Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

By Hamish Gill

I’ve had my Noritsu LS-1100 for nearly a year, yet after all this time I’m only just beginning to scan with it. To say it’s been a bit of a rocky road would be an understatement! But, now I have it working, and I’m just beginning to get an idea of the potential this thing has… well, it’s safe to say, I think it’s been worth it!

The move to home scanning

I’ve been happy with the results I’ve been getting from AG photo lab for a long time. I’ve flirted with other labs, and been quite satisfied with them too, but AG have always given me the closest to what I’ve wanted from a 35mm scan. I like my scans to be well colour corrected for skin tones, but beyond that, I’d rather have a sense that I’m seeing a fairly neutral image that hasn’t has had too much of someone else’s taste written into it.

Quite often when I look at images from some labs – and of course the photographers that use them – I feel like I’m looking at as much of that lab’s house style as I’m looking at the photographer’s style. This is born out in what I think are trends in the way some photography – especially colour film – has been scanned. There’s nothing wrong with this really, but for my tastes, it feels like there is a bit too much of a sense of putting my work into the hands of someone else.

Of course, I know that some of these labs offer a custom service to help you work with them to define the look you after, but having dabbled in the idea and discussed it with one of these labs, the process felt a little too outside of my control. And besides, I like to feel like my process is as much about learning and further developing as it is about creating a final image. I want to be in control of both my own successes and failures and more importantly learn and develop my skills from both… if that makes sense? This is why I’ve preferred as neutral scan as I can get. Once I have my scans, from AG or whoever, I see it as my job to apply my taste to them to make them my own etc.

Slapton
An AG scan that I tweaked slightly

This is all well and good, but sometimes the scans I receive back are just slightly too far outside of where I need them be to apply the look I like without degrading the image quality. Especially, in fact, with colour. I find AG scan colour images very close to my desired end product. This end product is what I see is quite neutral in terms of colour, but is also largely quite high in contrast. The issue with receiving a higher contrast image is that it’s harder to work with in post process – contrast is harder to take away that it is to add.

This can be largely remedied by choosing to receive high resolution TIFF files. These files have more room for manoeuvre in post, but then the scans cost so much more than JPEGs it becomes hard to justify for every roll. The issue is, I don’t always know when I will need the extra room for manoeuvre the TIFF files bring, so tend to always opt for the cheaper smaller jpeg files. 9 in 10 times these come back fine, and I’m perfectly happy able to make any minor adjustments I need to. Unfortunately though, there remains that 1 in 10 time I wish I’d opted for the bigger TIFF file. I get he file back, it’s not how I wanted it, but there isn’t enough room in the file to get it there either. By that time – short of a lot of faff sending them back – it’s too late! It’s this 1 in 10 result that’s made me decide to bring my scanning home.

The problem I faced with this decision basically came down to my previous experience of home scanning. I used to scan all my photos at home. In fact about 10-12 years back I used to develop everything at home too. I stopped because I found it laborious, especially the scanning process which back then was done with an Epson v500 flatbed. The idea of going back to that horrified me. What I needed was a scanner that needed as little faffing around with as possible. What I needed was a commercial scanner.

Clee
A scan from a way underexposed neg – this came back in jpeg from AG looking frankly pants. To get this out of it I rescanned it on my Epson V500 – a process that reminded my how much I hate flat bed scanning

Why go for a commercial scanner

If you run a business as a dev/scan/print lab there is one key ingredient to its success, and that’s efficiency. It would be simply impossible to run a commercial operation scanning negatives with anything even remotely slow. You need something that can suck the negs in, give you a preview to tweak, then poke them back out again asap scanning them in the process. Whilst doing this, you also need good quality images that are going to make your customers happy, and therefore keep coming back.

I’m not a commercial operation, and have no desire to be one, but that sort of efficiency appeals to me enormously. I don’t feel like I have hours in my days to dedicate to scanning my negs – this is exactly the reason I started outsourcing the process in the first place. As such, when I decided to look for a scanner I decided the only real option was going to have to be something pretty serious. I wanted the same efficiency and quality achieved by a lab, but in my office instead. In fact, what I decided I wanted was the sort of images I was getting back from AG.

