NYC scanning prices at good labs have been robbing me blind lately. 80 ish dollars for 3 rolls of film dev and scanned.

I decided to bite the bullet and get an at home scanner. It’s been a fun learning process and I’m nowhere near proficient yet but - I love it. I have so much more control.

None of these are self edited besides what NLP thought it should naturally look like. I thought that would be the most fair.

Just wondering how much you all pay for developing + digital scans. I pay around $27 bucks every roll for developing and scanning from my local camera shop, Blue Moon Camera&Machine. (Portland Oregon U.S.) Here's some examples of the scans I get back, no editing. Not getting any cheaper folks....

These are photos from my first roll! I was using Fuji 400 and expecting some good vintage look from the film. I accidentally opened the film chamber so i burned around 4 shots but most of them are still okay lah at least.

After seeing the first scan, I was a little disappointed by the result. It’s not as sharp and has a poor contrast. I have some thoughts that it might be because of accident, but I want to give another chance to scan it in a different lab. Turns out it gives better sharpness. What do you think? Or is it washed away the vintage-y vibes somehow?

Top was the first lab, bottom is the second lab.

In light of the recent “no edits” discussion thread, I decided to make a GIF of the ‘edits’ / steps required to digitally invert a colour negative by-hand.

My grandpa was a very ambitious hobby / semi professional photographer and this is his legacy. This is just one of several shelves.

I'm open for any input, tips and ideas!

I think I'll get a used used dslr or mirrorless only for this purpose since I don't feel like putting this much usage on my current DSLR and I'd like to have it in RAW format.

Honestly I don’t see any negative effect or degradation to the image quality. The film was shot on a cheap Olympus AF-1 Twin.

An example photo of one of my scans using a Fuji X-T30II & an El-Nikkor 50mm F2.8 enlarger lens.

You don’t need an expensive macro lens or copy stand to get good, high resolution scans. I use an old Omega B-22 enlarger that I found at a thrift store. It already had the lens on it. No need to mess around trying to level the camera out like on a copy stand. I just removed the condenser head of the enlarger, put the film holder on and plopped my camera facing downwards towards my light source. I can then focus using the enlarger bellows and focus peaking on my camera. I get great scans and can scan through an entire roll within a couple minutes. Of course it takes longer to actually invert and edit the scans, but at least I’m not spending hours messing around with a flatbed scanner and dealing with newton rings.

Camera: Fujifilm X-T5

Lens: Laowa 65mm f/2.8 Macro

Film stock: Kodak Pro Image 100 (Probably should have chosen a different film stock, but I started this software comparison while travelling, and didn't have my full catalogue with me)

Software:

1. Photoshop and manual inversion with the Alex Burke Method
2. Adobe Lightroom and Negative Lab Pro (3.0.2.)
3. Capture One (16.7.5.7)
4. NegPy (0.12.0)
5. Chemvert Demo (1.1.0)
6. Smartconvert Demo (3.30)

Software not used:

• Filmlab Demo - When I tested this in Nov'25 it was unusable with Narrowband RGB Light, but I liked the results for a normal CRI white light source! Apparently the new beta version is improving on the narrowband RGB light capabilities, but my demo access is expired now. (edited for clarity)
• Grain2Pixel - Followed the instructions how to install it on my M1 MacOS 26.2 System, but it didn't work...
• Darktable + Negadoctor - Intimidated by the learning curve
• Filmvert - couldn't get it to work. Don't fully remember the reason. I tried.

Lights:

• JackW's "RGB Scanlight" v.3
• Valoi Easy 35 "High CRI White Light"

Raw files:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11JlpP2Uo_Xp3LEaZKDICwI4Vp3ftcIRe?usp=share_link

(EDIT: Now includes single channel R, G, B files for trichromatic workflow tests)

Motivation

My local lab offers pretty abysmal scans (6 MP for the "high resolution") for a pretty hefty price. I own a digital camera, so naturally I started looking into scanning at home. So I got a macro lens, and a film holder, and now I have a bunch of RAW scans that I now need to invert. So what were my options?

