Recommendations For 35mm Film Scanner For Mac
I’ve reviewed options like the Kodak Scanza before that I wish were higher in quality, but what you’re getting for the most part isn’t really all that awful. It takes your 35mm film and can deliver up to 22MP JPEG files.
If you want TIFFs or DNG files, then you’ll need something significantly higher end that is bound to take up more real estate on your desk. But if you just want to scan your photos, it’s seriously tough to beat the Kodak Scanza. It works via a simple interface that takes your film, gives you an immediate preview with color corrections, and allows you to scan by simply pressing a button. These images are then put onto an SD card or onto your computer directly. This all sounds fantastic, except that the Kodak Scanza suffers from a few design issues that are holding back my highest recommendations.
Pros and Cons Pros. Simple to use.
22MP is nice. Options of black and white, color negative and slide.
You can scan smaller format film. Nice, big, bright LCD screen. Not large at all. Delivers pretty good scans when used correctly Cons. Getting the film holder to line up just right is incredibly difficult if not impossible at times. But this is common for products like this.
Tech Specs Specs taken from Scan and save 35mm, 126, 110, Super 8 and 8mm film negatives and slides. Features:. 14/22 Megapixel resolution.
Adjustable scanning resolution, brightness and coloration. PC/MAC® compatible (software not required). Save to computer of SD™ card (not included). Video-out for TV connection. Convenient, easy-loading film and negative adapters and inserts. Tilt-up 3.5” color TFT LCD screen Ergonomics The Kodak Scanza is mostly characterized by the massive screen on top. Below that are three buttons that operate various functions based on what the screen is telling you.
Below those are another three buttons which are hardwired to on/off, shooting the photo, and the home button. While the screen looks like it will swivel up and down, it doesn’t. Here’s where you’ve got access to scanning one film type that I’ll probably never use. So let’s move on. The side here is where you’ll spot the film slit for the Kodak Scanza. You can shove your holders in here to hold the 35mm film that you can use.
Turn the Kodak Scanza and what you’ll find here are ports. You can see the SD card port, the power ports, the HDMI port, the USB port, etc. Nothing more there.
Using the provided film holders, you can stuff your film inside for scanning. This is probably the biggest issue with the Kodak Scanza. But more on that in a bit. Ease of Use Scanners like the Kodak Scanza couldn’t be simpler to use. You boot it up, plug in an SD card, tell the scanner what type of film you want to scan and what size, take the holder out so you can load up film, pull the film through and scan the ones you want. It’s that simple.
This is one of the very nice features of the Kodak Scanza. I can hand this to someone that is technophobic and they’ll be able to figure it out for themselves providing that they give it the time and the patience. My mom, who would’ve been in her 60s at this point, probably would’ve been able to figure it out despite barely even knowing how to use the printer we used when growing up. But my Dad and my mom’s relatives would have no issues figuring this out at all.
In truth, it’s really simple. The results that it can give you are also very good. We scanned CineStill, Fujifilm, and Kodak film emulsions with the Kodak Scanza and were very happy with the results. However, there are a fair amount of exceptions to that statement. In an ideal world, the Kodak Scanza would be able to do the following:. Scan the entire photographic area of the 35mm negative/slide.
Not get any white space or black space in the scan. Keep the negative holder firmly in place Unfortunately, the Kodak Scanza can’t do these three things. So what you end up getting at times are scans where the edges are just odd.
Recommendations For 35mm Film Scanner For Mac Reviews
Thankfully, it does a pretty fantastic job of keeping dust and specks off the photographic area of the scan. This is the unfortunate price that you’re overall paying for the convenience., which is a scanner very similar to this that I’ve used before, is even worse quality. So I’d consider the Kodak Scanza to be a second version with a significant amount of improvements.
However, inconsistency with scans can be pretty annoying. You can ask a photo lab to scan your film for you, but you’d be shocked at the variety in quality that you’ll get. Something else I experienced — the files scan in a way that has problems with Capture One. I talked to my C1 reps about this, and they found it to be scanning images into an odd way that didn’t let me export the photos. Adobe Lightroom handled it fine on the other hand.