Choosing and sourcing a Noritsu

At the time, I knew little more about the kit that AG used than knowing it was Noritsu based. I was also aware of the Noritsu vs. Fuji Frontier conversation that seemed to emanate from the general direction of Richard photo lab, and found myself on the Noritsu side of the fence. I just find the colours and tonality from the Noritsu scanner to look more natural, and often find Frontier scans – at least those that come out of some labs – to look a bit insipid… though this is more down to the aforementioned trends around the use of the Frontier look, rather than the look itself… if you follow??

So, I decided I wanted a Noritsu. In fact, I decided nothing else would do. Either I was going to carry on getting the scans I liked from AG, or if I could find a Noritsu scanner that was going to give me scans like the ones I got from AG, I would try to buy it. So what next? Well, a bloody long wait was what came next!

Finding a Noritsu

I did my research and discovered there were basically three Noritsu scanners that can be used relatively easily outside of a mini-lab set up. The LS-600 and LS-1100, and then the big daddy the HS-1800. The 600 and 1100 are basically the same, they scan 35mm and APS film and entire roll at a time, quickly, up to 24mp equivalent files size. The 1800 does medium format too, but you’ll need to remortgage, and of course have some desire to scan 120, which I don’t. An LS-600/1100 it was.

Image source: http://www.noritsu.com/film-scanners.html

At the time these scanners were sparingly being sold on eBay, but rarely, or in fact seemingly never in the UK. Still, I didn’t give up hope and put a couple of followed searches on eBay.

Low and behold, after fair old wait one came up. A Noritsu LS-1100 was being sold on by a high street D&P somewhere in East Anglia. The listing on eBay had no photos, a sparse description, and a buy it now button. Being slightly less than crazy, rather than ‘buy it now’, I got the chaps number and we did a deal over the phone. From memory, it cost me a flat £1000 shipped.

Getting the Noritsu LS-1100 working

Then came the hard bit. At the time – unlike the Pakon scanner that has a facebook support group, the Noritsu didn’t have much of an online community of users at all. In fact, finding info online about how to set one up as a standalone scanner was nigh on impossible. The most I could find was some references to the fact it could be done, and the email address of some Russian chap who was very happy to sell me some software for below retail value… … …

Eventually, I stumbled across the help of a chap called Tom who was successfully using an LS-600 scanner out in the states. With his advice about what software I needed in mind, I then stumbled across the U.K. importer of Noritsu gear; a nice chap called Derek at PhotoXport. He was able to supply me with the software I needed. Though it had to be ordered specifically from Noritsu in Japan.

Unfortunately for me, the software only runs on Windows, so I then had to endure the learning curve of installing parallels on my Mac and poisoning it with an installation of windows XP. Combining the software from Noritsu which included something called “twain drivers” with windows XP, photoshop CS5 and some sort of plugin, the bloody thing only went and spluttered to life. Bear in mind by this time we are in the region of 6 months into me owning the thing by this time.

Discovering the fault

It was at this time that I discovered my LS-1100 had a fault. I had my first scans out of it and they were blurred. Not just a little unsharp either. Blurred.

By this time me and Tom had set up a Noritsu users facebook group, and whilst it was growing, there wasn’t anyone on there who could help me. There was plenty of discussion around how to fine tune the sharpness, but no one had experience of completely blurred results. At this point, I got back on the phone to Derek. He sent my blurred image to Noritsu in Japan, who in turn sent back a very complicated document that detailed how to adjust something called the “light axis tilt and swing”. This was outside of my desire to tackle, and apparently outside of Derek’s too.

Running out of options I returned to google and found a company called Veritek who claimed to offer a repair service for such things. Vertiek are a company that’s mainly geared up for dealing with bigger companies that have maintenance requirements for all sorts of machines; photo lab equipment being within their remit. A quick phone call to them revealed that yes, they did have Noritsu specialists on their team, yes they probably could fix it, but the call out charge was to be over £500! Gulp!!

I then had the brainwave to talk to Matt from AG – he uses Noritsu gear, so who does he use to service them? The short answer was of course, Veritek. He did also give me the name and number of another repair chap, but warned me that unless he said “I know how to fix that” straight away, he was probably a dead end. As it turns out, when I explained the problem to this guy I was met with a short period of silence, some concerned noises, then a “yeah, that doesn’t sound right”. Veritek was to be my only option.

