Epson v700 film holder problem

[Anupam]

I just received a v700 scanner today and am really struggling with the holders. I know people suggest the betterscanning.com ones but I'll need to save up a bit before I can buy them. But the Epson holders can't possibly be this crap, so I might be doing something wrong. I'm trying to scan 6x7 and the holder takes a lot of cajoling just to snap shut and when it does the film visibly buckles a bit. I have never seen this much buckling in non-glass holders before.

Any opinions from Epson owners on these holders would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Anupam

[Kuzano]

the medium format holders that come with the epson scanners are flimsy, hard to position film, hard to close.....in a word (2 words) Pure Krap!!!

[D. Bryant]

I just received a v700 scanner today and am really struggling with the holders. I know people suggest the betterscanning.com ones but I'll need to save up a bit before I can buy them. But the Epson holders can't possibly be this crap, so I might be doing something wrong. I'm trying to scan 6x7 and the holder takes a lot of cajoling just to snap shut and when it does the film visibly buckles a bit. I have never seen this much buckling in non-glass holders before.

Any opinions from Epson owners on these holders would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Anupam

http://betterscanning.com/

You won't regret it.

Don Bryant

[kilimanjaro1996]

I was in the same boat, got V700 yesterday and played with it for half a day. Most of my old films are perfectly flat, and they work quite well with the holder. And it is surprisingly easy to get sharp focus without much adjustment in Epson Scan. But my latest Velvia 100F are really curly and it is next to impossible to get them onto the holder. So around mid-night I decided to give myself a break and ordered Doug's betterscanning holder and ANR inserts.

On the other hand, this V700 is excellent for the the price. I have been using my friend's Microtek M1 Pro for the last three weeks, and the M1 is much louder, much slower, and auto focus is a bit of hit and miss. M1 Pro can be a touch better in details when it is in focus, but it is much faster to get good results from the Epson V700 without too many tweaks. Besides I was using the Epson Scan instead of SilverFast Ai for the M1, so more juices can be squeezed out of the V700. I really look forward to scanning my medium format stock, as well as the upcoming 4x5 since I'm waiting for a Graflex Crown Graphic in the mail.

[Paul O]

Pay a visit to the Betterscanning website - shell out the cash (quite reasonable when you see the quality of the product), cut back on food for a week or two and realise the full potential of the V series scanners

[Joanna Carter]

Anupam, there is only one answer to your problem : yes the Espon MF holders a totally useless, the only way I could get anything like a flat neg was to remove the "clippy bits" from the holder so that it just lay on the film rather than clicking into place.

In the end, like many others, I opted for Doug's excellent holder system and have not regretted it, worth every penny.

[Paul H]

You can get it to work, but it does feel a little like you are going to break things!

Try with some nice flat film first, to get the "feeling" of how it snaps together. If your film is not lying perfectly in the channel it will cause the film to bow when you try and snap it shut. Work from the hinge end, then the middle clips, then the end ones. The ones in the middle feel especially flimsy.

If your film is curly, you can go to a framing shop and get some anti-reflective glass cut that you can lay in the channel In this case, you remove the fold-down clamp, and just lay the AR glass on top of the negs. I do this when I want to scan Efke 100 straight away )rather than leaving it a few days under heavy books to flatten out!). If it is really curly, tape one end to the AR glass then lay the whole lot down into the channel on the Epson film holders.

[sparq]

The epson holders are crap, some films won't fit into the channels at all.
Get the betterscanning.com holder, I am very happy with it.

[Songyun]

guys, how about 8X10? since the betterscanning holder doesn't cover 8X10

[Kirk Gittings]

Another vote for the Betterscanning holder in general on the 700/750. For single frames of 6x9 I also use the earlier holder from the 4990 masked off to hold three individual frames and a holder from a Canon 9950F. Many things can be adapted as long as you can get the film level, the calibration indentation and the film height where it needs to be.