A Modern 35mm Film Scanner for Home
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A new 35mm film scanner, Knokke, has been announced with a modern design and claimed high-quality scans, but its $999 price tag and lack of sample scans have sparked debate among HN users.
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A second hand DSLR setup is going to be roughly the same price or less. I'm also not sure what kind of workflow improvements it actually offers. If you want fancy and experimental, filmomat has arguably a more interesting but pricier offering.
But naysaying aside, I hope they manage to find a niche that allows them to survive as a company, and keep the analog photography revival alive.
And if you get one with Pixel Shift, you can get way higher resolutions than the 22MP they're offering (e.g. my cheapo Olympus gets 40MP JPEG or 64MP RAW from a 16MP sensor.)
However, a Bayer-filtered sensor has lower color resolution, since each pixel only sees one color. So the pixel shift really helps quite a bit here since the sensor (and Bayer array) are shifting relative to the film multiple times per exposure.
High-quality film scanners maintain color resolution by using linear sensors without Bayer filtering. But they’re slow and expensive.
https://www.adox.de/Photo/films/cms20ii-en/
[Image resolution is a very complicated topic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_resolution) and megapixel count, or even lines/mm does not tell the full story.
Then it’ll do a 16 or 32 shot stack in order to do the same thing but with more resolution.
Am I missing something or is this supposed to be in another tier of image quality?
Ilford Delta 400 pushed two stops to 1600 ASA in a 1970s Asahi Pentax SP1000 was always going to produce… artistic results, requiring as much imagination as acuity to appreciate the subject. (Read: see past the blur.)
A 36Mp camera is not enough to best a 4000ppi scanner. You need about 60-70 mp to resolve the detail of a scan to similar level .
Even a layman can see the difference at 100%
For most films, anything beyond 4000 DPI is just going to help resolve the grain particles or dye cloud shapes. You have to be shooting slow fine grained BW with the best lenses to need more.
Well, as I mentioned elsewhere old fashioned Kodachrome resolves ~100 lines/mm and some newer color emulsion are considerably higher, and of course B&W ones have even higher resolutions.
Given that a 35mm frame is 36x24mm even Kodachrome achieves 8.64 megapixels. OK, let's allow for an overgenerous Kell factor of say 0.8, this figure will drop to ~6.9 megapixels. Given the ready availability of emulsions with higher resolutions, especially the best B&W ones then a figure well in excess of 5 megapixels is relizable in practice.
Of course, that doesn't take into account the image chain as a whole, lenses, displays, compression, etc. which would reduce the effective resolution. That said, these days the typical image chain can easily achieve much higher pixel throughput than 5 megapixels before bandwidth limiting so the effective Kell derating factor could easily be kept quite small.
Are there any sample images
If that matters, I’m not sure.
The results are good, as you'd expect. However can I tell the difference between that and me putting the negatives on a decent softbox and using a fancy camera to take a picture? yes, but not by much.
I think the main issue is film registration, that is getting the film to be flat and "co-planar" to the lens so the whole frame is sharp.
My negatives are slightly warped, so they really need a frame to make sure they are perfectly flat. But for instagram, they are close enough.
However scanning more than a few pictures is a massive pain in the arse. If I was scanning film regularly, then this is what I'd want, and its cheaper than the competition.
Assuming that its actually any good, I haven't seen any scans yet.
personally I think that technology has come on enough to move on from the imacon/hasselblad: https://emulsive.org/articles/opinion/scanning-film-the-20k-...
Both.
> personally I think that technology has come on enough to move on from the imacon/hasselblad: https://emulsive.org/articles/opinion/scanning-film-the-20k-...
It's not - the issue that still remains is keeping the film flat, and this is especially problematic with smaller formats. With current solutions you can get the resolution but not the flatness, or you sacrifice something to get the flatness (e.g. ANR glass holders). It's the old glass vs glassless carrier debate, applied to a modern workflow.
