wet mounting on flat bed scanners

[hbjornson]

Well, I've gone and bought a cezanne ft s5500 scanner. Dragged it 700 miles thru snow and sleet, over the appalachian mountains and I hope it was worth it!
I want to make the best sharpest, perhaps not sharpened, scans i can of 4"x5" color negs. This is not covered in the manual. I think i should wet mount but do not know how and whether it is safe on my scanner? Can anyone advise?
I want to make sure my scanner is calibrated for color negs, do I need a transparency test chart?
How can I focus the lens and how do I prevent sharpening and do I want to prevent sharpening and instead do later in photoshop?
Should i make and use a black mask around my negs to reduce light pollution? I print entire neg including border.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Howard

[jetcode]

I recommend scanning for while without fluid to get the hang of how your scanner works. The software is not too difficult to navigate. Examine the controls. The buttons will bring up dialog boxes that will give you access to the features you are looking for.

[hbjornson]

I am willing to try some dry scans but have found on drums that wet scanning was superior. I could really use help with the questions I posed, so I can make a comparison. However if you think that dry scanning will give equal results please enlighten me.

[jetcode]

I am willing to try some dry scans but have found on drums that wet scanning was superior. I could really use help with the questions I posed, so I can make a comparison. However if you think that dry scanning will give equal results please enlighten me.

I have the same scanner you do - spend some time learning the software, that's all I'm saying - I have some great scans without fluid - once you have figured out how to turn sharpening off (in the fine adjustment dialog) and know how to select for a color negative (in the main scan panel) then you can get into maximizing a scan, that's all I'm suggesting - I have never used fluids with my scans though I might at some point.

Ted is likely your best source and he is available as a consultant. I hired him to come up to speed on my scanner. By the way you got a great deal on your scanner. Mine was $5900 shipped to my doorstep.

[Peter J. De Smidt]

I have the earlier non-elite Cezanne. I haven't had a chance to try wet-mounting on it yet, but I will soon. I do have experience wet-mounting on a different flatbed, a Canon 9950f. My experience was that wet-mounting held the negative perfectly flat, grainy film scanned better, and the highlights were slightly brighter. IMO the biggest gain was from film flatness, as most consumer scanners really don't hold the film flat.

In the Cezanne case, the negative gets sandwhiched between two pieces of glass or resin, both of which have an anti-Newton texture. Hence the negative is held perfectly flat without the need for wet-mounting.

It should be easy to wet-mount on a Cezanne. Take the removable tray to a clean work area. (Perhaps set it on top of a light table with a grid to help with film alignmnet.) Tape one edge of a sheet of scanning Mylar down on the glass. (I use Kami tape, but I expect blue painter's tape would probably work too. Some fluids will eat at the adhesive of some tapes. If in doubt, perform and easy test.) Put down some fluid, either Kami, Prazio or something similar. Lay down the negative. Put more fluid on top of negative and lay the scanning sheet down. If there are bubbles, and there will be bubbles, place a spare piece of mylar on top of everything, and use your finger, a squeegee, or a roller to push the bubbles out. You can tape all of the edges of the mylar down, depending on how long you plan to leave the film emersed, and how evaporative the fluid is.

Don't get any fluid inside your scanner, and don't light yourself on fire. (Some scanning fluids are flammable). Also, be careful not to scratch your film.

Wet mounting really isn't very hard, but it does take some practice. You can practice with a throwaway negative on any old piece of glass.

I'm going to run some tests this week. What I expect is that wet-mounting won't be worth the trouble except with grainy 35mm and perhaps 120mm film, but only testing will tell for sure.

I expect that the anti-newton glass/plastic Screen uses does impact sharpness and detail somewhat. Screen seems to agree, as they say in one of their manuals that one should use a clear glass tray, as opposed to the standard anti-Newton tray, when using the highest resolution line copy mode. My guess is that the texture of the regular holder limits resolution somewhat.

Tomorrow I'm building a carrier that'll allow me to use a clear optical glass mounting sheet. I plan to try mounting negatives to the bottom of this glass, using both dry and wet methods. I'll see if there's any difference. I'll also test whether using light white plexiglass as a diffusor has any effect.

I'm hoping that there really isn't any benefit, as putting a negative in a anti-Newton holder is so much more convenient.

[Ted Harris]

Howard, there is no reason to wet mount beyond removing nasty scratches for most images. For a few images you will gain a bit of grain reduction by wet mounting but that is only in a small umber of cases. I seldom wet mount. I DO work very carefully in how I configure the sharpening options which are very powerful and infinitely adjustable.

The lens is autofocus. If you are turning sharpening off you are losing some of the main benefits of the scanner.

Send me a PM or email for more info.

[sanking]

I'm hoping that there really isn't any benefit, as putting a negative in a anti-Newton holder is so much more convenient.

I don't believe you will find much benefit in fluid mounting with a professional flatbed scanner unless you plan to enlarge more than about 8X. That would be a print size of 32" X 40" with a 4X5 negative. High end flatbed scanners have a focusing system, and the material to be scanned is held flat between two pieces of anti-newton glass.The anti-newton glass diffuses the light slightly which softens the grain without a loss of sharpness. The main thing is to disable any default sharpening since this can increase grain size with some films.

Sandy King

[sanking]

The lens is autofocus. If you are turning sharpening off you are losing some of the main benefits of the scanner.

Ted,

I don't understand this. Does the scanner not run the auto-focus in the pre-scan? Why would turning the sharpening off after the pre-scan have any impact on the point of focus? I certainly have not seen any difference in focus in using default sharpening and turning it off with the EverSmart Pro.

Sandy King

[Ted Harris]

Sandy, what I meant was that if you didn't use at least the default sharpening you would be losing a lot of the potential of the scanner ... or any high end scanner for that matter. Unlike working with consumer scanners, you get your best images by doing most of the sharpening in the scanner.