Noritsu vs Frontier

Which scanner is right for you?

If you’ve sent your film to an established lab to get developed and scanned, you’ve probably filled out an order form that will ask which scanner you prefer: Noritsu or Frontier.

I stick to primarily one scanner so my scans remain consistent between rolls, but every now and again I’ll switch scanners for a roll just to shake things up. Here’s a few images from each scanner….

Noritsu

Frontier

Last week I decided to send in one roll of film to be scanned on both scanners. That way I could compare apples-to-apples and really see the nuances between the two scanners. Here’s how the images turned out…

A few notes before the side-by-side comparisons:

• All images have remained unedited here so you can really study the differences yourself

• This is a series of 2-photo galleries, with the first image being Frontier’s scan, and the second image Noritsu’s scan

• The roll I used for this was Portra400, photographed on my Canon AE1

• My take-aways will be at the end of the post (I would love to hear yours as well!)