Hi, So, this is one of those obnoxious, spoiled posts about how to spend 4 grand. But your help would appreciated because I'm overwhelmed with the options. Here's what I need to be able to do: Use Photoshop to work with MF Images Scan 35mm and MF Negs Word Process Print Word Documents Travel with the Computer I will need to purchase everything and my budget is 4,000 for the computer, software, scanner, etc.
I'd like the computer to be mobile, but I'd also like a big screen. What would you buy?
Most people looking for Darkroom photo editing software downloaded: Darkroom Professional Edition. Makes Digital Darkroom versatile, easy. Picture Window. How to enlarge low resolution photos on Mac. The following software to go. The resulting photo, click.
Click to expand.He never stated this though. I'd check out the series laptops.
With quad-core 2.53 GHz processor, an NVIDIA Quadro FX 2700M 48-core CUDA parallel computing processor 512MB, and a 17' WUXGA+ screen, it's kind of what he wants. It's big, but if he's scans from MF film, he'll need it to process rather large files. The 17' MBP is nice, but in terms of processing speed and such, is completely obliterated by this machine. I guess the only problem is that he can't afford the scanner AND buy the computer he needs. This laptop would cost over $3500. If he really needs both, then the Lenovo W500 series with its 15' screen: - 1920 x 1200 res display (15' MBP has a 1440 x 900 res screen) - up to 8 GB of RAM (MacBook Pros can't recognise that much RAM, even in the future when RAM prices drop and you install more.) - ATI Mobility FireGL V5700 with 512MB VRAM (MacBook Pros only have 256 MB of RAM on its base price) - a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo processor - starting price of around $1874 for the machine I customized.
Add RAM as necessary. You can even enter a coupon code (USPW500FEB09) and get it cheaper than that. This is a FAR better deal than a base MacBook Pro. It's form or function.
For your needs, you need to pick function. Here's the deal. If you get a scanner it probably should be this one, since anything else medium format will cost a lot more, and this is a pretty good unit. $1999 This limits your choices for the laptop, software, etc. You could go wintel for a bit less, but you could also get a refurb MacBook Pro 15.4' unibody: 15.4' 2.4ghz, 2gb memory, 250gb hd - $1699 This leaves you $300. Get a copy of Photoshop Elements for $79, which will do much of what Photoshop will do without the $700 pricetag.
Also, take a look at, open-source photo editing software with many Photoshop capabilities. For your Word processing, writing/printing Word.docs.
Don't waste your money on MS Office, but download a free copy of for Mac. Or take a look at. Great software for a small download price (compared to commercial prices.) A great version of 2 is available too. Anyway, lots of alternatives out there to avoid paying more than you have to.
You still have $220, next get one of: usb - $106 shipped That leaves $114 for a nice sleeve and backpack of your choice. (Of course, I'd really recommend a refurb hi-definition 17' MBP matte screen model, but it's $300 more to start with). So, with the 15.4 inch MBP you should think about stashing a little extra cash away for an eventual purchase of an external monitor like this nice, if you can't swing the 17'MBP from the start. $499 So, now that you've used up all your $4000, you could go for the better display with a refurb 17' MBP (high-definition matte screen) for an extra $300 now, or wait and spend $499 for an Apple Cinema Display a bit later. Now, if you only had $5000 to spend.
He never stated this though. I'd check out the series laptops. With quad-core 2.53 GHz processor, an NVIDIA Quadro FX 2700M 48-core CUDA parallel computing processor 512MB, and a 17' WUXGA+ screen, it's kind of what he wants.
It's big, but if he's scans from MF film, he'll need it to process rather large files. The 17' MBP is nice, but in terms of processing speed and such, is completely obliterated by this machine. I guess the only problem is that he can't afford the scanner AND buy the computer he needs.
This laptop would cost over $3500. If he really needs both, then the Lenovo W500 series with its 15' screen: - 1920 x 1200 res display (15' MBP has a 1440 x 900 res screen) - up to 8 GB of RAM (MacBook Pros can't recognise that much RAM, even in the future when RAM prices drop and you install more.) - ATI Mobility FireGL V5700 with 512MB VRAM (MacBook Pros only have 256 MB of RAM on its base price) - a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo processor - starting price of around $1874 for the machine I customized. Add RAM as necessary. You can even enter a coupon code (USPW500FEB09) and get it cheaper than that.
This is a FAR better deal than a base MacBook Pro. It's form or function. For your needs, you need to pick function. Click to expand.It's really a matter of opinion, because you'd end up with a Lenovo. They're nice, functional machines, but I'd take a bit less horsepower for a ton more elegance and simplicity, free of the MS view of the world. To me (note the qualifier here.) there's not a price you can put on avoiding Microsoft for important, daily functions.
