# Drum Scanners: Anyone know about them? For purchase?



## cayenne (Jun 26, 2020)

Hi all,
Does anyone here know much about drum scanners? Are they practical to purchase for self use?

I've been shooting a bit of MF film and see that some sites want $60/scan on a drum scanner....wondering if there is a practical one to buy for home use?

I have my older Epson V600...and its "ok"...but thinking an upgrade would do me good....but I know nothing about drum scanners and hoping someone might could give me some advice, pointers or links to info.

Thanks in advance,

cayenne


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## Sporgon (Jun 26, 2020)

I'd say no they're not. I think there is only one company that makes them now, that's Aztec, and they are rather expensive 

You'd be looking at an old one that would require some refurbishment. Then there's the fact that the scanning process takes a lot of setting up; they are wet scans and it's messy.

Here in the U.K. Mr Drum Scanner is Tim Parkin of Optimum Exposure / Professional Drum Scanning. He takes orders from all over the world, and a 5000 dpi scan of 6x6 is £14. This would give you an output size of about 1.4m @ 300dpi. For any special negatives / transparencies you may want to print big it's worth getting them scanned in this way, as it is, IMO, still the ultimate way to digitise your film. Your V700 won't do a good medium format film justice if you are going to be looking at it critically, it's going to be (relatively) soft. It sounds crazy but it's quite feasible to post your negs to him and get the digital files via we transfer, and then your negs back in the post later.

Or you could just shoot digital and run the raws through a good film simulator like RNI . (Joke !)

(Sorry output size is about 1m x 1m @300 dpi).


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## privatebydesign (Jun 26, 2020)

I trust Nick Carver’s opinion.

One very important thing to recognize with high resolution scans is actually determining if it is rendering any more photographic detail or is it just resolving film grain at ever greater acuity.


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## Graphic.Artifacts (Jun 27, 2020)

I've had access to film scanners that cost significantly more than my first house and I'd still prefer to digitize film with a digital camera and a macro lens. I'd be hard pressed to think of anything that would be a bigger waste of money for a casual user than a drum scanner. As PBD said there just isn't that much photo information in film emulsion. Certainly not in the emulsions that are fashionable today. An Eos R can easily capture all of the detail in a 6x6 negative and it will have the benefit of yielding a RAW file. An R5 even more so. If that's not enough take multiple images and merge them. You can also do hdr stacks which will vastly exceed the dMax of even the best scanner. There is a reason why nobody makes scanners any more, because anybody who has invested any time and money into them knows scanners suck. I know you won't take my word for it so carry on.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jun 27, 2020)

Every time I've looked at drum scanners over the last 15 or 20 years, I quickly give up.

I also have a V700 and its fine for me. I built a copy stand last year and tried lighting it with some softboxes thinking that I could adjust the angles to eliminate reflections from the surface of the photos, but it never worked. I also found it took a lot of time to get a photo positioned properly under the cameras. I used to have several enlargers and easels but gave them all away to a local high school. One of the easl's might be a help if I ever figure out the lighting. I wonder if a ring light would work?

Here is a photo I took while testing it, the lights are at about 60 degrees, just out of the photo. I tried several angles, I could see the reflection no matter how I adjusted.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jun 27, 2020)

BTW, I looked on ebay again at both current and at sold ones. For $5000, you get a 30 year old model that only works with a 30 year old Mac and floppy disks. Be very careful, some of them may not work at all unless you have a very old computer to control them, and the software may not be available.


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## cayenne (Jun 29, 2020)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> BTW, I looked on ebay again at both current and at sold ones. For $5000, you get a 30 year old model that only works with a 30 year old Mac and floppy disks. Be very careful, some of them may not work at all unless you have a very old computer to control them, and the software may not be available.




Whew..yeah, ok....I guess I"ll pass on looking into drum scanners.


I love my digital, don't get me wrong, but I am also very much enjoying shooting MF 120 film not only in 6x6...but in 6x9, 6x12 and 6x17......

