Alternative to Epson 4870

[Julian Boulter]

Hi all,

I have an Epson 4870 for 4x5 transparency scanning but I'm not that pleased with it. The scans are soft, the old 2450 I replaced with the 4870 was way sharper. I have read much feedback about the 4870 and understand the resolution issues and I have concluded that Epson's manufacturing tolerances are not as high as other manufacturers, I just think I have purchased a bit of a dud whereas others have been happy with theirs.

The main reason I upgraded to the 4870 was the digital ICE, which whilst not amazing, is certainly much better that cloning dust and hairs out by hand. It works much better with Silverfast SE by the way than with the Epson bundled software.

My question is, are there any higher end scanners out there which will A) do a better job of scanning than the 4870 and B) provided digital ICE for film?

I thought the answer to my problems was going to be the microtek i900 complete with it's glassless film holders but reading the specs the digital ICE appears only to work on prints not film, why is this?

Of course I could just use quickload and not worry too much about dust but obviously this is more expensive. I like the ICE feature on the 4870, it saves me a lot of time but I've read a lot of comparisons and I think something like the i900 is going to provide sharper scans so why did they not include ICE for film??

What other scanner offerings would offer me the ICE for films and a sharper scan. Hardly any thing else out there seems to offer ICE apart from the new Epson but I kind of wanted to step away from Epson now and try something else.

Thanks

[Jeffrey Sipress]

Julian, just clean your film before you scan and forget about the ICE. And, particles on the film when you expose it show up as spots that you can clone out selectively, without the potentially degrading effects of a software cleanup routine.

[Ted Harris]

jilian,

I woiuldn't give up on the i900 untilk you have at least tried it. I thought long and hard about the scanning options for $1000 or less and the i900 was the ONLY choice I came up with that made sense. I find it serves me well even though I have to do a bit of touching up when scanning 5x7 or 8x10 (I do use quickloads for 4x5).

Take a look at this image that I just scanned. Photo.net is balking at [osting the image but you can see it here:

http://homepage.mac.com/tedharris/CommonTerns.htm (http://homepage.mac.com/tedharris/CommonTerns.htm)

[Ted Harris]

Yeah, yeah yeah, this is not photo.net, and I didn't spellcheck and I should probably goback to sleep. That is what I get for trying to be coherent after spending 4 hours in the darkroom and/or with Photoshop!

Apologies!

[paulr]

Julian,
have you experimented with shims to adjust the focal plane?

One manufacturing inconsistency with these scanners is the precision of the focal plane; it's supposed to be 1mm above the glass, but can vary by quite a bit. On my 4870 it's about 1.5 mm.

The depth of field is low enough that even the thickness of the film will make a difference: you might get sharper results with the emulsion down. But if you say the results are actually soft, it may be off by more than that.

For sharper results still, you can wet mount on a piece of float glass. If you do a search in this forum you'll find more information.

I'm not sure what you mean by "resolution issues." If you're refering to the effective resolution being much less than the advertised resolution, I believe this is by design. 4800dpi is called the resolution, but it's more accurate to call it the sampling frequency. If this number isn't significantly higher than the optical resolution, you would see no end of problems with aliasing and other digital artifacts. The lower resolution is actually a much better deal, even if the marketing is deceptive. For what it's worth, all the manufacturers do the same thing.

[Kirk Gittings]

I was alos interested in the i900. I could be wrong, but according to their advertising the ICE on the i900 only works on print scanning not film.


http://www.microtekusa.com/smi900.html (http://www.microtekusa.com/smi900.html)

I also use a 4870 and was reasonably pleased with it. Then I saw the wet drum scans that were done of some of the same trans. for an upcoming book that is being done about me and I was blown away. There is no comparison unfortunately.

[Tim Chakravorty]

I am amazed that no one mentions Canon flatbeds when it comes to large format scanning.

Julian, have you every heard of a scanner called the Canon 9950F , or have you completely bought in to the Epson Hoopla ?

