1 00:00:00,070 --> 00:00:04,780 I learned how to use a camera with these, a pair of Canon cameras given to me by a close 2 00:00:04,780 --> 00:00:06,170 family friend. 3 00:00:06,170 --> 00:00:10,299 This one in particular, the Canon F-1, is delightful to use. 4 00:00:10,299 --> 00:00:14,750 Of course people familiar with the Canon T90 will know that it is arguably the best manual 5 00:00:14,750 --> 00:00:19,550 focus camera Canon ever made, but the vintage charm, clunky feel, and primitive operation 6 00:00:19,550 --> 00:00:23,160 of the F-1 made it my preferred go-to because I’m weird and eccentric. 7 00:00:23,160 --> 00:00:28,650 I first got my hands on these in 2007, when a digital SLR was well out of reach for me. 8 00:00:28,650 --> 00:00:32,880 At the time, ordinary print film could still be purchased pretty much everywhere, and Costco 9 00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:35,460 would develop a roll for $1.89. 10 00:00:35,460 --> 00:00:40,320 Much cheaper than spending a thousand dollars on a decent DSLR and lens to go with it. 11 00:00:40,320 --> 00:00:44,480 Anyway, the one thing I needed was a competent film scanner, as I planned to just pay to 12 00:00:44,480 --> 00:00:48,760 have the film developed, then scan it at a high resolution--a roundabout way of having 13 00:00:48,760 --> 00:00:49,980 a digital camera. 14 00:00:49,980 --> 00:00:54,460 I ended up buying a refurbished Epson scanner, and it had a feature I didn’t really understand 15 00:00:54,460 --> 00:00:58,710 at the time, but which was really cool: Digital ICE. 16 00:00:58,710 --> 00:01:02,290 Digital ICE may sound like the most nineties things ever, but in fact the ICE standards 17 00:01:02,290 --> 00:01:04,420 for Image Correction and Enhancement. 18 00:01:04,420 --> 00:01:09,090 The system used in film scanners was developed by Kodak at their Austin Research Center, 19 00:01:09,090 --> 00:01:13,400 though at the time it was referred to as Applied Science Fiction which is a much better name. 20 00:01:13,400 --> 00:01:18,320 I’m not sure exactly when the system was released but it probably was in the nineties, 21 00:01:18,320 --> 00:01:24,240 as this PC magazine article from 1998 seems totally amazed at the new Nikon Super Coolscan 22 00:01:24,240 --> 00:01:25,240 2000. 23 00:01:25,240 --> 00:01:28,480 Let’s join together in a brief moment of silence for Kodak. 24 00:01:28,480 --> 00:01:31,520 You had it all, and then you just… 25 00:01:31,580 --> 00:01:32,840 Yeah. 26 00:01:32,840 --> 00:01:34,659 So, what does Digital ICE actually do? 27 00:01:34,659 --> 00:01:39,300 Well, it’s a dust and scratch removal feature that works almost miraculously well. 28 00:01:39,300 --> 00:01:42,520 It can make an image go from this, to this. 29 00:01:42,520 --> 00:01:46,450 Some absolute purists will insist on never using it because it softens the image slightly 30 00:01:46,450 --> 00:01:51,960 and ...ehhh... but most people with this attitude just scare people away from photography altogether. 31 00:01:51,960 --> 00:01:52,960 Side-note 32 00:01:52,960 --> 00:01:57,270 Photography enthusiasts tend to get hung up on specs like color accuracy, sharpness, compression, 33 00:01:57,270 --> 00:02:00,020 file format, and more to a pedantic level. 34 00:02:00,020 --> 00:02:04,490 I understand that professional photographers want and need the best equipment and will 35 00:02:04,490 --> 00:02:09,310 work to find the best methods, but for amateurs like myself this sometimes works to create 36 00:02:09,310 --> 00:02:11,140 lingering self-doubt. 37 00:02:11,140 --> 00:02:15,010 Forum threads arguing about which camera is best, which settings you should use, why you 38 00:02:15,010 --> 00:02:20,180 should NEVER use jpegs, etc. can end up making those reading the thread worry that they’re 39 00:02:20,180 --> 00:02:24,870 not choosing the optimal methods, and that somehow their work is worse for it. 40 00:02:24,870 --> 00:02:25,910 My advice? 