I’m going to dive a little deeper into the 67, to attempt to access more of the camera’s potential. As a newcomer to MF, I can at least say that my early results on the 67 / 50mm f2.4 are truly inspiring. My aspirations are strictly as a hobbyist; I’m coming from a background of 35mm BW darkroom (4 decades ago!), through early digital P&S, to more recently (past 5 years) Olympus M43 in the OM-D E-M1. (I have to laugh when I set the Oly beside the 67 and note the size difference!).

I only send my film to The Darkroom for development and deep scans (no prints), and I share the results digitally with family and friends. I’ve considered working again with the chemicals, but as little as I currently shoot (8 years til retirement) I’d like to get to the point where I can still send the film out for development but scan at home.

With all of that said, I’m curious of how many of you take this hybrid approach, and if you think it makes sense in my situation. Am I wrong to dismiss the C-41 process so quickly? I realize that whatever future steps I take, economics will go out the window, as with all good therapeutic hobbies!

Thank you - interested in your thoughts.

I've been using a hybrid darkroom for several years now. Actually, my darkroom is a changing bag. I've developed my B&W since I began shooting B&W film, some 35 years ago. My first attempt at developing E6 slides was almost that long ago -- and the results were excellent. For about a year now, I've been developing C-41, and what I've discovered about developing C-41 is it's actually a bit easier than E6. By doing my own developing I'm saving a lot of money. I don't care about having prints made. I can digitize the slides and negatives and have my local Costco print them out for me. If I'm after more artistic quality, I can send off for it.

I have a similar "hybrid approach"—I don´t develop at home. Im lucky to be situated close to a professional lab (in our capital Copenhagen) that does day-to-day development (if I need it), drumscans etc. and then I scan the rolls with an Epson V750 Pro (that I own) or sometimes an Imacon (that I can rent by the hour) and do my "darkroom" work in digital (Adobe), then print digitally downtown, a friend of mine that used to have a printshop and still has a pro level Canon printer (up to 64cm) or other pro printshop. Im happy with the results. Regards Jakob

Thanks for the input. I’ve got to do a whole lot more research. Epson V600 vs. V800, dry vs. wet scan, continue to let an outside service do the negatives, etc.

I do have a bathroom in the house that I can set up for the negative development.

A couple of further specific questions, please:

1). Is the scanning software included in the V800 scanner adequate?

2) What is the best / most cost effective software post-scan? I was a little tripped up by the $240 / year for Adobe photoshop. Makes costing out the effort a little tricky in terms of payback - aside from the fact that this is just a hobby for me.

Thanks again,

Epson Scan is so, so—not too bad, but not great either. When I got my V750 it came with Silverfast, version 6.6, which is a pro level but outdated program, the interface is not very intutive and very old fashion, like a program from the nineties. I had a long "fight" with the suppliers to give me the newest version 8 that was the current one at the time (2011), but they would only give me 15-20% off the price on the upgrade—that was kind of disappointing. However, the version 6.6 is letting me get the jobs done and does produce great scans. So, Im OK. I guess, the newer scanner V. 800/850 comes with the SF 8.8? I never used the wet scan method. The filmholders are OK, but not great either. For sharpness correction you have to switch four little "feet" around (positions 0-1-X) and find the best position. No autofocus. Alternative filmholder are in the market. I use and old Adobe Creative Suite 4. You don´t have to get Creative Cloud CC version rental—depends on what computersystem you have? Ebay or others has many optional versions of Photoshop etc.

Thanks, jt !

I shoot E6 almost exclusively and have it developed at a pro quality E6 lab. I then scan the slides with a Plustek Opticfilm 120. It will do negative film as well. The slides do not sit on a glass bed, as it uses trays that insert into the machine. It uses Silverfast for image processing but I use Windows Photo Gallery to touch up the shots since Silverfast had some limitations.

Thanks Desertscape. From my early Youtube searches, it seems that many users don’t find their scanning software adequate for image processing. Is there a single piece of software that effectively does both and is universal enough to match the scanner you are using?

I think most people today would opt for Adobe Lightroom CC—if they are not going for expensive stuff like Phase One. I´m using three steps: 1. Silverfast 6.6; 2. Adobe Bridge CS4, Camera RAW 5.0; 3. Adobe Photoshop CS4, First I produce a scan that picks up as much material from the roll as I possible can, then I use a combination of tools (things like CR: Basic, Sharpening/Noise reduction, Hue/Saturation/Luminance; then PS: Dust cleaning: Clone tool, Unsharp Mask/High Pass (Copy "Background" layer. Radius around 6 to 7 for a face; layer blending mode: Soft Light, often 67%, great sharpening filter used with care), Crop, Levels, Curves,Color Balance, Hue/Saturation etc) in the creative Suite 4 to get to my intended final result. Which might then look like this 100% screen crop of a 5120X4067px scanned TIFF:



Pentax 67II, SMC 67 4/55, Ektar 100

Very nice, jt. Thank you for explaining your process.

JT, those are some very nice looking scans.

I've been using my old Epson 4990 to scan my medium format images because I've always found that scanner to be sufficient. But recently I've gotten curious about using my NEX 7 to duplicate my medium format stuff. I wasn't trying to do any stitching or anything like that -- I just used a copy stand and a light box and shot the whole image. So, instead of 3200 ppi (the setting I've always used), I was shooting the entire image at 4000x6000 pixels. The results were good, but after crunching the numbers, I realized I was better off using my scanner, in terms of resolution. Plus, I didn't have to jump through all the hoops involved in trying to get color negs looking right from a digital duplicate. I dunno, maybe someday when/if I ever get a full-frame digital with a super high megapixel sensor, I might try shooting digital dupes of MF slides and negs again.

JT, I just gotta say, that Merc is one cool old car. I've driven an earlier version of it -- the 280 SEL 6.3. It was a big car, but it was also extremely fast for its size. An ultimate Autobahn cruiser.

Thank´s guys

... and yeah, wouldn´t that be a nice car to drive :-)

The most difficult area of an image to scan well on a flatbed scanner like the V750 are bright skyes or fog with very light colortransitions—some kind of banding easely occurs in the transition from white light to light blue, (e.g. this image) very slight colorshifts like red, yellow, green appears? That´s a problem, I havn´t found a solution to—I think, other scanning/copying methods are necessary to avoid this or maybe another brand or software?