[Roger Hein]

Ted,

How long did it take for the i900 to scan the 5x7 tranny @ 2400ppi? Also are you the artitst who did this painting/carving?

[Ted Harris]

Roger,

I wish I had carved and painted the birds but alas, those are not my talents. The artist is Andrew Ursin and unfortunately I know nothing about him.

As for the scan I have to admit I don't time them very closely but a 5x7 @ 2400 takes at least 5 minutes and maybe more; I do other things while the scan is working. The scanner is hooked to a firewire 400 port on a dual processor 867mhz G4 w 2gigs of RAM.

[evan clarke]

Hi all,
I have been using these flatbeds since Epson brought out their first one. I have also used a number of 35mm and 120 film scanners and now own 11 of them all total. My current flat is a Microtek 1800f which I use for 8x10, 4x5 and 120. Somewhere in the process you will end up with an image that is a print size x 300 or 360 dpi. I use Silverfast and find that it does the best interpolation, producing a sharper image than if you specify an output of 2400 or 3600 dpi..EC

[Richard Martel]

Found this link to be of interest. Hope you will too.


http://www.gnyman.com/Personal/Epson3200vsEpson4870vsCanon9900F.htm (http://www.gnyman.com/Personal/Epson3200vsEpson4870vsCanon9900F.htm)

[Julian Boulter]

Thanks very much to everyone who replied here - paulr, your reference to wet mounting and float glass sent me off in a whole new direction and I eventually unconvered a product called SCAN+ from Scanmax Technical Graphics.

It appears to be a kit for the Epson 3200 and 4870 which comprises of several items to help improve scan quality including shims, glass plates, masks, and mounting fluid.

Just wondering if anyone has used one of these kits before and what their experiences were? It seems quite expensive but I'll give it a try if others report good improvments.

Thanks

[Kirk Gittings]

I can find nothing about SCAN+ from Scanmax Technical Graphics when I google the names. Where can I find out more about it?

[Julian Boulter]

Ok, just found the link:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/gluemax/ScanMax/scanmaxbrochure4.pdf

Julian

[Kirk Gittings]

Actually my memory is failing here. I did find that a few months ago but couldn't get any response from them. They may be out of business.

[Julian Boulter]

Kirk,

I mailed them for information and they have been very responsive so they appear to be very much in business.

Everything they say about the kit seems to make perfect sense and it costs $95 which is quite expensive but if the improvement is significant I am willing to give it a go.

[eric may]

I am wondering if anyone bought this kit and if I could hear some feedback on the kit? Do you feel it has been worth the cost of the kit? Thanks in advance, I am trying to find a kit that will accomadate polaroid negatives (665 and type 55). Does anyone have any suggestions for others kits that will accomodate these negatives?

eric may

[Keith S. Walklet]

I don't have any experience with the wet mount kits for flatbeds, but I have been doing some tests to determine, given the improvements in scanner technology, whether the common approach of "not sharpening at the scan stage" still makes sense. I am particularly intrigued with comparisons between drum scans, a Nikon 8000 and the Epson. No argument that the drums are the best. Still, the results were surprising, especially when comparing the Nikon 8000 to the Epson 4870.

What I found was when scanning with the Epson, I obtain a file that was nearly identical in all respects with Nikon when I applied the scanner's Epson Medium USM setting.

I also wanted to put a number on the Epson's sharpening levels compared to the sharpening achieved in Photoshop, to see what the baseline was. My subjective tests show that the USM on the Epson approximates Photoshop as follows:

Epson Low: 350/3
Epson Medium: 400/3
Epson High: 400/4

True, in Photoshop, one has far greater control over sharpening, but, if one starts in the same place with a Medium USM Epson scan as one would with an unsharpened Nikon 8000, why not use the Epson's built-in sharpening?

I'm curious to hear other's observations on this, as if scanner comparisons aren't confusing enough.