I think the betterscanning holders are very worth it. If you can't focus the stupid POS Epson, then what good is it to have blurry scans!? After all that, work, and the end result is some crap blurry scan. OK, so we've established the need to focus.
The betterscanning holder (I have the wet+dry ANR glass mounting station thing) works well for 4x5.
The problem, however, is that there are 10 plastic screws that you turn 1/4 of a turn each to raise the height by .1mm (or something like that). This process is a VERY good solution to the problem, as it works well. You start out at 0.0mm, with the thing on the platten, and scan a known sharp area of the negative while raising the platform by .2mm iteratively. As you can imagine, this takes f.o.r.e.v.e.r.
So, once you find your optimal height, you then have to start all the screws from 0.0 again and guess at the average best height because you may have turned some of the screws a bit more than 90 degrees per turn when scanning/checking/turning, and so the entire platform can be tilted a bit and the sharpness in the scan will be uneven and/or all the screws don't reach the platten and you're really only rocking back and forth on two or three of them. So, you pray to the gods of scanning and try to make everything exactly perfect, then at some point you say "good enough" and run with it. I used a MF negative to calibrate since the lenses are sharper, then I realized that 4x5 film is usually thicker, and even with tape, it can sag more towards the platten since it's bigger. So, luckily I'm lazy, so I said "good enough" again. Lots of that going on.
However, "good enough" is, in reality, very good. My scans look WAY better with the betterscanning holder than they did before with the stock holder. The difference is night and day and definitely worth $100 in piece of mind that yes, this scanner actually can get sharp output.
I just dry mount with tape. I tried using those cotton gloves, but then I get little pieces of cotton to dust spot (lintless gloves my a$$), so I'm just very careful and I use a combination of washed hands to grip by the edges like when loading holders, Scotch Magic tape, and a cuticle stick (like $2 for 15, they are invaluable for holding down edges and whatnot while mounting and fussing with edges of film. I should call them "scanning sticks" and sell them for $10 a pop)
Cuticle Pusher
I haven't seen the need to try wet mounting, to be honest. Any more work to get a 5% improvement in this laborious process and I'd shoot myself. The scans look quite good dry.
It drove me nuts to spend so much time mounting MF and 35mm -- and I complained so incessantly -- that my wife actually pushed me to buy the Nikon 9000 for MF before they stopped making them (she's prescient like that) so at least I would simmer down for the MF scanning. Double Win for the Betterscanning holder!!
Interestingly, as opposed to others, my optimal height is 1.8mm. Go figure. Here is my reference scan on MF: http://www.flickr.com/photos/urs0pol...n/photostream/
I wish they made one for 8x10 though... for 8x10, I bought a 8.5x11" piece of ANR glass from focalpoint, which I place on top of the 8x10 negative straight on the platten. Otherwise the heat of the scan makes that sucker curl like mad, and on a V700, you have to be very careful about taping to the platten because if you obstruct the film guide in any way, the V700 decides to make streaks through your scan. Grr 8x10.
But, for 4x5 and MF, it works great, but you've been warned: it's tedious.
I've said this before, but if Epson got their __ out of their ___ and made an autofocusing V700/750/Vwhatever for under (or about) $1000, I think they would sell a boatload of them.
my 2 cents
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Originally Posted by Ari
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