Are these results good for scanned 35mm negative film?

[Douglas MacDonald]

The interesting thing about the Internet is that no matter what one person
has to say and no matter on what basis they say it, there is always someone
else with a 180 degree opposed opinions. One of Canon's own scanner
development team said in 2003. "You probably won't find much difference in
the scan speeds for film between the dedicated FS4000 and the 8000F flatbed"

The last time I checked, FS4000 was a 35mm scanner. Nearly 80% of my reply
quoting speed was related to MF film and flatbed scanning. If you want to
compare scanning speeds with drivers that process after scan and drivers
that scan and process at the same time, your arguments are totally flawed
before you start, Bruce. All that matters is how long it takes to go from
start to begin editing.

My 4870 can scan a 6x9 cm negative at 4800 dpi in 5 minutes using vuescan.
If I were to scan a single 35mm frame, all things being equal, it would be
in the region of a few minutes. Substantially faster than your FS4000 and at
19% higher resolution. But like you said, It takes more time to process the
scan into usable data. That time depends of the speed of your PC. Use IR or
ICE and the scan speed time goes up. Increase the dust removal to get it all
and the scan speed goes out of the timeframe acceptable to Professional
Photographers.

I have yet to experience the IR channel of Vuescan but if it is anything
like the Digital ICE algorithm, it will add about 80% to the scan times of a
negative like the one the OP posted. FARE is incapable of accurate dust and
scratch removal with an 8000F, without removing the grain/noise structure
and making the end scan look like a water painting. The day Canon make a
decent film scanner will probably be the day they introduce thought control
focusing on SLRs!

Douglas.
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[David Chien]

I know this question has been asked before, and here's a good modern day
answer - how do I get tons of film into digital, cheap, w/o wasting my time?

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If you're local photo lab has a Noritsu QSS-3011 or any of the latest
digital mini-print lab machines, you can get a 1500x1000 scan made of
any 35mm film to CD-R fast.

While the image resolution seems low, you can make prints, let's say off
an Epson 925 Photo printer at home, that'll match the output of the
Noritsu directly from the original (because the Noritsu only does 320dpi
anyways).

Both will look like very nice 4x6" regular film prints, and given that,
you can say that if all you want is to archive your 35mm films to
digital images, and you only expect 4x6" prints from them in the future,
then this is a fast, cheap way to go.

You can expect <$1 / frame for operator time, and $300 buys you about 12
24 frame rolls of 35mm film scanned in less time and trouble than it
would take you to setup a slide scanner, tweak and manipulate the image
color, and dump to CD-R.

The Noritsu has ultra-fast slide scanning with digtial noise and scratch
removal, and a competent operator can adjust colors and so forth faster
than you can with the dedicated input keyboard.