You gotta love the old SCSI bus devices. The reason why they must be turned on first is that they all have an ID which gets read by the computer on boot. Since they were not designed for hot-plugging like USB, there is no bus scanning routine in the OS once it's started. Same thing for the old external hard drives.
The younger generations will never know how exciting the the concept of plug-and-play was along with the advent of USB. Was dark times back then y'all...
But, in Windows all you have to do is go to device manager and rescan for hardware. I do this for my CoolScan on a regular basis. IIRC, the Mac used to have SCSI Tools that could do the same thing.
Hey Willem, assisted on these and the newer generation for several years- if there is a color problem be sure that the blackpoint and white point sliders on RGB channels each don’t cut from the curve where there is still information shown. If one cuts too far into it one will end up with weird color artefacts. Just backing it off a bit usually helped me. Hope you’ll be happy, I remember their colors to be super deep and rich compared to other lab scanners, peace
Honestly, the color problem might simply be that he uses a pretty trash, non-calibrated monitor. No offense to the screen, it looks just like my old one. But that's how I know its colors are terrible. Edit: You can always compare it by scanning film as a positive and converting it on a modern setup using Negative Lab Pro. If the colors are good there, it's not the actual scanner's problem and might very well be software or screen or whatever.
flexcolor is very much to professional lab-standard, more than capable and Imacons won't give you raw files that would benefit from a third party NLP workflow. @@Nitidus
Hey Willem, Just an advice, don’t do that much color correction in the Flexcolor software. Use the 3f and make 100% scans. When converting the “RAW” 3f into tiff, make sure you export as low contrast file and do the post in photoshop just using levels, no lightroom!!! Been using, renting these scanners for years. I have tried all different methods with it and this is the way to go. Colors are better with this scanner than most others. No idea about the drum scanners but… keep up! ✌️
I agree, I used the Imacon for years one the side of some Scitex scanners. And there was nothing wrong withe colors. Use the 3F format and basically get a raw format file and scan to a really flat file to maximise shadow/highlight detail. But stay away from PS/LR and use the Hasselblad Phocus software that I think still supports the 3F format and that handles color better then almost anyone. And yes get a properly calibrated/profiled screen to work from. I believe you could upgrade the later generations to use Firewire as well and then you can use newer Mac OS but only as long as they support 32 bit apps.
Also one machine I worked with that was my favourite in terms of how easy and smart it was to work with was the Heidelberg Topaz and it's the only flatbed I have used that matched their drum scanners and the colors you got out of the Newcolor app was soooo god and as soon as you understod the interface of the app it was on another level.
I have a 35mm film scanner and a large format one. But two years ago, bought a 105/2.8S macro lens with my Nikon Z - very sharp and goes to 1:1 in the case of "full frame". Now I upgraded the camera (to Z 8) and it can do "photosite shift" up to 32 frames with half shifts for more resolution. In a couple seconds rather than minutes. The old scanners have lost "it".
Willem, we have the same Flextight at our university and it is used with an older mac mini. You only need to make sure, that the processor is 64-bit or else it won‘t work with the machine/flexcolor. Kindest regards from Europe!
Scan that as a RAW and you can make a lot of color improvements with either Lightroom or PS. For many years I hung onto (still have) my Apple Mac G4 to be able to use my Nikon Coolscan 6000 ED scanner but then discovered that there is a company who reverse engineered the ability to run that high end scanner with a modern Mac processor. Otherwise, it was an expensive boat anchor.
0:44 I appreciate that you calculated for the inflation. This is something that content creators forget to consider often. Usually when saying something like "our parents had it better back in the day" 😂
We had a Flextight where I studied photography. I scanned a lot of 4x5 B&W images on it. It’s not fun spending 4 hours to make 15-20 scans but the scans are gorgeous. Thanks for sharing, Willem!
🤩 OMG! Back in Ukraine 🇺🇦 in 1999-2000 I used to work at the publishing house and we bought PowerMac G3 like yours and an EPSON professional scanner which was capable of scanning film slides and negatives. Back then it was cutting edge!!! And yes - you have to connect it via pesky SCSI port.
You can considerably increase its resolution, by switching to proper glass MC filter. It has a blue gel filter on the lens, and you can just switch it to glass one. I has just a regular enlarger lens, so it has threads for it.
Hi, I have an Imacon P1 scanner with the same blue filter over the back of the lens. Excuse me for asking, what does ‘MC’ stand for? I ask, because twice, I have had to clean fungus from this filter, and I am concerned that it will eventually degrade into being unusable.
@@rf8221 I am a bit confused here, on the front of the lens there is a reddish polyester colour correction filter, and on the back of lens there is a bluish green, presumably glass or maybe polyester that (I think) acts as a UV/IR cut filter before the light path hits the CCD scanning array. Only the rear filter seems to generate mould, and I would like to find out if it could be replaced. Could ask Hasselblad but they want buckets of money for the simplest of items.
Thank you Willem, I really enjoyed seeing the video! But bear in mind that the little “Danish Wonder” usually did the same service as a very big Drum Scanner for 100 0000 thousand dollars. And did not need heavy duty concrete flooring and was ready for use in days instead of a year of training! So the Danes (there were several companies like Imacon) really changed the scanner market and put an end to the old saying “If you don´t like Scitex, then Cross the Field and go to Hell!” ;-)!
We used an Imacon back at my University when scanning film-good memories! I remember that it sometimes took 6-10 minutes to scan a single image, but it was so worth it!
@@hypeyeast.mp4No, man. You don't understand: It's about scanning the *negative* _as if it was_ a *positive* so that the automatic conversion doesn't happen. This way you can get it into NLP. So despite scanning a *negative,* you set the scanner to *positive.* OP simply got confused in the wording. No big deal. You're all referring to the same thing. By the way, if the colors in NLP turn out good, this shows that the scanner is fine! Because if it was the scanner's problem, NLP wouldn't be able to suddenly make up great colors out of thin air. If converted with NLP it looks fine, then the scans itself are good and the actual problem lies with either the conversion software, or the monitor, or something entirely different.