I especially like those wider aspect ratios, and they are something I cannot shoot in one shot with a digital camera....I can use ND filters on that 6x17 and get smooth pano shots that aren't possible shooting digital multiple shots and stitching together....things like that.

So, I'm working on getting good scans.

SO, if drum scanners are out of the picture...what are the better flatbed scanners around today? My V600 is "ok"....should I look at a V800 or the newest equivalent of that?

C


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## Graphic.Artifacts (Jun 29, 2020)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> BTW, I looked on ebay again at both current and at sold ones. For $5000, you get a 30 year old model that only works with a 30 year old Mac and floppy disks. Be very careful, some of them may not work at all unless you have a very old computer to control them, and the software may not be available.


Yes, scanner drivers are notoriously susceptible to OS updates and computer I/O changes. I have to keep a Windows 7 PC and an old MacPro in storage because they are the only machines I have that can run the drivers for my film scanners. When they stop working I guess that will be the end of that.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jun 29, 2020)

Graphic.Artifacts said:


> Yes, scanner drivers are notoriously susceptible to OS updates and computer I/O changes. I have to keep a Windows 7 PC and an old MacPro in storage because they are the only machines I have that can run the drivers for my film scanners. When they stop working I guess that will be the end of that.


I have a HP-4 Scanner out in my Studio. It works fine. But, getting a SCSI adapter for a modern PC, and finding a 3rd party driver would not be fun. I have several older PC's that Would likely work, even one with ISA slots. I also have a ton of old SCSI Cards and cables. My time is better spent elsewhere though.


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## Graphic.Artifacts (Jun 30, 2020)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> I have a HP-4 Scanner out in my Studio. It works fine. But, getting a SCSI adapter for a modern PC, and finding a 3rd party driver would not be fun. I have several older PC's that Would likely work, even one with ISA slots. I also have a ton of old SCSI Cards and cables. My time is better spent elsewhere though.


SCSI worked remarkably well for a system that seemed like it should be prone to problems. As long as you followed the rules it mostly did what it was supposed to do.
At least with SCSI when it failed it was probably a connector and you could usually fix it. With USB and drivers it either works or it doesn’t. Pretty much out of my control.
I gave up on SCSI a while ago though. I took a nice Lino-Hell flatbed and a few removable drives (syquest zip etc) to a county electronics recycling fair. The Lino was a hand me down from an old client. It probably cost more than my car when it was new. 
Maybe somebody rescued them but they probably were scrapped. The older I get the harder it is to watch the inevitable trip for the junkyard for all the tech I’ve bought over the years.


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## SteveC (Jun 30, 2020)

There at least used to be a place near here called OEM parts that one could sell their antiques to. Better than trashing it.

There are even museums, now for some of these sorts of things.


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## Graphic.Artifacts (Jun 30, 2020)

SteveC said:


> There at least used to be a place near here called OEM parts that one could sell their antiques to. Better than trashing it.
> 
> There are even museums, now for some of these sorts of things.


Maybe if you have an early Mac, Apple II, TRS-80 or something like that. I don’t think anybody wanted my old SCSI gear. I gave it to the recyclers so it wouldn’t end up in a landfill. About the best I could do.


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## stevelee (Jul 7, 2020)

Graphic.Artifacts said:


> Yes, scanner drivers are notoriously susceptible to OS updates and computer I/O changes. I have to keep a Windows 7 PC and an old MacPro in storage because they are the only machines I have that can run the drivers for my film scanners. When they stop working I guess that will be the end of that.


Drivers for my Minolta film scanner haven't worked in my Macs for over ten years, as I recall. I use VueScan. It works great and has a variety of options. It also supports my old Canon flatbed scanner. When I got a newer Canon flatbed, I never bothered to use the Canon software because VueScan works so well.


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## Graphic.Artifacts (Jul 7, 2020)

stevelee said:


> Drivers for my Minolta film scanner haven't worked in my Macs for over ten years, as I recall. I use VueScan. It works great and has a variety of options. It also supports my old Canon flatbed scanner. When I got a newer Canon flatbed, I never bothered to use the Canon software because VueScan works so well.


