Wherein we opine on more or less anything that strikes our fancy.

Of scans and scanners9 February 2026   ▲

For those of us with old film photographs scanning in the digital age is a must.  Herein I relate my own experiences with the film era, including a recent revisiting of old slides to mine any remaining nostalgia nuggets that should be preserved in digital form.  Along the way, one also discovers things about film that are very relevant to the longevity of a collection of old original media.

To summarize, over the years we shot black and white negatives, color negatives and color slides.  In the Kodak line we used Kodachrome and Ekrachrome slide film, Tri-X black and white negative film as well as Kodak color negative film.  Fujifilm choices inclued early slide film plus Velvia and Provia.  Other film included Agfachrome and GAF slides.  We have owned three separate Nikon scanners,stwo 4000s and a 5000, as well as a recent PlusTek 135i Ai.  For the Nikon scanners, film was processed by NikonScan.  With the PlusTek scanner, we've used both the supplied QuickScan Plus and the powerful but obtuse SilverFast software.  In table form:

We perfered and used Kodachrome 64 from the late 1960s.  At some point we began using Kodachrome 200 and Ektachrome for the higher ASA ratings.  Unfortunately slide mounts of the era do not distinguish between the two flavors of Kodachrome but it is perhaps significant that we did use plenty of Ektachrome, possibly hinting that Ektachrome gave better results at higher ASA speeds.  Over 40 years later, we are beginning to notice a difference in longevity between Kodachrome and Ektachrome.  Considred archival, Kodak still holds up fairly well, showing only modest loss of contrast. 

Ektachromes exposed in the 1970s are starting to fade a bit.  Thankfully, there isn't the color shift one sees with other films.  Further back in time, Ektachrome slides we inherited from the 1960s and 1950s have turned orange and faded substantially.  In this latter case, quality of storage is unknown and it could be that environmental factors are at work.

Perhaps the most surprising observation regarding both Kodak slide films is that daylight color rendition is by far the most accurate of any film or digital camera we've ever used.  For people photographs, the colors are spot on compared to the reality of the subject on the day of exposure.  Scans of these slides are easy to work with in digital post-processing as well.  Would that digital cameras produced such accurate results with such ease.  Indoors under tungsten light, it is a different story.  We didn't filter such photos and the result is a distinct yellow-orange cast that is difficult if not impossible to eliminate in post.

Here we comment only on earlier FujiFilm emulsions.  Velvia and Provia came later, when we took up bird  photography circa 1999.  The comparison of those earlier FujiFilms with Kodak does not favor Fuji.  Forty years later, many have faded to orange, rendering them virtually useless.  There aren't enough Agfachrome or GAF examples to give a reliable recommendation, but the few we have have held up well.

Right up front, our Kodak Tri-X negatives are still in good shape.  With that out the way, color negative film is a different story.  Not too many years after shooting a lot of color negative film, mostly Kodak, we scanned many of those we liked best.  Years later we went back  to see if we missed anything.  To our horror, we found creeping mold and color shifts to orange on just about every negative strip.  Many were beyond salvaging.  We quickly bought archival storage envelopes and scanned what little could be saved.  But the damage had been done.  It was a hard lesson, with no payoff from having learned it due to the long since completed conversion to digital.

Back in the day Nikon's Super Coolscan 4000, and later 5000, were the best consumer grade scanners available. Accompanied by Nikon's easy to use NikonScan software, one could push a great many images through those machines -- and I did.  In fact, I wore two out and the third finally needed repairs long after production had ceased.  The problems were never mechanical; the scan optics eventually began to show color shifts and loss of conrast.  In that sense, the reliabiity and longevity of the scanner hardware was a disappointment.  NikonScan, on the other hand, was an excellent product.  The interface was intuitive and the program had all the controls one would want to produce good scans out of the box or to work an image for maximum results.

Fast forward to today and one must look anew for a good commercial grade scanner and the software to run it.  After much investigation, I decided on the Plustek 135i Ai.  This unit comes bundled with Plustek's own QuickScan Plus application as well as the notorious SilverFast.  So far scan results with QuickScan Plus have been good.  The software is about as bare-bones and one could imagine, with very limited post scan adjustments.  Nevertheless, the results out of the scanner are good enough to feed into a post processing workflow.  The four slide carrier for the scanner is easy to use -- although one can bend a thin cardboard mount when extracting a slide if one isn't careful.

Silverfast is a different universe.  It is every bit as clunky and awkward as advertised.  The very style of the user interface is right out of the 1970s.  The only other program I have used that is as bad in Pano2VR.  Both are incredibly powerful for full-time users, but neither of their user interfaces conform to modern software user interface practices.  It would take more space than I care to employ to fully analyze all the things wrong with SilverFast so I won't.  But, frustration compels me to point out that the File dropdown menu does not contain a save selection.  At that point, it's anybody's guess as to how one saves one's scanned file.

For all of that, SilverFast appears on limited sampling so far to extract a bit more detail  from scans than QuickScan Plus.  Countering that, one is compelled to make careful parameter adjustments in order to get a decent color graded file out.  This is different than my experience with QuickScan Plus which tends to produce good colors and contrast out of the box, files that are easy to work with in post processing.

Given that film is a thing of the past, at least for me, nothwithstanding a modest resurgence in recent years, these experiences are relevant largely to mining old collections for a few more photos worth saving.  Based on that, the new Plustek scanner meets the need.  I use SilverFast so little that each time amounts to starting the learning process all over again.  The lesson learned, long after it is relevant for me, is that some film stocks, especially color negatives but slide filmse as well to a lesser degree, are subject to irreversible long term deterioration.  While the process cannot be stopped it can be slowed through proper storage environmental conditions and archival containers.