@@Nitidus There we go, that's right. I think we all just had different wordings. What I meant was to make a scan of the negative, you meant making a positive scan of the negative. Same thing, different expressions.
Hey Willem, I run an older canoscan scanner that uses SCSI. Ive managed to get it working on windows ten, using a startech PCI to PCIE adapter you can find for about 70 usd. Id reccomend trying it! Requires pulling out the scsi card from the desktop and adapting it with the startech adapter, and then finding the right drivers. Adaptec scanners do have drivers readily available for most that work with windows 10 and vuescan. Happy scanning!
I scanned with a flextight while at university, they had an army of these - 25 troopers in a small scanning suite! Absolutely love the magnetized holders, and the quality is wonderful!!!
After using an Hasselblad Imacon X5 for quite a bit let me say: The thing it outperforms every other scanner I know is scanning slides. They look breathtaking scanned on an Imacon. Black and white too if the grain is not too heavy. Personally, I feel the lens is too sharp for overly grainy images as it enhances the structure too much - even for someone like me who loves grain on monochrome shots. Colour negative is the hardest to scan on this thing, that's true. Like you said, it just isn't meant to do the editing. It performs very well in getting a flat image, with loads of detail in shadows and highlights. Think of these scans more like an FLOG file from a video camera or a drum scan. They are supposed to be as neutral as possible to allow for maximum flexibility in postproduction.
For some reason FlexColor just automatically sets sharpening crazy high when selecting monochrome which makes it look overly grainy. Just disable the sharpening and you should be fine. Technically there's even sharpening going on when you set it to 0 so if you really want to get rid of it, go to -120.
My go-to workaround for bad scanner colors is to scan negative film as a positive and then convert the negative in Negative Lab Pro. That usually works out so much better for me.
Man, how good - I heard a bit too late that a local museum threw one of these out a few years back. Very much worth the hassle. Also that's a bloody good price. I'm about to deal with the same kind of headaches for an old SCSI Digital MF back.
Niiice. So many great memories from when I used to scan on the same imacon back in art school. Yeah, Imacon on first, then computer. Make sure you get the mask size correct. If you have a small mask but the software thinks its a larger one, it will pull it in too far and you have a problem at hand. THe way it curves the negs over the sensor - you get almost absolute flatness. Even with super curled large negs. And no dusty glass or newton rings. So easy to get perfectly flat and in focus scans. For me the best flow was to scan flat in the imacon as it sees the whole neg in 16bit tiff. And then in photoshop lift each channels ends to match the actual data it recored in any channel. And then on another level/curve layer adjust the balance for colors. I found that was the easiest to get maximum out of any neg. Its a per-image process but thats what the imacon is for anyways. For complete rolls of 35, there were better machines. Not that the nikon coolscans were known for their speed..
That’s a great deal! I use the Epson Scanner and it cost twice as much as what you paid for your Imacon! With the Epson flat bed scanners, I find the film doesn’t stay flat. Those Imacon scanners are sweet!, the film stays flatter I have used these back in the day, seems like yesterday! I think those cameras are awesome for 4x5!
hey big fan thanks for the videos, Best solution I found was scanning @ around 1000 PPI and then inverting in Lightroom with Negative lab Pro. It is by far the most accurate way of doing it other than making test prints afterwards and seeing which really matches the colors. Keep it up!
I have a friend who was scanning Magnum photo's archive with this scanner and I can confirm they had a much more modern mac. I bet you can find some modified drivers and adapters to make it work with a modern computer.
I think the main problem with colours is the monitor -> mac connection. MacOS has very special system that works with colours on external display. You have to try another monitor for the mac or manage to connect your scanner into the macbook or IMac (the best option for colours) .
The Precision II was a good scanner in its days, and it is certainly still good today, but the quality of the scans is not comparable to an 848 or an X5... there is a large gap. The Precision II suffers a bit from blooming and banding, and has some weakness in the deep shadows.
I had a newer generation (646) with a Firewire port. I calibrated the scanner before the use and my colors were really amazing. Try to use the adequate ICC profiles.
First of all, there are SCSI to USB adapters. More importantly, I think the slow speed may be due to the software, while the color cast is probably due to the software cutting the histogram incorrectly. My Minolta's original software was 32bit and processed the image "live" during scanning, thus slowing down the scanner. People reactivate their WinXP machines for this obsolete approach. Today, with larger RAM, modern universal software like Vuescan (99€ lifetime license for all scanners) or Silverfast is written in 64bit, scans first and processes after. This often takes a tenth of the time (depending on the model). You can scan in raw and then convert the negative in Adobe's negative lab pro or, better, Negadoctor in Darktable (freeware).
They used to have these at the Art Institute of Colorado back in the day, and there was a way to scan it DNG that might have been the Hasselblad version . That was how we would get the best color. It also did a lot better with slide film
Some of my friends scan the neg as a neg and then do the conversion in photoshop (you use the gray pipette on the film and not the photograph). I usually get those levels correct with pressing down alt and moving the black and white sliders. You can get different holders like a 6x6x3, which is for a strip of 6x6 film. You can't get an entire strip of 6x7 on there but you can turn it around and thusly not cut into a negative. I have had bad luck with using the 35mm frames which can get stuck, you then have to open up the scanner and get it out there. But the results are really amazing, especially the grain. Getting the colors is tricky but one's you get the hang of it, there really is no way back (unless you photograph your negative which also has it's drawbacks).