What do you think? It comes from experience. He could get a Lenovo and do what he has to do, no doubt, as I mentioned above. $4k for a computer and a copy of Photoshop is easy to do. Actually Photoshop Elements might be all you need. However a portable scanner for MF negs does not exist. What scanner to buy depends on your image quality requirements.
Can you quantify your requirements? Dependiign on what you need the price of a scanner could range from about $275 to well past 4 times your total budget. Flatbed scanners are really not all that bad. If you buy third party software the scanners can make multiple passes using different exposures on each pass and assemble a good scan using techniques not un-like 'HDR'. You can get very good dynamic range. For a bit more you can buy a lab-quality tast calibration target and calibrate your scanner ad get very good color from a flatbed scanner.
But multi-scanning is slow. My Epson flatbed takes about 2 hours to fully process a load of 35mm slides and then it takes my at least 5 or 6 minutes per image (20 images per load = about 2 hours) to hand corect each image. This means I can do about 20 slides per evening. I use a scanning service for the bulk of my work simply because I value my time at more than $4 per hour. Also what is your definition of 'portable'? Hand carry or a shipping case with wheels.
Any of ths larger scanners will require a wheeled case. If you have simple requirements then a Macbook, 'Elements' and an Epson scanner and $1000 left in your pocket. One More Thing. Why not simply send the negative out to be scanned. Have you considered your time? Figure on at least 5 to 6 minutes per negative at a bare minimum. Some could require an hour if there are dust or scratches.
You can get this done for you for abut $1 each, give or take. Later as you shoot more film have the lab that procees it scan it for you. Also please do save some budget for three external disk drives to be used in rotation for backups. Click to expand.Don't worry, read the comment above.
Use one from time to time at the paper, and used it quite heavily when my fiancee shoots with film on her EM. Works perfectly with OSX Tiger. The paper hasn't upgraded to Leopard and may never do so, so Tiger works fine. Don't know where he/she got that from.
As for the OP. LISTEN CAREFULLY, since you don't have the budget to do all of that yourself. You can pay someone to scan the negatives for you.
The best scanner you can get will be the Nikon Coolscan 9000 ED. Plain and simple. Look for it used, but good luck, it's a KICK@$$ machine to just give away. $2000 best price for it, may be a bit less.
If you need to get a Mac, get the 17' MBP, whichever version you want to save cash, doesn't have to be the latest and greatest. BUT, if you can go PC, then you can get yourself a 17' hi res book for around $2000 and skimp on the cute stuff like Bluetooth and glass trackpads. Get the student version of Photoshop or the Creative Suite for $250. Get OpenOffice for documents and such. SO, in the end, you will either be skimping on the machine, or on the scanner/method of scanning.
Pick on or the other, or skip scanning MF for now and just scan 35mm into a $1000 Nikon scanner. One more thing to concider: What is your time worth?
Put a dollar value on it. Once you do that that you can decide if spending an extra 15 minutes per image is worth saving $200 or not. Will you work for $4 an hour, $10, or $50? You may also have some hard 'through put' and/or 'latency' requirements. For example, maybe you typically shoot 250 images and need them scanned the same day. Or you have a back catalog of 10,000 images and would like to have them scanned over a one year period.
Depending on answers to the above I'd recommend very different solutions. You might need a bigger budget or you might have $1K left over. Click to expand.If you need all the things the high-end Lenovo laptop offers in a fairly heavy package, I can see it working for you. Heck, it would work for me, too, since I have a history with IBM Thinkpads. But yours and my choices would just be different today. But, for the OP, what I said still might have some merit. Not everyone has the same needs, clearly.
For what he mentioned he could actually get by a nice combo iMac for the desk/MBAir for the portable use and contract out the scanning as needed. And still buy a full-blown copy of Photoshop. There are a number of ways he could go. No real advantage to the Lenovo from my perspective. Click to expand.The application is a PowerPC binary. You're going to have to run it through Rosetta, which makes it a bit slower than it should be.
I often have issues with the scanner hanging up on me and making it appear as if its still scanning, but I have to take out the negatives from the strip, insert them back in, and try rescanning. Scanning a medium format negative at 4000dpi takes a little while, so if you are serious about scanning your negatives.well, I hope you have some patience. It'll work, but it's not exactly the best. However, if you want to scan MF, your options are limited anyway.
