Q&A: What’s the Best DPI or Resolution to Scan Your Film Negatives?
“Hi there. Since you have and use an Epson Perfection V600 I wanted to ask you what is the optimal scan settings for scanning film negatives?
Right now I use 12800 dpi, but I have a feeling it's overkill and all my indoor night time pictures have a lot of grain. I certainly appreciate whatever advice you have to offer.”
Walter, thanks for writing me. Let me see if I can help you out with this one.
First off, you're right — I am currently scanning all of my photos with the Epson Perfection V600 Photo Scanner. I have been listing all of my favorite hardware, software, and products on my Photo Scanning Resources page. I started this page to let you all know about all of my favorite “scanning things” I have discovered and use.
I would say your gut feeling is right on — 12800 dpi is going to be overkill for negatives (film and slides). Hopefully, you haven't scanned too many of them already in case you now want to do them over.
12800 dpi is the “maximum interpolated resolution” that our Epson V600 scanners will scan. But this is interpolated, which is a fancy way of saying “digital.” The scanner actually only scans up to 9600 dpi (the optical resolution). But using some technical “magic”, the software takes the 9600 dpi image and creates a higher resolution scan out of it.
If you've used some of the point-and-shoot digital cameras that have come out in the last ten years, you know many of them have an “optical” zoom rating. Once you have zoomed in all the way, the actual glass lens no longer comes out any further. But, many still zoom in even tighter, and that's because it's digitally pushing into the pixels to make the image “look” closer.
That's basically what the scanner is doing as well when it's using this digital (Interpolated) resolution. All it's really doing is blowing up the pixels and cropping the image around it. The image quality doesn't get better — really only worse.
So, my suggestion to anyone is never to go beyond the optical resolution of your scanner. So at the highest, with the Epson V600 don't scan your prints, slides or negatives above 9600 dpi.
But, even that is overkill and you will see not only a massively huge file size, but also too much grain when scanning film. Computers these days are fast enough to handle the file size, but the additional grain isn't so good.
What's Is the Best DPI to Scan your Film Negatives and Slides?
I like to keep it simple and break people down into 2 categories. Those with basic goals, and those with advanced goals.
If you are scanning your negatives to just have some nice pictures, but you don't really care about getting them perfect, or your computer is fairly old and you don't want large file sizes for example, then 2000 dpi is just fine. This will make average people happy.
If however, you really want to do it the right way — you really want to archive the best quality of the image that you possibly can so you can pass them down to your family someday, then I would recommend going with a dpi between 3000 dpi – 4000 dpi.
If you try 4000 dpi and you feel there is too much grain, work your way down to 3000 dpi. But, I wouldn't go any lower than 3000 if you really want to archive a high quality film scan.
And if even 4000 dpi seems to low for you, and you really want to try going a little higher — if it will make you sleep at night going a bit more — maybe try up to 5000 dpi and see if it introduces much more grain in your images.
Now Walter, I suggested dpi's exceeding 4000 dpi going up to 5000 dpi for you because you seem to be fairly aggressive in the amount of DPI you are willing to work with. (Just know that those dpi's will produce considerably large file sizes)
However, I feel most people with “advanced goals” should stick between the 3000 dpi – 4000 dpi range with their film negatives and slides.
Personally, I have chosen to scan my slides at 3200 dpi, a “preset number” that is easy to select in my scanning software. And with this setting, my slides end up being around 70-80 MB's (megabytes) a piece.
It's not specifically about negatives — it's really mainly on prints — but I wrote a long post on my site about the best DPI to scan paper photographs that you might like to read if you want more information. Right in the middle of the article is the section on Optical DPI vs Digital with our scanner that you might find interesting. Here's the link:
And, coincidentally, I recently wrote “Scanning Your Film Negatives vs. Prints: An Interesting Comparison” about a photo I had scanned at a scanning service recently. I had the print and the negative of the same photo scanned at the same time and I found some really interesting differences.
Thanks again for writing me. Please let me know how this works out for you. Seriously.
Thanks Walter! Cheers!
Curtis Bisel
Having the later v850 which is better I should point out that the true optical performance is much less that 3000ppi. Ive compared it to my old Nikon LS2000 which scans at a max of 2700ppi. This shows more detail compared to higher scans on the Epson. Guessing the Epson compares mire to 2400ppi. Having said that for larger prints scanning at a higher resolution may have some advantages but don’t expect much. Nite the Epsons are fine for larger formats but gives poor results for 35mm. I get better results using a camera (Nikon D800 & ES-2 neg/slide duplicator).
Have you tried increasing the aspect ratio to 2:1 and 3:1 when using your Nikon D800? You might get higher resolution. This article prompted me to ask that question. https://www.addicted2light.com/2012/11/29/how-to-scan-films-using-a-digital-camera/?v=dd07de856139
I am looking a scanning my negatives to digital for a presentation on a screen approximately 20- feat by 10ft. I will need to scan 35mm negatives as well as 120 (larger negative) What would you suggest to be the best DPI for each type of negative
I am at the very beginning of a self publishing project. I am scanning images from negs and print format on a wide bed Epson 4990.
The first image scans were made just yesterday. I want to do it properly from the start…but fear I am overdoing the file size. I am scanning up to 6 negatives at a time. The negatives are from box camera size film…about 2.4 x 4.28”. Am scanning at resolution 2400 pixels per inch. Each file is approx. 900 MB.
-Am I scanning at too high a resolution? Or too low?
-If saving the file for publishing, should it be no larger than 300dpi?
I am working in Photoshop, with which I am very familiar. But have only printed my own, fine art images from digital camera files.