I have a Minolta as well. Dimage 5400. I agree. VueScan is fine. I have a calibrated workflow that doesn’t work with vuescan but I could get along without it. I still get better results with my 5D Mark IV and it is 10x faster and I get a RAW file. My color slides are dense and scanners always struggle with the shadows. The 5D has almost unlimited Dmax. The new R’s will be even better. Seriously, I’d never go back to scanning. It’s a 20th century technology that hasn’t improved in decades. My opinion but I think solidly grounded in fact.
If you are going to scan though, the Minolta are about as good as it gets. I could still sell mine for what I paid for it. Last time I tried to use it it wouldn’t start up. I thought that might be the end of it but turned out to just be a bad power supply. $15 on Amazon and good as new. Sony won’t fix them so when they break they’re done.


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## cayenne (Jul 7, 2020)

Graphic.Artifacts said:


> I have a Minolta as well. Dimage 5400. I agree. VueScan is fine. I have a calibrated workflow that doesn’t work with vuescan but I could get along without it. I still get better results with my 5D Mark IV and it is 10x faster and I get a RAW file. My color slides are dense and scanners always struggle with the shadows. The 5D has almost unlimited Dmax. The new R’s will be even better. Seriously, I’d never go back to scanning. It’s a 20th century technology that hasn’t improved in decades. My opinion but I think solidly grounded in fact.
> If you are going to scan though, the Minolta are about as good as it gets. I could still sell mine for what I paid for it. Last time I tried to use it it wouldn’t start up. I thought that might be the end of it but turned out to just be a bad power supply. $15 on Amazon and good as new. Sony won’t fix them so when they break they’re done.



I know there's no real GOOD reason that I've found yet to date, against using a digital camera to digitize your film into the computer, but man..that just seems WRONG somehow...hahaha.

Plus, with me, I'm shooting mostly larger format Medium Format film.....like the 6x17 stuff, where I'd have to stitch the images together, which in my head, kinda negates shooting panoramic images in camera with no stitching in the first place.


I think for 35mm film, using a Digital camera might be ok, but I just don't seem to like thinking about it for larger formats of film, at least at this point.

Also it seems a bit more of a PITA to set up a DSLR/Mirrorless, level it, get your film mounted to something and that that surface is level, and then unless camera is down low enough to be able to look at the back to check focus, etc..and then worry about moving film for overlapping, etc (in the case of panos)....just seems a lot more trouble than throwing into a holder in a scanner and getting 1 or more images all in one swoop, you know?

Not that I won't look more into it, but I just can't see doing that right off to bat.

After finding out more about drum scanning, I"ve kinda given up on that, haha.

But looking maybe to upgrade my flatbed scanner at some point....

Thanks for the response!!

C


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## Graphic.Artifacts (Jul 7, 2020)

cayenne said:


> I know there's no real GOOD reason that I've found yet to date, against using a digital camera to digitize your film into the computer, but man..that just seems WRONG somehow...hahaha.
> 
> Plus, with me, I'm shooting mostly larger format Medium Format film.....like the 6x17 stuff, where I'd have to stitch the images together, which in my head, kinda negates shooting panoramic images in camera with no stitching in the first place.
> 
> ...


I have a few. I also have a Microtek M1 for glassless scanning of all medium format size as well as all my large format film. It’s also about as good as it gets and the 5D is still better.
Last year I digitized my entire portfolio. Hundreds of hours. Thousands of individual images in formats large and small. A bucket list accomplishment for me. I tested a lot of different options and using the camera was the clear winner. 

The stitching worked fine. I've never seen any artifacts. You need a good system and everything has to be squared up. After that it's easy. I was often doing HDR combined with and Panos without any problems. Scanners are so slow I would never have gotten it done. I’m only telling you this so you know I’m not just shooting from the hip.

IMO, film’s true superpower is making chemical prints in a darkroom. There is no substitute for a silver print. If you want a challenge consider that. I wouldn’t have shot all that film just to digitize it. But, you should do what works for you. Process can be an important source of inspiration.