41 00:02:25,910 --> 00:02:27,260 Do what you think is best. 42 00:02:27,260 --> 00:02:30,160 Did the automatic color correction make it look better to you? 43 00:02:30,160 --> 00:02:31,720 If yes, go ahead and use it. 44 00:02:31,720 --> 00:02:36,000 Don’t go down the rabbit hole of chasing technical perfection at the expense of exploring 45 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:37,000 your own creativity. 46 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:39,420 If it looks good to you, that’s all that matters. 47 00:02:39,420 --> 00:02:43,050 With that out of the way, let’s get back to the subject at hand because it’s freaking 48 00:02:43,050 --> 00:02:44,050 cool! 49 00:02:44,050 --> 00:02:45,730 To show you, I’ve scanned some film. 50 00:02:45,730 --> 00:02:49,200 This long-lost set of negatives has been sitting around, gathering dust. 51 00:02:49,200 --> 00:02:52,430 So, when scanned, they looked like this. 52 00:02:52,430 --> 00:02:56,180 Dust on the film will appear white because the dust blocks light, which the scanner interprets 53 00:02:56,180 --> 00:03:01,420 correctly as dark spots, but as the film contains a negative image, it has to be inverted, and 54 00:03:01,420 --> 00:03:04,880 these dust spots get inverted to bright white when rendering the image as a positive. 55 00:03:04,880 --> 00:03:09,960 But, when you scan them with Digital ICE, they look like this. 56 00:03:09,960 --> 00:03:10,960 Pretty crazy, right! 57 00:03:10,960 --> 00:03:13,510 But what’s even cooler, is how this works. 58 00:03:13,510 --> 00:03:15,070 First a bit about the scanner. 59 00:03:15,070 --> 00:03:16,960 This is not the same scanner that I started with. 60 00:03:16,960 --> 00:03:20,980 In fact, this was one of those rare Goodwill finds where you ask yourself if it was donated 61 00:03:20,980 --> 00:03:21,980 by mistake. 62 00:03:21,980 --> 00:03:27,090 It’s a $210 dollar purchase today on Amazon, and it cost well more than that at the time 63 00:03:27,090 --> 00:03:29,140 I picked it up for this paltry sum. 64 00:03:29,140 --> 00:03:33,780 And it’s a substantial upgrade from my old one as it uses LEDs as its illumination source, 65 00:03:33,780 --> 00:03:36,200 and not cold cathode fluorescent lights which require warm-up. 66 00:03:36,200 --> 00:03:38,820 You’ll see why that’s so important later on. 67 00:03:38,820 --> 00:03:42,930 This is a flatbed scanner like any ordinary document scanner, and when scanning a photograph 68 00:03:42,930 --> 00:03:47,830 or a piece of paper, the scanner uses two rows of LEDs to illuminate whatever it’s 69 00:03:47,830 --> 00:03:52,430 scanning, and between them lies a single row of really tiny light sensors that build an 70 00:03:52,430 --> 00:03:55,680 image as the scanning head dutifully travels below the glass. 71 00:03:55,680 --> 00:03:59,870 But this doesn’t work to scan film, because light needs to travel through the film and 72 00:03:59,870 --> 00:04:01,340 not reflect off of it. 73 00:04:01,340 --> 00:04:05,370 What separates this scanner from an ordinary one is a second light source located in the 74 00:04:05,370 --> 00:04:06,810 lid of the scanner. 75 00:04:06,810 --> 00:04:10,590 This functions as a travelling backlight, and it follows the scanning head to allow 76 00:04:10,590 --> 00:04:12,410 for scanning film. 77 00:04:12,410 --> 00:04:16,181 Film scanners are also separated from their document brothers by a very high resolution 78 00:04:16,181 --> 00:04:17,650 scanning array. 79 00:04:17,650 --> 00:04:22,970 This scanner’s sensor is capable of resolving 6,400 pixels per inch, meaning it can produce 80 00:04:22,970 --> 00:04:28,440 a theoretical image with dimensions over 6,000 by 9,000 pixels from a standard frame of film, 81 00:04:28,440 --> 00:04:31,090 or an over 54 megapixel image. 82 00:04:31,090 --> 00:04:35,700 In nearly all cases this is overkill to the extreme, and it’s likely that this consumer-grade 83 00:04:35,700 --> 00:04:38,890 scanner’s stepper motors can’t reliably move in small enough increments to actually 84 00:04:38,890 --> 00:04:42,680 resolve that resolution in the Y dimension anyway, but still. 