I repeat myself: focus, DPI / resolution, dynamic range - these are the solved problems. In fact, modern medium format digital cameras are superior on all these factor. Keeping the film flat, however? Only drum scans and the Imacon "Flextight" solution do this well.
Of course, it depends on what you plan to do with the scans and for 99% of people the solution in the link above is more than good enough.
I've written about this previously https://leejo.github.io/tags/scanning/ # I'm going to add the fourth, and hopefully final, part in a couple of months time.
> I'm also not sure what kind of workflow improvements it actually offers.
The obvious one is auto-feeding and portability, but without using it who knows. It doesn't offer IR, but even Filmomat's system needs a modified camera. You get that with most flatbed and Plustek-style scanners. I have a V850 Pro which wasn't cheap either, but it'll do a full roll in one go and I can walk away. Even if I shot a roll a day it would be more than fast enough. It has occasional focus issues, and you need to be scrupulous about dusting, but it works well enough. I've never been a huge fan of the setup required for copy-stand scanning and it's tricky getting the negatives perfectly flat in/frame. The good carriers are also not cheap, look at Negative Supply for example.
Frankly it also looks great, like the Filmomat. I think some of the appeal is a chunk of modern looking hardware and also the hope that it's maintained? My Epson works well, but I ended up paying for VueScan because the OEM software is temperamental.
> “Is Knokke open, repairable, and long-term supported?”
> “Absolutely. We're committed to building a scanner that lasts decades. All schematics and repair manuals will be publicly available, replacement parts can be purchased directly, and the software will remain supported for as long as possible.”
Is the software open source?
Yes. Our control application, Korova, will be fully open source and maintained long term. It’s a native, lightweight application for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
With that said, I'm happy to see new film products released in 2025/2026. Hopefully this is just the first at-bat.
https://jackw01.github.io/scanlight/
I think the problem is that it sounds like you get worse results for slide film with RGB than you get with C41 and white light. So the tradeoff is only worth it if you shoot no slide and C41.
Is there such a thing as a cheap drum scanner.
I'm both amazed and really pleased to see anyone attempting to launch a totally new scanner in 2025, and genuinely hoping the actual scans are really made at the resolution and color-depth claimed in the text: too many recent scanners are simply upscaled, lower bit-depth devices marketed with exaggerated specs.
I also have a Nikon Coolscan 9000, so I'm not immediately in the market for this. But I don't expect the Coolscan to last forever, and the Firewire connections on the machine are already abandoned by Apple, who chose not to support the cables in their latest Operating System - so eventually I won't be able to connect it to a new computer.
For example I wanted to look at the first picture in the horizontal gallery that scrolls horizontally when you scroll vertically. However, there is no way for me to view the whole image. Either it is cutoff at the bottom, or it starts horizontally scrolling. Switching from vertical to horizontal scrolling is awkward and I just want to skip the gallery.
scrolling on that page feels slow, sluggish, and if you switch to spacebar, you actually miss significant content since it only loads/becomes visible halfway into the page.
Like others have said, dust is a huge issue. Some film labs cut film into short strips. some film is just a single image (for example if previously cut to fit into slides).
The film is designed to form into a coil. So, if there's grit or any hard material you'll end up with scratches on the negative itself.
--is it only 35mm as well? I don't think I see any mention of formats it supports. So I can only assume it's just 35mm.-- EDIT: found the 120mm section in the FAQ.
If I wanted to wait 1/2 second for each part of the page to load I’d have stayed on dialup.
Apple certainly made it popular for product pages though.
https://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html#/...
Looks cool, but I'll stick with my DSLR scanning setup.
35mm film and 120 film are a similar cost per roll, but with 35mm you get 36 exposures vs 8-16 exposures on 120 film (6x12 and 6x4, with square 6x6 in the middle at 12 exposures). And if you shoot half-frame, the cost/shot really goes in the 35mm direction.