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## stevelee (Jul 8, 2020)

Graphic.Artifacts said:


> I have a Minolta as well. Dimage 5400. I agree. VueScan is fine. I have a calibrated workflow that doesn’t work with vuescan but I could get along without it. I still get better results with my 5D Mark IV and it is 10x faster and I get a RAW file. My color slides are dense and scanners always struggle with the shadows. The 5D has almost unlimited Dmax. The new R’s will be even better. Seriously, I’d never go back to scanning. It’s a 20th century technology that hasn’t improved in decades. My opinion but I think solidly grounded in fact.
> If you are going to scan though, the Minolta are about as good as it gets. I could still sell mine for what I paid for it. Last time I tried to use it it wouldn’t start up. I thought that might be the end of it but turned out to just be a bad power supply. $15 on Amazon and good as new. Sony won’t fix them so when they break they’re done.


I did some quick tests using my 6D2, the 100mm macro, and my iPad in lightbox mode. They were hardly rigorous, but suggested that would work OK. The Minolta is so much handier to use, at least the way I go about it, and VueScan’s multipass and high bit depth produces TIFFs that seem to work as well in ACR as the camera shots. The camera’s extra resolution didn’t seem to help. Of course the slides are 20 years old and have faded and grain shows up rather badly. My slide scans turned out well enough that I had a book printed of many of the pictures.

My next scanning project is to be color negatives from 2001, so probably in better shape than the slides. I have been impressed with how well VueScan deals with the masking that Id be inclined to scan even if I liked the camera method better. Now my next trick is to find what I did with my film carrier for the Minolta. I know I saw it around the first of the year, before I did the slide scanning.


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## Graphic.Artifacts (Jul 8, 2020)

I thought that sorting out masking would be the hardest part but once I got the hang of it I could reverse and color balance in lightroom in 10 or 15 sec. Auto-masking probably the best feature of a scanner though and if you really want to preserve the color qualities of the original film ihat's probably the best way. I was mostly a B&W neg / Color Pos shooter so it wasn'r a big percentage for me. Mostly family vacations and such. It''s a real treat getting to see those old negs when they've been in the closet for a couple decades. 

Sounds like you have a good plan. Good luck with the film holder. You don't want to have to find another one.


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## stevelee (Jul 8, 2020)

Graphic.Artifacts said:


> I thought that sorting out masking would be the hardest part but once I got the hang of it I could reverse and color balance in lightroom in 10 or 15 sec. Auto-masking probably the best feature of a scanner though and if you really want to preserve the color qualities of the original film ihat's probably the best way. I was mostly a B&W neg / Color Pos shooter so it wasn'r a big percentage for me. Mostly family vacations and such. It''s a real treat getting to see those old negs when they've been in the closet for a couple decades.
> 
> Sounds like you have a good plan. Good luck with the film holder. You don't want to have to find another one.


That's for sure. I vaguely remembering that it fell under or behind something when I moved it from lying on top of the scanner, and at the time, I thought, "I'll worry about crawling down and finding it when I'm done scanning all these slides."

The negatives are from a trip to Seattle and Glacier National Park after a train ride there. I also visited Mount St. Helens. So there could be a lot of very scenic shots. The negatives are in folders with prints, so it would be very easy to see which negatives I'd most want to scan. Of course I could just scan in the prints on a flatbed, but figure that negative scans will give me much better quality. Maybe the difference is not really worth the trouble. I could try scanning in both negatives and prints of a few shots to see before I go to a lot of trouble.

It has been ages since I scanned negatives. VueScan has settings by film type, so it knows what the mask is supposed to be and compensates accordingly. I recall being impressed with the results. Once I finish that project, I'd like to scan some of my old black and white negatives. I also played around a bit with unmasked negatives. I developed slide film as negatives, though I don't recall specifically how. C-41? Ektachrome chemicals but skipping the reversal step? Doesn't matter, because I'm not doing it again. But the prints might have an interesting look to them, which is why I tried that out in the first place. I also tried infrared color film.