The repair

The Veritek experience first involved a telephone consultation with a nice man named Andy. Again I explained the fault and was again met with a “hmmm, that doesn’t sound right”. At this point I sent him my very blurred image by email which in turn was met with a “that doesn’t look right either”. As it turned out, Andy used to be high up in the team of repair folks for Noritsu when they had an operation based in the U.K. As such, I figured if anyone was going to know his onions, it would probably be Andy. “Can you fix it?” I ask. “I don’t know; not without looking at it” he tells me. The problem is, looking at it was going to cost me that aforementioned £500+.

This felt like a dead end – I could spend the £500 only to find out it wasn’t repairable. This would leave me with what amounted to a £1500 paperweight! Not ideal, and quite a big gamble. That was until I had the idea to ask my company insurance broker if it was covered. Amazingly, the answer was yes. (I have a very good insurance broker, if anyone in the U.K. wants their details, let me know!)

This need to stump up the cash did add further delay, but just after Christmas, having raised some funds by selling my Contax T3, I got back in touch with Veritek and arranged the repair. Andy arrived a week or so later, I explained the fault again, he looked concerned again, but went head on into tackling fixing it. It was quite amazing how quickly he identified the fault. All he needed to do was take the top off.

Topless scanner!

Straight away he noticed that there was quite a good deal of sag/play in the scanning assembly that hangs above the film when it’s scanning. As it turned out, it was just these two little nylon bushings that had snapped.

These nylon bushing run along two rails and are what keep the scanning assembly at its calibrated height above the film. Two at the back, two at the front. The front two were snapped on my scanner meaning that whilst it could still operate on the back ones, without the front two in place, it was sagging lower than it should be and couldn’t be calibrated to be in focus. The craziest thing about the whole process was just how much of the scanner had to be dismantled to get to the damned things. Andy basically had to strip the whole of the front of the unit down to its component parts to access the bits to extract them.

Once extracted, Andy was able to confirm that there didn’t appear to be anything else awry, so put in an email to his head office to see if they had the parts in stock. As if by miracle they had some in their German office. Of course, this meant that Andy couldn’t fix it there and then, but it did mean there was a very bright light at the end of the tunnel.

A few days later the parts arrived. A few days after that, Andy returned to fit them. A further £20 for the bits, and an extra £90 for the additional time it took over the original call out, and low and behold the damn thing worked! Not only did it work, but whilst Andy was there he gave it a bit of a clean and service, leaving me in a very positive position to start scanning!

You can see my first black and white scans here, and the rest of my first colour scans here

The final part of the puzzle

Just for the sake of a complete story, I just want to quickly mention one thing that I’ve missed out of this story – mostly because I can’t quite remember when in the above timeline that it happened – but happen it did, and the outcome was positive.

At some point in all this, my old 2012 MacBook was replaced with a 2016 MacBook. When I did this forgot about the faff I’d had setting up the scanner with XP and started afresh instead of restoring my new computer from a time-machine backup of the old one. For the most part, this didn’t cause me any real issues (I live in the cloud), but it did mean I’d lost all the configuration of XP and photoshop within parallels. Try as I might, I couldn’t get it all working again with the same combination of software.

All was not lost, as by this time mine and Tom’s facebook Noritsu FB group had bloomed, and with it, we found a couple of folks with good knowledge of all this lark, one of whom had found the way to get it all working in Windows 10.

As such, I installed windows 10 into Parallels on my Mac switched off something called “driver signing” (whatever that is), and it all installed fine.

The basic scanner interface running in windows, in parallels on my new mac

What’s really exciting for anyone looking to follow my path, apparently, Noritsu have just released specific Windows 10 drivers too. So it’s now even easier to get these things up and running as standalone units.

So that’s the story so far… Give me a few months and I shall be back with some thoughts on getting the best out of it!

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About The Author

By Hamish Gill
I started taking photos at the age of 9. Since then I've taken photos for a hobby, sold cameras for a living, and for a little more than decade I've been a professional photographer and, of course, weekly contributor to 35mmc.
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Comments

Ryan on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 08/01/2024

Hi, so first off thanks for starting the Noritsu facebook group and also writing this article. I currently own a Frontier SP3000 and currently looking for a Noritsu. I can't afford the HS1800 so I was going to settle for the 600 or 1100. After reading this, apparently the two LS models are identical except for speed of the scans. Is that correct? So if there's no other advantages of having the 1100 over the 600 except for faster scanning?

