yeah I mean we could also enlarge it and then scan the enlargement but that's just another step why do it we will probably lose quality so now for scanning okay hi scanning a film the big question of course in the beginning why would I need to scan a film we can just go to the drugstore get copies and point on yeah we want it on CD even though I have no way of reading a CD in 2022 we can do that so why would we scan at home yes we can home develop there are multiple reasons to do those I personally had just the experience that I went with my film to my lab with my first film they took I gave it to them and I waited two and a half weeks and I'm not the person who can wait two and a half weeks for photos I forget what's on the film I forget why I shoot it and I started back with a comment saying that my pictures were great I don't want that I want my pictures to stay with me I'm a bit of a paranoid person in that regard and in a film lab they have to manually process that film which is totally fine but you can scan at home so no one else touches it if you home develop you should home scan also you want to post your pictures online you need a digital copy so let's talk first of all what goes into scanning because like if we go nerdy about it let's optimize the direction we can we want to scan in the highest possible resolution with the best color accuracy sure that's obvious we want to get that picture as precisely reproduced as possible and maybe even we have mistakes on our picture dust is a big major a big factor in analog photography if you have dust on your film and you do an enlargement you get that dust spot on your enlarged image so some scanners offer optimizations to reduce that dust to reduce anything else that might be on the film and to correct for things like film aging film aging is actually a thing like film from the 80s especially slide film will have aged up until now and you might need to correct for that to get an accurate image what was on the film also there is software and I think everyone can agree here software can be a real pain and if your scanner like many film things from the 90s comes with software from the 90s and that runs only on windows xp and something like that that can be a real show to work with besides that stuff that is from the 90s the early 2000s and isn't built anymore that's expensive and usually super slow if you had at the time like no thunderbolt available but you're putting your data through usb 1.1 or firewire 400 if it is as good as good of a scanner you're waiting for your images to arrive and there are multiple scanners that try to deal with that and there are multiple categories of scanners but before we look into those we need to define resolution because resolution is like the obvious thing to look at there is a test chart that the US Air Force defined in 1951 that is giving us a possibility to benchmark optical systems scanners count as optical systems and all our scan setups count as optical systems so we can use that chart that chart gives us black and white stripes that get finer and finer the last set of stripes where you can distinctly understand which ones are the white stripes and the black stripes that is where your scanners can still reproduce at the highest contrast that the scanner is possible to process a difference between white and black so that is what we use to get an optical resolution test scanners and optical systems usually have lenses and other stuff that is in the way of the light so you have optical losses and those optical losses are usually what prevents from reaching the actual resolution it is advertising you might have seen scanners from the early 2000s, mid 2000s I have no idea promising 9000 DPI resolutions they usually don't reach those there are optical losses involved so what resolutions do we actually need to scan film that's difficult because film is silver halide crystals and they have different sizes depending on the speed of your film how light sensitive is your film and depending on your developer your developer might accentuate those grains and give you more in bigger grain structures so if you sample a grain with like four pixels you get an accurate representation of that grain so if your grain is bigger you need in theory a higher resolution to get everything out of the film there is a good upper bound if we say for black and white color film 8000 DPI that is like on an a small 35 film negative that is roughly where every film is you should be able to sample every film that crosses around but there are different scanners and they have all their different specialities and usually if you say I scan at 4000 DPI you get a good representation of what is on the film so let's just go with those two numbers you can completely sample every silver grain but if you want the image 3000-4000 DPI is usually where you would max out for that but for color that's difficult it's not like we can say yeah, that's a number if you sample at that number you get a good result we already heard there is light film DF film, positive film that film is pretty much accurate in the way it is it comes on a transparent base not the brown strips you might know that transparent base let's slide through and you can calibrate for that specific film like base and then you have an accurate representation there are calibration targets you can buy for Kodak and Fujifilm the two big manufacturers of slide film to this day you calibrate your scanner to that it has different checker patterns of the different colors and if you then scan a positive film you should get a good representation of the colors that are actually on that image that's pretty easy black and white negative also not that bad you pretty much have to define this is my black point, this is my white point software is not bad at doing that that's just basic histogram checking a manual operator can easily do that by hand the thing is color negative film the brown ones, they are