Soft scans or soft images?

[Kirk Gittings]

The problem being that the true optical resolution of this scanner is more like 2200 spit according to our tests and the tests of others. So, if you sample at 2400 spi you are capturing all the information on the film.

Ted Harris

Ted's experience mirrors my own independent tests on the 750, 2400 is really closer to the optical resolution of this scanner and there is no advantage and considerable more tediousness by scanning above this.

Also.....I have been doing some testing on this lately, though I do not print large, and this is by no means a recomendation at this point.......... It appears to me if you need a larger file it may be better in terms of actual print resolution to scan at the optical 2400 resolution, and up res with Genuine Fractals (the latest version has some real world improvements) later in the workflow before the final sharpening.

[QT Luong]

Can you explain this terminology? I've never heard of this and I can't even guess.

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/fstop.html

[walter23]

You just need to add some sharpening in photoshop. Flatbed scanners show very blurry without any sharpening. Here's a slight redo on your crop. The extra grain won't be noticable on enlargening to at least 16x20.

That's definitely something of an improvement, however like I said I tend to prefer to undersharpen rather than oversharpen and I want to figure out how much of the softness is from my camera technique and how much is scanner. The output you're seeing there has some auto-sharpening from the scanning software already applied.

I think what I'll do though is take this tranny to the darkroom* and check it with the grain focusing tool. That should tell me all that I need to know (and I'll report back once I get to it. Alas I'm swamped so it won't be for a week or so).



*I've got no other reason to ever have a tranny in a dark room, I assure you.

[Ted Harris]

The output you're seeing there has some auto-sharpening from the scanning software already applied.

If you are using auto sharpening that could also be part of the problem. I suspect that the errors are all in some combination of the scanner and your scanning workflow. Regardless of whether you are using Epson's software or Silverfast you should never just use the auto settings.

Time for a small bit of self promotion. Our next scanning and digital workflow workshop will be at Midwest Photo in Columbus in late January or early February. Kirk and I will be doing the workshop. There will also be one in late February or early March at Elevator in Toronto. Working on dates now. Send me a PM if you want to be on the mailing list

[Kirk Fry]

Seems to me the first stop on this fuzzy hunt would be to start at the beginning. Look at the developed film with a good optical magnifying device of some sort (Loupe, dissecting scope, microscope.) and figure out if it is the film that is fuzzy or the aftermath.

K

[Rob Champagne]

That's definitely something of an improvement, however like I said I tend to prefer to undersharpen rather than oversharpen and I want to figure out how much of the softness is from my camera technique and how much is scanner. The output you're seeing there has some auto-sharpening from the scanning software already applied.

I think what I'll do though is take this tranny to the darkroom* and check it with the grain focusing tool. That should tell me all that I need to know (and I'll report back once I get to it. Alas I'm swamped so it won't be for a week or so).

*I've got no other reason to ever have a tranny in a dark room, I assure you.

I'm not going to argue the points others have made but I would remind you that you have already said that you have observed better quality from higher resolution scans.
Ultimately you should do your own print tests using the different techniques given here and trust your own vision of what you actually see rather than a theory or non scientific test.

[Greg Lockrey]

I'm not going to argue the points others have made but I would remind you that you have already said that you have observed better quality from higher resolution scans.
Ultimately you should do your own print tests using the different techniques given here and trust your own vision of what you actually see rather than a theory or non scientific test.

I think that what they are saying is that the limit for resolution is met about half way with the 750V in terms of ppi. But I wonder if "throwing out" half the pixal potential because the lens can't resolve them anyway is a good thing too? I'll have to play with this a bit to see for myself. (What if I have that lens that is on the high end of the production statistical curve?)

I know from experiance and testing a step wedge of the 256 gray points what the limits are for my printers and paper combinations. Trying to go beyond laws of physics in this case is just a waste of ink. Getting the max resolution will save time by not needing to go over.

[walter23]

Just as a followup, I checked this out in the darkroom and under the grain focuser the rocks are sharper. I'm using a decent enlarger lens (schneider componon-S) and I can barely make out the transparency grain. A couple of other transparencies that I've scanned, e.g. this one, are really sharp but don't show quite as nice detail in the scans:



I guess I'm just hitting the limit from this kind of scanner. Might be able to adjust the height of the transparencies a bit to improve things.

It is, however, encouraging that I could see almost the same detail in the scans as I can see with the grain magnifier under my enlarger, even if the scans are a bit softer.