Ever thought, “These flatbed scans are ok…. but shouldn’t I be getting more from my film?”

I certainly had this thought and couldn’t stand the lengthy process of scanning film on my Epson V550 and V800 scanners. It’s not to say I wasn’t able to get some decent scans and prints from these scanners, but the amount of time in physically scanning along with post processing… led me to find a better method. DSLR / Mirrorless Camera Scanning!

I’m using a Canon 5DSr with a 100mm f/2.8 macro lens and my light source is a Paul C Buff Einstein flash. All of this is mounted in a copy stand that I cut a 12”x12” hole in the bottom of. Using two pieces of plexiglass, I’m able to achieve double diffusion for a very even light source. The Eintein 640ws flash unit has a color consistency mode and I’ve found this to be an exceptional light source for a balance between color consistency and flash duration, ensuring sharp images with consistent color.

For keeping my negatives flat, I’m using Negative Supply products. Their innovated designs ensures extreme film flatness while keeping a very fast work flow. Highly recommend you check them out!

Below is an Epson scan, scanned at 2400dpi and then mildly post processed in Photoshop. It’s shot on Cinestill 800T, using a CTO gel on both of my flashes to maintain a proper color on the skateboarded while rendering the sunset vibe as very blue. But… there was something very “flat” feeling about the tonality.

Now here’s the DSLR scan. To my eyes, the actual depth of the negative can be seen instead of this flat rendition of the negative.

This was “scanned” (digitized) in a matter of seconds and required VERY little post processing to achieve an image I was happy with. Below are side by side crops of the two

Thanks for checking out this quick blog post! Below are some images of the set up used to make the DSLR scans along with some more example images digitized using my DSLR set up. Happy shooting!!!