I think a more handy solution to make that thing work would be to run the OS in a virtual machine on a modern computer, you just need a PCI card compatible with the connector for the scanner
why is this scanner (still) so expensive and was it even more expensive in 2000? 1. Thanks to the optics, an image can always be scanned in full scanning line resolution. 2. The density range is from 0-4.1. This corresponds to a dynamic range of 14 f-stops. Most scanners don't even get 8-10 (usually even less). 3. It probably has a real resolution of 5760 dpi. For comparison: my Epson G9500 (from the same time) has a density of 3, i.e. 10 apertures and a target resolution of 600dpi (din A4) and no cariable optics. At the time it cost almost 1000 USD.... But it has one advantage, it has a SCSI2 interface and I still run it under Windows 8 and 10!!! Most digital cameras at the time only had a dynamic range of 7 apertures and corresponding resolutions.
Cool scanner! The colors indeed do look a bit strange and muddy, it's one of the hardest things to get right with digitizing negatives it's a whole rabbithole on its own.You could try to scan it as a negative tiff and convert it into a positive with a more recent software like the negative lab pro plug in, filmlab, or do a manual conversion in Photoshop or capture one (tricky to get the right colors in my experience). I use negative lab pro with my camera scanning workflow and I'm in general quite happy with it.
Recently, I also bought this scanner. It's not true that an old Mac is needed. I managed to run my scanner on a computer that I specifically bought for this scanner (cheap one). It has Windows 10 and a SCSI card. I connect to this computer remotely using nRemoteNG, so I don't need an additional monitor, keyboard, or mouse. You can buy larger holders, which allow you to scan more frames without cutting the film.
Hey man, I am a photography student in fine arts at uni and we have two of these scanners. I agree they don't do colours very well. What I have found out that works best for me is trying to just get the colours to look as neutral as possible and then do the colourgrading to your preference in Photoshop. Also adding contrast with the scanner is not preferable, here you will be better of just adding the contrast the picture need / you want in Photoshop. At least this is what I have found out works best for me. Cheers!
I scanned a lot of film on the Imacon about 20 years ago at a local facility where you could rent it by the hour. I never had any troubles getting great colours from it. I was working with older film and what I had the most trouble with was dust. There was no Applied ICE in that machine, so along with the very slow scan times was the laborious task of photoshopping the dust out by hand. I actually did comparison scans between the Imacon and an Epson V700 using of the same frames taken on 120. The Imacon was better, but not that much better and the ICE feature alone was enough for me to get the Epson. Well, the price of acquisition may also have had something to do with it.
The computer lab in my high school had those computers! I thought Macs were the worst because of them. The UI was rough (to me a high schooler). Once I went to college and had a MacBook and they changed updated the OS, I was in love. You cant do much to upgrade those any more but if you got your hands on a 2010 Mac Pro, you can still upgrade them today. I still have mine!
You would buy it and run a "service bureau" scanning film for people and make the money back + profit.
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I’ve never used one of these scanners, but I studied around that year industrial design, and we had that kind of shiny slow and futuristic hardware too. Monstrous big silicon graphics 3d rendering computer and glossy Power Mac cubes. It was a really special time for hardware enthusiasts and digital pioneers.
For the best colours on a flextight , I’ve found that using the neutral grey colour picker on the histogram straight off the bat does a great job at balancing the colours out for a good baseline to work from !
I have an Imacon Flextight P1 - it is superb. About sharpness … the default Imacon sharpening at zero is in fact +120. So,to get a scan without any sharpening applied, set sharpening to -120 to get zero.
I tried to buy one of these from my job years ago. The slow speed of scanning killed it for business. They didn't need the ultimate level of quality. They switched to a fuji flatbed that could scan transparencies. Those big fujis could really knock out a scan. You could place multiple transparencies on the flatbed, and it would scan each according to your settings one by one. But I really wanted that Imacon. They also made digital backs for medium format cameras.
I have expereince with different film scanner. Not sure if the color shift is related to the out of date calibration file (icc). I do it every half year with the provided calibration standards. Or you can purchase the standards separatly.
I don't know if someone said it, but with the right scsi to firewire converter to TB3 (I did it in a lab) you could actually get the setup down to a mini macbook with Mojave. Just saying if you want to basically cut down the space to the scanner, a mini laptop and a cable, there is a way!
I had the medium format model, but they made a holder designed for scanning each side of a 4x5. You would then combine the two in photoshop. I noticed that the two scans never matched up. They were always different lengths from each other. I now scan my film with my sony camera and get superior results.
I remember these kind of scanners. The interface was SCSI and to make them work it was a total mess. Some required to be confugured to a particular SCSI channel, others were requiring a SCSI terminator...driver issues...huge and bulky cables...it was 1998
Fascinating to see the old tech I used to mess with back then. Although I wonder how the results of this would compare to a direct shot of the negative with a GFX100 instead of futzing with a dinosaur like this.
SCSI II was a little long in the tooth even then. The most RAM you could stuff into a PowerMac of the era was 1GB and Photoshop CS1 barely ran on that little (Layers quickly iterated beyond 1GB with 200MB scans). Multiscanning 16 bit.log files from Minolta Damage scanners eclipsed these for MF and 35mm pretty quickly. If I remember my research, early Imacon Flextite also did not have IR channel for automatic dust and scratch correction. It also had a similar maximum file size regardless of format size since it moved the lens. IOW, it was high res but only for 35mm (5K dpi). But rather middling for 6x7 and relatively poor at 4x5. Was it even 16-bit? If not results from modern DSLR and macro lens will easily trounce the Imacon, if only because stitching or HDR of a stack of images is now trivially easy
I bet there could be a way via an adapter and some programming to connect the scanner to a linux or windows pc. But this is probably to niché for the effort
maybe there is a way to grab a positive image off the flex tight and convert to color using NLP - a few more of hoops to jump around but I think the platform might be a better space to get colors where you may want them!
I used the imacon 848 at the Chicago Tribune back in 2001-2003. They were really impressive for medium format and large format film. SCSI was much more commonplace. :)
The quality on this scanner is absolutly amazing. I used a Imacon 848 at university. The workflow is horribly slow and the maintanance needed is a real pain in the ass but god I stil miss it.
What is the color profile which is embedded in the processed TIFF coming out of the box? Do you have a name or a link? Is it possible to profile the scanner with a kodak translucent test pattern? Otherwise I would prefer a basic setting setup without touching the gradients, scan a tranlucent test pattern (i.e. kodak) and make a lightroom profile with a software like "basiccolor input". Then you have a proper workflow.
Yes, Willem! I love the "I bought this so you don't have to" videos! (Of course, your Volvo videos are kind of about that, too). This is really cool! Thanks for sharing.
Jk I bought two of them in a bundle for $3000 with tons of other parts and holders and I sold all the rest leaving me with only $500 invested into the setup
Hello Willem! I have a neat trick for you! Scan the negatives as though you were scanning positive film. Set each colour channels blackpoint far off to the sides so that you get a Very uncontrasty scan. Save it as a 16-bit Tiff. Then open the image using Negative Lab Pro and convert it there (the linear flat profile works best for the scans I've been working on so far, but try each one until you find what you like best). For some reason this combo seems to give me both the colour and the contrast I rarely get when DSLR scanning! I really hope you'll try this technique, cause it really blew my mind the first time I tried it (and it still does!). And hey! Happy Easter!
Willem, you HAVE to get a nice CRT for accurate color rendering on that. A Lacie Electron Blue or a Mitsubishi diamondtron would be perfect so you can get the colors juuuust right.
The fact you didn't show files in 1:1, didn't say a word about possible bit depth, max resolution of final file(any kind of RAW files?), details, scratch removal automation is insane.
I have an old book called photoshop 5 artistry, he talks about doing several captures at different settings then combining them which might spruce colours up a bit
Wow. Blast from the past. Did not use that model. But I worked at a production agency as an operator on a Scitex drum scanner and IRIS proofing system. Wow, SCSI with terminator. Good luck with everything.
Sold them for the main British distributor" The Studio Workshop " back in the day. Very good bit of kit, I still have some holders and a PSU from my demo kit.
Just checked the Flextight Precision II User's Guide, it get 150DPI at 4x5. Well, good to have it at $500 with this level of detail at dark area of the photo,the lens inside aready expensive than $500,but 1500 euro on ebay or 3200usd for a abandoned supporting scanner ? no thank. dont forget to calculate the CCD
these things are SO GOOD. Also, they take A LOT OF PRACTICE to get good scans from. I used one in undergrand in the late 2000's, and it took me the better part of 4 years just to feel like I was getting great imacon scans
When noticing the price tag in the title, I knew exactly what it was - An Imacon… I believe that Imacon turned into PhaseOne, but not 100% sure about that… the Imacon scanners are amazing… would love to try their drum scanner
Good on you if you got a good copy .-) Been working with these beasts for more than 20 years and have one still going strong. The old macs are getting difficult to keep running. Ive got mine on a new cheap PC with Windows 7 and all the legacy software. Much more stable than the mac route. And servicing is a nightmare ...
Actually, the original price from 2000, adjusted for inflation, is more like $35,000 today. As he gets into the video, we are reminded that to run the thing, you'll need computers and operating systems which are a quarter-century old, running hardware which may be impossible to find if replacement is required. A fair number is these high-end scanners are coming on the market, and they almost always come with the complete, if antiquated, computer set-up to run it. This is one of those items which requires that a buyer adopt a "show me" attitude before purchase. Getting the whole package in working condition for $500 is the bargain of the year, even if it drops dead in a few years of use.
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You gotta love the old SCSI bus devices. The reason why they must be turned on first is that they all have an ID which gets read by the computer on boot. Since they were not designed for hot-plugging like USB, there is no bus scanning routine in the OS once it's started. Same thing for the old external hard drives.
Yes 🤣. What a relief once USB came. Although the drivers in Windows 98 were, well, I mean, it kind of worked, mostly 🤣. Feeling old...
@@thomasa.243 if you crossed your fingers, it was Wednesday and you used the device between 11:34 and 11:58am.
The younger generations will never know how exciting the the concept of plug-and-play was along with the advent of USB. Was dark times back then y'all...
@@adamm.1367 That was funny how surprised he was. PNP was just starting to get to work at those times, somehow and sometimes.
But, in Windows all you have to do is go to device manager and rescan for hardware. I do this for my CoolScan on a regular basis. IIRC, the Mac used to have SCSI Tools that could do the same thing.
Hey Willem, assisted on these and the newer generation for several years- if there is a color problem be sure that the blackpoint and white point sliders on RGB channels each don’t cut from the curve where there is still information shown. If one cuts too far into it one will end up with weird color artefacts. Just backing it off a bit usually helped me.
Hope you’ll be happy, I remember their colors to be super deep and rich compared to other lab scanners,
peace
Hope he sees this comment! The scans came out super well
this. scan in with the full histogram and set black and white points in photoshop. best way to use one of these
Honestly, the color problem might simply be that he uses a pretty trash, non-calibrated monitor. No offense to the screen, it looks just like my old one. But that's how I know its colors are terrible.
Edit: You can always compare it by scanning film as a positive and converting it on a modern setup using Negative Lab Pro. If the colors are good there, it's not the actual scanner's problem and might very well be software or screen or whatever.
flexcolor is very much to professional lab-standard, more than capable and Imacons won't give you raw files that would benefit from a third party NLP workflow. @@Nitidus
Couldnt it also just be the screen? I can’t imagine that monitor has accurate color reproduction
Hey Willem,
Just an advice, don’t do that much color correction in the Flexcolor software. Use the 3f and make 100% scans. When converting the “RAW” 3f into tiff, make sure you export as low contrast file and do the post in photoshop just using levels, no lightroom!!! Been using, renting these scanners for years. I have tried all different methods with it and this is the way to go. Colors are better with this scanner than most others. No idea about the drum scanners but… keep up! ✌️
I agree, I used the Imacon for years one the side of some Scitex scanners. And there was nothing wrong withe colors. Use the 3F format and basically get a raw format file and scan to a really flat file to maximise shadow/highlight detail. But stay away from PS/LR and use the Hasselblad Phocus software that I think still supports the 3F format and that handles color better then almost anyone. And yes get a properly calibrated/profiled screen to work from. I believe you could upgrade the later generations to use Firewire as well and then you can use newer Mac OS but only as long as they support 32 bit apps.
Also one machine I worked with that was my favourite in terms of how easy and smart it was to work with was the Heidelberg Topaz and it's the only flatbed I have used that matched their drum scanners and the colors you got out of the Newcolor app was soooo god and as soon as you understod the interface of the app it was on another level.
Why photoshop > lightroom?
11:50 " Let's get our Portra 400 borders in here for the instagram likes.. " i'm cracking up ahahaha
Lol that's psychological manipulation.
@@REMY.C.ahahaha
I have a 35mm film scanner and a large format one. But two years ago, bought a 105/2.8S macro lens with my Nikon Z - very sharp and goes to 1:1 in the case of "full frame". Now I upgraded the camera (to Z 8) and it can do "photosite shift" up to 32 frames with half shifts for more resolution. In a couple seconds rather than minutes. The old scanners have lost "it".
Willem, we have the same Flextight at our university and it is used with an older mac mini. You only need to make sure, that the processor is 64-bit or else it won‘t work with the machine/flexcolor.
Kindest regards from Europe!
you mean not 64-bit, flexcolor only work on 32-bit
Scan that as a RAW and you can make a lot of color improvements with either Lightroom or PS. For many years I hung onto (still have) my Apple Mac G4 to be able to use my Nikon Coolscan 6000 ED scanner but then discovered that there is a company who reverse engineered the ability to run that high end scanner with a modern Mac processor. Otherwise, it was an expensive boat anchor.
0:44 I appreciate that you calculated for the inflation. This is something that content creators forget to consider often. Usually when saying something like "our parents had it better back in the day" 😂
We had a Flextight where I studied photography. I scanned a lot of 4x5 B&W images on it. It’s not fun spending 4 hours to make 15-20 scans but the scans are gorgeous. Thanks for sharing, Willem!
🤩 OMG! Back in Ukraine 🇺🇦 in 1999-2000 I used to work at the publishing house and we bought PowerMac G3 like yours and an EPSON professional scanner which was capable of scanning film slides and negatives. Back then it was cutting edge!!! And yes - you have to connect it via pesky SCSI port.
You can considerably increase its resolution, by switching to proper glass MC filter. It has a blue gel filter on the lens, and you can just switch it to glass one. I has just a regular enlarger lens, so it has threads for it.
Maybe a dumb question, but why does it need to have a filter over the lens in the first place?
@@fricki1997 Maybe because it has a tungsten like light source? I don't know, maybe some one can let us know.
Hi, I have an Imacon P1 scanner with the same blue filter over the back of the lens. Excuse me for asking, what does ‘MC’ stand for? I ask, because twice, I have had to clean fungus from this filter, and I am concerned that it will eventually degrade into being unusable.
@@williamcurwen7428 Just a guess, "Multi Coated". So no slight haze?
@@rf8221 I am a bit confused here, on the front of the lens there is a reddish polyester colour correction filter, and on the back of lens there is a bluish green, presumably glass or maybe polyester that (I think) acts as a UV/IR cut filter before the light path hits the CCD scanning array. Only the rear filter seems to generate mould, and I would like to find out if it could be replaced. Could ask Hasselblad but they want buckets of money for the simplest of items.
Only 500 doll-hairs? That's a steal! Congrats on the new scanner man.
Thank you Willem, I really enjoyed seeing the video! But bear in mind that the little “Danish Wonder” usually did the same service as a very big Drum Scanner for 100 0000 thousand dollars. And did not need heavy duty concrete flooring and was ready for use in days instead of a year of training!
So the Danes (there were several companies like Imacon) really changed the scanner market and put an end to the old saying “If you don´t like Scitex, then Cross the Field and go to Hell!” ;-)!
We used an Imacon back at my University when scanning film-good memories! I remember that it sometimes took 6-10 minutes to scan a single image, but it was so worth it!
try scanning as a negative and convert it in NLP! the colours come out quite pleasing
as a positive you mean
@@JacobChristiansen1 No, he was right. You scan the negative as a raw file, then turn it into a positive with NLP.
@@hypeyeast.mp4No, man. You don't understand: It's about scanning the *negative* _as if it was_ a *positive* so that the automatic conversion doesn't happen. This way you can get it into NLP. So despite scanning a *negative,* you set the scanner to *positive.*
OP simply got confused in the wording. No big deal. You're all referring to the same thing.
By the way, if the colors in NLP turn out good, this shows that the scanner is fine! Because if it was the scanner's problem, NLP wouldn't be able to suddenly make up great colors out of thin air. If converted with NLP it looks fine, then the scans itself are good and the actual problem lies with either the conversion software, or the monitor, or something entirely different.
@@Nitidus There we go, that's right. I think we all just had different wordings. What I meant was to make a scan of the negative, you meant making a positive scan of the negative. Same thing, different expressions.
Willem literally has the absolute dream film photography setup
Hey Willem, I run an older canoscan scanner that uses SCSI. Ive managed to get it working on windows ten, using a startech PCI to PCIE adapter you can find for about 70 usd. Id reccomend trying it! Requires pulling out the scsi card from the desktop and adapting it with the startech adapter, and then finding the right drivers. Adaptec scanners do have drivers readily available for most that work with windows 10 and vuescan. Happy scanning!
I scanned with a flextight while at university, they had an army of these - 25 troopers in a small scanning suite! Absolutely love the magnetized holders,
and the quality is wonderful!!!
Yep! The film stayed flatter which makes a beautiful scan, something that is more of a challenge with flat bed scanners.
I don't get how a guy born in 1999 has had a haircut from 1995 his entire TH-cam career
😂
That haircut has never looked good on anybody ever.