Make sure that you install PowerPC compatibility (if its even there), when Snow Leopard comes out. Also, digital skunk, I know you're a Nikon fanboy and would love to get on your knees for them, but unless you know what you're talking about, shut up. Click to expand.The thinness and lightness is more of a curse. Now we are plagued with very limited choices in Intel chips and limited hardware inside of the body. While most 17' PC laptops have gotten quad core options, dual HDD options, and 'some other niche feature geared toward the market, i.e. Jog/shuttle wheels or internal calibration' the 17' Macbook Pro has only gotten a longer battery life for simple tasks and sacrifices an internal battery. 1.1' machines aren't that heavy, and I know Apple could do a lot with that extra tenth of an inch.
The thinness and lightness is more of a curse. Now we are plagued with very limited choices in Intel chips and limited hardware inside of the body. While most 17' PC laptops have gotten quad core options, dual HDD options, and 'some other niche feature geared toward the market, i.e. Jog/shuttle wheels or internal calibration' the 17' Macbook Pro has only gotten a longer battery life for simple tasks and sacrifices an internal battery. 1.1' machines aren't that heavy, and I know Apple could do a lot with that extra tenth of an inch. Click to expand.This is very true brother. Power IS being able to get work done VERY QUICKLY with the least amount of STRESS.
Not being sarcastic, just pointing out those point to emphasize them down below. Quad core would allow me to render HD video a lot quicker. Not only that, it would allow me to batch process images quicker, as well as (in regards to Nikon Coolscan) process application functions quicker, or allow certain apps to run on two cores and other to run on the others.
In regards to video editing, I recently learned that Premier Pro isn't 64 bit for Mac OSX, but Adobe made it up out of smaller 32 bit executables that each could run on a core and that core's RAM. Dual HDDs would allow me to have either space for storage, scratch for video, or scratch for still images. OR, it would allow me to RAID my drive for speed or instant backup.
Having an external is never a problem until the cable falls out when you're rendering or batching. Lastly, everyone wants more ports. I could due for less USBs and added eSATA to be honest.
Digital Darkroom - Hardware Although I've been taking photographs for over 55 years, it wasn't until the advent of the digital darkroom that I really obtained control over how my pictures were processed. I had always wanted a chemical darkroom but had neither the space nor the facilities for one. While in high school and the Army I did do some darkroom work and really liked it. My background of over 40 years working with computer software starting with mainframes and later with micro-computers (now PC's) gave me good preparation for what later became the digital darkroom. In the 1990's I experimeted a bit with HP ScanJet scanners (which were primarilly document scanners) as well as an early slide scanner, the Nikon LS-10 Coolscan (2700 dpi).
I used the then current Corel Paint as my software. Early printers left more to the imagination in the mediocre images that they produced.
But it was a start. In early 2001 just after getting my first digital camera, the 4MB Olympus E10, I acquired my first Photoshop software - Photoshop 6.0, a Canon BJ-8200 printer, and a Nikon ED-8000 Coolscan which gave me the ability to scan my 2-1/4' slides as well as my 35mm's.
This page covers only my hardware and the operating system. The Digital Darkroom - Software section covers all of my image processing software, and the Printer Information section discusses my printer and it's RIP software. I hope that the following information is useful to anyone managing their own hardware/software.
It reflects my experience and opinions, which of course may differ from other views which abound on the internet. Complete Shift: 1/2011: Windows 7 to (Mac) OS X 10.6 and Windows 7 64bit using Mac Bootcamp.
After considering many factors both my wife and I decided to switch to Apple. Other considerations such as syncing email between devices when on the road are added features that make the Mac's worth looking into.
Express Digital Darkroom Professional 9.2
I'm not looking here to get into flame wars about which is best. In my opinion what it boils down to is that both current operating systems (Windows 7 and Snow Leopard - OS X 10.6) are excellent software. However, Windows must attempt to be all things to all hardware, whereas Mac software is tailored to Apple's own hardware. Is there a hardware price penalty, yes, but not as much as there used to be. My original micro computer, the Apple II in 1979, was almost as expensive as my wife's new Mac portable (more expensive whan considering 1979 dollars).
My Current hardware is: Mac Pro: 2 quad core Intel XEON 'Westmere' cpu's 2.4Ghz (2.53Ghz - turbo). 24 GB memory (2 banks of 3 modules each Crucial DDR3 memory). 4 Hard disk drives: 2 Hitachi 2TB drives, 2 WD Caviar 'Black' 1TB Drives. 1 PCI express USB 2.0 board with 4 additional ports Apple 27' Cinema LCD Display Nikon LS9000ED Super Coolscan scanner, used, (replaced LS8000ED). Mac OS X 10.6.8 'Snow Leopard', Windows 7 Home Premium (using Mac Bootcamp). Note: Windows 7 Home Premium only recognizes up to 16GB memory and 1 quad core CPU. This system gets a 7.4 Windows Experience rating except for the hard disk drive which is rated at 5.9, thus giving the whole system a rating of 5.9 (same as my previous home built Windows computer).