evil they come on a brown base to help you offset some shortcomings of how the emulsion represents color that means your negative inverted is not directly what is on the film so you need a strategy to compensate for the issues that come with how the film is manufactured that seems easy enough you figure out the math and then you go with it sadly it's not like that every film has its different characteristics they have their different formulas they have their different colors they use to create the image and those colors behave differently some films might accentuate red tones one gives you more contrast you can't have a one fits all solution because film ages as I said and a film from now and a film from 10 years ago will not render an image exactly the same so there are best guesses manufacturers of scanners did that you will just have to trust them for a different scan let's take an example for those two images the upper image is a Kodak packon scanner the lower one is an Orizo scan and the lower one is a series of scanners expensive scanners that's not putting a phone over a light and just photographing it those are expensive lab scans if you were to get them done in a lab which one is the correct one so that's difficult to say I couldn't tell from here the lower one, yeah I got a white when I was there I would say snow is white that seems right but I also know that my film that I used to photograph that was a cinema film if my final image has more blue than it then I would expect maybe that's just the film overcompensating am I now working backwards against the film or do I just accept that my film is rending more blue you can see that in the upper one the camera decided ok I'm using no base point to do white elements against while in the lower image you have a perfect white for the stripe of the passing ball in S1 so I couldn't tell which one is correct I don't know what is on the film I can look at those two images and decide which one I like better and that's the issue we can't just go around and say this is perfectly what is on the film for color negative film there are strategies and there are manufacturers with their strategies and there are corrections and all of that but in the end of the day it is a question of art so let's go through the process manually we have a raw scan that is like 6x6 medium format on a very specially chosen film this is Lomography 400 and I chose a picture that was especially green because I put the filter on so we're using that picture later this is not as bad as you would likely see it in a real life example this is like a specially crafted image for that case so what do we have in a raw scan ok raw data that's a yellow brownish picture we do have a couple of color informations ok cool but at this point the scanner already decided what its dynamic range is it has already lightened or darkened the image according to what it read during scanning we need to keep that in mind so we could be at the point where the image is too light or too dark because the scanner has already compensated for us if we now just go and invert that image by just pulling our curve upside down that's blue that's a blue image I don't want a blue image but that is the point where the yellow base of the film just breaks our image we need to compensate now for the yellow base ok that's easily done we subtract the yellow base from every pixel we have a green image we just put out blue why is it green now now we have different ranges of our colors where the color material exists and we don't know if like the actual black that we are seeing in the shirt is actually the blackest black in the image or if that is like a dark gray and we need to make an assumption in this case I just moved all the sliders around to where actual data was and the image looked good so if there was on the red channel there was no data I just moved the black point to the red channel to a point where the data began so what was probably 30% black saturation before now becomes my new no black data at all that strategy I did manually and I came up with an image that to me looks quite nice you might disagree perfectly fine that is like how you could invert an image very basic manually the difficulty is if you're now not doing it manually by editing curves but you're using scanners or a lab you might get different results from left to right that is like a solution for Lightroom that already inverts the image and I said yeah I want a very saturated image and I want the colors to pop because why not I have that slider if that software gives me that slider I'm allowed to use it I get a very red brown over saturated contrast the image I used the same image with a different software to convert it and I get a brown greenish image in this case it was ViewScan a software that runs on Windows and Linux and talks to desktop scanners that gave me that image and then I gave that image to a lab and they scanned it onto professional lab scanners and I asked them not to correct and I would say that one scanner they have a pretty perfect result so maybe they did correct maybe they did not because the other lab scanner that's green so an operator now has to manually step in and correct that image by what they think you want your image to look like that's why I want to scan at home because I want to do that step manually if I'm going to correct it anyways before posting because it is my image I might want to correct for small details to post processing at Photoshop or Lightroom or whatever then I can also do color correction so that's the point where we need to correct where we need to talk about automatic correction and film grain because as we talked we can sample film at some resolutions and we will get the grain for black and white that's pretty easy either we have a grain there or we don't have a grain there or we have different sizes of grains there but that's somewhat binary ish data on one layer for color film we don't have that for color film we have those bluffs of data all spread around and they align roughly to form a color so there are different ways how we might want to correct that and one of the solutions that the late 90s early 2000s produced was the digital eyes software suite for software solutions to deal with those issues that might arise when you are photographing a film digital eyes is the first one that emerged and that's the most popular that's dust and scratch removal you just shine an infrared light through your film base and your colors will not influence that infrared light but dust will so you get a mask that you can use to automatically correct and do a fill from this from around the data the data around your scratch to fill in new color information and you get the scratch removed there is the digital ROC with destruction of color if your film is aging if your film might be shifted in color due to development that takes care of that gives you a software suite gives you some heuristics and so on to get the color right and then there is digital gem grain equalization and management and I want to focus on why we might want to manage our grain because why wouldn't we would we we wanted to have the film and we want the data from the film and now we agree that maybe the color of the film is personal preference are we now having to manage even what the film is all about that's the zoom in into the pictures that is what I'm talking about that is not digital noise that is grain noise that we have on the film I spent this picture multiple times I go to high resolution scanner because I couldn't believe that looks like camera noise no it's not it is actually multiple colored blobs that are on the film now I think it 2000 times magnification that is like a half frame image so we're zooming in quite a bit but that is how our film is made up and for a very modern film like the one we are seeing here that might not even be a problem no one is zooming in into that that much that might not be the case if we are looking at an old film that is a film that came with a camera from the 70s and the film was from the 80s that's like one of the earliest color films and if you zoom in that's horrible that is a grainy image that is all over the place looking like noise, green, red and blue chunks those things you might want to correct also those purple borders around the image that's from the aging of the film as I said those are worst case examples I could find in my stash something that is looking that bad with a modern film so we know what we want to correct for we know roughly where we want to go let's throw money at it sounds like a usually good solution for all things technical so we have different scanner types the labs are using we do have flatbed scanners we have seen those at home they should work they are scanning something there are dedicated film scanners that are desktop machines you could buy or even sometimes later that were designed to just scan film at highest possible resolutions and we have the Creme de la Creme the drum scanners or the virtual drum scanners in this case that's like how they look that's a one and a half meter tower of pure awesomeness and you pay roughly the same like of a car of it that's a Hustleblad, FlexTide X1, Big X5 they had multiple versions of that there are actual drum scanners where you mount your image onto a rotating drum and just sample one color line at a time different ways of how they work they produce the sharpest images the best images but they are so expensive as I said 25,000 euros base price if you can get one now and you have to get it with a box and a manual and the manual tells you that the power supplies are consumable so ouch if you even can get replacement parts they might cost you a thousand a year there are labs still using them saying they never had an issue and there are others who have to replace something expensive every year I don't own one I only were able to talk to people it has a 10,000 pixel scanner line the FlexTide I talked about so on 35 millimeters with a bit of lenses in between you get an 8,000 dpi scan that's pretty much the best you can get for a 35 millimeter film if you are now using that same lens to focus wider and use the same scanner line on a medium format images like this 6x6 centimeter once so earlier we get a 3,600 dpi resolution on medium format so that's good that's pretty much the best you can do for small images you can do better for medium format but that's not really an option if you want to get into it that's not really an option ever unless you explicitly want that for the karma points okay so let's buy a lab scanner they are fast, they are quick they are optimized for speed they work in a lab, you put in your film also that was a test film no worries, I'm usually not putting my film into that bed of the situation but yeah, those scanners were built to pass film through them all day long Noritso has this line where they have a scanner they call HS 1,800 and the 1,800 means 1,800 small format frames per hour that's a frame every half a second on not the highest resolution but that scanner just pulls film through which means you might not even get the color accuracy you would expect from that kind of scanner but now every lab has them and that kind of software and the Noritso scanners were pretty popular and they give you a nice color feel they render your film in nice colors so people now expect the inaccuracy of the film scanner with their analog scans so yeah, we've come full circle now we are correcting for the scanner that someone in the past used for the future, whatever this is one of the scanners I looked into that's a codec packer at only 2,000 euros if they work, this one was broken when I got it, they are stupidly expensive and they require you to run Windows XP and it's a complete mess to work with the driver registers its own partition you have to mount a different drive into the machine give it its own partition the driver will take over that partition then open a com server connect to it via the DLL putting around a different UI application so you have like 15 places where this whole second crash and it does so they are not no fun to use, they are clunky and if you don't have the absolute optimized virtualization setup that magically works you are waiting forever for your images so desktop machines, they were made for the home user let's get one of those they were optimized for results, they are quick in the way they work, they are not super slow but they are slower than lab scanners they take a couple of minutes to get a big scan and what we are seeing here are two scanners from the Nikon cool scan line which were like state of the art when they came out, the upper one from the early 90s, we got for 10 euros on eBay, it is a DEA scanner and someone put it into an Apple CD drive because they broke the casing whatever, it still scans 30 years later not as great as the modern one but it works and they are cheap and those scanners, they work on multiple operating systems they can scan with a view scan for Windows and Linux, a third-party operating third-party operating software and they even are supported insane insane the Linux scanning application though the cool scan 9000 only has a driver that was posted to the mailing list in 2008 so you have to patch your scan manually and integrate that driver into the built environment but that works, you can scan with that and you end up with a scan with three color layers and an infrared layer if you want to and then you need to convince GIMP to work with that but that is a different problem people using GIMP usually know what they are doing I don't but those scanners exist they range from 10 euros on eBay to 4,500 when I looked it up earlier today would not recommend that's expensive for a hobby why would anyone buy that if it is not for the taking apart so we had flatbed scanners my dad had one of those, I lent that one there are different scanners that were built to scan negatives we have the scan in 9900F that allows you to theoretically scan at 9600 dpi's you never get that if you put in 9600 dpi's you roughly get around 2400 real dpi's of optical resolutions out of it which is not bad that gives you quite a bit of zoom in for this 6x6 negative that is quite a bit of data we got out of it there but it's not perfect also if you scan at 9600 dpi's 6x6 centimeters that's a lot of storage data you end up with a gigabyte per image you need to compress that so you throw out every fourth pixel or something with all the downsides of digital image processing compression that's a topic for another talk at some point there's also the epsom scanner's line they are pretty popular they have their own accessories community has built extensions to those they are even still sold the v600 you can still buy they are pretty fast they scan at good resolutions the v800 or 850's they were the ones you get recommended at 800 euros you get real dpi's and you don't have to scan at the highest possible resolution at the highest possible resolution the scanner is introducing noise because the heat it creates is higher so at scanning at lower resolutions gives you a better result but yeah, they work with linux they work with the same driver kit you can do that if you don't want to use windows and lightroom and the modern solution if you maybe even have a camera at home is just pointing it at it if you have a light table on the floor you mount your negative over it and you use a good camera to scan it we said 4000 dpi for a color negative that's roughly 24 megapixels that's a modern camera a modern camera can do that yes we do have losses through the lens but you can obtain pretty good results with a very minimum financial effort that's my digital camera I think with a 70 euro lens on it that worked for me pretty fine until I figured out scanners suck and they have software to break so that is still my go-to way if I just wanted to work you can use it with anything that reads SD cards cool and there are converters things like negative lab pro which integrates into lightroom so you import your images cut out everything that is not your color negative you click convert and you have a couple of profiles it simulates pretty well how the different lab scanners of the time would have processed that image they just reversed engineered how the software vendor did the color corrections and integrated that into that software solution and if you have crazy money to throw around for 10,000 euros you can buy a Hasselblad scanner or you can buy a medium format digital camera with a good macro lens you get pretty much the same resolution at the end of the day but one of those things is 1 meter 50 high, weighs 70 kilos and you can't move around and you don't know if it works tomorrow and the other thing is a camera that is actually workable as a camera that is what I would recommend for anyone who wants to get into scanning unless you already have one of those flatbed scanners flatbed scanners have the disadvantage you need to have a light that the scanner is able to shine through you can't just put a light on top of your negative and hope that the scanning will work out because the scanner will try to compensate for the reflection it is registering and will completely erase anything that is on your negative but if you have a scanner like the ones mentioned, a Canon 9900F or an Epson, those work if you are just here trying to have a camera, bought a 30 euro camera just mount whatever you already have even if it is a phone or an old compact camera fix the focus, fix white balance and start shooting your negatives it works yeah, that is everything I have to say for scanning let's compare it between two scanners on the left that is a view scan scan, on the right that is a scan from a camera you can see software you can basically see how this different software has decided what to do with the colours