No one cares about your hairstyle preferencies...
little less care and maybe you can make it big like him ig
@@kellymoses8566 wait what, do you mean Prince Valiant is not stylish after af!? 😂
After using an Hasselblad Imacon X5 for quite a bit let me say: The thing it outperforms every other scanner I know is scanning slides. They look breathtaking scanned on an Imacon. Black and white too if the grain is not too heavy. Personally, I feel the lens is too sharp for overly grainy images as it enhances the structure too much - even for someone like me who loves grain on monochrome shots.
Colour negative is the hardest to scan on this thing, that's true. Like you said, it just isn't meant to do the editing. It performs very well in getting a flat image, with loads of detail in shadows and highlights. Think of these scans more like an FLOG file from a video camera or a drum scan. They are supposed to be as neutral as possible to allow for maximum flexibility in postproduction.
For some reason FlexColor just automatically sets sharpening crazy high when selecting monochrome which makes it look overly grainy. Just disable the sharpening and you should be fine. Technically there's even sharpening going on when you set it to 0 so if you really want to get rid of it, go to -120.
oh verb is back LETS GOOOO
My go-to workaround for bad scanner colors is to scan negative film as a positive and then convert the negative in Negative Lab Pro. That usually works out so much better for me.
Man, how good - I heard a bit too late that a local museum threw one of these out a few years back. Very much worth the hassle.
Also that's a bloody good price. I'm about to deal with the same kind of headaches for an old SCSI Digital MF back.
Niiice. So many great memories from when I used to scan on the same imacon back in art school. Yeah, Imacon on first, then computer. Make sure you get the mask size correct. If you have a small mask but the software thinks its a larger one, it will pull it in too far and you have a problem at hand.
THe way it curves the negs over the sensor - you get almost absolute flatness. Even with super curled large negs. And no dusty glass or newton rings. So easy to get perfectly flat and in focus scans.
For me the best flow was to scan flat in the imacon as it sees the whole neg in 16bit tiff. And then in photoshop lift each channels ends to match the actual data it recored in any channel. And then on another level/curve layer adjust the balance for colors. I found that was the easiest to get maximum out of any neg. Its a per-image process but thats what the imacon is for anyways. For complete rolls of 35, there were better machines. Not that the nikon coolscans were known for their speed..
That’s a great deal! I use the Epson Scanner and it cost twice as much as what you paid for your Imacon! With the Epson flat bed scanners, I find the film doesn’t stay flat. Those Imacon scanners are sweet!, the film stays flatter I have used these back in the day, seems like yesterday! I think those cameras are awesome for 4x5!
hey big fan thanks for the videos,
Best solution I found was scanning @ around 1000 PPI and then inverting in Lightroom with Negative lab Pro. It is by far the most accurate way of doing it other than making test prints afterwards and seeing which really matches the colors.
Keep it up!
I have a friend who was scanning Magnum photo's archive with this scanner and I can confirm they had a much more modern mac. I bet you can find some modified drivers and adapters to make it work with a modern computer.
I think the main problem with colours is the monitor -> mac connection. MacOS has very special system that works with colours on external display. You have to try another monitor for the mac or manage to connect your scanner into the macbook or IMac (the best option for colours) .
The Precision II was a good scanner in its days, and it is certainly still good today, but the quality of the scans is not comparable to an 848 or an X5... there is a large gap. The Precision II suffers a bit from blooming and banding, and has some weakness in the deep shadows.
I had a newer generation (646) with a Firewire port. I calibrated the scanner before the use and my colors were really amazing. Try to use the adequate ICC profiles.
First of all, there are SCSI to USB adapters. More importantly, I think the slow speed may be due to the software, while the color cast is probably due to the software cutting the histogram incorrectly. My Minolta's original software was 32bit and processed the image "live" during scanning, thus slowing down the scanner. People reactivate their WinXP machines for this obsolete approach. Today, with larger RAM, modern universal software like Vuescan (99€ lifetime license for all scanners) or Silverfast is written in 64bit, scans first and processes after. This often takes a tenth of the time (depending on the model). You can scan in raw and then convert the negative in Adobe's negative lab pro or, better, Negadoctor in Darktable (freeware).
They used to have these at the Art Institute of Colorado back in the day, and there was a way to scan it DNG that might have been the Hasselblad version . That was how we would get the best color. It also did a lot better with slide film
Some of my friends scan the neg as a neg and then do the conversion in photoshop (you use the gray pipette on the film and not the photograph). I usually get those levels correct with pressing down alt and moving the black and white sliders. You can get different holders like a 6x6x3, which is for a strip of 6x6 film. You can't get an entire strip of 6x7 on there but you can turn it around and thusly not cut into a negative. I have had bad luck with using the 35mm frames which can get stuck, you then have to open up the scanner and get it out there. But the results are really amazing, especially the grain. Getting the colors is tricky but one's you get the hang of it, there really is no way back (unless you photograph your negative which also has it's drawbacks).
I think a more handy solution to make that thing work would be to run the OS in a virtual machine on a modern computer, you just need a PCI card compatible with the connector for the scanner
why is this scanner (still) so expensive and was it even more expensive in 2000?
1. Thanks to the optics, an image can always be scanned in full scanning line resolution.
2. The density range is from 0-4.1. This corresponds to a dynamic range of 14 f-stops.
Most scanners don't even get 8-10 (usually even less).
3. It probably has a real resolution of 5760 dpi.
For comparison: my Epson G9500 (from the same time) has a density of 3, i.e. 10 apertures and a target resolution of 600dpi (din A4) and no cariable optics. At the time it cost almost 1000 USD....
But it has one advantage, it has a SCSI2 interface and I still run it under Windows 8 and 10!!!
Most digital cameras at the time only had a dynamic range of 7 apertures and corresponding resolutions.
Just found out they sell your bags in urban outfitters, Nice!!