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## stevelee (Jul 8, 2020)

Graphic.Artifacts said:


> I thought that sorting out masking would be the hardest part but once I got the hang of it I could reverse and color balance in lightroom in 10 or 15 sec.


My first inclination would be to use the eye dropper on an unexposed part of the film, in effect reading the base. What do you do in Lightroom or ACR to reverse? I know in Photoshop, you can just hit Command-I.


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## Graphic.Artifacts (Jul 8, 2020)

It's a little trickier than that. Unfortunately there isn't an invert command in lightroom. I learned how to do it by watching a couple you tube videos. The basic idea is that you invert the RGB tone curves and then set the beginning and end points for each RGB channel. That converts it from a negative into a positive and eliminates the color shift from the mask. It sounds harder than it is but it does make your file behave a little oddly in lightroom. You can also just sent it to photoshop and invert it there. If you do that then lightroom functions normally and you just set the begining and end RGB points in lightroom to remove the mask. It's actually a lot easier in photoshop but my goal was to get everthing into lightroom so I put in the extra effort.

I'm sure you've decided I'm totally bonkers at this point and the scanner sounds like a much better option but it's really not that big a deal. I can shoot a five image film strip with a dslr in about two minutes so it's still faster than a scanner for me. Search on you tube for inverting negative in lightroom and you should get some hits that show you what I mean. It makes more sense when you see someone do it but the Minolta probably is a better bet for color negs.


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## stevelee (Jul 8, 2020)

The workflow advantage to me in scanning was that I could put VueScan in batch mode and be doing other things while it scanned. Often that meant I was editing the recent scans in ACR and Photoshop while the next batch of slides were being scanned. And when it finished with those four, then I stopped work to load in the next slides.

Later I copied many of the PSD files into another folder and imported them into Lightroom to make the book. I found the split toning useful for getting rid of the last of the magenta cast in the shadows. The images in the book still retain the look of old pictures, but more charmingly so than annoyingly so. I also cleaned up more of the lint or whatever mostly in the skies. I gained an appreciation for the non-destructive Lightroom equivalent of the healing brush. I was impressed at the speed at which it would pick the substitute area, and I rarely could improve upon it. I see that that tool is now in ACR as it has become a lot more Lightroomified. I'm still finding where things are now hidden.


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## Graphic.Artifacts (Jul 8, 2020)

Culling and cleaning the film is really the hardest part. I discarded at least half and I’d culled them several times previously. Than I scanned every single remaining image. My Lightroom catalog now has everything. It’s very satisfying to have them all in one place. Never thought I’d get to that point. I’d say about 7000 total. That would be at least 1000 hours of scanner operating time. In reality it could have been twice that. If the scanner didn’t burnout halfway through.
I might go back and high Rez scan the 4x5 film on the Mikrotek at some point just for backup since I have it. But for now I’m more or less done. I probably should sell the scanners while there is a market for them.


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## cayenne (Jul 8, 2020)

Graphic.Artifacts said:


> Culling and cleaning the film is really the hardest part. I discarded at least half and I’d culled them several times previously. Than I scanned every single remaining image. My Lightroom catalog now has everything. It’s very satisfying to have them all in one place. Never thought I’d get to that point. I’d say about 7000 total. That would be at least 1000 hours of scanner operating time. In reality it could have been twice that. If the scanner didn’t burnout halfway through.
> I might go back and high Rez scan the 4x5 film on the Mikrotek at some point just for backup since I have it. But for now I’m more or less done. I probably should sell the scanners while there is a market for them.



Do you think scanners and the market for them will disappear?

I mean, aside from people needing to scan other things besides film.....there IS a bit of a resurgence of folks out there shooting film, and I'd think the market for scanners would pick up a bit too, if not at least stay stable?

Thoughts?

