Epson V750 and Imacon 848

[Mark_Se]

I normaly scan my 4x5 negatives with an Epson V750 and I have to say that i was always quite happy with it. Last week I did a job for a company, so I thought- okay lets make some professional scans. So I took my negatives to a local lab, they use a Imacon 848. I payed about 15€ for a 200mb scan.
I have to say that there isn`t that much difference between the imacon and the v750 as i expected. Is that possible, or is it just a bad scan operator?
With medium format the imacon is a lot better then the v750.

[Ken Lee]

It's hard to gague the difference based on your sample, but the shadow on the right side of the image is clearly smoother on the Imacon scanner. If you give us some numbers by which to judge, that will make it easier.

What are we looking at ? How large ? Has it been sharpened ? etc.

If we measure scanners by cost per pixel, the Epson scanners certainly deliver a good value. Epson is part of a large company with lots of money to invest in R&D, a huge existing infrastucture, channels for marketing and distribution, etc. For them to make a line of pretty good and affordable scanners is probably rather easy.

It's when we want to get all the data from our large film, that the cost curve starts to steepen sharply. Many of the small companies that once made such scanners, are no longer in business. What remains, is comparatively expensive to acquire.

When professional photographers shot Medium Format, there was enough of a market for good MF scanners. Now, only Nikon is still in that business.

One way to overcome the steepness of that cost curve, is to use larger film. That's one of the reasons that we use large format in the first place. To squeeze the last 10% out of a 4x5 image costs a lot of money - but with 5x7, you can use the same consumer-grade Epson, but automatically get a 33% increase in... "image quality".

[Ron Marshall]

Pro flatbed scanners (Creo etc.) or drumscanners will give better results than the Imacons.

I had test scans made from all three, and I found that the Imacon scan did not have much better resolution than my Epson 4990.

[venchka]

If you carry that thinking to 8x10, do you have to return some excess "image quality"?

I continue to be amazed by the quality I get from my ancient 6x6 negatives created with ancient lenses, scanned on an ancient Epson scanner and printed on an HP All-in-One printer. Admitedly, I am making small prints. They certainly look good to my novice eyeballs.

Footnote:
$80 Mamiya C3 & Agfa ISS L film, circa 1969.
$150 1680 scanner
HP Officejet 7310 printer

[Ken Lee]

"If you carry that thinking to 8x10, do you have to return some excess "image quality"?"

Yes indeed !

As we know, there is some kind of sweet spot for each of us, where we find the convergence of image size, image quality, equipment portability, usability, and... affordability.

Each one of those factors is personal. What you call affordable, may be out of my reach. What I call portable, another person may consider too heavy or large. Some might consider that any camera which requires a tripod, is unusable. To me, any camera that doesn't, is hardly worth using.

What I call a large print, others may consider too small, and what some call high quality, I may deem unacceptable.

[gregstidham]

Mark,
I did the same test with an Epson V750, Imacon 848, and my old Sprintscan 45.

My results were the same as you have found. Even the old Sprintscan held it's own when sent out to the printer. Of course, not as grand as the Epson or the Imacon, but quite acceptable in my opinion once hung on the wall.

I've decided that unless I find some money to buy a Creo or similar scanner, I'll stick with the Epson V750 for the best bang for buck. I've also decided to spend more time thinking about what's in my photograph and less about the scan because I found that I was just splitting hairs when deciding what scanner to use.