Peripherals: Slide/film scanning or copying: 1/28/2013 - Note: I am evaluating digital slide copying for 35mm as opposed to scanning. From what I have seen, this method of slide digitization, if done right, will produce an image that is as good or almost as good as scanned output, and is much faster.
If this works out, I will be able to digitize my 35mm slides much faster than with a scanner. The pros of this process are: fast processing and more accurate overall reproduction. Fast processing. Slide scanning is a slow tedious process. If one wants to get the most out of each image, then it must be previewed, corrections applied, and re-previewed until it looks as good as possible. When digitally copying a slide, the prime concerns appear to be sharp focusing (critical) and proper lighting (exposure). More accurate reproduction.
If properly exposed, the resultant image will look more like the original slide. Scanned slides characteristics are somewhat modified by the light of film scanners, and it is tougher to get information out of the shadows without blowing out the highlights (slides were often exposed to avoid blowing out hightlights, which hurt shadows).
Flatbed scanners create 'softer' images than film scanners. Cons of this process are: More post processing time required, and, higher contrast images with possibly blocked shadpows and problems with color negative orange casts. Because scanners can use correction and enhancement software such as Digital ICE, or equivalents, the elimination of spots as well as the restoration and enhancement of faded slides reduces the amount of necessary post processing effort.
However, except in cases of badly shifted colors in older non-Kodachrome slides, enhancements during the scanner process can diminish sharpness and create garish colors. I find that post processing is always necessary, so the amount of time for me is offset by the time I don't need to spend doing exposure and color correction prior to the scan. Contrast Increase is something that I will have to evaluate. A problem with slide copying has been that contrast increases in the copy. I believe that this can be controlled, but I will have to watch this and see how it can be dealt with.
Color negatives have a color cast which must be compensated for. Usually this is an orange cast. Scanners can deal with this. It remains to be seen how well this cast can be eliminated by post processing. My first efforts have been with an Opteka slide copier, which have produced good results with the NEX-7 and the 18-55mm kit lens, and raw output - this resulted in about a 70MB 16 bit output image.
The prime criteria is the ability for a lens to close focus. Sony's 49mm lens filter size works well with the 52mm size of the Opteka. The main problem with the Opteka is that the slide mount is somewhat loose, and precise focusing is problematic. I used the setup mounted on a tripod with the camera pointed at an outside window in order to get sufficient even high quality light. The key to using this device with no modification is a lens that has very close focusing. I am now waiting on the arrival of a Minolta Auto Bellows III along with its focusing rail and the ABIII-Slide Copier unit. This, along with a Minolta 100mm f/4 bellows macro lens should enable me to copy slides in a tightly controlled manner.
The bellows assembly as well as the lens were purchased used on EBay. In order to attach this to my A99 (or NEX-7) I need a Minolta to Alpha or E mount adapter. I have an Alpha adapter on order. With the arrival of these items this week, I should be able to copy my 35mm material with sufficient control to make it useful. Scanner: My main peripheral unit, aside from the Epson 9800 printer is a Nikon ED-9000 Super Coolscan. I bought this used unit in 2011 to upgrade from my ED-8000 scanner which was purchased new in 2002 and was still fine when it was sold.
The 9000 handles Kodachrome better and also has better color rendition. I use Nikon Scan v4.02 as it gives me the best results for the effort. The problem with the Nikon Scan software is that it hasn't been supported for several years and will not run on MAC OS's beyond Snow Leopard (10.6.8). Nikon Scan also had to be 'jury rigged' to run on Wndows 7.
If I upgrade my OS Software, I will have to used either Vue Scan, which is fine but allows very little control, or Silverfast which is expensive and more complex than Nikon Scan. If my 35mm copying efforts are succesful, then the scanner will still be used for difficult 35mm slides as well as my 2-1/4' Hasselblad slides. Other peripherals are besides my Epson 9800 which is described on a separate page, are: EPSON R1900 printer. This is a nice printer which uses an Ultrachrome pigment ink set and produces excellent prints up to 13'x19' in size. Since the inkset is Epson's Ultrachrome pigment ink set, the prints its produces are long-lived.
Unlike my larger Epson, this one can also produce 4'x6' prints. Epson R300 printer. This is my general purpose and 4x6' printer. It is a good unit although it has long been replaced by inexpensive later model printers. Last edited:1/28/2013.