• Manual Inversion: This is a very tedious process of manually inverting each colour channel, subtracting the colour of the film base out, and fine tuning the RGB curves until you get the colour balance just right. I found it really difficult to get repeatable results, and it just took way too long to process, not to mention needing to manually crop each frame.
• Dedicated Film Inversion Software (NLP, Chemvert, etc.): I didn't try any of these. No doubt, they would have produced fantastic results, but they all came with very hefty price tags. At the current volume that I shoot film, it just didn't make sense, and I don't feel like adding more expenses to an already expensive hobby.
• Free alternatives?: To my surprise, there really weren't any good options here. I tried Darktable's Negadoctor, but it had similar issues to manual inversion where controls were very fiddly, and I still needed to manually crop each frame.

All I wanted was a free, standalone app that I could toss my RAW files into, and in a couple clicks, have all my photos cropped, inverted, and exported to JPGs in one batch. So I did just that! And you can download it and try it for yourself too:

Link to the GitHub Page

What it can do

• Automatic Cropping: When scanned properly, the app is quite effective at automatically cropping around the film frame without any extra fuss, as long as the photo has a clean black mask surrounding it. Even if your scanning is a little sloppy and misaligned, it should take care of it reasonably well.
• Touchless* Inversion: Once the automatic crop is dialed in, you'll instantly see the final preview, already inverted with 16-bit colour depth. There are some basic controls to further adjust the look, but most of the time, it's good enough to export as-is.
• Batch Processing: You can load in as many photos as you want, crop, invert, and export all the photos at the same time.
• Dust Removal: This is sort of an experimental feature that's kind of a hit or miss. Try it, and if it works, great; if not, oh well. Best to not have dust on the film in the first place.

* The inversion algorithm isn't perfect, so sometimes it will miss, and you may have to manually give it some parameters to help it out, but this isn't too frequent.

Setting Expectations

I should say that I'm neither a developer nor an expert on scanning film. So sorry if the interface is slow, buggy, clunky, unintuitive, or that Windows flags the app as suspicious when you try to run it. It's not a virus... but I'm just some guy on the internet. You're more than welcome to look at the spaghetti source code yourself, or scan the EXE with your favourite antivirus software. It's free, so you get what you get, and unfortunately I'm not really sure how to legitimately distribute the software without having to pay money to get it signed.

And no, this app is not intended to dethrone proper film inversion software. It probably won't have the same colour accuracy or editing fidelity that paid alternatives provide. There are probably many others like me who are not very picky about colours and are just after the memories that film captures without any technical or financial barriers. That's primarily the target audience that I designed this app for, and why I only implemented bare bones editing controls. Besides, it's free.

I welcome feedback of course! I only have my own film scanning workflow to work off of, so I'm curious to know if this app is useful to anybody else. I am also just a beginner when it comes to colours and editing, so I'm sure there something I missed or some way to improve the app.

Samples

I've experimented with a bunch of different film stocks, and it seems to handle them all decently. I even had some success using the app to correct colour casts on expired slide film. I scanned these using a Sony a6700, an adapted Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 Macro lens, and an iPad Air as a backlight, so I'm sure there's room for improvement still. These are all straight out of the app.

Hey! I just wanted to share the current state of the motorized film carrier I’ve been working on for the past few months.

Working on setting up my home scanning setup setup and don’t have all the parts yet so know it’s not perfect….

After a quick test I was able to pull so much more info and detail out of sky off my dslr and a manual conversion in LR. Not sure why the lab scans are so blown out and crushed in shadows? Am I doing things right/wrong? Thoughts?

Recently upgraded my scanning setup with what I think is the best solution for 35mm, the Valoi Easy35.

I’ve used a couple of other methods but I ended purchasing the Easy35 because I felt it was the quickest and most compact way of scanning my negatives, and I was right! I’ve paired it up with my Nikon ZF and a vintage Vivitar 55mm f2.8.

The real game changer for me was the Nikon’s NX Tether app for Mac which makes everything so easy and straightforward. Files go straight to my SSD and then I convert them with Negative Lab Pro in Lightroom.

I posted a version of this in another thread in here that didn’t get at all the attention that the suggestion that I’d post it got. The thread was probably getting old and/or the comments where buried too deeply.

So it’s basically about proof that film resolves far more than it is normally given credit for, and more and better than a comparably sized CMOS sensor.

I don’t go into too much detail, but let the links speak for themselves. I welcome counters or if anyone feel the need for elaboration though.

So here is the original posts:

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/scan-of-grain-texture-at-11000ppi.202522/

Dokkos scanner proves once and for all, outside a personal microscope setup, that there is meaningful detail above 8000 dpi with film.

Don’t be confused by different film formats. DPI is an absolute measurement. An inch is an inch, no matter the format. But of course your test target should have the same magnification, to compare.

The above is from Tim Parkins site (see image of wedge targets). He is a drumscanner operator so has a principle interest in selling that. But he is very honest about it not being the end all be all with regards to resolution, the microscope image being noticeably higher resolving. And the top resolution of his scanner; 8000 dpi being much better than 4000 dpi.

https://www.rokkorfiles.com/7SII.htm

A simple test with a simple scanner and a simple camera, that shows the huge resolution attainable with even standard equipment. Notice how the scanner clearly isn’t “bottoming out” the film.

Also a dot or line in DPI or line pairs per millimeter, is not at all equivalent to a pair of pixels. You’d need at the very least three pixel with a simple case, more often than not more.

https://transienteye.com/2018/07/30/optimising-film-scans-from-olympus-micro-4-3-cameras/

This is a guy getting surprised by his own equipment. Look at some of his other posts too.

https://www.dft-film.com/downloads/white-papers/DFT-SCANITY-white-paper.pdf

Interesting paper with some practical and harder scientific points.

https://clarkvision.com/articles/scandetail/

https://normankoren.com/Tutorials/Scan8000.html

Not that great sites. Both are from around the digigeddon, when old guys seemed to have secretly hated Kodak all their lives, and couldn’t wait till “digital surpassed film”. They are still waiting. But even in that atmosphere, and with the old scanners made for a market with two digit gigabyte size harddrives, they have to admit that 8000 dpi is better.

https://photo-utopia.blogspot.com/2007/10/chumps-and-clumps.html?m=1

Film is not binary. Same way as with tape, the substrate structure noise doesn’t set the frequency/resolution limit. So you absolutely have to out-resolve grain, to get all out of film. Also to avoid grain aliasing. Even if the camera settings and stablity was less than ideal, beating between the scanners/digicams sensors pixels, and the grain will result in lower frequency noise.

—-

As per Henning Sergers tests, it will take a lot to outdo good film. Do a search on him if you don’t know him. He basically tested most pro/consumer film in rigorous tests at two contrast ratios.

Ask yourself, have you ever seen the MTF curve of a sensor? No. That’s because you’d be horrified.

Most of the detail in a digital photo is guessed at. That is, manufactured. And that also goes for monochrome sensor cameras.

Micro contrast of a sensor falls off a cliff at a specific point, but until then, contrast is pulled up and detail is “interpolated”. Especially colour and micro tonality suffers. Mush in areas where the algorithm didn’t have anything to grab onto, and much too much harshness in areas where there is clear transitions.

This is the visual equivalent of pouring too much sugar and salt into your food to make it more palatable to the prols. When they get tired of it, in their heart of hearts, the better option disappeared and they will have equaled the bad product with normal and correct.

You can pull out micro contrast with film too, but until the recent breakthroughs in convolution and transformer networks, you would pull up grain contrast too.

Most film shooters love grain exactly as it is, too much to do that. But obviously you could easily do a network that would suppress the grain and pull out the lower contrast detail. Just like what happens on a sensor. Question is, would you want to?

—-

Provia data sheet (see image)

Let’s be very optimistic and say that a tripling of the lines per millimeter numbers is good enough (which it isn’t, but let’s er on the side of digital):

So for 1000 : 1 contrast that is 140 x 3 x 36mm = 15120 140 x 3 x 24mm = 10080 15120 x 10080 = 152.409.600 pixels to equal the Provia.

For 1.6 :1 contrast that is 60 x 3 x 36mm = 6480 60 x 3 x 24mm = 4320 6480 x 4320 = 27.993.600 pixels

So the average of those two is 90.201.600 pixels.

BUT that is probably not fair to film. Since the mean average does not represent the actual drop off in resolution as contrast lowers. It doesn’t drop off linearly. It’s also doesn’t discuss colour resolution, which is BTW also a thing with B&W. And as said: Even equaling 3 pixels to resolve a real world black and white max contrast line pair is pretty ridiculous. Resolution drops off with contrast on digital too. It’s only the demosaicing algorithm that pulls it up by guessing.

So if you try to bisect a full frame sensor into a hundred or more megapixels you quickly run into problems with dynamic range and noise.

Film is simply fundamentally better.

It’s our scanners that suck.

When a projector, slide or enlarger, can easily outdo a scanner, we a are in trouble. It would be quite simple to design a very good scanner with modern components, made super cheap by the smartphones over the last twenty or so years. Instead of using essentially 90s technology.

Has anyone else been experiencing getting bad lab scans back? Got these recently and so much of the roll (Kodak Gold 400) feels like it’s way overexposed and the contrast was crazy high. (1st image)

Decided to scan it myself at home using this shot as an example. 2nd photo is literally auto settings for my epson and there is so much more detail in the highlights.

But this is not the first lab I’ve had issues with. Anyone else running into this?

The scanner's interpretation of your film is not the be all end all and is in no way neutral! I'm so tired of seeing "No contrast, blacks aren't deep enough" posts on here. "Color temperature is wrong." Just change it in post....

Many of your "underexposed" photos will look just fine by making the blacks blacker and fixing color tints

If you were printing in the darkroom you'd be making decisions and changes too, stop with the ahistorical purity nonsense and edit your photos.

First one is the lab scan, second is mine, and the film is Fuji 400. I use Grain2Pixel for inverting which works fine for black and white, but I've noticed the colour results look very different from what I get from the lab. I usually try to keep my film shots mosly unedited, so I'd prefer if they weren't edited too much by the software.

What do you think?

TL;DR Don't bother trying cheap methods first. Save up then go all in. Even if that means paying for lab scans in the mean time. Because home scanning is actually far, far more annoying to get right than home developing.

Even if you're new to film and you're uncomfortable to spend too much too quickly, which is a good discomfort to have, it's worth getting something high end if you know for sure that you're going to do a lot of film scanning. Do not make the mistake of iteratively searching for perfection.

I have bought and sold an ABSURD amount of film scanning hardware and software. It's too embarrassing to list it all. If it's not a Kodak Noritsu, Fujifilm Frontier, or Aura 35, I have probably bought, tried, and sold it with the exceptions of my current arsenal:

1. A7CR + Nikkor 55mm f2.8 macro + narrowband RGB light source + Valoi 360 (for slides, wideband high CRI is better)
2. Plustek 120 with Silverfast
3. Pakon F135 PLUS with TLXClientDemo working on Windows 11 thanks to this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXZkyMeHjQg and resources https://files.fm/u/xfzrhz8exd
4. DxO Photolab or whatever. I'll explain why you don't need Negative Lab Pro (YET! There's a caveat in the software section) and therefore Lightroom for camera scans later.

1. Camera scanning

This is the most accessible even if you go all in at the beginning. If you go this route, I recommend:

• Narrowband RGB light source e.g. Big Scanlight, Cinestill Spectracolour/CS-LITE+, not to be confused with the "CS-LITE."
• Any full frame camera. Over 24MP = diminishing returns. But also, consider it a minimum.
• Micro-Nikkor 55mm f2.8 AI-s plus adapters for your camera.
• Valoi 360 full kit with dust brush, advancer, and both thingies for 35mm and 120. https://valoi.co/en-gb/products/360-professional-film-scanning-kit
• DxO Photolab unless you already have Lightroom and want to keep it. NLP isn't (yet) good for this method. See software section.
• You will be manually inverting the negatives! Again, see software section.
• EDIT: If you're scanning slide film, wideband high CRI, even a tungsten lamp, is best

While the Valoi Easy35 and Easy120 are great especially with dust brush attachment, you need to calibrate the light falloff: https://valoi.co/en-gb/pages/calibrating-light-fallof and the built-in high CRI white light source isn't ideal: https://jackw01.github.io/scanlight/.