That said, I have a handful of of 35mm cameras (all fixed lens vintage rangefinder) and a post-war Zeiss Super Ikonta IV (6x6 120 format). The Olympus 35DC is my favorite of the bunch - it's automatic except focus - really sharp and fast lens - just a pleasure to use. And a Polaroid Go 2 because it's just dumb fun (way overpriced for the quality, and sensible people buy Instax cameras instead, but the Polaroid form-factor was just too much for me to pass up).
I shoot film because it makes me slow down and think a bit. With my mirrorless cameras, I'm too prone to spray and pray and sorting through hundreds of shots can kill the fun for me. That, and the film look is nostalgic for me - sometimes I just want rough snapshots - feels more like a memory vs the crystal clear high res digital output.
> I shoot film because it makes me slow down and think a bit.
100%, because of the higher cost per shot compared to digital. The higher still cost per shot of medium/large format enhances that effect.
The look and the process explains film over digital.
That has also been superseded in the digital realm. I can use a top DSLR from the last decade to blow film medium format cameras away under most conditions, especially in low light. If I just use a digital medium format camera, it invalidates almost any rationale for film medium format (there is a minor, minor argument to be made about depth of field when the lens is wide open).
Large format can squeeze slightly more resolution out of an image, but the ability to actually use that extra resolution is rarely satisfied. Again, a MF digital subs in for almost every conceivable use case.
The reality is that people do this because it is fun, or a challenge, or for a feeling. Basically, its interesting. The technical excellence of the 'end result' is secondary.
There's tons of things that people do that don't make sense from a purely pragmatic point of view, and that's what makes the world so much more fun to live in.
But these cost several thousand dollars, due to them still being relevant for contemporary professional applications. Medium format bodies can be found for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Even at $1/shot, if as a hobbyist even if you shot 4 rolls (48 shots total) in a weekend, you'd be shooting that much every weekend, every weekend straight for years before a top digital body would break even for you. And you would have more fun and a more meaningful time due to the more deliberative process.
It's expensive compared to digital for snapshots, but if you enjoy working in the darkroom as a hobby, you can probably get everything you need for free or cheap.
I'm sure this will be on every photography youtuber's channel shortly, can't wait to see it in action.
IIRC at some point their value started going up as they became rare.
Mine did something like 50MP scans of 35mm film/slides. The quality was more than enough.
But it was painfully slow.
This thing is not 100x faster, so I think it's still painfully slow. If it takes 5 minutes to do a roll of 24 that still means someone with hundreds of rolls needs to have a lot of time on their hands.
Not sure I can actually figure out software to get my old one to work FWIW, but I don't think I care to deal with it, I have a big enough mess dealing with the ~200k digital photos that are already on disk.
This sounds excellent to me, personally.
Epson stopped making their flatbeds that do film, reportedly because they can’t get the CCDs anymore. That may be a rumor.
The result is they go for 2x MSRP on eBay for models that are many years old. Because that’s all that exists.
Without that, you can buy the kind of scanner meant for a photo lab ($$$$$), DIY it with a DSLR ($$$ if you don’t have one), or pay your a lab a lot per roll and hope they do a good job.
I’m not saying it’s a giant market but it certainly seems to me like there’s enough of one that it could support a small product.
You can get brand new Plustek OpticFilm scanners for 35mm and smaller starting around $300, and there are plenty of other options above that. Plus the DIY.
I’m sure 35mm is easier to make and certainly a bigger market but it’s also a lot more crowded.
I expect their specs are far better than the $300 one I’ve mentioned, I don’t know enough to know. But medium format people are desperate for anything.
This is way out of date. I have since been able to get it working on a Windows 11 4th gen Intel machine with 64-bit drivers cobbled together from a couple of versions of FlexColor and some .inf modification. It's not flawless, there's some major corruption that can occur when trying to use certain operations, but overall it works for my needs.
Software could also use some improvement. Automating batch correction and clean up should be easier, IMO.
And yeah, workflow is the thing that seems the worst. That seems like a great place to try to improve things to get a sale.
