Live from Austin!

As you may have gathered if you subscribe to my Flickr stream, the infamous Nikon scanner decided it didn’t want to scan any more. Or rather, it would scan, but the scan head wouldn’t move, resulting in some interesting modern art.

I took the case off and looked for any obviously fixable mechanical problems, but couldn’t see any. It would probably be possible to get it working by disassembling the mechanism, but I’m not that mechanically oriented.

It’s not like I’ve abused the scanner, and it has only had light residential use. So that’s definitely the last Nikon product I will ever buy.

I zipped off to the web and did a quick search for reviews of film scanners. Turns out that technology has advanced (as usual). Canon now have dual-mode flatbed/film scanners that are so good that they have stopped making old-style dedicated film scanners. Their finest model is also less than half the price the Nikon was back when it was new.

So, I bought a Canon CanoScan 9950F from Newegg. It arrived yesterday. It’s clearly a pro grade scanner; it feels far more hefty and resilient than any other flatbed I’ve used. It also has two killer features.

The first is that you can load it with up to 30 images (5 strips of negatives) in one go, and it’ll churn away for an hour or so and scan them all automatically. Major time saver.

The second is that it has an adaptor for larger film sizes, including 120 and 645. So I’ll be able to scan my dad’s prize winning 645 photos. It’s also higher resolution than the Nikon, with better bit depth.

It also does all the usual flatbed stuff, including turning documents into PDF with OCR. I use this to turn interesting magazine articles into PDFs for reference.

So, how do the results look? At least as good as the Nikon, and the software is miles better. The FARE auto-fix stuff even seems to do a better job than VueScan, though the sharpening is a bit over-zealous (but can be turned off).

The most popular SLR on Flickr is the Canon Digital Rebel XT.

The most popular point-and-shoot is the Canon PowerShot SD400.

Guess which two cameras I use?

It’s a bit of a surprise to me, because I generally don’t hold with the theory that the best product wins. However, perhaps it’s the case that the product that’s most popular with the kind of enthusiasts that post to Flickr, is the best.

I decided it was time for a digital camera upgrade. The PowerShot S100 has been a wonderful camera, but the new S400 has almost double the resolution, as well as more manual controls and a longer zoom lens with the same aperture range. The result seems to be insanely detailed pictures. With the full original files (1-2MB JPEGs) you can enlarge the squirrel to fill the whole screen and see every individual hair on his body. I think I’m going to be quite happy taking the S400 to England as my only still camera for the vacation. The best part is, the camera is slightly smaller and lighter than the S100, about the size of a packet of cigarettes…

According to someone who’s compared, the new Canon EOS 1Ds blows away 35mm film, and is good enough that he’s abandoning medium format.

I’m particularly impressed that it can take a picture of the milky way through an f/3.5 lens!

Canon are announcing a new digital SLR camera with 11 megapixel full-frame sensor.

Well, that about wraps it up for film then. Now we just need the price to come down.

Well, it’s happened. Canon have introduced a digital SLR camera which matches the resolution I can get with 35mm film and a film scanner. In fact, it probably exceeds the resolution of film, as you don’t have grain, whereas grain is visible at that resolution with regular ISO 400 film.

Now I just need to wait for the price to drop by a factor of four. So, two or three years.

Got a digital camera last weekend. The SLR is great, but I wanted something small to carry around places where I wouldn’t be bothered to drag an SLR. I also wanted to be able to take one or two pictures a week and send them to the family by e-mail. Resolution wasn’t a big concern, as long as I could get 4×6 prints for any shots the family really liked.

I settled on the Canon PowerShot S100. It’s the smallest 2.1 megapixel digital camera. Nice metal case, with an iris that protects the lens when the camera’s off, so you don’t need to screw around with lens caps. It shuts down into a flat rectangular slab about the size of a packet of cigarettes. Picture quality is excellent—there are a couple of Olympus and Sony cameras that do better, but largely because they have bigger and better lenses.

We’re off to Minnesota on vacation soon, and I’ll take the SLR for that trip.