What I learned so far using the scanner for several weeks.
Scanner cons:
- The Oxygen software sucks, big time!
- I'm rather disappointed with the amount of digital noise the scanner produces. I'd say it's far larger than that of Epson V750. Even after I cleaned the mirror...UPDATE - Masks, that I never used before, are apparently the essential part of scanning (Novice mistake learned from internets).
>>The amount of noise is radically reduced after covering edges of the film with magnetic sheets used as masks.<<
- The resolution appears to be same like V750, which is also perfectly sharp at DPi 3200. My scans at native scanner resolution (4300 DPi) don't impress me at all. I can see only slightly better resolution ability. UPDATE - Masks, that I never used before, are apparently the essential part of scanning (Novice mistake learned from internets).
>>The amount of detail has increased noticeably after covering edges of the film with magnetic sheets used as masks.<<
- Another downside would be terribly low density that is to my eye equal to that of Epson, or even worse. I'd scan even my color negs in positive mode, but inverting and correcting all that orange is terribly difficult task. DT would come handy here (only available for iQsmart3)... UPDATE - Masks, that I never used before, are apparently the essential part of scanning (Novice mistake learned from internets).
>>The amount of density has also increased noticeably after covering edges of the film with magnetic sheets used as masks.<<
- Also quite irritating is a huge amount of chromatic aberration. Also big minus compare to Epson! Needless to say, I haven't used any masks to cover excessive light around my negatives. Only today I received magnetic sheets which I plan to cut and use for the purpose. UPDATE - Masks, that I never used before...
- The scanner is slow. It takes 20 minutes to do one 6x6 frame at 4300 DPi - This is a whole working day for one A3+ load (2 x 120 films).
- The scanner is noisy.
Pros:
- Large scanning area.
- No Newton rings!!! No need for fluids.
What I learned after an excessive amount of daily scanning.
- The best way to scan B&W negs is with slides (media - positive, in color RGB 16 bit mode) setting and post inverted in PS. No other setting can produce wider tonal range. It's quite unbelievable how terrible scans look when dedicated B&W settings are used. Are there any tricks on how to increase the tonal range on color negs? UPDATE - Masks, that I never used before...
-As folks here mentioned already before me, sharpening tool is also rather deteriorating the file, and I'd recommend to switch it off altogether, as well as any other correction tools. In PS, I use high pass filter overlay for better detail recognition and also some sharpening mask.
The problem I can't figure out:
There are horizontal stripe areas (see a picture of crop attached), that appear sharpened compare to the rest of the image on B&W, and fuzzy on color negatives. First I thought this is caused by inertia movement of the scanner laying on funny IKEA table. By anchoring the table to the wall from two sides I successfully eliminated the movement itself, but not the problem with stripes. ..
In my opinion, XY stitching function has also nothing to do with this, since the stripes appear always very randomly.
I notice the change of the green channel in PS seem to react to its intensity the most.
Can anybody explain this? I keep the calibration window clean - learned that from using the Epson last 10 years.
UPDATE - Ability of the software to create good BW file is just not good, and as most users suggest, scanning shall be done either in color negative mode or positive(slide) mode - which I find yields the best results. Seems to me, that scanning all film in slide mode prevents all problematics I encountered before!
I invert my scans in postprocess using this very handy Photoshop action by Jeff Gordon:
https://www.iamthejeff.com/post/32/t...ive-film-scans
Thanks a lot for your time folks!
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