Epson v700 and 5x7 film -- are people making their own custom holders?

[horanginy]

Hello everyone.

I'm a 4x5 and 5x7 shooter. I recently purchased an Epson v700, and lately I've been trying to settle into a 5x7 scanning workflow.

I'd like to solve dry mounting first before moving on and tackling wet mounting. What I've been doing so far is taping my negatives to an 8x10 piece of anti-newton ring glass, and laying that glass across the "short" side of the scanning bed, which in effect raises the ANR glass keeps the negative off the scanning glass, minimizing the chance of newton rings. (So far, so good.) I'm continuing to experiment with differing heights of the glass by building up pieces of rubber tape on the corners of the ANR glass, and scanning with the "Film (with Film Holder)" option in Epson Scan. Surprisingly I don't seem to be encountering any major differences in sharpness so far in my limited testing. The depth of focus of the scanner is actually greater than I had imagined it would be, at least from the reviews I had read before actually buying and using the scanner myself.

I figure that eventually I'll arrive at a decent workflow. The only thing that really bothers me about the workflow so far is the glass. I can't help but think that I'm losing some sharpness simply by introducing another piece of glass. And no matter how careful I am, dusting consumes a much bigger amount of my post-scanning time than I would like.

I'm wondering if anyone out there has devised a good glassless workflow for scanning 5x7 negatives on the v700 (or v750, for that matter). Film flatness would be an issue, but having yet ventured down this road, I wonder if there is a viable solution involving double mat board or even magnets or something like that.

John

[Walter Calahan]

I simply place the film emulsion up with a piece of anti-newton ring glass on top. No need for a holder.

http://fpointinc.com/glass.htm

[horanginy]

I simply place the film emulsion up with a piece of anti-newton ring glass on top. No need for a holder.

http://fpointinc.com/glass.htm

I am using glass from Focal Point. When I lay the glass flat on the scanner bed I get newton rings galore. The only success I've had removing the newton rings was to raise the ANR glass (with taped negative underneath) above the scanner glass so that no two pieces of glass were flush in contact with each other.

[sanking]

I'm wondering if anyone out there has devised a good glassless workflow for scanning 5x7 negatives on the v700 (or v750, for that matter). Film flatness would be an issue, but having yet ventured down this road, I wonder if there is a viable solution involving double mat board or even magnets or something like that.

John

Have you looked into a fluid mount station. I have used the one by betterscanning and it works great. http://www.betterscanning.com/scanning/mainintro.html

Sandy

[sparq]

I am another happy customer of betterscanning.com. Highly recommended. Doug also got me an 8x10 ANR glass, so I can do a quick preview scan of two 5x7 negs at a time directly from the bed.

[horanginy]

Sandy,

I haven't tried fluid mounting yet, although I know that many people swear by it.

What I'm trying to do here is explore whether or not there is a suitable glassless dry mounting method. If only Epson had included a 5x7 holder stock with the scanner, and the film holders were a *little* bit higher in quality!

[sanking]

Sandy,

I haven't tried fluid mounting yet, although I know that many people swear by it.

What I'm trying to do here is explore whether or not there is a suitable glassless dry mounting method. If only Epson had included a 5x7 holder stock with the scanner, and the film holders were a *little* bit higher in quality!

Once you find the point of best focus you could cut a piece of black plastic of the right thickness to fit over the bed, and a 5X7 frame in the plastic. You tape the 5X7 film, emulsion side down, to the top of the frame. Tape the film down at one end, and then at the other end, pulling it tight as you apply the tape. This will preven sag.

But fluid mounting, if done right, will still result in a better scan than the above method.

Sandy King

[Joanna Carter]

Having just received my Better Scanning holder from Doug (many thanks Doug), I can strongly recommend it. But you don't have to use wet mounting to get appreciable results.

From my experience with the V700, there is not that much tolerance on the scanning height, although you can get a "reasonable" quality at most heights, as long as you don't want that great an enlargement.

However, having the facility of adjustable height on the Better Scanning holder has allowed me to find the optimum height which, on my scanner, turns out to be around 3.1mm; this is calculated by taking the base height of the BS holder (1.5mm) plus 2 complete turns of the adjusters.

Having gone through the process, I can say that there really is a discernable difference in sharpness over a height difference of 0.4mm.

As to scanning 5x7, of course all you have to do is to cut a mask to fit; for dry mounting, it couldn't be simpler.

[nathantw]

I know you don't want to move to wet mounting your slides or negatives, but I can tell you there's a HUGE difference between dry mount scanning and wet mount scanning on the V700/V750. I have a V750 and I scanned a bunch of 6x6 negs without wet mounting them (3.5mm on the negative frame or all facing the "+"). I then did my first wet mount and I haven't done any "real" scanning without wet mounting.

The wet mount that came with the V750 is the perfect height for the scanner focus. Once it's done you just need to do the usual Photoshop sharpening and you're all set. I've made a 30"x30" photo using this scanner, so large prints are possible. I understand you said you wanted to use 5x7 negatives so a wet mount unit would be perfect.

One thing I did try was to put a negative on the scanner glass, put another piece of glass on top of that just to see what happened. It came out pretty reasonable provided you use the "correct" lens (since the unit has two).

Good luck!

Nathan

[ophelia42]

I am new to scanning negatives on the v700. Why can't I just place the negative directly on the scanner glass? Why is a holder needed?