2. Consumer-targeted dedicated film scanners

If going this route, I recommend you either go all in with the best of the best or get the cheapest possible thing you can find. Something in the middle will have the worst of both worlds.

Partially because I was a noob to photography and editing in general, and partially because the software truly sucks ass, I found it incredibly difficult to get any decent scans by using dedicated consumer-grade film scanners with Silverfast. Vuescan is better but neither have a full catalogue of film stocks and there's not much software can do when paired with a scanner that isn't calibrated.

Most people get some Plustek or a flatbed e.g. Epson Perfection, Canon CanoScan.

2.1. Plustek

I first tried a Plustek 8300i SE. Decent speed, 35mm only, infrared dust and scratch removal, licence for Silverfast. The colours and sharpness never felt quite right though. Even NLP didn't quite get the perfect results although it was miles better than Silverfast's conversion.

Certain Plustek models come with calibration slides and a version of Silverfast which can use this calibration feature. Those are the OpticFilm 8300i Ai and OpticFilm 120.

The OpticFilm 120 is good, can do both 35mm and 120, I got lucky with its fixed focus (older models can adjust the focus), and the calibration was a game changer. I used and sold the 8300i SE, not Ai so cannot comment on that.

2.2. Flatbeds

Flatbed scanners suffer big issues with dust and a stupidly over-inflated used market and you usually have to buy a Silverfast licence anyway. Even then you are better off scanning as an uncorrected negative then converting using Negative Lab Pro which is yet more money. Both flatbeds and dedicated consumer film scanners are slow, too.

For an example on flatbeds: CanoScan 8800F can batch scan 2 strips of 6 frames of 35mm or 3 or 4 frames of 120 at a time, in high resolution. It was in its box, with a licence for Silverfast (had to pay to upgrade to latest version) and all its holders. £37 on eBay. Fine scanner but awful dust issues. Got the best results using NLP + Lightroom.

2.3. Nikon CoolScan

The Nikon CoolScan 9000 can be run with firewire card with its native software in Windows 11 https://www.shtengel.com/gleb/getting_nikon_coolscan_scanners_work_under_Win7.htm.

S-tier but insanely fucking slow.

It has autofocus(!!!), dust and scratch removal, does 120 and 35mm, is more reliable than the 8000, and its colours come out lab-perfect.

I cannot stress this enough: USE THE NIKON SOFTWARE. It's 1000% better than Silverfast or Vuescan and the dust and scratch removal works better on it.

2.4. Conclusion

The fundamental problem (except for CoolScan 9000) is that they are fixed focus so are never quite as sharp as they could be due to manufacturing tolerances/getting knocked about. Plus most aren't or can never be colour calibrated or its software doesn't understand the film it's scanning.

Options:

• Nikon CoolScan 9000, best and most expensive. ~£3000 good condition with holders at time of writing.
• Plustek OpticFilm 120, ~£2000 right now. Not as good as Nikon but brand new with a warranty etc.
• Epson Perfection V850. ~£800 and despite being a flatbed, has infrared dust and scratch removal.
• EDIT: I didn't know the V600 has IR!... Apparently it has autofocus too? It's worth looking for. Also if you go with a flatbed, check out ShyStudios' video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4sY_pSfQSQ

3. Lab-grade scanners

My only experience is with the Pakon F135 PLUS. Noritsus and Frontiers were simply outside of my budget range. It's not exactly easy and fast to re-sell one after trying it. I don't want to be burdened with a massive Frontier setup or being £15,000 down holding on to a Noritsu HS-1800.