85 00:04:42,680 --> 00:04:43,680 Impressive. 86 00:04:43,680 --> 00:04:48,370 For the record, I usually scan at 3,200 DPI which is able to resolve the grain of many 87 00:04:48,370 --> 00:04:49,370 films. 88 00:04:49,370 --> 00:04:50,720 Now, to the fun part. 89 00:04:50,720 --> 00:04:55,240 When you use Digital ICE, the scanner actually scans each negative or slide twice. 90 00:04:55,240 --> 00:05:00,260 You’ll hear it get into position, make one pass of a scan, then the backlight and scanning 91 00:05:00,260 --> 00:05:01,880 head return to their parked position. 92 00:05:01,880 --> 00:05:05,350 But right when they stop, you hear a click. 93 00:05:05,350 --> 00:05:10,760 That click is the light source switching from your standard issue white light, to infrared. 94 00:05:10,760 --> 00:05:15,180 You can see this with a smartphone camera--many smartphone cameras detect infrared light and 95 00:05:15,180 --> 00:05:17,040 render it as a purplish glow. 96 00:05:17,040 --> 00:05:19,800 This is also handy for seeing if remote control batteries are any good. 97 00:05:19,800 --> 00:05:24,860 You see, the film itself is mostly transparent to infrared light, but dust on the film will 98 00:05:24,860 --> 00:05:27,070 block it from coming through. 99 00:05:27,070 --> 00:05:30,380 When the scanner makes it way through the second time, it will see an image that is 100 00:05:30,380 --> 00:05:34,990 completely empty except for where dust lies on the film. 101 00:05:34,990 --> 00:05:39,230 Scratches and oils from fingerprints will distort the infrared light, and the scanner 102 00:05:39,230 --> 00:05:41,520 can detect this distortion, too. 103 00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:45,210 The result is that on the second pass, the scanner will produce an image composed only 104 00:05:45,210 --> 00:05:49,640 of where scratches, dust, or general defects are located on the film. 105 00:05:49,640 --> 00:05:53,840 After it’s scanned the second time, software inside the scanner creates a composite of 106 00:05:53,840 --> 00:05:54,840 the two images. 107 00:05:54,840 --> 00:05:59,860 It will use the data on where scratches and dust are to remove affected areas of the image. 108 00:05:59,860 --> 00:06:03,900 It will then fill these areas in using information from what’s around them, and it usually 109 00:06:03,900 --> 00:06:05,150 does a bang-up job. 110 00:06:05,150 --> 00:06:08,110 I am always impressed with how well this works. 111 00:06:08,110 --> 00:06:12,270 Now of course it’s not perfect, there are some artifacts here that it didn’t completely 112 00:06:12,270 --> 00:06:17,830 remove, but what’s remarkable is that in most places, it appears to be completely flawless. 113 00:06:17,830 --> 00:06:22,610 The algorithm responsible for deciding what to fill in the empty space with is so good 114 00:06:22,610 --> 00:06:25,480 that it mimics the grain structure of the film itself. 115 00:06:25,480 --> 00:06:29,240 You would have no idea that this area has been retouched. 116 00:06:29,240 --> 00:06:33,551 Pixel-peeping shows that Digital ICE had almost no effect on the clarity of the image, and 117 00:06:33,551 --> 00:06:36,780 appears to have done nothing except remove flaws. 118 00:06:36,780 --> 00:06:37,780 Here are some slides. 119 00:06:37,780 --> 00:06:42,320 I shot some rolls of slide film, too, which looked like this without dusting. 120 00:06:42,320 --> 00:06:46,500 Observe how well digital ICE is able to take care of really dusty slides. 121 00:06:57,700 --> 00:06:59,440 I’d like to take another brief side-note. 122 00:06:59,450 --> 00:07:02,530 There’s something magical about slide film to me. 123 00:07:02,530 --> 00:07:04,500 This IS the photograph. 