Thanks!
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Kodak Portra 800 Review - and some Thoughts on Shooting it Within my Workflow - 35mmc on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 02/07/2020

[…] 800, but they have all been 35mm, all processed the same way by AG Photo Lab, then scanned with my Noritsu LS1100 and post-processed in Lightroom by me, to my eye. I choose the labs I use for their consistent […]
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Mark Davidson on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 13/08/2018

Great article.
I closed my photo lab in 2009 and we had been scanning film since 1995 so I was feeling a lot of your same emotions.
Of course the software issues were not one of obtaining them but actually having them run in a stable manner.
I have a ton of negatives that I want to scan and think of getting a commercial scanner just because I know how much better they are than any of the consumer scanners.
The last consumer scanner we tested was a Nikon LS 1000 that was widely praised as a superb scanner. After setting it up we found the scans were woefully inadequate unless one set the scanner for multi-pass scanning and that took forever. Negative scans were useless as Nikon was entirely clueless about color conversions for negatives.
We did have a Kodak 3570 as our first scanner and it was superb for negatives. The only shortcoming was its max of 18MB files that, in truth, were not a huge penalty.
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Damien Derouene on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 07/07/2018

I just posted a comparison between scanning with the Noritsu LS-600 and with a Canon 5D Mark IV. The results are interesting. You can check the article on my blog. http://www.gostreetphoto.com/quick-comparison-canon-5d-mark-iv-vs-noritsu-ls-600/
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 07/07/2018

I'd be very interested to learn more about your colour conversion process!

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WAQAS SHAFI on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 18/05/2018

Love the review, I'm buying the Noritsu HS-1800. Do you anyone that can help me with the initial set up of the stand-alone scanner and its EZ controller Software?
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Balazs I. Horvath on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 24/04/2018

I have this problem for me too. Can you tell the product number ?
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Balazs I. Horvath replied:

Comment posted: 24/04/2018

I found the product number of the broken part. If it later this helps someone. It can be ordered. ( A083226-01 )

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Damien Derouene on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 27/01/2018

Very good article. I’m also using a Noritsu LS-600 and it a pleasure to scan my films.
For the ones who are interested, I posted a detailled article about the Noritsu on my blog.
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Mark F on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 29/10/2017

Appreciate the article Hamish. Lots of good info. Any chance you can speak about the scanner's dynamic range? Is it possible to set the software to do multiple scans automatically for increased highlight/shadow detail as it scans through an entire roll automatically? Or do you have to rescan each frame manually if you seek increased DR?
Learning about the Noritsu scanners now for the first time. Will join the FB group. Thanks, Mark
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 29/10/2017

Hi Mark, EZ controller might have the means if you went for a full lab-type setup. You'd have to ask on the group though - theres a chap on there called Richard who seems to know everything about, well, everything ... He's probably your best bet

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Michał Czajkowski on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 07/09/2017

Where did you get windows 10 drivers ? I would like to upgrade my Windows 7 to 10.
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 07/09/2017

If you get yourself over to the facebook group, there are a few folks there who can likely help - else it is possible to order from Noritsu importers

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Davud Dadar on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 15/07/2017

Nice machine indeed. I have a question though. For color negatives in range of ISO 100~200 (eg. Ektar, Portra, Agfa Vista, ...), does higher than 2000x3000 scans make sense? Is there any extra details to be gained by scanning 6000x4000? I am asking because my local lab has a HS-1800 and they only scan 135 film at 1.5Mpix or 6Mpix. They only use higher resolutions for 120 film.
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 15/07/2017

I find the higher resolution to be worthwhile, yes. At some point I'm going to do a Noritsu review that goes into some of this stuff - I've just not quite found the inclination yet

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OLiver Lison on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 02/05/2017

Prices of those machines will go up as more people discover that they are cheaper and maybe better than scanners from Nikon or Minolta. I was looking into getting one of those scanners some years ago but I never took the risk of buy of them. When sourcing a scanner like this most of them are in the US. Then you have to deal to get it across the pond and getting it through customs....

With my Minolta scanner, I set the samlple at 8 times to get a noise free black and white image and this takes a lot of time. At some point I really need to upgrade..... to some thing better and quicker...