on the left it is less saturated on the right it is more saturated I wouldn't say there is a big difference in detail from the last rows, definitely not from the front here, that is perfectly fine that is a 35mm image that is 24 megapixel scanned on the right side and on the left side it is a 4000TPS scan, so a bit more data if you store it as tiff but still roughly the same so let's zoom in if we read the text that is pretty much the same sharpness across the board both work the differences one is a 4000€ investment up front that gives you a nice workflow and the other one requires you to mount a camera somewhere over your negative you beat the touch of it I like the technical challenge of taking apart scanner drivers but I would not do it for the results so yeah if you point a camera at it you get decent results though you don't get the whole suite of digital corrections your camera will not have an infrared sensor that allows you to correct for dust scratches so that is the one downside of DSLR scanning that might for some people give them a reason to buy an expensive scanner but all things considered that is everything I have to say for scanning thank you so much hope you have a great day goodbye that was awesome we still have about 30 minutes time for some Q&A I guess some people will have some questions yeah so when I was looking at scanning options that went too expensive I mostly found devices that would allow you to mount a phone or scan your phone and jolt the phone next to the phone camera have you ever used one of those and are they decent how do they mount it I haven't bought it so I haven't had much of a chance to actually look into it too much but I think they kind of let you move the film to scan multiple photos after one another so basically a roller setup where you put the film in and you roll it forward or what I don't understand what device we're talking about I think it's a cheap piece of plastic but I'm not sure so just where you mount the film and you scan through it with a camera you mount your phone then sorry I understood film I tried one of those they are horrifying in so multiple ways because you lose so much dynamic range through your phone's camera you had your phone's correction for what the phone is thinking your photographing yes codec has its own app that is trying to read raw data from the camera it does not work out that well sadly it is good enough to understand what's on your pictures it is good enough to post online it is not photography for me personally I did not like the results sadly they don't give you accurate color representation due to limitations of the phone's camera but if you were to completely over engineer that with a good phone where you maybe even can put an external lens on that might work I have not looked into the go crazy option on that I'd like to ask about the kind of painful part of the process which is software to me because I looked at scanning some of my films quite a while back and a friend of mine had a decent flatpad scanner and he tried that and was quite frustrating not very sharp and so I did go the same route that you recommend of mounting a camera but at the time it wasn't a particularly amazing camera it was like a microfiber camera from way back when and it seems that if I understand it correctly that now there is lightroom plugins so I changed the color correction for you because I really struggled quite a lot actually getting the color correction for the color film I ended up actually mounting like Lee filters you know like the color gels that you mount on lights that is like roughly the opposite of the film base so that my camera would have enough dynamic range but you know I wouldn't be sure if that would be at all a viable strategy now if there is like you know film presets no, I would personally not do it with a filter because modern cameras or somewhat modern cameras give you a lot of dynamic range you can even do like an HDR photo of a film negative which means that your base color is never completely blown out you should always have color information color data brightness information on those borders so you can just white balance from that border and then you get a negative that you can invert you can you can use negative lab pro which is doing fancy saturation curves across the whole range of colors for your image but like as I said as I showed in the one slide just inverting it manually and subtracting the color base and pushing in the border so your color data is on the range where you would expect it usually works out so no I would not go with a filter yes that plugin exists it costs money it is proprietary though it is Lua software so yeah there are multiple options there I don't think I would go with a filter just because of the amount of light that it would lose so I'm pretty much a noob at this but say I assume I were to want to develop my own film at home how does that even work it's pretty easy you have a development tank with a spool I had it in my slide but it's you can kind of make it out you have this roundish thing on the right which is a spool and you basically just need a dark room or like a dark changing bag these also exist I just like to use my bathroom shut the door shut all the lights off so it's really perfectly dark and then you use this room to spool your film in in total darkness put it into this black tank which is a development tank and at this point you can already like turn the lights back on and for back and white processing it's pretty easy you have like the developer which goes first you can find like the dilutions at the time you can try it for your film online there are huge lists I can recommend the one at digitaltruth.com if someone is interested in that and then at the end of this development process you pour it out pour some water in just to make sure everything of the developer is out and then you need fixer I'm not going into the chemical process at this time because