Share your ultimate v700 B&W 4x5 workflow!

[Bill Burk]

I agree with Paul that scanning software tends to be less than great. But I will put in a good word for VueScan. Ed Hamrick will email you right away when you have a question or a problem. It works by numbers you can save and keep for reference later. Consistency. I don't like having to learn a new GUI everytime I want to make a scan.

Darin, I mention Stephen Johnson because he is a renowned digital photography instructor within 15 minutes of you. I don't say that I'm a scanning expert, but I'm 15 minutes from you, we could work blind-leading-the-blind style.

[timparkin]

I agree with Paul that scanning software tends to be less than great. But I will put in a good word for VueScan. Ed Hamrick will email you right away when you have a question or a problem. It works by numbers you can save and keep for reference later. Consistency. I don't like having to learn a new GUI everytime I want to make a scan.

Darin, I mention Stephen Johnson because he is a renowned digital photography instructor within 15 minutes of you. I don't say that I'm a scanning expert, but I'm 15 minutes from you, we could work blind-leading-the-blind style.

I work with a drum scanner and wanted to research how to get the best possible result from my v750. After a great deal of effort the following was the conclusion

I use the betterscanning holder and kami fluid, mounting the film to the underside of the glass. I remove all of the screws apart from one on each corner to ease focus checking. You only need an accuracy of 1mm or possibly 0.5mm if you want to be really fussy.

1) Scan at either 4800dpi or 6400dpi (i use the epson software disabling all colour management, sharpening, dust removal etc) - this doesn't make sense at first as maximum resolution of scanner is probably only 2200-2600dpi but scanning at 2400 dpi only gives about 2000dpi results. Oversampling and downsizing increases resolution. It also increases the frequency of digital noise which means you can apply a noise reduction algorithm at twice maximum resolution frequency without reducing detail

2) Potentially use the green channel as it's cleaner - the advantages here are tenuous and you might be better off scanning in monochrome to save disk/memory space.

3) downsize before rotating as you can get aliasing patterns when rotating small angles - even better, don't rotate - get it right on the platen. I lost a large portion of my life discovering tartan patterns caused by <1 degree rotations on noisy images (you can see the results yourself, fill a photoshop file with noise and rotate by half a degree).

4) Use Imagenomic's Noiseware for noise reduction - stunning software that allows you to tweak the reduction at different spatial frequencies. ignore the 'protect detail', contrast and sharpening options.

5) Photokit sharpener to apply 'medium edge' sharpen

Finally downsize to 2500dpi

Tim

[Brian Ellis]

I make sure the scanner glass is clean, clean the negative (b&w only) as well as I can, put the negative in the film holder (Umax), put the film holder on the glass, close the cover, open the software (Epson), set the black and white points, do a prescan mostly just to check alignment, then do the final scan at 2200 ppi. There isn't a whole lot to it when you view scanning as nothing more than a necessary step to getting the photograph into the computer where the real work is done. I do no sharpening in the scanner, I save that for PKSharpen after editing in Photoshop.

I used Vuescan and Silverfast for many years. Both are excellent programs. But I now just use the simple Epson software because I decided that the added time and complexity involved with those two programs wasn't worth it for me. Others of course might differ, especially people who do color or who do more editing in the scanner than I do. I also should mention that I've tried scanning at much higher ppi and never found a benefit that was observable in the scan or the print. If others think it's beneficial that's fine for them.

I took the late Ted Harris' scanning workshop in Columbus years ago. It was very useful but sadly no longer available. I also spent a lot of time years ago with Wayne Fulton's book "A Few Scanning Tips." You might find it and other information on his web site very useful, I know I did.

[timparkin]

Here's a comparison of 2400dpi, 4800dpi and a drum scanner..



The fine detail in the roof on the left and the general smoothness of the sky show the differences the most.

Tim

[sanking]

Tim,

Thanks for the comparison. Shows that the Epson V700 is not as bad a scanner as some people claim.

What aperture did you use for the Howtek 4000 dpi scan?

Also, did you do any noise reduction with any of the scans. Seems odd that you are getting more grain with the Epson V700 than the Howtek. My own comparisons show the opposite.

Sandy

[timparkin]

Tim,

Thanks for the comparison. Shows that the Epson V700 is not as bad a scanner as some people claim.

What aperture did you use for the Howtek 4000 dpi scan?

Also, did you do any noise reduction with any of the scans. Seems odd that you are getting more grain with the Epson V700 than the Howtek. My own comparisons show the opposite.

Sandy

Hi Sandy,

Yes I've done a serious amount of sharpening on the Epson one to pick up the sharpness (Epson scans come in with very little contrast but quite a lot of resolution). I used a smart sharpen in gaussian mode (almost 500 at 1px).

I used noise reduction on the drum scan and the 4800 dpi scan as I could do so without destroying any detail - I couldn't reduce the noise on the 2400 without destroying info..

I've gone back and made two psds. One with the raw scans (inverted and black/white pointed) and one with the epson layers sharpened.

http://static.timparkin.co.uk/static...arison-all.zip

Tim

p.s. The epson scans were wet mounted which makes a reasonable difference to noise

[Darin Boville]

I've gone back and made two psds. One with the raw scans (inverted and black/white pointed) and one with the epson layers sharpened.

Hey Tim,

I'm not sure I understand what the comparisons are showing me. Is one a unadjusted Howtek scan and the other an unsharpened Epson? (That's what it looks like but it does't seem to match what you say in the text.

--Darin

[Edit" Nevermind! I just saw that each file has four layers with different examples in each.]

[Darin Boville]

Tim,

Your post with the sample files has to be one of the most useful I've come across. Having all of the raw files and comparison/sharpened files in such an easily accessed and compared form makes all the difference. Simply outstanding. Thanks.

--Darin

[Frank Petronio]

Thanks Tim, good info

[rustyair]

Wow Thanks Tim, The sharpened v700 file looks amazing comparing to Howtek drum scan file. Sample file is awesome too!

One question to Tim, Does that mean v700 scanned file could be printed as big as the howtek file?