Thank you for your insight post,
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David Clark on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 14/04/2017

Hi - you've not mentioned the cost of the software that you got from Derek at PhotoXport - was it expensive? Do you know what the software was called?
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 14/04/2017

It's the Noritsu Ls-1100 program software and twain drivers - about £100 I think. Get yourself on the facebook group, there is lots more info on there.

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David Clark replied:

Comment posted: 14/04/2017

Many thanks - will do.... I've just carried my LS-1100 into the building.... I was very lucky to get it for a swap! (A wall mounted card/glass cutter!) But it came with no software - a friend managed to get it as it was about to be thrown into a skip at a high street minilab that had gone bust. The PC had got home to the chaps kids and had been wiped to put games on! Have you tracked down any manuals?

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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 14/04/2017

That's a great skip save! No manuals, but I've emailed you a useful link :)

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David Clark replied:

Comment posted: 14/04/2017

The Facebook page is an absolute gold mine of very useful information. There was a Drylab saved from the skip too - but I'm lucky enough to have a Fuji Frontier 570 (just the printer - no Fuji Scanners!) Thanks for your helpful email!

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Cool Film on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 19/03/2017

It seems like you had bad times with this scanner, but it all paid well. Photographs look nice. The scanner a bit pricey but the cost of scanning at labs is increasing, so it's worth investing in the scanner.
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Kodachromeguy on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 13/03/2017

Wow, good for you and your persistence. You were REALLY lucky that the plastic bushings were still available somewhere on earth. The scans look great.

As for the troublesome software, I went through a similar adventure trying to get a Minolta ScanMulti medium format scanner to run. I wanted to run it off my Mac, but it would be almost hopeless getting an adapter to the SCSI input on the scanner. Fortunately, I still had an old Dell Windows 7 computer at home that I was about to surplus. I found abandoned SCSI cards at work, installed them and various drivers, installed the 1999 or 2000-vintage Minolta scanning software, and lo and behold, the thing worked. Since then, I bought SilverFast in a version that had been made for the ScanMulti. Moral, keep an old computer around for the just-in-case. Cheers
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 13/03/2017

I think they still make this scanner... Care to share a post about you experiences? :)

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Peter Boorman replied:

Comment posted: 13/03/2017

My Dimage ScanMulti Pro will run on FireWire, which seemed to be less trouble, and faster, than SCSI. And ditto: I'm glad I kept an old computer around: it's now my scanning machine, and because it has no connection to the 'net I don't have to worry about the out of date OS...

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Akeem replied:

Comment posted: 13/03/2017

Hi, I've just purchased the ls-600 model. I'm in desperate need of a few tips on my windows 10 install - I've got the TWAIN, and the program discs. And I know how to disable driver signing checks. I think the issue is the old version of PostgreSQL 8.1 that shipped on my TWAIN disc. Any tips?

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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 13/03/2017

Yes, go and find the facebook group - there are some much smarter people on there who will be able to help :)

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Akeem replied:

Comment posted: 13/03/2017

Thanks for your, help, got it working already!

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Raffael replied:

Comment posted: 13/03/2017

I’m also looking for a scanner to digitize my 135 negatives. How many 135 negatives can you digitize in which resultion per hour? Is so much faster than e.g. a Nikon 5000ed Coolscan? Best, Raffael

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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 13/03/2017

Great stuff... You will have to let me know how you get on!

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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 13/03/2017

I can do a roll at full res in about 15 minutes including editing images one by one

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Ori on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 12/03/2017

Obviously, you didn't know about the broken plastics in the Noritsu, did you try to call the seller and get a refund? I mean, he did sell you a broken machine..
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 12/03/2017

There is a bit missing from the story, mostly because it's not that relevant... I bought the scanner off a chap on the other side of the country. We agreed that I would take the risk on the shipping. I did have suspicions that something might have been wrong with it before it was sent, until I spoke with Derek. Derek, as it turns out, knows most of the companies around the uk who use these scanners, and new the chap I bought it off personally. He assured me it was working before it had been shipped. But as I say, I took the risk... the guy sending it didn't want me to buy it unless I collected, and I wasn't prepared to let it go!

