I'm mostly happy with my M1, but occasionally the film will bow in the glass-free holder, making for a less than sharp scan. Sadly, the easiest way to tell if this has happened is when the dust is out of focus. Nice sharp dust is a nice sharp scan. Many a time I've been looking over the 50% image and thought "wow, almost no dust!" until I realize that the little white out of focus blobs mean another focusing problem.
Anyway, I ponied up the $160 for the Aztek generic flatbed wet mount starter kit, and re-scanned a negative that I'm pretty sure bowed in the scanner.
This may be a best case vs. worst case test, but I think I'll probably stick with the wet mounting kit for all my 4x5 from now on. I don't shoot but a score or so sheets each month on average, so the extra work is probably worth it.
The kit comes with 9x11" mylar, designed for the full glass platen, but since I'm using the slide-in glass holder, with an 8x10 piece of glass, I'm just going to cut the sheets into 5.5x9 and have twice as many.
Drew
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