Film And Slide Scanners 35mm
Conclusions I think that the Kodak Scanza is an improvement over many of the other options that have been out there on the market. But I’d love for a scanner to be able to be compact, hold the film perfectly in place, give you high resolution scans, and to give you 100% of the photographic area of the film. At least in my mind, I don’t find that too difficult to ask for. But where the Kodak Scanza provides its most value is with its simplicity.
And if you’re a person who wants to easily digitize most of your images, this is probably the way to do it while also being careful. The Kodak Scanza receives three out of five stars. Want one?
We have filmscanner and accessories in our always in stock. While with other computer peripherals such as printers or document scanners you have the choice between hundrets of devices, there are only 1-2 dozen devices available at the film scanner market. They are also difficult to compare, because the performance characteristics concerning scanning speed and image quality, as well as the possibility of scanning various film materials and batch scanning, are to different. To digitize your slides and film strips you also need the neccessary accessories to clean them and handle them accurately. On this page we would like to give you a detailed and competent advice to buy the right film scanner and accessories. If you have furthermore questions after reading this page, feel free to us. Our professional photographers will be pleased to provide you with advice on film scanners and accessories by phone, via email or at our store.
Our film scanner ranking contains all devices we have tested. Including a list of the main advantages and disadvantages of each product.
To keep an overview trough the various number of scanners, we seperated them into 4 categories: 1) professional film scanners for medium format and 35mm film, 2) 35mm - film scanners with hardware based dust- and scratch correction 3) 35mm film scanners without hardware based dust- and scratch correction, 4) flatbed scanners with intigrated transparency unit. Whenever a new film scanner gets out on the market we extend this ranking list after we have tested the new device.
On this page we want to give you detailed guidance to choose the right film scanner and accessories. While you can find advice on specific criteria for buying a film scanner in the next chapter, our main focus in this chapter is accessories and helping tools like basic professional literature and the scan software as well as film-cleaning, the safe use of film material and the monitor calibration, printer profiling along with file archiving.
All these important topics are listed in an own section while a link will lead you to an extra website if you want to get to know more about a specific theme. On this page we will give you detailed tips and hints to buy the right film scanner. First, we look at different ways of digitalization and take a look at the film scanner market. Then we deal with important purchase criteria for scanners in detail: Resolution, color depth, density range, image quality, scan speed, scan noise, batch scanning, dealing with film material, accessories, equipment, etc. After reading this page you should be able to judge which film scanner is best suited for your use, in order to make the right buying decision. Buying a film scanner is always associated with the purchase of accessories and cleaning products.
That is why we interdruce you to important accessories and practical cleaning utensils on this site with lots of pictures from the field. Here we show you both: Simple, low cost cleaning supplies such as compressed air sprays, antistatic brushes, Speckgrabber or cleaning paper, and also professional tools such as electric film cleaners or compressed air cleaning devices (compressors). Important tools in dealing with film material are cotton gloves, tweezers or special frames to reframe slides. Most flat bed scanners have a scan area of maximum approx.
20x30 cm, which corresponds approximately the DIN A4 format. In the film scanner field even the expensive medium format scanners cannot handle large films than 6x12 cm. In order to digitize larger paper documents than DIN A4 or larger film material (large format films, x-rays) there a specific large format scanner which have a scan area up to 40x30cm. With such a big glass plate these devices can even handle documents and films upt to a size of DIN A3, which is 42 x 29,7 cm.
The choice of large format scanners is pretty small. On our site about large format scanners we introduce such scanners and show their benefits and deficits. This site has been translated from German into English and serves for a better understanding for the English speaking visitors of our website. By differences the content of the German original website holds. Changes on the original German site after the translation will not be maintained automatically on the English site.
Copyright: Patrick Wagner, Fa.