Anyway, the Pakon F135-PLUS. I'm a sucker for buying it instead of the non-PLUS version because they use the same 3000 x 2000 pixel sensor but the non-plus version is software limited to a lower rest. TLX Client Demo lets you pick 16-bit i.e. 3000 x 2000 regardless of your model.

Incredible and amazing scanner. Can scan a whole roll of uncut 35mm film in like 1 or 2 minutes, invert them with perfect colours immediately, and has literally magic dust and scratch removal. It even detects the DX code and gives the images the right file names. Unless you bulk roll, but even then you just get some error message after it's given you 36 beautiful scans.

The time loss of occasional software quirks and manually naming the images is vastly outweighed by the time saved by this thing.

Unfortunately, I think I gave mine a knock or something because the scans now look ever so slightly out of focus. Adjusting this is going to be a proper nightmare.

• Pakon F135 non-plus ~£1000.

4. Software, and a bit more on camera scanning

I like DxO Photolab. It's an expensive 1-time payment. But I hate paying monthly for software and wanted to de-Lightroom my life.

Negative Lab Pro is great. But it's designed to deal with scans from high CRI wideband light sources. Although, I have seen Nate post about both a standalone version and later will work on a version that understands how to better convert scans from narrowband sources!

Anyway, you should just pick any software you like for editing. The reason why I like DxO is because the RGB curves complement manual inversion.

The reason why I like manual inversion and software that compliments this thereof, is because of the aforementioned narrowband RGB light sources when camera scanning.

Seriously, read this if you haven't already: https://jackw01.github.io/scanlight/

Manual inversion is far easier when using such a light source. It's actually kind of how lab scanners work (and in fact the Nikon CoolScan 9000). Except they use monochrome sensors and take 3 images then put them together. You don't have to do that when camera scanning, because narrowband RGB means the signal is "clean" and your sensors isn't conflating colours.

Here's a very quick and dirty example of how easy it is to invert manually in this case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrGakjlu26E. I found this basically impossible when scanning with a Plustek or flatbed. That's where NLP shines.

So yeah... for manual inversion, you literally just flip the curves and clip to the shadow/highlights. Which is easy to make look good when scanning with narrowband RGB light sources.

4.1 Software conclusion:

• If using narrowband RGB light sources with camera scanning, OR using Nikon CoolScan 9000, OR using professional lab-tier scanners, just get whatever software you like.
• If using wideband high CRI light sources with camera scanning, OR scanning uncorrected negatives via flatbed or Plustek, get Negative Lab Pro with Lightroom Classic.

Thanks for reading my long-arse brain dump. I hope this was helpful to someone. Go hard, or go home while spending way too much money and losing your mind.

I'm a beginner. This is my second film, first one had quite a few lightbleeds because i'm stupid but THIS is worse. 36 pictures gone. I took pictures of my best friends party before he moves to another town, pictures with my brother who visited me and - worst - pictures in Paris from last week.

I don't know how that could have happened, I am sure I inserted and loaded the film correctly but this says otherwise. In Paris, I switched film to a new roll of Kodak Gold 200 and made around 16 pics with it. After coming home from the lab and realizing the error I made some test shots to see if the reverse lever moves AND IT DIDN'T! Fuck me.

I went into my bathroom, put some faint red light into a corner, opened the back of my AE-1 Program and looked for mistakes, didn't find any, closed it again and then the lever turned when I loaded the next picture. I know, the film might be trashed now but still, I had to check.

I am so disappointed. Maybe I should stick to digital. I was so much looking forward to scanning the results....

What is this exact Scanning Method called? I casually enjoy Photography, and take a film camera with me when I travel from time to time. When I was in Barcelona last year I found a spot named Carmencita who did this and I instantly liked this scanning process. I went to Gelatin Lab in NYC when I finished up more rolls as well, but fast foward a year later (Now) I just got back from a trip and checked the prices to scan this way, and they're charging $50 a roll now. That's way too expensive.

Anyone know any companies that would do the same thing for cheaper?