Testing Digital Cameras for Film Scanning

Written By Stephen Yokley

I’ve put way too much thought into this.

Today we’ll be comparing film scans coming from three different cameras with macro lenses:

  1. Sony A7RIV

    • 61 megapixel full frame sensor

    • Sigma 100mm Macro lens

  2. Fuji X-T5

    • 40 megapixel crop sensor (1.53x)

    • Laowa 65mm Macro lens

  3. Canon EOS RP

    • 26 megapixel full frame sensor

    • Canon 35mm Macro lens

For this test we’ll use five shots from a roll of Portra 400 in 120 shot through a Fuji GW670II. The negatives were scanned in uncompressed raw formats, imported into Lightroom and converted to positive using the default settings in Negative Lab Pro.

NOTE: The fringing around the edges of the frame in the Canon image is due to the wider 35mm macro lens used, and could be corrected by using a longer lens.

These scans look very similar, particularly the Sony and the Fuji. The Canon is showing a tendency to have a little less saturation and a skew away from red.

All three scans are remarkably similar in terms of color, again with the Canon being slightly less saturated. The Sony and Canon look like they might be retaining a little more fine detail than the Fuji, but there isn’t much between them.

The difference in colors really comes out in this image with the Canon shifting warmer and the Fuji reds being more saturated than the Sony. Additionally, it looks like the Sony may be retaining a little more highlight detail than the other two.

Again the Fuji looks to be a little more saturated than the others, but I don’t think I could pick between these blind.

We can see how the Fuji is rendering the lighter blue below the window a bit brighter than the others and the Canon is pushing the white building a little less blue/green.

So was this all a waste of time?

Probably, yeah. But at least we now know that any good quality camera with a solid macro lens will yield pretty comparable scans if converted using the same settings. Personally, I think I’d rather have the Sony or Fuji than the Canon; outdoor scenes with the Canon are looking a little less like what I’d expect from portra 400 and more like a Canon digital camera. But that could just be personal bias, what do I know?

So after spending a few hours on this I’ve come to the same conclusion I always come to about gear: Use what you like, and don’t stress about it too much.

Stephen Yokley