They stopped making them early this year. Only the top end model for $1500 still exists and I don’t know if that’s because they still make it or just that there is still stock left at Amazon/etc.
I don’t understand this… the V850 Pro is still being publicly sold with film and slide trays… what am I missing?
And even eBay is selling them at only about $1,200-1-700 CAD, which is considerably cheaper than the 2,000+ CAD MSRP.
Wow, you weren’t kidding, I completely missed this. I bought one, sold it, then bought and currently own another. I better baby it, there’s really nothing like it out there.
It's not, it's actually quite a bit worse, especially with color reproduction.
Seems about as credible as a lot of the crowdfunded stuff.
The issue with LEDs, is very pure colors. That’s actually a bit of a problem, with film scanners. You need a smooth curve, and it needs to extend out a bit. You don’t want areas of color being missed.
The Coolscans had a light color response (think the “levels” screen, in Photoshop) that looked like three steep hills, with minimal overlap, but they were able to make them wider than a “pure” LED. Coherence is a feature of LED lighting.
Most previous light sources used filters over a white light, and they looked “sloppier,” with a lot more overlap, so there was more coverage. We had to correct for the unusual color coverage of LEDs.
I got the response curves by feeding in a special slide with a diffraction grating.
The curves were markedly different from an incandescent light source.
I could do that for my dad too...
I haven’t seen any consumer scanner that has an auto feed. Good ones have a nice sprocket wheel but you still feed manually with a wheel.
https://studio-supplies.com/products/nikon-sf-210-239995
If you get one, have a look at VueScan on the software side - the original software needs (I think) a Windows XP virtual machine to drive it.
In the end I found a new in-box Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400 II, pretty much the end of the line for film scanners. I haven't tried it yet!
I paid about $1K for the Minolta too, which if I recall correctly was slightly more than they sold for new.
The custom software package is clearly in its foobar stage. Loving the word "TextLabel" surrounded by a bunch of padding.
35mm typically uses 2:3 ratio images, often printed as 4x6 inch pictures.
I tried various fancy holders, but in the end decided that I'll likely have to make my own holder from aluminum or steel sheet metal. And even then you run into the problem of lengthwise curvature. For those that are unaware of the problem with this, these scanners have a very limited depth of field, in the range of 1mm or less. So if your film is bent, some of it will always be out of focus.
I can't see much on this fancy webpage, because they made it so fancy that some of the images do not load and those that do load are oh so mysteriously dark. But if their scanner can scan both heavily curved rolls and strips, I will be buying it.
As to optical quality, if you can get your film to stay flat, this is a solved problem, that Epson mentioned above can produce fantastic results (more pixels that you want, generally).
Professional drum scanners would immerse the film in mineral oil. Epson used to ship a kit for their flatbeds. Popular with 8x10 photographers.
https://shootitwithfilm.com/what-are-newtons-rings-and-how-t...
https://web.archive.org/web/20251111210606/https://www.soke....
PS to add more - I am unable to scroll, all I see is the picture with the dark background. If I use arrow keys instead of the touchpad, I can scroll a bit then after a second or so the page snaps back to the top. I have Firefox on MacOS.
(I know the HN rules say that we should focus on the contents rather than criticising the technical aspects of a website, but in this case the contents are not accessible).
https://jackw01.github.io/scanlight/
(NB: Most film I shoot is slide film, which I’ve been told doesn’t benefit from RGB light sources because it’s intended viewing was projected with a broad-spectrum white light [likely a warmer than daylight (but color temperature isn’t much of a concern for digitizing slides)] so I haven’t dug into this much.)
https://store.waveformlighting.com/collections/led-strips/pr...
Negative Supply use something similar in their light tables, though I don't know exactly what the source or spectrum is. They're highly regarded enough that I think it's not an issue.
You can also use LEDs for enlarging, but you need to be careful about buying the right bands for the paper. I've used Luxeon SunPlus with some success as you can buy the correct green/blue for the different contrast layers. Though for B&W, even a random 5500K module from Cree worked quite well.
