U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: negative scanners (OT)

Re: negative scanners (OT)



From: Sandy King <sanking@clemson.edu>
Subject: Re: negative scanners (OT)
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:12:13 -0400

> If you must cover several formats, my advice would be a dedicated 
> film scanner for 35mm, and a flatbed like the V700 or V7500 for 
> medium format and LF. Of, if only LF, a 4990.

In my comparison of V700 and Coolscan scanner (5000 and 9000),
V700 delivers just as good resolution for 35mm
format. However, 5000 scans faster. Another thing is that
V700, like any scanner, is very sensitive to the glass-to-film
distance, but Epson ships the scanner with flimsy plastic
crap, which is usable, but requires some tests to get full
potential performance.

On the other hand, 5000 can use an attachment to scan a whole
roll of uncut 35mm and that must be very nice, especially
after burning a lot of film in studio shoots.

One weakness of V700 is flare and ghost, when I scan VERY high
contrast (graphic art standard) originals. V750 is supposedly
better in this area. These things, as well as Dmax, shouldn't
matter for pictorial b&w negatives.

One feature I wish softwares like Vuescan had is to scan the
image at 6400dpi into the buffer, apply very light sharpening,
and then resample the image at 4800 dpi or 3200 dpi before
saving in TIFF. A 3200 dpi equivalent file I make from 6400dpi
scans in Photoshop is superior to 3200 dpi scan, as you can
easily expect. Why not automate this and save disk space a
bit?