C


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## koenkooi (Jul 8, 2020)

cayenne said:


> Do you think scanners and the market for them will disappear?
> 
> I mean, aside from people needing to scan other things besides film.....there IS a bit of a resurgence of folks out there shooting film, and I'd think the market for scanners would pick up a bit too, if not at least stay stable?
> [..]



With 'shooting film', do you mean 35mm colour negative, 6x6, slide, something else? I keep planning to buy a new scanner to replace my Canon one with the broken film light and scan my remaining 6x6 negatives and slides.


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## Graphic.Artifacts (Jul 8, 2020)

cayenne said:


> Do you think scanners and the market for them will disappear?
> 
> I mean, aside from people needing to scan other things besides film.....there IS a bit of a resurgence of folks out there shooting film, and I'd think the market for scanners would pick up a bit too, if not at least stay stable?
> 
> ...


It already has. You can’t buy a high quality scanner today. All the better models are long gone. There are plenty of inexpensive 35mm film scanners still out the but they’re all low build quality consumer models. I don’t think anybody makes a quality medium or large format Film scanner. You can use a glass flat bed but that’s not ideal. I’d look in the used market if you really want one but as I said I think that’s a dead end. No development dollars, no market and an inherently flawed concept. Hate to keep saying that but it’s the way I see it. Commercially they are practically extinct.

edit: You might do better getting scanner advise from somebody who doesn’t despise scanners. I’d hang around the film and rangefinder forums and see what they are saying. There may very well be options I don’t know about.


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## cayenne (Jul 8, 2020)

Graphic.Artifacts said:


> It already has. You can’t buy a high quality scanner today. All the better models are long gone. There are plenty of inexpensive 35mm film scanners still out the but they’re all low build quality consumer models. I don’t think anybody makes a quality medium or large format Film scanner. You can use a glass flat bed but that’s not ideal. I’d look in the used market if you really want one but as I said I think that’s a dead end. No development dollars, no market and an inherently flawed concept. Hate to keep saying that but it’s the way I see it. Commercially they are practically extinct.
> 
> edit: You might do better getting scanner advise from somebody who doesn’t despise scanners. I’d hang around the film and rangefinder forums and see what they are saying. There may very well be options I don’t know about.



Thank you for the info.

So, there were dedicated MF and LF scanners? I thought it was either drum (high end) or flatbed....I didn't know there are/were dedicated MF/LF scanners.

I'm familiar with the Nikon 35mm dedicated scanners, but I thought that was a single outlier....

Well, I learn something new every day!!


Ok, well, I'm sure I"ll have a "down" weekend (hell, so many of them these days with the virus are "down weekends")...and I'll toy with scanning some MF film with my digital camera. It will, I'm sure, give me a chance to research the equipment for it, etc.

But in the mean time, I guess I'll look to possibly upgrading my flatbed scanner.

I have the Epson V600 currently. Would you have any recommendations of what might be a valid upgrade from what's available out there today?

Thank you in advance!!

C


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## Graphic.Artifacts (Jul 8, 2020)

cayenne said:


> Thank you for the info.
> 
> So, there were dedicated MF and LF scanners? I thought it was either drum (high end) or flatbed....I didn't know there are/were dedicated MF/LF scanners.
> 
> ...


My scanners are legacy purchases from 10 or 15 years ago. Sorry but I really have no idea.


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## privatebydesign (Jul 10, 2020)

Just saw this thought it might be of interest.


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## Graphic.Artifacts (Jul 10, 2020)

That's a great find. Those MF Nikon scanners were very nice. I coveted one but had access to comercial scanners at work so it didn't make any sense for me to buy one. They were expensive. Maybe $8K. Can't remember exactly. I did have a Nikon 35mm Coolscan at one point for mounted slides. LS-20 I think. It did a pretty good job but was SCSI based which I got tired of supporting. I'd say the used market is the best bet if you want a high quality scanner and don't mind supporting some wonky old gear. BTDT so I'll leave that to somebody else.

The Minolta Dimage Multi Image Pro is another medium format scanner that's still well thought of as far as I know. They probably made those up to about 2005 or so.


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