Originally Posted by
Keith S. Walklet
On my recent trip to California, I had an opportunity to compare my own fluid mount results against those of a proponent of dry scans with a diffusion filter, and I was surprised to discover the quality of his scans exceeded my own wet-mounted results.
His approach was to place the film in an IMACON holder on top of the EPSON wet mount tray, and then to place a pair of metal spacers on top of that (approximately 1/16 of an inch) and then a piece of diffuse Mylar on top of that. The results were very good, and much easier than wet mounting.
Still, we both thought that it might be a case where I had yet to truly optimize the height of the film on my scanner. So when I returned to Idaho, I tried a sandwich of plex.
The sandwich was placed directly on the scanner bed in this order, fluid, 1/8 plex, fluid, 1/16 plex, fluid, film, fluid, Mylar, diffuse Mylar. Lo and behold, the results proved better than the dry mounted method, though consuming more fluid.
The FILM HOLDER option was clicked to engage the higher resolution lens. I have yet to see if I can find a single piece of plex that equals the combination of the 1/8 and 1/16 to simplify matters.
But, for comparison, I've attached the two files, which, like the previous samples, represent a fingernail sized portion of a 4x5 transparency.
If the plex is degrading the scan, it sure doesn't show up here.
As for disc space, scanning at 6400 spi, consider that a 4x5 has to be scanned in two passes, each totaling about 2.5 gigs. Each of those is then downsized to 3200spi, and combined in PS to a single file, which is over a gig in size. To work on that file easily, I use the Layer Transfer Method.
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