Topic: Scanner for films (Read 4337 times)

Desmond · « **on:** June 26, 2009, 10:56:14 am »

My film scanner is dying, I am considering to purchase the EPSON perfection V700. Any hand on experience for this scanner, especially on BW NEG scan?

Les Sparks · « **Reply #1 on:** June 26, 2009, 04:41:02 pm »

Check out Vincent Oliver's site for a fairly complete review. Then check out the forum on his site for information from users.
Les

Desmond · « **Reply #2 on:** July 02, 2009, 11:59:36 am »

Quote from: engineer

Check out Vincent Oliver's site for a fairly complete review. Then check out the forum on his site for information from users.
Les

Thanks, really good sources of information.

Desmond · « **Reply #3 on:** July 02, 2009, 11:59:36 am »

Quote from: engineer

Check out Vincent Oliver's site for a fairly complete review. Then check out the forum on his site for information from users.
Les

Thanks, really good sources of information.

pegelli · « **Reply #4 on:** July 03, 2009, 07:16:43 am »

It's the Vincent Oliver review that made me buy this flatbed, after I coulnd't get my old Canon film scanner with SCSI interface to work under XP.

I'm hardly a scanning expert, but here's two results I've achieved with my Epson V700 and a bit of PP

HP4 B&W negative from 1972:

Agfa 100 Iso colour slide from 1979:

Needless to say I'm pretty happy about the scanner, any flaws you see in here is me still being at the bottom end of the learning curve.

digitaldog · « **Reply #5 on:** July 03, 2009, 09:53:43 am »

For the money, a shockingly good scanner. I have a V750.

chez · « **Reply #6 on:** July 04, 2009, 04:13:56 pm »

The V700 / 750 are OK scanners, but if you will be scanning strickly 35mm film, I would give the Nikon Coolscan V a good hard look. The price is about the same as the epson flatbeds, but the results on 35mm are much better. To get the most out of the Epson scanners you need to fluid mount the negatives which is a royal pain in the a$$.

Desmond · « **Reply #7 on:** July 08, 2009, 08:27:09 am »

Thanks again for advices, got a V700 finally. I am very happy about the result, better than my dying film scanner in all aspect besides speed. I got very smooth gradation for BW neg using gamma 1.8 in Epson Scan. Still testing scanning positive, need some time to find the best setting.
I have Vuescan installed and gave it a try, result is slightly better than Epson Scan in terms of grey transition, but Epson Scan looks marginally sharper. Its a shame that Vuescan doesn't support batch scanning.
Silverfast is not user friendly if the result is not better than ES or Vue significantly, I will save the hassle.

Any comment on Silverfast? Bundled SE version I meant. Any suggestion on scan setting?

I was considering to get a handy compact like DP-1 or GRDII, now I will being bringing my Minilux or M6 along.

Rob C · « **Reply #8 on:** July 08, 2009, 10:48:52 am »

I´ve toyed with the idea of getting back to 6x6 film, once in a while, and each time the ball stops rolling when it hits the scanner buffers. I know a pro who has an Epson flatbed which he has used once in a while as an alternative to getting drum scans but he seems far from thinking it the flavour of the day, never mind the month. It might be an affordable option, but defeats the point of getting back to a ´blad if the end result isn´t going to live in the same league as the camera system will.

Nikon makes/made? a 6x6 compatible scanner, but what I read about that one is that film doesn´t lie flat. Expensive enough, it doesn´t approach the stick 'em up prices of the Hasselblad offerings. Whether that´s an attempt to kill off the film market totally and drive users to MFD I can´t tell, but in my case, it fails to move me into either action. Okay, my wallet won´t allow it without too much screaming and fighting which would look terrible in public.

Anyone here have experience of dedicated 120 film scanners that don´t break banks?

Rob C

Rob C · « **Reply #9 on:** July 08, 2009, 10:51:52 am »

Quote from: chez

The V700 / 750 are OK scanners, but if you will be scanning strickly 35mm film, I would give the Nikon Coolscan V a good hard look. The price is about the same as the epson flatbeds, but the results on 35mm are much better. To get the most out of the Epson scanners you need to fluid mount the negatives which is a royal pain in the a$$.

For 35mm I would also recommend the CanoScan FS4000US which I use - great results, but I don´t know if they still make it now.

Rob C

bob mccarthy · « **Reply #10 on:** July 08, 2009, 03:24:41 pm »

I own or have access to a number of scanners from a screen cezanne, to a Nikon 5000 to a Epson 4990. On film I shoot/scan from 35mm up to 8x10.

The epson runs out of gas around 2000 dpi, so its a perfectly usable scanner with large format and to some degree with medium format if your not printing large.

The Epson can't hold a candle to the Nikon for 35mm as the Nikon 5000 approaches its claimed 4000 dpi.

Forget about claims from Epson, there bogus. File size may go up, but information doesn't follow along.

I use Vuescan with all but the Cezanne.

The Cezanne can pretty well do it all.

bob

pegelli · « **Reply #11 on:** July 09, 2009, 09:17:24 am »

Quote from: bob mccarthy

The epson runs out of gas around 2000 dpi, so its a perfectly usable scanner with large format and to some degree with medium format if your not printing large.

This is perfectly in line with what I find. Even though Epson claims much higher resolutions scanning/keeping anything from 35 mm film above 6MP is a waste of space and time. Since most of my slides/negatives are 100 or 200ISO they don't contain much more information anyway (I never got into the Kodachrome 25 types or very fine grain B&W) so the whole set up is "fit for purpose" for my use.

Chris_Brown · « **Reply #12 on:** July 17, 2009, 09:03:21 am »

Nothin' beats a drum scanner when scanning chromes. Oh wait! There's for sale here.

Author Topic: Scanner for films (Read 4337 times)