Cool scanner! The colors indeed do look a bit strange and muddy, it's one of the hardest things to get right with digitizing negatives it's a whole rabbithole on its own.You could try to scan it as a negative tiff and convert it into a positive with a more recent software like the negative lab pro plug in, filmlab, or do a manual conversion in Photoshop or capture one (tricky to get the right colors in my experience). I use negative lab pro with my camera scanning workflow and I'm in general quite happy with it.
Recently, I also bought this scanner. It's not true that an old Mac is needed. I managed to run my scanner on a computer that I specifically bought for this scanner (cheap one). It has Windows 10 and a SCSI card. I connect to this computer remotely using nRemoteNG, so I don't need an additional monitor, keyboard, or mouse. You can buy larger holders, which allow you to scan more frames without cutting the film.
Hey man, I am a photography student in fine arts at uni and we have two of these scanners. I agree they don't do colours very well. What I have found out that works best for me is trying to just get the colours to look as neutral as possible and then do the colourgrading to your preference in Photoshop. Also adding contrast with the scanner is not preferable, here you will be better of just adding the contrast the picture need / you want in Photoshop. At least this is what I have found out works best for me.
Cheers!
I scanned a lot of film on the Imacon about 20 years ago at a local facility where you could rent it by the hour. I never had any troubles getting great colours from it. I was working with older film and what I had the most trouble with was dust. There was no Applied ICE in that machine, so along with the very slow scan times was the laborious task of photoshopping the dust out by hand.
I actually did comparison scans between the Imacon and an Epson V700 using of the same frames taken on 120. The Imacon was better, but not that much better and the ICE feature alone was enough for me to get the Epson. Well, the price of acquisition may also have had something to do with it.
The silent uncut sequence of the scanner slowly starting to move the film😭😂
The computer lab in my high school had those computers! I thought Macs were the worst because of them. The UI was rough (to me a high schooler). Once I went to college and had a MacBook and they changed updated the OS, I was in love. You cant do much to upgrade those any more but if you got your hands on a 2010 Mac Pro, you can still upgrade them today. I still have mine!
The best thing to do is scan raw fff files and then convert with the old color perfect plugin. There is no better colors. Hands down
For that price that film scanner better cool my dinner and put the kids to bed
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Considering the technology of those days, buying the scanner would be investment that would buy you a dinner and send your kids to school.
lol u wish
You would buy it and run a "service bureau" scanning film for people and make the money back + profit.
I’ve never used one of these scanners, but I studied around that year industrial design, and we had that kind of shiny slow and futuristic hardware too. Monstrous big silicon graphics 3d rendering computer and glossy Power Mac cubes. It was a really special time for hardware enthusiasts and digital pioneers.
GFX 100s and a Pentax 120 macro lens, better color, newer technology. On the plus side you can also use the camera to take photos.
For the best colours on a flextight , I’ve found that using the neutral grey colour picker on the histogram straight off the bat does a great job at balancing the colours out for a good baseline to work from !
About the colors, did you calibrate the monitor?
is there a way to scan just the raw negative and used NLP?
I have an Imacon Flextight P1 - it is superb. About sharpness … the default Imacon sharpening at zero is in fact +120. So,to get a scan without any sharpening applied, set sharpening to -120 to get zero.
I tried to buy one of these from my job years ago. The slow speed of scanning killed it for business. They didn't need the ultimate level of quality. They switched to a fuji flatbed that could scan transparencies. Those big fujis could really knock out a scan. You could place multiple transparencies on the flatbed, and it would scan each according to your settings one by one. But I really wanted that Imacon. They also made digital backs for medium format cameras.
I've used these before and the scanning quality is immaculate
I have expereince with different film scanner. Not sure if the color shift is related to the out of date calibration file (icc). I do it every half year with the provided calibration standards. Or you can purchase the standards separatly.
A good solution might be to scan the negative as a slide and then converting it in post using Negative Lab Pro!
I agree
I don't know if someone said it, but with the right scsi to firewire converter to TB3 (I did it in a lab) you could actually get the setup down to a mini macbook with Mojave. Just saying if you want to basically cut down the space to the scanner, a mini laptop and a cable, there is a way!
I had the medium format model, but they made a holder designed for scanning each side of a 4x5. You would then combine the two in photoshop. I noticed that the two scans never matched up. They were always different lengths from each other. I now scan my film with my sony camera and get superior results.
The inflation calculator actually says $15,000 in 2000 adjusted for inflation would be $27,031.88 today.
Actually ☝🤓
9:20 This feels like looking at an IMAX frame
I remember these kind of scanners. The interface was SCSI and to make them work it was a total mess. Some required to be confugured to a particular SCSI channel, others were requiring a SCSI terminator...driver issues...huge and bulky cables...it was 1998
the linus x willem bromance is growing stronger by the day
Fascinating to see the old tech I used to mess with back then. Although I wonder how the results of this would compare to a direct shot of the negative with a GFX100 instead of futzing with a dinosaur like this.
I'm so glad I can across this in my random 2AM recommendations. This scratches that itch I get every once in a while, as a photographer.
Couldn't you just scan it as a raw negative and do the convertion and color editing on another PC with Negative Lab Pro and Lightroom?
SCSI II was a little long in the tooth even then. The most RAM you could stuff into a PowerMac of the era was 1GB and Photoshop CS1 barely ran on that little (Layers quickly iterated beyond 1GB with 200MB scans). Multiscanning 16 bit.log files from Minolta Damage scanners eclipsed these for MF and 35mm pretty quickly. If I remember my research, early Imacon Flextite also did not have IR channel for automatic dust and scratch correction. It also had a similar maximum file size regardless of format size since it moved the lens. IOW, it was high res but only for 35mm (5K dpi). But rather middling for 6x7 and relatively poor at 4x5. Was it even 16-bit? If not results from modern DSLR and macro lens will easily trounce the Imacon, if only because stitching or HDR of a stack of images is now trivially easy
as others have said, scan it as a positive and convert in NLP or manually in photoshop
When was the LG monitor last colour calibrated? Sure the scanner isn’t the only issue?