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Ronnie Thain on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 12/03/2017

Sorry I never got back to you with an article on scanning with a camera, Hamish. I've been too busy catching up with scanning, amongst other things, to find the time :)
I could never go back to using a scanner – even the Crosfield drum scanner that I used to almost worship – when I see the results I can get from the RAW output of a cheap Sony mirrorless. That's not to say I'm finding it easy: there are a few things I do to achieve colour balance that I would find it difficult to explain. For instance some workers suggest using autobalance, but I find this doesn't work at all and I am having to set the end densities from scratch in curves. However, it all seems worthwhile when I get a result – https://www.flickr.com/gp/ronaldthain/j9t5V6
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Christos Theofilogiannakos on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 11/03/2017

My local lab has the LS-1100 and the scans I get are very good indeed (esp. at the price of 4 euros per roll for developing and scanning). Other than the speed of scanning though, wouldn't it be cheaper to get one of the Plustek or Reflecta 35mm scanners (the newer models support whole-roll scanning) at 400-500 euros new? I've seen great results from both brands online, certainly comparable to those I get from the Noritsu.
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 11/03/2017

Other than the speed, and the ability to replicate a look I'm already happy with, yes possibly. And there's also the fact that I don't have to use either vuescan or silverfast, which I dislike, a lot

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Christos Theofilogiannakos replied:

Comment posted: 11/03/2017

Yep, the software is an issue, indeed.

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Stephen on Noritsu LS-1100 – The Move to Home Scanning / Early experiences with a 35mm Film Lab Scanner

Comment posted: 11/03/2017

Congratulations on your persistence, does the Noritsu produce 'raw' files?

But it really shouldn't be this difficult... What I really don't get Hamish, is why there aren't more players in the pro/enthusiast market for film... It is pretty clear that the traditional darkroom has remained a legacy of the film era with no appreciable future.

Film itself though, is going from strength to strength but back-end processing is usually preferred, even though the resulting computer image is in reality a digital image of a piece of exposed film.

One thing that I got from your piece today is that the Noritsu scanners do not seem to produce raw files, but rather jpeg or tiff files. This is not the case with the Nikon 4000ED that I have here which produces Nikon raw files... These can either be run through the Adobe Raw program, or processed in their native form with Iridient Developer... Brian Griffiths who is in charge of this program added the Coolscans to his list of accepted digital cameras and their resulting '.nef' files are manipulated natively by the package.

The Iridient Developer program is very mild mannered, small and fast and has made a speciality of handling the recent Fuji sensor output better than other similar applications. I don't have a Fuji, but I really like that I sent this company an email and the owner got back to me by return, and within three weeks had added my Nikon to the list of supported cameras.

Having said that, I run my Nikon on a PowerMac that is around 15 years old, the Nikon software only runs on a Mac of this age, or Windows XP. This is an obscenity really, last night I had to scan a strip of five negatives three times, because the Nikon software (or the Mac) crashed before I could save the output.

There seems to be only one reasonably priced machine out there from Plustek, the OpticFilm which seems to evoke various responses from user/reviewers, all of the others are from the 1990's?

Where are Nikon, Sony, Leica?
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 11/03/2017

It doesn't do Raw, but it's so quick I'm already finding that if I don't like a scan, it's really easy just to get it closer with a rescan. By that measure, I don't feel any loss at not having Raw as a feature really. In terms of players, I suspect the size of the film photography market is still quite small. If it stays on the trajectory it is on, perhaps we will see more input from big companies, but with the struggles they are having selling digital cameras, I just imagine the r&d costs to be prohibitive when looking at an uncertain market place. They are all probably waiting to see if someone else makes a move first. Kodaks super 16 camera makes me hopeful. As for the darkroom, I'm not sure I agree... I think the uptake is increasing, just slower.

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Peter Boorman replied:

Comment posted: 11/03/2017

"Where are Nikon, Sony, Leica?" When Sony took over Minolta they acquired the superb Minolta Dimage scanners, and promptly dropped them. Sony stopped providing up to date drivers, so my (wonderful) scanner currently runs in NT :( Unlike remaking old film era lens designs and expecting them to work equally well on digital, there is no reason at all why a twenty year old 'top flight' film scanner shouldn't still be top flight now. I wish Sony would start re-manufacturing those scanners, and start providing drivers. The same goes for Nikon. If Sony can re-open a vinyl pressing plant, why not a scanner production line... ;)

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