Started by HannahC41, 16 May 2026. 7 replies, 272 views
Gear in this topic: Pentax 67, Valoi easy35
Been shooting the Pentax 67 since January and my lab charges £16 for dev and scan on 120. The scans are fine but a bit small and flat and i always end up wanting more out of them.
Thinking of scanning myself. Problem is my only digital camera is the X100V which obviously cant do it. So is it a macro lens plus a cheap used body plus a light plus a holder, or a flatbed? whats the cheapest way to do it properly without it turning into another hobby
camera scanning wins for 35 imo, I use an easy35 and the difference over lab scans was huge. for 120 you need a different holder though. the color inversion is the annoying part, budget time for learning that more than money
For 6x7 I'd seriously consider a decent flatbed before a camera rig. You lose a little sharpness, but you gain a great deal of sanity. I scan my RB67 negatives on an Epson and print them to A3 without anyone complaining, and I'm fussier about prints than most.
The reason is the negative size. A 6x7 neg is big enough that a flatbed's resolution is rarely the limit at sensible print sizes, whereas camera scanning 120 properly means either a very good macro lens and a high resolution body, or stitching two or three frames together. Stitching is fine until you've done forty negatives in an evening and want to throw the light box out of the window.
If you're printing bigger than A3, then by all means camera scan and stitch. Most people aren't. Most people are posting them on a phone screen, where a lab scan was already more than enough.
gwyn_ap said:you gain a great deal of sanity
sanity is in short supply here tbh. how much was the epson
HannahC41 said:how much was the epson
I bought mine second hand years ago for a couple of hundred pounds. They hold their value annoyingly well. Buy one with the film holders included, replacements are surprisingly dear, and do give the glass a proper clean before your first scan.
Or print them in a darkroom and stop worrying about scans pal. There'll be a community darkroom somewhere in Bristol, there always is.
Whichever you pick, the inversion step is where most of the quality is won or lost, not the hardware.
Capture flat. If it's a camera, shoot raw and don't touch the in-camera profile. Set your white balance off the clear film base between frames (the orange mask), not off the image. Then invert in something that actually models the mask rather than just flipping a curve. If you invert in Lightroom with an upside-down tone curve you will fight colour casts in the shadows forever, and every frame will need its own fix.
One practical note for 6x7 on a flatbed: get the negatives flat. Curled 120 is the single biggest cause of soft flatbed scans, people blame the scanner when it's the film sitting half a millimetre off the focal plane. Anti-newton glass or a decent holder with adjustable height fixes most of it.
darktable has a negative module that handles this properly and it costs nothing. A flatbed with good software and a careful inversion will beat a camera rig with a sloppy one every single time. imo that matters more than flatbed vs camera.