Should I Drum Scan, X1 Flextight Scan, or use the Epson V850 w/Aztek Wet Mount Kit?

[grat]

I find that video very annoying because you can see from the start he was inclined to write off camera scanning. Then his technique for making the scan was atrocious. No masking, sitting right on the light source, no copy stand, and using a crappy Canon sensor. When I commented that his technique could be improved in a number of ways he was belligerent about it of course.

Yes. He admitted he was biased against DSLR scanning. And admitted it worked far better than he expected. He also admitted his technique wasn't that great and could be improved.

But even people who know what they're doing, and do it on a regular basis find it fiddly, and difficult.

If you can point out another video or article where someone has done a comprehensive comparison between the technologies, I'd like to see it.

I don't know which comments were yours, but most of the comments I saw that he responded to, he was incredibly tolerant, and open-minded, even to criticism. Then again, there's a level of hostility against the Epson around here that I find a bit baffling, especially since most of the alternatives cost significantly more money, and/or take exponentially greater amounts of effort to accomplish.

Of course, it's also obvious that there is a strong Sony bias here, so ergonomics and ease of use apparently aren't a priority.

[Peter De Smidt]

But even people who know what they're doing, and do it on a regular basis find it fiddly, and difficult.

I don't find it fiddly or difficult, and you're lumping a bunch of different approaches together. For example, using a slide duplicator with a digital camera is easy and much faster than any other method. Yes, maximizing quality is a challenge, but that's true for any system. With an Epson that involves finding the best scanning height, keeping the negative perfectly flat, and so on.

This is a group for large format photography. Generally, we car about photographic quality enough to go through the hassle and expense of using large format cameras. It's not at all surprising that we care about eeking out as much photographic quality as we can.

Finally, no one in forcing you to use a particular scanning method. If you are happy with an Epson scanner, then by all means keep using it.

[sperdynamite]

But even people who know what they're doing, and do it on a regular basis find it fiddly, and difficult.

Scanning the way he insisted on doing so was indeed fiddly and difficult. But generally camera scanning is an ultra fast way to generate an incredibly high quality file. If it was fiddly and difficult I'd pay big bucks for an Imacon. Thank god I don't have to consider that anymore.

I suggested that he should look into pixel shift cameras and he stated that 'sombody from Hasselblad' told him it's not a good way to go because you need to be vibration free. I pointed out that all scans need to be vibration free and that I use pixel shift all the time. He wrote off my suggestions. How could you possibly beat the industry worst sensors from Canon I guess?

[Pere Casals]

Then again, there's a level of hostility against the Epson around here that I find a bit baffling

yeah

If you want to make good friends here you have to repeat with them that the Epson is "prure crap", only acceptable for x2 or x3 prints, that is has lenses made of cheap plastic (it was a fake belived by many), that its color conversion is infame, that M-E makes nothing...

Not only hostility aganist the Epson, also remarkable hostility aganist anybody telling it's performance in practical situations.

Many people having commercial interests have been involved in discrediting the Epson and in assembling a hard group trolling aganist the few opposing.

This is an example (3 days ago) of the paradigm: "Your enhancements only accentuate what's shit about that scanner, and, in addition, you completely ignore the horrible gradations produced by the Epson. What a good quality PMT can give you that your Epson never can is that quality of gradation, that is evident even on lower res jpegs posted on the internet. So, while I may buy an Epson as a curiosity as it's a cheap piece of hardware, I can say that the most I'd ever use it for is document scanning, something I've been doing with the Canons lately."

(Want quality gradiations with the Epson ? Scan 16 bits/channel...)


Take it with humor

[Sasquatchian]

Oh Pere. Scanning in 16 bits per channel alone isn't enough to give you great gradations. The underlying hardware has to be good enough and it's the quality of the sensors, the converters and the optics all combined. No one here could give two shits about Epson either way. What they DO care about is people (like you) grossly overstating the facts without a full understanding of the scanning process. Put your money where you mouth is. Go buy yourself a freaking Howtek or ICG - the only two I would consider after years of study, spend a year (minimum required to learn it) and then see if you have the same opinion. Of course, you're so biased in favor of what you can afford that you can't see beyond and are using someone else's flawed comparison as the basis of your finding of "fact". I fully understand that there's gonna be no convincing you. I only put stuff out there to help make sure that no one else is suckered into your (delusional) world. And that you quote me without actually quoting ME. That's pathetic.

[Alan Klein]

I just got a V850. Does Silverfast 8 SE Plus version that came with the scanner provide multipass and multi exposure or do I need to upgrade Silverfast? How does it do it?

[Pere Casals]

I just got a V850. Does Silverfast 8 SE Plus version that came with the scanner provide multipass and multi exposure or do I need to upgrade Silverfast? How does it do it?

Alan, your SE plus version features Multi-Exposure, see this introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MAw4FF0gWU

You have to check the little button in the split bar that is labeled ME, see min 1:53 in the video.

The scanner will make two passes, each at different exposures and later both will be combined in a single file. Scan and Export in TIFF 16 bits, take all histogram and latter edit curves in Ps.

IMO multipass does not offer much a benefit, but as it averages several scans it decreases noise, a bit the super-resolution effect.

These 4x5 Tmax 100's are scanned at 2400. I tried scanning at 3200 but couldn't see the difference. Should I scan at 3200 or 4800 or higher?

Alan, sorry, I've not seen your post until now.

Image quality is very expensive in effective pixel terms, to the make eye notice an slight improvement you have to double the effective pixels of the image, this is resolving 1.4 times more, linearly.