124 00:07:04,500 --> 00:07:08,850 A slide is just a piece of the very film that was in your camera mounted in cardboard or 125 00:07:08,850 --> 00:07:14,200 plastic so you and slide projectors can interact with it easily and without touching it. 126 00:07:14,200 --> 00:07:18,610 Unlike today where cameras save digital files of ones and zeros which you need a device 127 00:07:18,610 --> 00:07:22,970 to be able to interpret, slide film becomes a literal photograph. 128 00:07:22,970 --> 00:07:26,770 The light that came through the lens and landed on the film behind it looked nearly exactly 129 00:07:26,770 --> 00:07:27,770 like this. 130 00:07:27,770 --> 00:07:32,130 It’s just really cool to me to be holding a physical object that captured light and 131 00:07:32,130 --> 00:07:35,940 through processing became an actual copy of that light. 132 00:07:35,940 --> 00:07:40,110 Anyway, here is where Digital ICE can sometimes be detrimental. 133 00:07:40,110 --> 00:07:44,630 Images with lots of detail tend to obscure dust on their own, particularly with slides 134 00:07:44,630 --> 00:07:49,080 as the dark dust is harder to notice than the bright white dust from negatives. 135 00:07:49,080 --> 00:07:53,630 Sometimes it really is better to not use digital ICE, as complex images can be too much for 136 00:07:53,630 --> 00:07:55,050 the algorithm. 137 00:07:55,050 --> 00:07:59,130 This image in particular seemed relatively defect-free, but Digital ICE saw a bit of 138 00:07:59,130 --> 00:08:03,460 dust here, and didn’t really know how to re-fill in the detail of the sign. 139 00:08:03,460 --> 00:08:06,680 To be honest, it would have been better to leave this alone, though it is admittedly 140 00:08:06,680 --> 00:08:08,520 a tiny portion of the image. 141 00:08:08,520 --> 00:08:10,120 Hey look, Kodak! 142 00:08:10,120 --> 00:08:14,419 Same with this photograph, though it was very dusty, the cacophonous nature of the leaves 143 00:08:14,419 --> 00:08:18,630 and organic material on the ground made it hard to notice, and this bit of dust shows 144 00:08:18,630 --> 00:08:20,110 how things can go wrong. 145 00:08:20,110 --> 00:08:24,320 It’s not hard to see once you know it’s there, but it’s easy to ignore. 146 00:08:24,320 --> 00:08:30,680 Digital ICE certainly saw it, and its imperfect correction ended up making it much more noticeable. 147 00:08:30,680 --> 00:08:35,200 Digital ICE tends to do better in areas that are low-detail such as the sky or on clothing, 148 00:08:35,200 --> 00:08:38,650 as the algorithm can rely on adjacent areas to fill in the defect. 149 00:08:38,650 --> 00:08:42,890 In these cases it merely has to mimic the grain structure and color of the areas next 150 00:08:42,890 --> 00:08:43,890 to the defect. 151 00:08:43,890 --> 00:08:48,690 If any sort of pattern or high level of detail surrounds the problem area, it can in some 152 00:08:48,690 --> 00:08:53,320 cases end up making the defect more noticeable as it fails to convincingly fill it in. 153 00:08:53,320 --> 00:08:56,060 Digital ICE also has a few technical limitations. 154 00:08:56,060 --> 00:09:00,570 It can only be used on color negative film or E-6 process slides, which includes most 155 00:09:00,570 --> 00:09:04,220 color slides such as Ektachrome and Fuji Velvia. 156 00:09:04,220 --> 00:09:08,360 Conventional black and white film doesn’t work because with this film, the image is 157 00:09:08,360 --> 00:09:10,690 composed of silver molecules. 158 00:09:10,690 --> 00:09:12,960 These molecules block light from passing through, and that's how 159 00:09:12,960 --> 00:09:15,960 it creates the dark areas of the film. 160 00:09:15,960 --> 00:09:20,131 The silver will also block the infrared light on the second scan, so when you use Digital 161 00:09:20,131 --> 00:09:24,130 ICE, the scanner will see the exact same image from both passes. 162 00:09:24,130 --> 00:09:28,170 It’s smart enough to realize there’s nothing it can do, and doesn’t bother trying, 163 00:09:28,170 --> 00:09:30,230 so you just don’t get any help. 164 00:09:30,230 --> 00:09:34,500 However, C41 process black and white film, which can be identified by its orange film 165 00:09:34,500 --> 00:09:39,080 base rather than the gray of true black-and-white film, can use Digital ICE. 166 00:09:39,080 --> 00:09:43,060 This type of black-and-white film was mainly sold in stores as a novelty film, designed 167 00:09:43,060 --> 00:09:47,660 to be compatible with the standard C41 color development process. 