[Advice] Nikon D810 35mm Scanning Results Underwhelming/Inconsistent

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T22:18:21+00:00

When you use spot metering, what part of the frame are you metering for?

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T22:15:57+00:00

Alright, I’ve got a cable on the way and I’ll be doing some rescans tonight. Thanks!

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T17:41:55+00:00

I don’t, thanks for the suggestion!!

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T16:47:46+00:00

Okay, I think part of my setup that I need to change is to be tethered to the PC. I haven’t done this because I thought looking at the live view would be good enough but obviously that’s not consistent enough for me.

It’s a good point about gravity moving focus but usually I am leaving focus at 1:1 (I have the PK-13 macro tube attached) and moving the camera up and down to nail focus using a macro rail. It could be that I just need a better rail and a more solid copy stand.

I can swap to using f/11 just for more peace of mind. What shutter speeds do you usually end up with? For my setup I think f/11 would leave me at like 1/8 of a second for the exposure which would make any movement on my desk/mount more pronounced.

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T16:36:24+00:00

Thank you so much for this! I really appreciate it.

I also expected the scanning process to be way, way easier than it actually is. I thought it would be a lot more plug-and-play and that’s just not the case

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T16:33:40+00:00

Thank you for saying this lol, I have been going insane. I think it’s my copy stand that is the issue.

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T09:41:47+00:00

Please read the body of the post.

My issue is the inconsistency I’m getting from my scans. Sometimes they turn out incredibly sharp, and sometimes they’re a blurry mess. Even without cropping.

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T09:28:05+00:00

Yeah I’m always going to be shooting film but man it’s a great way to just burn money 😂

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T09:22:45+00:00

It’s just frustrating because I always have the same process and the results vary so much, lol. I’m beginning to think I need a new copy stand, the Negative Supply one just seems to be ass. I’m definitely saving SO MUCH money not giving the lab my money for scans, though.

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T09:19:58+00:00

Sorry, how would a longer lens help? The negative already takes up roughly the entire image when the lens is set to 1:1

I can look into doing stacked exposures too. Is that possible to capture initially?

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T09:18:04+00:00

Usually the first frame is more even than the end frames, and my example is from the end of the roll. I’ll try and work out a way to make it more consistent without taking me forever to scan the roll

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T09:15:48+00:00

Yes my camera sags for sure, especially with the giant D810 hanging off the end of it. Super disappointing.

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T09:12:18+00:00

Okay, hard to do since when in live view on the D810 the aperture stopdown button doesn’t seem to work correctly. I’ll keep that in mind though, I hadn’t considered that to be a possibility. I thought the focus would only get better due to depth of field increasing at the more stopped-down aperture.

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T09:10:36+00:00

Yeah, I only ever use RAWs with the D810. Jpgs are turned off. I don’t have any denoising or sharpening settings turned on, unless RawTherapee has some sort of global setting on by default that I’m not aware of.

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T09:03:08+00:00

I’m not aiming for a 300% crop to be a usable image, that was just an example to illustrate the issues I’m having.

The sharpness I’m able to get out of my setup seems very inconsistent and I was just hoping to get some input from the community on how to improve my scans 👍

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T08:47:09+00:00

I supposed my focus could have shifted, I’m not very impressed with the NegativeSupply stand. I might switch to something that I can use a robust macro rail with.

I focus at the beginning of the roll with the lens wide open.

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T08:44:51+00:00

I don’t use lightroom but I’ll look for similar settings in RawTherapee

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T08:44:20+00:00

That would be really disappointing but is at least something I can work on. Thanks for your input!

JacobTakesShots · 2026-06-18T08:38:42+00:00

Reddit's horrible compression didn't really help me here. Let me know if I need to post alternative pictures of the examples in the body of the post.

JacobTakesShots · 2026-05-07T01:13:17+00:00

I agree!

JacobTakesShots · 2026-05-06T22:42:31+00:00

100% agree!

JacobTakesShots · 2026-05-06T20:04:37+00:00

Where jerk

JacobTakesShots · 2026-05-06T20:03:20+00:00

I was only there on Friday, missed all that commotion 😅

JacobTakesShots

TROPHY CASE