Because of diminishing returns, if scanning 3200 instead 2400 you will get perhaps 300 more effective dpi but not the 800 the hardware settings say. Is that effort worth ? it depends, if the shot it's not sharp of your print size is small, or you only need 8MPix to fill a 4k monitor... in that case you won't find a difference, the most important is your final pixel level sharpening and using the right downsizing algorithm.


If your negative is sharp then scan at max dpi your computer will stand, sharpen optimal and reduce to the edition size, this is a refined workflow.

Scan a crop of the 4x5" negative at 6400 and compare to a 2400 dpi one bicubic oversampled to 6400dpi, view it at 100%. This will tell the truth.


To scan at high dpi you need a tunned computer, a M.2 disk can load a 3gb file in less than 2 seconds... but a magnetic disk may take 30s.

[Pere Casals]

Oh Pere. Scanning in 16 bits per channel alone isn't enough to give you great gradations. The underlying hardware has to be good enough and it's the quality of the sensors, the converters and the optics all combined. No one here could give two shits about Epson either way. What they DO care about is people (like you) grossly overstating the facts without a full understanding of the scanning process. Put your money where you mouth is. Go buy yourself a freaking Howtek or ICG - the only two I would consider after years of study, spend a year (minimum required to learn it) and then see if you have the same opinion. Of course, you're so biased in favor of what you can afford that you can't see beyond and are using someone else's flawed comparison as the basis of your finding of "fact". I fully understand that there's gonna be no convincing you. I only put stuff out there to help make sure that no one else is suckered into your (delusional) world. And that you quote me without actually quoting ME. That's pathetic.

Sasquatchian, I did not quote your name because you were using a dirty wording like "shit" etc and I judged better not to put your name, it's up to you using that kind of language but it defines you.

Let's do something, I give you an address and you send me a LF negative, BW, CN or Velvia, I'll send you the file and we'll post here the Epson scan and your Imacon scan, to compare the crops you want.

It is true that the Epson won't be as good as a drum for say 3.6D densities, but with usual densities you have the same perfect gradation than with a drum.

The negative Pali selected for the "side by side" has extremly subtile gradations, I guess he selected it for that reason, the result is that the Epson perfectly matches the drum after a careful but simple edition, even if pixel peeping. This is a fact. (https://www.largeformatphotography.i...=1#post1553157)

The Epson is an IT8 calibrated machine, if you scan an IT8 target you will see that it nails the reference rgb for each patch, one by one.

[grat]

I don't find it fiddly or difficult, and you're lumping a bunch of different approaches together. For example, using a slide duplicator with a digital camera is easy and much faster than any other method. Yes, maximizing quality is a challenge, but that's true for any system. With an Epson that involves finding the best scanning height, keeping the negative perfectly flat, and so on.

Sure, let me put this 4x5 negative into a slide scanner... how many times do I need to fold it? Oh, right. Now who's conflating techniques?

As was said in the video, if the negative could be scanned in one shot, DSLR's would be a fantastic way to digitize images.

This is a group for large format photography. Generally, we car about photographic quality enough to go through the hassle and expense of using large format cameras. It's not at all surprising that we care about eeking out as much photographic quality as we can.

Well, that's true also. And since I don't have a 100 megapixel camera, and I can get 100 megapixel scans of a 4x5 negative, in one pass (actually, 2 negatives in one pass), the Epson makes a lot of sense. I can buy an awful lot of film, lenses, and other gear for the amount I save by using the Epson-- and if I really need a higher resolution scan, I still have the negatives, and can take them to someone who has better equipment, and the experience on using it.

To use a DSLR, I need a copy stand, a perfectly level table, a very flat lens (my 100mm f/2.8 macro has a pretty good reputation, but it still has a small amount of distortion), a custom white balance, and a minimum of 4 images (6 would be ideal). Multiple images means precisely positioning the camera relative to the negative (or vice versa) is kind of important.

If I could load up a negative, mount my camera in a bracket, push a button and have a system automatically take a series of 6 images, that would be fantastic, and I'd put my scanner on eBay tomorrow.

I've considered building such a system, and I might-- but it's not like I can buy one off the shelf, and even if I could, it would be such a specialist item that it would run 4 figures, *without* the camera (I do, however, have an old CoreXY 3D printer sitting in the corner.....).

Should I do so, the resolution would be mind-boggling, since my camera has a very high pixel density (even though it's a "crap" Canon and can't shift the sensor one pixel to the left and interpolate like mad) at something on the order of 7900 PPI.

Finally, no one in forcing you to use a particular scanning method. If you are happy with an Epson scanner, then by all means keep using it.

You're right, you aren't. In fact, the instrument has not yet been devised that can measure the insignificant amount of influence this discussion could possibly have on my preferences. And if you'll pay close attention, I've never suggested that anyone should use a particular method, or that their preferred method was crap, or their hardware was crap, or that their hardware is in fact a figment of their imagination.

That would be rude.

Just like photography, there is no perfect technique for digitizing negatives-- every method I'm aware of has both advantages and drawbacks. Out of "fast", "cheap" and "high resolution", pick two. The Epson provides a very high return on a minimal investment of time and money (and yes, it could, and should be better than it is). But if neither of those is a concern, use a drum scanner. If ultimate bragging rights are your goal, spend the time and use a DSLR-- because really, it's neither fast, nor cheap. It is however, potentially, the highest resolution option available.

[Peter De Smidt]

Grat, if it's so much trouble, why are you talking about it? Just don't do it. Problem solved.