I bet there could be a way via an adapter and some programming to connect the scanner to a linux or windows pc. But this is probably to niché for the effort
maybe there is a way to grab a positive image off the flex tight and convert to color using NLP - a few more of hoops to jump around but I think the platform might be a better space to get colors where you may want them!
I was ready for you to drop a Diet Coke sponsorship at the end there.
I wish, I’m the one paying them
I recommend selecting you black, grey and white points manually, with the sample picker, this normally gives you a better starting off point.
I used the imacon 848 at the Chicago Tribune back in 2001-2003. They were really impressive for medium format and large format film. SCSI was much more commonplace. :)
The quality on this scanner is absolutly amazing. I used a Imacon 848 at university. The workflow is horribly slow and the maintanance needed is a real pain in the ass but god I stil miss it.
You should scan 3F files on there and invert later for better colors, in my experience
Yes to this. I had an X1 and scanning as a 3f produces much better colors
I use a flextight x5 and don’t use flex colour for converting. Scan as a positive and convert in photoshop or NLP if you use that.
babe wake up, willem just dropped a vid
Scan it as a positive and invert in NLP or Raw Therapee. I like RT a lot more than NLP!
The DC tall boy episode is definitely my new fav. First freeway shot is insane!
What is the color profile which is embedded in the processed TIFF coming out of the box? Do you have a name or a link? Is it possible to profile the scanner with a kodak translucent test pattern?
Otherwise I would prefer a basic setting setup without touching the gradients, scan a tranlucent test pattern (i.e. kodak) and make a lightroom profile with a software like "basiccolor input". Then you have a proper workflow.
Yes, Willem! I love the "I bought this so you don't have to" videos! (Of course, your Volvo videos are kind of about that, too). This is really cool! Thanks for sharing.
5:28 - that's insane - whole valley filled with a freeway without anything else other than few buildings.
I paid 10k for my used Flextight III in 2004. Indispensable for my thirty years of Kodachrome work. Still using it. And my 2006 Power Mac.
I’ve heard it’s particularly good for scanning slide! That’s awesome
Welcome to the Imacon club! As a Swede loving cars, your channels just keeps on getting better and better!!!
How did you get it for 500 ???
Same way I buy my cars ;)
Jk I bought two of them in a bundle for $3000 with tons of other parts and holders and I sold all the rest leaving me with only $500 invested into the setup
scan it as a .FFF and then inver the colors to normal in PS. best way to use a imacon.
Hello Willem!
I have a neat trick for you!
Scan the negatives as though you were scanning positive film.
Set each colour channels blackpoint far off to the sides so that you get a Very uncontrasty scan.
Save it as a 16-bit Tiff.
Then open the image using Negative Lab Pro and convert it there (the linear flat profile works best for the scans I've been working on so far, but try each one until you find what you like best).
For some reason this combo seems to give me both the colour and the contrast I rarely get when DSLR scanning!
I really hope you'll try this technique, cause it really blew my mind the first time I tried it (and it still does!).
And hey!
Happy Easter!
Congrats on the new machine and 400k subs!
Willem, you HAVE to get a nice CRT for accurate color rendering on that. A Lacie Electron Blue or a Mitsubishi diamondtron would be perfect so you can get the colors juuuust right.
So what would I have to pay for a consumer scanner with the same or better quality?
The fact you didn't show files in 1:1, didn't say a word about possible bit depth, max resolution of final file(any kind of RAW files?), details, scratch removal automation is insane.
I have an old book called photoshop 5 artistry, he talks about doing several captures at different settings then combining them which might spruce colours up a bit
It is not weird to turn on 2000' before you turn on the PC or Mac.
You made me feel soooo old 😂
Wow. Blast from the past. Did not use that model. But I worked at a production agency as an operator on a Scitex drum scanner and IRIS proofing system. Wow, SCSI with terminator. Good luck with everything.
Sold them for the main British distributor" The Studio Workshop " back in the day. Very good bit of kit, I still have some holders and a PSU from my demo kit.
They might sell adapters so you can use a newish moniter on the pc. That way you can view the images more color accurate and better sharpness
congrats Will!! I got my Imacon 848 for 3500 CAD, also a good deal. You gonna LOVE imacon's color
Just checked the Flextight Precision II User's Guide, it get 150DPI at 4x5. Well, good to have it at $500 with this level of detail at dark area of the photo,the lens inside aready expensive than $500,but 1500 euro on ebay or 3200usd for a abandoned supporting scanner ? no thank.
dont forget to calculate the CCD
these things are SO GOOD.
Also, they take A LOT OF PRACTICE to get good scans from. I used one in undergrand in the late 2000's, and it took me the better part of 4 years just to feel like I was getting great imacon scans
When noticing the price tag in the title, I knew exactly what it was - An Imacon… I believe that Imacon turned into PhaseOne, but not 100% sure about that… the Imacon scanners are amazing… would love to try their drum scanner
Good on you if you got a good copy .-) Been working with these beasts for more than 20 years and have one still going strong. The old macs are getting difficult to keep running. Ive got mine on a new cheap PC with Windows 7 and all the legacy software. Much more stable than the mac route. And servicing is a nightmare ...
Actually, the original price from 2000, adjusted for inflation, is more like $35,000 today. As he gets into the video, we are reminded that to run the thing, you'll need computers and operating systems which are a quarter-century old, running hardware which may be impossible to find if replacement is required. A fair number is these high-end scanners are coming on the market, and they almost always come with the complete, if antiquated, computer set-up to run it. This is one of those items which requires that a buyer adopt a "show me" attitude before purchase. Getting the whole package in working condition for $500 is the bargain of the year, even if it drops dead in a few years of use.
$15,000 in 2000 = $27,440 now. "$20,000" was his estimated price with inflation, the original price was $15,000.
We've got one of these at college. I tend to scan my negatives as a positive then convert them in lightroom using negative lab pro