that would lead too far like the fixer in for maybe I usually do it for 8 minutes pour that out and then you can take your finished film out hang it over your bathtub maybe so it can dry and that's everything and in media you sometimes see them developing film in rooms with red light how come red light doesn't affect it the thing is that silver highlights which the film is based on also color film which is a bit more complicated but it also use like silver highlights so some silver chemicals if you use them as they are they are only sensitive to blue light or ultraviolet light so you have special chemicals in the film which make it sense to put other colors of light too and at this point you can choose which chemicals to put in so you can for example put in something that only makes it sensible towards green and yellow light but it's not sensitive to red light which means red light doesn't affect the film and you can develop while you can practically watch the development process under the red light because the film is not affected by it but you can also go into the other direction there's even film which is sensitized way into the infrared spectrum which makes it even harder to process because for example in labs they sometimes use like infrared goggles to check the machines while they are running but you can't do that with infrared film which needs complete darkness of course it's an interesting topic but that would be another talk so that's basically how it works and the word you might come across if you look further into it is panchromatic and orthochromatic panchromatic is like sensitized for all visible light colors and orthochromatic is not sensitive to red but to all the other colors and yeah I think it's kind of a cliche and probably also a movie trope because yeah showing a red lighted room just works better than showing a black room I have some experience with lab with photographic lab yeah the thing with the film and into the spool and developing putting the film in the canister is has to be in complete darkness but after this the photographic paper and that's what you meant why this red light or brownish whatever line this is when you print when you make the image on a paper this is sensitive to only a very specific part of the spectrum and it's not sensitive for red light and this gives you the possibility to you put the image on the paper and then you put it into the developer bath and you see how the picture comes how the image develops and then you process it this is actually how you do black and white in the lab you have this red light or greenish whatever it's not and the paper is not sensitive to this light so you can see it's really really fascinating to watch every time I love it so there is actually a point where I have to work blindly okay and does it have does it have to be like entirely dark or if I have very good vision in the dark like tiny bit of light destroys it you want complete darkness usually you you place your stuff on a table you know where your spools are where your canisters is and you memorize that's how I do it I memorize it I go out I switch off the light and I go in and I grab what I have to take and the scissors and stuff it's a bit of a training one really gets used to it and by now I don't think it's particularly at all it's really a question of getting used to it well still one minute last question quick question now you showed only how to scan decent photographs do you have here any information about I'm looking for a slide scanner because I have many cupboards of slides positive and black and white so I want to run them automatically within frames I looked at a reflector but they are still very expensive and the linux support is not that well you run into exactly that hold you mentioned I am not aware of a scanner that is scanning ideas from a stack cheaply like you do have the cool scan series but you spend 2,000 euros on it yeah and more especially if it's called a chrome yeah especially if it is called a chrome then you will you want that kind of scanner for that because it's the one solution to scan that very old particular film in a good way so yeah if you have old film get an old calibration target it works with cameras to a degree that's also a comment for if you do it with not a ready made scanner like for example the mobile phone thing and some light source I think you always should have a calibration target so you have a print out of a lot of colors where you get the scanned numbers of the correct what's this type of red green whatever and do the calibration because you have 3 sets of color sensitivity it's from the film itself it's from your camera because the pixels on the camera are not sensitive to the same wave lengths as then the third one your illumination is you have to be very careful about the illumination sources both about the frequency and that wave content if it's not a Wolfram whatever sensitive thing that you have as a wide spectrum and then you always should do calibration with a target to take your camera to take that calibration thing and then you can calculate backwards that you get the real colors yeah but that is basically the rabbit hole right if you spend 500 euros on a color source and then you only mount your most expensive slides and then you use your phone then you have invested at the wrong point so yeah of course you can or should calibrate for your slide film if you want to do accurate slide film representation for color negative I tried it I don't really see the benefit in it it is just expensive to get a calibration target and at the end of the day you will just do it differently for the color anyways your software will decide or you will decide what you want to see in the picture so why correct for the 1% if you're going to flip 99% of the color information anyways this is a question you can discuss afterwards thank you very much it's very interesting as always get into analog photography and applause