Soft scans with Epson V750?

[Jack Flesher]

Would that also be true for the photographer who shoots in more than one format and needs to scan 120 and 135?

A few more comments, then I'll leave the thread alone...

1) As Ted clearly pointed out, these scanners are in the same general class -- IOW neither is significantly superior or inferior to the other in any application.

2) The comments I made earlier (and without putting words in Ted's mouth, I think he was attempting pretty much the same thing in his review) were simply to try and quantify verbally the relatively minor, but still noticeable, differences I (we) saw between the machines.

3) To clarify one last time: If you scan 4x5 there appears to be a slight resolution edge in favor of the 4990 in the 1600 to 3200 DPI range. However if you scan 35mm and 120, the V700's get a similar slight resolution edge over the 4990 at over 3200 DPI in those applications (presumably from the second lens).

4) If you are contemplating a new purchase, a NEW 4990 Pro (with Silverfast Ai) costs about the same as the non-Pro V700. Alternatively you can pay $300 more and get the Pro version V750 with Silverfast Ai. However this option also puts you within a few hundred bucks of the Microtek 1800f price territory, so you may want to reconsider just how far you want to go.

5) Given the above, I will reiterate/clarify my original comment: If you already own a 4990, I think one is wasting money on a V700/750 upgrade as there simply is not enough difference to bother with -- My opinion only... If you are contemplating a new purchase, you should compare sample scans from each so you know exactly what you are paying for before you plunk down your cash.

Hope this helps,

[Ted Harris]

Totally agree with Jack, in fact my conversations with Epson folk when I was gathering information and running tests for the review indicated that they really were not thinking too hard about LF photographers when they designed the machine. My tests of the V700 showed pretty much the same results (to my surprise).

As for price differentials, prices I have seen for the V750 pro package are ~ 750 and the 1800f is 900 (including shipping) from Midwest. BTW, as I mentioned in another thread yesterday, according to my Microtek contacts there are ~ 150 1800f machines left in the US supply line so don't wait a lot longer if you want one.

[Ed Richards]

Ted,

What happened when you did scan 4x5 at 6400? Is there a real gain in resolution? If you use black and white and use Vuescan, it will downsample the scan to a usable size, even on a 1 gig machine.

[Ted Harris]

Ed,

Scanning at 6400 did give a real gain but slight. The resolution was 2800 onone axis and 2400 on the other. I am not a fan of Vuescan form most applications but this may be one place to use it although I am not convinced that you will gain enough to make it worthwhile. Generally, you gt the best results from scanning black and white by scanning in RGB and then later throwing away two of the channels. This approach, of course,leaves you starting with the massive files sizes we have been discussing. I also question how Vuescan is doing the downsampling, if it is doing it in such a way that the information gained is, in turn lost. If, OTOH, it does force the machine to use the better optics it may be worthdoing just for that.

We didn't do any testing using Vuescan, just Epson software and Silverfast.

[Ed Richards]

Ted,

If you have not worked with Vuescan recently, it has been signficantly improved over early versions. Whether you get better results with RGB depends on what your software is doing. The data out of the scanner should not vary, all Vuescan does is discard two channel swithout bothering to save them, thus not balloning up the file.

Vuescan does simple averaging and down samples in even multiples of two, thus a matrix of four pixels at 4800 becomes 1 downsampled to 2400. This gives you the same effect on reducing noise as a multiple scan. You can do the same with silverfast by downsampling in PS, but you cannot load the files to do it because they are too big to load in many cases. With black and white, I can just handle a full 4800 dpi scan at 16 bits in my 1 gig machine. I pick Vuescan or Silverfast depending on the image. Some work better in one than the other. I then use a macro in PS to down sample the files. I have to use Vuescan to down sample when I do color - the files are way too large othewise. (Unfortunately, when I had the scanner test slide I had software problems and could not down sample, so I had to just scan at 2400.)

I do not want to buy a 700 just to try this, but it would use the second lense system, which seems critical to really getting any better performance. I am assuming that the primary lens system is the same as 4990. If there is a tinker out there with a 700, give it a try.

[Remigius]

If you scan a lot of 120, it may be worthwile to buy a V700 instead of the 4990 to get the (imho) better mf film holder (2 strips of 6x12 instead of 3 strips of 6x12).

[Ted Harris]

Ed,

I have used recent versions of Vuescan and still recommend it for quick scans to many but it just doesn't have the flexibility of Silverfast Ai. The process you ae outlining will indeed get your file down to a managable size but you also lose some of the advantage of looking at the results of each channel and, as some do some of the time, even blending them for a quadtone print. There is no doubt that Vuescan is good solid softwrae but it just isn't the same as Silverfast ... and not everybody needs Silverfst nor does naybody need it for all images.

As for buying a V700 just to use the better optics with Vuescan ..... if you don't have an immediate need, if you can wait 2 to 3 months you may see something interesting from Microtek.

[Michael Heald]

Hello! What kind of things? Any rumors?

Mike

[Ed Richards]

Thanks Ted,

While I would like to fool with a 700, I do not want to enough to buy one.:-) I have a working routine with 9950 that gives me good results, using both Vuescan and Silverfast - for difficult negatives I like to work with the raw scanner data and Vuescan gives you more ability to really get to the data.

After getting some excellent drum scans from Danny Burke, and doing comparison PRINTS, as opposed to pixel peeping, I decided for my images and the way I print them, that a little better resolution makes the image easier to photoshop, but the end results were about the same for 18 x 24 prints. At that point I quit worrying as much about getting more data out of the negative. I mostly try to get a reasonable density range so I do not need the better DMax of a drum scanner, and I have spent a lot of time figuring out sharpening for black and white.

OTOH, if money did not matter I would have Danny scan all of my negatives because having them be easier to work with is worth something, so I would also be interested in better flatbed.

[Ted Harris]

Ed,

The wold o scanners is one with a huge gap in price and quality. There are minor variations in performance among the various scanners in the under $1000 range. There is a reasonable increase (but still relatively small) when you step up to the Microtek 2500f which approaches $3000 in porice and is not available in the US at the moment. The next jumptakes you up to over $10,000 and this is where the drum scanners and high end flatbeds live ... all with dramatically different performance than the lower priced spreads. Point being, save your money unless it looks like you are doing enough scanning to justify one of the high end machines ... you can easily find good oens used in the 3500 to 5000 range if you have some patience and do some work looking.