Perhaps you could point me to some reading.
I’m just getting started on scanning slides and film from my college days back in the 70’s. Most were shot with a 35mm camera. Very rough estimate would be just under 5,000 slides. I will probably need to hone my strategy as I go, but wondering if I should:
1. Scan at a high enough resolution on the first run-through to be able to get as good an 8×10 as possible out of any of them (except for the obvious duplicates, etc.) That way I’ll have them archived and could do the 8×10 at any time even if the films deteriorate.
2. Scan at resolution for 5×7 to get them in and then go back through and make the 8×10 scans of the ones that matter. Knowing the way I shot, I think that could cut the number by half at least.
Just in general, what resolution would be good enough for posting on the web? Giving a slide-show on my 4K TV?
Sorry if this is a bit unfocused, but as I said I’m just getting started. Thanks for your understanding.
Note: using an Epson V370.
Computer storage is not an issue.
Some rough calcs:
At 4800 DPI, 24-Bit color: 5,000 slides x 2 mins/slide = 10,000 minutes = 167 hours – not TOO bad.
Uncompressed TIFF: 80MB x 5,000 images = 400GB – acceptable
Coffee: At LEAST 10lbs! 🙂
Ken
If I have a beautiful Kodachrome 35 mm slide. I want to scan it and print it for a gallery show for sale. Besides the DPI discussion, how big of print can I make that will have some definition, contrast and sharpness?
I believe colour slides have a much lower definition than silver negatives – see a discussion lower down on ‘dye clouds’. As said there, there is no point in scanning at a higher resolution than the patches of dye. I suggest you project the slide as normal on to a matt white wall and make it as big as you can with an acceptable resolution from the distance you assume people will be standing, and then measure the width of the projected image. Then assume this is an image at 300 dpi, calculate how many dots that makes the width, and then divide that number of pixels by the actual width of the slide in inches to give the desired scanning DPI.
A further point – I have had colour slides re-photographed, and they loose dynamic range badly. Detail in the shadows and highlights is lost. Apparently colour slides have a much higher dynamic range than prints from negatives. This may apply to scanning as well.
I always scan negatives and slides at 16 bits per channel (48 bits). Then it’s much easier to adjust exposure in Lightroom without doing bad things (saturating high or low). You could get the same effect by using a DSLR, but you would have to shoot RAW in order to preserve dynamic range.
I am pondering what DPI to scan my 35mm colour slides at, and then what JPEG compression to use. All here is very interesting, but I wondered what the original camera optical system was capable of. The Wikipedia article on ‘Depth of Focus’ has an interesting section on the ‘Circle of (acceptable) Confusion’ of a lens. For 35mm cameras this is apparently taken to be 1/30 mm, ie 762 DPI. So a 35mm camera lens is apparently designed to produce a 762 DPI image.
What then is the point in scanning such a negative at more than 762 DPI?
yes, please. I am also trying to understand… the point of 3000-4000 dpi when others say 2000 is sufficient. and it seems others say things like Apple say the eye can only see up to somewhere in the 300’s.
As far as I understood, scanning at 300 DPI will scan 300 dots per inch and since a 35mm film is 1.4 inch wide, this will produce an image of 420 pixels wide: 300 x 1.4. Not very sharp. So scanning at 762 DPI will produce an image of 1066 pixels wide, still not very sharp. Scanning at the DPI recommended by this article will produce an image of 4480 pixels wide. Now that is a quality I can work with.
My Canon 5D mark ii produces images of 5616 x 3744 pixels, so 4000 DPI would be required to produce a scanned image that approaches this quality. And therefore 4000 DPI is my personal minimum required DPI setting for any scanned image (although I sometimes scan at less DPI to speed up the process: I can always rescan the best ones at a higher DPI setting later).
I really doubt that 762 DPI can be the designed or intended resolution of 35mm. Because any original 35mm slide can “blown up” to wall size proportions, and I believe that is not possible at 762 DPI (not without seeing all the dots in the picture).
Not sure if this thread is dead or not!
But anyways, I was wondering if my Brother MFC J460DW which has a scanning resolution of up to 19200 x 19200 dpi, this being interpolated. (I have utterly no clue what this really means.) I assume the best way is to try right? And 2400 x 1200 dpi being optical. Thanks guys!
optical is the max. interpolated is digital zoom. this is explained in this article if you care to read it all the way through.
Why do a lot of shops near me scan negatives at 300dpi if you’re saying to do 2000+dpi? Do you mean to be using the terms PPI instead of DPI?
Jon, 300 dpi is a very standard setting that many scanning services use to scan paper prints for the basic cost. Then, for those that want to pay more (usually) many services offer to scan paper prints at 600 dpi.
I would be really surprised if there’s a scanning service that wants to scan your negatives at 300 dpi. That would come out really really small in resolution. Maybe 3000 dpi… but not 300.
And DPI and PPI, are basically interchangeable. One stands for “dots” per inch, the other “pixels” per inch. When we are talking about digital images, pixels is really what we want to refer to them as, but so many scanning applications out there refer to “dots” per inch, that someone like myself has to often use DPI here and there, so that it’s not too confusing for those using their scanning software for the first time, who look up and see that “DPI” setting and wonder what it means.
Curtis,
I very rarely leave comments on websites but I stumbled upon your site this evening and felt compelled to let you know how much I appreciate you having taken the time to write your blogs. I am expecting my V600 to arrive tomorrow and in preparation, I have read your excellent blogs on optimum settings for prints, negatives and your comparison between the two types of media. Thank you.
Roy
Thanks so much Roy! So glad to hear I’ve been of help to you. :coffee: