Having recently acquired a newish iMac computer I was faced with having to upgrade some software to continue using my old flatbed. It seemed like putting money into keeping my old scanning technology going was not the wisest course.
Spending hundreds on a digital camera was also not very appealing, so I decided to see what I might be able to do with my iPhone 14 as a scanner replacement. The only additional piece of equipment I decided to get was a cheap LED light pad.
To use the setup I put negative strips into the negative carriers I had been using with the old Epson scanner. I covered the exposed light pad surface to avoid light on the phone camera lens. In making the exposure I just handheld the phone and zoomed in from about five inches to fill camera screen with the image. Here for comparison are the images from the Epson flatbed and the same images from the cellphone:
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| Yashica-Mat Flatbed |
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| Yashica-Mat iPhone 14 |
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| Leica IIIa Flatbed |
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| Leica IIIa iPhone 14 |
I'm pleased with the outcome of my little experiment. It seems to me that the quality of the iPhone scans is equal to what I can get from the old flatbed, and the time required to make the cellphone scans is an order of magnitude better.
13 comments:
Those look really good. How are you arranging to hold the phone parallel to the film? That seems like the big challenge. I know an app called FilmLab that has some ability to detect and correct that lack of parallelism.
I'm still scanning 120 on a flatbed and 35mm on a dedicated scanner. But I'm not replacing either when they break. I'll switch to DSLR scanning, and buy the equipment for that.
I'm just hand-holding and doing the best I can with framing, focusing and leveling. Some kind of frame to hold up the camera would be more reliable, as well as creating a smoother work flow. There are some apps which may also help in the scanning process. However, most of them want you to pay an ongoing subscription price, which I am not willing to do. Kodak has a free mobile phone scanning app which is very nice, except that it only seems to want to do low resolution scans. Still a lot to learn. I'm looking forward to seeing what others are doing.
Those phone scans look remarkably good, more 'open and airy' with a greater feeling of separation between the different elements of the image. It's particularly noticeable in the first image, with a softer, smoother o.o.f background. It's surprising what can be done with a phone these days.
I still have a lot to learn about the subject. I'm not sure about the differences apparent between the two types of scans. I was not able to move my copy of Photoshop over to the new computer, so I ended up adjusting tonality, etc. with GIMP. That photo editor has a lot of the same tools available as Photoshop, but I found I had to use a somewhat different combination to get the effects I was looking for. Thanks for your observations; I'll keep them in mind going forward.
I've never tried using a phone but your scans certainly show what can be done with one. Who'd have thought, when you originally bought your 2450, that in 20 odd years time you'd be doing the same with your phone? Quite remarkable.
Sorry, Mike, my second comment got sent without me identifying myself😬
I've made very little use of my cell phones up to now. However the capabilities of the cameras they now have certainly stimulated my interest.
On my monitor, when I enlarge your frames to their full size, the frames from the scanner have darker dark/shadow zones and brighter whites. The cell phone scans have a bit of mottling in some of the white zones. Regardless, the cell phone frames are impressive for a tiny sensor.
Thanks for letting me know. The phone scanning is definitely a work in process.
Beautiful series. ❤️
Thanks, Linda. I decided to use two negatives for my cellphone scanning trial which I thought were of good quality. I thought the cellphone scans compared very favorably with the ones made on my old flatbe scanner. I believe the small differences one can see in these examples are due primarily to the fact that I also had to use two different photo editors. The flatbed scans were adjusted for tonality and contrast using Photoshop. For the cellphone scans I had to use GIMP as I was unable to move Photoshop to my recently acquired 27-inch iMac.
Oh oh, different hardware and processing software. Plus uploading to an online service. There are a lot of variables (degrees of freedom) at work here.
I noticed in the cellphone scan that the detail under the Olds parking lights is a bit blurred on the right side while the flatbed isn't. This might be what might occurs when the phone is not perfectly aligned with the negative is my guess. What Jim mentioned above earlier.
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