I’ll also note that negative lab pro hates negatives that are scanned with it. They don’t turn out at all. If you’re using it, you should expect to be inverting them manually, which is kind of a pain. I was quietly hoping (but not expecting) to still see some of the benefits of it when passing them through NLP.
I think the product would be more compelling and worth it or even a good deal at the price they are offering if it offered drum scan-quality for larger formats.
2. Time is money, but who is honestly shooting that much 135 film that it's worth 1600 Euros to buy a faster scanner for it? I don't think a museum wants to feed degraded film through a fast scanner, and surely pros who still shoot film would use a larger format, since that's where it has some differences / advantages compared to digital?
That's how film is developed. Someone at a lab has to cut it.
> who is honestly shooting that much 135 film
How about a film lab? A place where "uncut developed film" is extremely common.
>it's worth 1600 Euros to buy a faster scanner for it
Price is 999 euro.
> pros who still shoot film would use a larger format
Some do, some don't. It depends on the project. I'm a little surprised by your comment looking at your history. You say you're a retired professional photographer and you've never heard of "uncut developed film" before? If you're retired in 2025, you must have been working when all photography was on film. You never developed a roll of film before?
What I meant was “every lab I’ve ever had my film developed at cut and sleeved film by default because there were plenty of reasons to do so and not many reasons to not”
> Price is 999 euro.
It says on the site it will retail for 1599 EUR
Having said all that, film labs and rich enthusiasts do seem to be the target market for this product, if it ever launches.
Any suggestions for a scanner meant for bulk scans of old family photos (think a few thousand images)? I bought, what I thought, was a reasonably solid scanner, the Pacific Image Powerfilm scanner but the software is so janky that it hangs every two strips and has to be restarted making the entire process super labor intensive. Also the entire "bulk feature" where it's meant to pull the strips one at a time iis not even close to working.
It can do 36 exposures but you have to cut them into strips and place them in a carrier but it isn't terrible and if you store your negs in film protectors you are cutting them down anyway.
I am fairly sure the newest version (V850) is the same but be aware they aren't cheap, at least $1k+ USD but still cheaper than the next level up which are pro drum scanners and they are many orders of magnitude more expensive.
Option 1 is to get an Epson Perfection series flatbed scanner. V800 or V850. This approach is highly automated and you get automatic dust correction with color film. But, leading software packages don't support Linux, and the quality for 35mm negatives is just okay. Performance on medium and large format is SOTA.
Option 2 is to assemble a scanning rig with a DSLR and a light table. This approach is fiddly and requires a lot of space, but with some tuning, the 35mm scan quality can beat flatbeds.
There are some other, more obscure approaches, like vintage Minolta and Nikon scanners, but unless you have a PC with a parallel port laying around, you're gonna have a hell of a time getting those working.
None of these options are good, and if this thing can really perform, I'd happily drop $500+ on it.
Side note: Those little toy scanners like the Kodak branded ones on Amazon are atrocious. Avoid them. If you need to scan some family photos and you don't want to break the bank, go to your local photography store. They could really use your business.
Did they not research the competition?
I can buy a brand-new 7200 (virtual) DPI machine with infrared, proper color metering, wide software support, and multi-exposure system for $400, less than half the price of this offering.
It also supports slides and single frames, whereas this has a min. of 3 in a strip.
for just contact sheet fast … you can just move and push the blue tooth button … for one particular treasure slow … you can do pixel shift and focus stacking …
I would love a new scanner for 21st century but there just no way anyone serious is trading CCD (or PMT if you got the cash) for CMOS.
But I applaud the initiative and will definitely buy it to try but not to keep.
(I have submitted it earlier but no traction)
I don't care how cool your scanner looks or how "modern" the workflow is - it's samples or nothing. Additionally, if they were really smart, they'd collaborate with a well known film photographer instead of using someone's walk-around point-and-shoot photos.
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