168 00:09:47,660 --> 00:09:52,690 Images on this film are composed of dyes like in normal color film, and these dyes are transparent 169 00:09:52,690 --> 00:09:53,690 to infrared. 170 00:09:53,690 --> 00:09:56,210 So, Digital ICE still works with this film. 171 00:09:56,210 --> 00:10:01,610 Kodachrome slide film also doesn’t behave too well with Digital ICE, though it can depending 172 00:10:01,610 --> 00:10:02,930 on the slide. 173 00:10:02,930 --> 00:10:07,620 In this case, the cyan dye in the film can absorb some of the infrared light, which occasionally 174 00:10:07,620 --> 00:10:09,540 becomes detected as a defect. 175 00:10:09,540 --> 00:10:14,150 The scanner might try to remove things it shouldn’t, and the results can be weird. 176 00:10:14,150 --> 00:10:18,210 I don’t have any Kodachrome slides to test this on, as although Simon and Garfunkel tried 177 00:10:18,210 --> 00:10:22,310 their best to convince her otherwise, mama took my Kodachrome away in 2010. 178 00:10:22,310 --> 00:10:25,680 However, google Kodachrome and Digital ICE and you’ll see some good examples. 179 00:10:25,680 --> 00:10:28,690 I’ll link a particularly good one in the description. 180 00:10:28,690 --> 00:10:32,500 The biggest drawback to using Digital ICE is that it more than doubles the time it takes 181 00:10:32,500 --> 00:10:36,160 to scan film, an already a tediously slow process. 182 00:10:36,160 --> 00:10:40,000 Which brings me back to why this scanner is such an upgrade from my old one. 183 00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:45,050 The CCFL backlight of my old scanner required about a one minute warmup between each successive 184 00:10:45,050 --> 00:10:50,330 scan when using Digital Ice, as the lamp would cool back down during the infrared scan. 185 00:10:50,330 --> 00:10:52,690 This made using it a real chore. 186 00:10:52,690 --> 00:10:57,260 A fully loaded film holder would take another 12 minutes on top of the more than doubled 187 00:10:57,260 --> 00:11:00,540 scan time needed for the second scan and image processing. 188 00:11:00,540 --> 00:11:04,470 This could easily make scanning 12 negatives take over a half hour. 189 00:11:04,470 --> 00:11:08,900 It still takes this scanner about twice as long to perform a scan with Digital ICE, but 190 00:11:08,900 --> 00:11:10,770 I think it works wonders. 191 00:11:10,770 --> 00:11:14,490 Like I said before, some people refuse to use it, and it is true that for slides and 192 00:11:14,490 --> 00:11:18,640 negatives that aren’t damaged, a duster spray can is capable of producing a nearly 193 00:11:18,640 --> 00:11:19,730 flawless image. 194 00:11:19,730 --> 00:11:23,900 And it’s also true that Digital ICE can occasionally produce weird glitches of its 195 00:11:23,900 --> 00:11:27,430 own, like how it made this piece of dust look worse after correction. 196 00:11:27,430 --> 00:11:32,800 But I still think being able to go from this, to this, without any sort of input is just 197 00:11:32,800 --> 00:11:33,970 amazing. 198 00:11:33,970 --> 00:11:37,870 When it works, which it usually does, it’s nothing short of awesome. 199 00:11:37,870 --> 00:11:41,530 Thanks for watching, I hope you learned something interesting in this Tech Exploration (though 200 00:11:41,530 --> 00:11:44,870 if you’re a photography buff, you probably didn’t). 201 00:11:44,870 --> 00:11:48,060 If you’re new to this channel and you liked what you saw, why not subscribe? 202 00:11:48,060 --> 00:11:49,300 There’s more on the way. 203 00:11:49,300 --> 00:11:53,460 I’d also like to thank all of my Patreon supporters for making this channel possible. 204 00:11:53,460 --> 00:11:55,770 Your contributions are appreciated each and every day. 205 00:11:55,770 --> 00:11:57,620 I’ll see you next time.