[www.betterscanning.com] Film scanning mounts, any good? Your experience and advice??

[PenGun]

I think he meant that with Epson holders and supplied spacers you might or might not be at the 0.5mm sweet spot. If not, you're SOL, or have to use your DIY spacers. With BS holder you have more room to adjust and more precision, so you are sure to be able to reach the sweet spot.

Or perhaps I missed the point(s) as well

Depth of Field is my point. There is no way a betterscan holder will get me closer to focus. I had already found there was about 0.5 mm of sweet spot with my own investigations.

The point is that all the efforts to achieve perfectly flat film are not necessary. Many people including me get very sharp scans over the whole, negative in my case, with the regular holder. The reason this is possible is because the slight film curvature is within the scanners depth of field. It is possible that if you focused your scanner/holder you might find all the fooling around does not produce a better scan.

The Epson holders do not crop my negs. I'm not sure what you are talking about D. Bryant but that seems to be normal.

[feppe]

Depth of Field is my point. There is no way a betterscan holder will get me closer to focus. I had already found there was about 0.5 mm of sweet spot with my own investigations.

The point is that all the efforts to achieve perfectly flat film are not necessary. Many people including me get very sharp scans over the whole, negative in my case, with the regular holder. The reason this is possible is because the slight film curvature is within the scanners depth of field. It is possible that if you focused your scanner/holder you might find all the fooling around does not produce a better scan.

Again: if the Epson film holder doesn't put the film within the 0.5mm sweet spot you're SOL unless you want to fiddle with DIY spacers. If it does - and seems to be the case with you - there's probably not much benefit from the BS holder.

[PenGun]

Again: if the Epson film holder doesn't put the film within the 0.5mm sweet spot you're SOL unless you want to fiddle with DIY spacers. If it does - and seems to be the case with you - there's probably not much benefit from the BS holder.

No the stock spacers are not useful on mine. None at all is close but I had to shim a bit to get to where i am happy.

Indeed. Another point I did try to make. The Betterscan holders seem nice but the are not necessary for good scans.

This is a place where people buy lens boards. An opaque material with a hole in it. I have always been a hacker both software and hardware and that seems a bit ludicrous to me. I have several so I won't need to make any but still. I have built copy stands for my 35mm efforts way in the past. Registering masks is a bit of a black art but I got pretty good at it. All om my home made crap.

The function is what matters. Not how well it buffs your ego.

[feppe]

No the stock spacers are not useful on mine. None at all is close but I had to shim a bit to get to where i am happy.

Indeed. Another point I did try to make. The Betterscan holders seem nice but the are not necessary for good scans.

This is a place where people buy lens boards. An opaque material with a hole in it. I have always been a hacker both software and hardware and that seems a bit ludicrous to me. I have several so I won't need to make any but still. I have built copy stands for my 35mm efforts way in the past. Registering masks is a bit of a black art but I got pretty good at it. All om my home made crap.

The function is what matters. Not how well it buffs your ego.

And not everyone is a DIY type, not even here.

I don't have a BS holder and am not considering one at the moment. When I'm done doing scan tests with my V700 with the Epson holder I'll keep using it unless it can't reach optimal sharpness, at which point I'll see if there's a reasonably hassle-free DIY option.

No idea what the ego comment is about.

[PenGun]

And not everyone is a DIY type, not even here.

I don't have a BS holder and am not considering one at the moment. When I'm done doing scan tests with my V700 with the Epson holder I'll keep using it unless it can't reach optimal sharpness, at which point I'll see if there's a reasonably hassle-free DIY option.

No idea what the ego comment is about.

Photography especially the way we do it is DIY.

A spacer is not high tech. The focus of the holder/film combo is what matters. If you cannot achieve that with the Epson holder the betterscan holder will not achieve focus either.

What matters is the ... oh I give up.

[D. Bryant]

The point is that all the efforts to achieve perfectly flat film are not necessary.

I guess all these years spent using my glass negative carrier in my Saunders LPL enlarger have been a waste of time. Once again you've demonstrated that dialoging with you is a waste of time. I should have known this anyway since you don't have the guts to use your real name.

Don Bryant

[rdenney]

What matters is the ... oh I give up.

What matters is having time to actually do something, rather than spending all one's time making stuff. The Better Scanning holders make convenient the possibly necessary adjustments required to focus the negative in an Epson flatbed scanner.

I rather expect some 4x5 films to hang more than half a millimeter when held horizontally, though actually if they do hang half a millimeter the height of the holder will have to be precise to nearest tiny fraction of a millimeter to fit within the depth of field Ben measured.

And some people want to see the outline of the film holder in their scan, for reasons important to them (but maybe not to you).

There are many things people buy to make their lives easier, even though gritty backwoods self-sufficient types such as yourself might scoff at them.

Rick "thinking the desire to communicate is sometimes stronger than the desire to be communicated with" Denney

[Jon Shiu]

Where did this .5mm figure come from? Looking at the graph, it appears that the range is more like 2mm.

Jon

[Nathan Potter]

Jon, I think the DOF is sort of what one finds acceptable - sort of like choosing an acceptable circle of confusion when evaluating a scene. I think I would be happy with anything within the 12 um range on my plot.

The amount of sag with an Epson holder is certainly an issue. I have not found any measurements of this. Looking at my Epson holder and a 4X5 chrome I'd suspect the sag at more than 0.5 mm. but I guess I'll try to measure that when I have a chance - but image making comes first.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[sanking]

Jon, I think the DOF is sort of what one finds acceptable - sort of like choosing an acceptable circle of confusion when evaluating a scene. I think I would be happy with anything within the 12 um range on my plot.

The amount of sag with an Epson holder is certainly an issue. I have not found any measurements of this. Looking at my Epson holder and a 4X5 chrome I'd suspect the sag at more than 0.5 mm. but I guess I'll try to measure that when I have a chance - but image making comes first.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

Nate,

Do you run your test with the highest resolution lens or with the other one. In my tests I found that DOF was significantly less with the "super high resolution" lens than the "high resolution" lens.

Sandy