Soft scans with Epson V750?

[Mike Delaney]

Soft scans from Epson V750?

I’ve just been reading Jack Flesher’s account of his first impressions of the Epson V750 compared to the 4990 (soft scan but better dmax). As I was just about to buy a 750 this has made me wonder whether I might not be better off with a 4990 after all.
I shoot colour slides, more 6x9 than 4x5 until now.
Has anyone else had the same or different experiences to Jack? I’d be most appreciative of any help. In addition, as I haven’t got any software, do you think it’s worth getting a package which includes Silverfast Ai and Monaco color or not (e.g V750 rather than V700)?
Thanks,
Mike

[Walter Calahan]

I own a V750 using Silverfast. My scans aren't soft.

Did Jack Flesher turn off all unsharp masking? All scanners add a little softness to the original image. My Nikon 8000 does. So I always use a "slight" amount of unsharp mask when doing any scan.

Mostly I'm scanning 8x10 color negs. The scans I'm making with the V750 is far superior to the old Epson Expression 1680 I use to use. Not a fair comparison with the 4990.

I don't think you'll be unhappy with either the 4990 or V750. As with any tool, you'll be the best judge of what is good or not. How you use it may be different than Jack or me.

[Jack Flesher]

To be clear, when I compared them 1) I did turn all sharpening off and 2) it was only a single sample of the V750. It is certainly possible there is some sample variation and a good 4990 will be sharper than a poor V750 or vice-versa.

The point of my commnet was that folks should check them out for themselves before they buy and if you already own 4990, not to expect significant gains from the V750.

Cheers,

[squiress]

I have the 700 and scan 120, 4x5 and 8x10. I note no softness in the scans and I normally have unsharp off. I have not compared to 4990, but am very pleased with this scanner. I also am not dissappointed with the bundled software given that I do little besides crop to my photos.

Stew

[Ted Harris]

See my earlier posts on the tests of the V700 that we did (the results should apply to the V750 as well). A full review of the V700 is in the current issue of View Camera which is on the newstands now. To summarize:

1) The refinements in the V Series over the 4990 are lost on the LF user since you need to use the highest resolution setting to take advantage of the second lens system; doing so gives you huge file sizes, larger than most computer systems can handle. Even so the resolution is only marginally better than that of the 4990.

2) Our tests showed that the V700 resolution, when set at the 3200 dpi setting, was slightly worse than that of the the 4990. The results obtained here and in 1 above were observed measurements from an AIG T20 Test Target, one of the industry standards used by scanner manufacturers.

3) The Dmax of the V700 was exactly the same as that of the 4990 when measured from a Stouffer Stepwedge. It is possible that, because of the antireflection coatings on the CCD and mirrors, the Dmax of the V750 is slightly better, but it will not be a marked improvement.

4) None of the above implies soft scans, that is, the scanners perform in the same general range as the others in their class, but they are not markedly superior.

Our overall conclusion, buy a 4990 and save a few hundred dollars.

[Mike Delaney]

Many thanks Walter, Jack, Stew and Ted for taking the time to answer and for the useful points, they are most appreciated!

[squiress]

1) The refinements in the V Series over the 4990 are lost on the LF user since you need to use the highest resolution setting to take advantage of the second lens system; doing so gives you huge file sizes, larger than most computer systems can handle. Even so the resolution is only marginally better than that of the 4990.

Our overall conclusion, buy a 4990 and save a few hundred dollars.

Good thing I still have lots of MF stuff to scan and ALL of the old 35mm in boxes and boxes. :D

Also, I got my V700 for $476 shipped. Similar pricing for 4990 is around $445 at places I checked. Hundreds difference may be list pricing, but street may not be so much.

Stew

[Leonard Metcalf]

I understand that getting the right height of the neg/trannie carrier is important in reducing softness. Put the tabs to the highest position and check again.

[Ed Richards]

If you are doing black and white 4x5 and using Vuescan, you can scan at the highest resolution and have Vuescan downsample the files before writing them to disk. While I have not tried with a 700, I have done it with a 9950 scanning color at 4800 DPI, which gives about the same size file as black and white would at 6400. This lets me do the scan on a computer with WinXP and only 1 gig memory.

[Charles Hohenstein]

Our overall conclusion, buy a 4990 and save a few hundred dollars.

Would that also be true for the photographer who shoots in more than one format and needs to scan 120 and 135?

[Jack Flesher]

Would that also be true for the photographer who shoots in more than one format and needs to scan 120 and 135?

A few more comments, then I'll leave the thread alone...

1) As Ted clearly pointed out, these scanners are in the same general class -- IOW neither is significantly superior or inferior to the other in any application.

2) The comments I made earlier (and without putting words in Ted's mouth, I think he was attempting pretty much the same thing in his review) were simply to try and quantify verbally the relatively minor, but still noticeable, differences I (we) saw between the machines.

3) To clarify one last time: If you scan 4x5 there appears to be a slight resolution edge in favor of the 4990 in the 1600 to 3200 DPI range. However if you scan 35mm and 120, the V700's get a similar slight resolution edge over the 4990 at over 3200 DPI in those applications (presumably from the second lens).

4) If you are contemplating a new purchase, a NEW 4990 Pro (with Silverfast Ai) costs about the same as the non-Pro V700. Alternatively you can pay $300 more and get the Pro version V750 with Silverfast Ai. However this option also puts you within a few hundred bucks of the Microtek 1800f price territory, so you may want to reconsider just how far you want to go.

5) Given the above, I will reiterate/clarify my original comment: If you already own a 4990, I think one is wasting money on a V700/750 upgrade as there simply is not enough difference to bother with -- My opinion only... If you are contemplating a new purchase, you should compare sample scans from each so you know exactly what you are paying for before you plunk down your cash.

Hope this helps,

[Ted Harris]

Totally agree with Jack, in fact my conversations with Epson folk when I was gathering information and running tests for the review indicated that they really were not thinking too hard about LF photographers when they designed the machine. My tests of the V700 showed pretty much the same results (to my surprise).

As for price differentials, prices I have seen for the V750 pro package are ~ 750 and the 1800f is 900 (including shipping) from Midwest. BTW, as I mentioned in another thread yesterday, according to my Microtek contacts there are ~ 150 1800f machines left in the US supply line so don't wait a lot longer if you want one.

[Ed Richards]

Ted,

What happened when you did scan 4x5 at 6400? Is there a real gain in resolution? If you use black and white and use Vuescan, it will downsample the scan to a usable size, even on a 1 gig machine.

[Ted Harris]

Ed,

Scanning at 6400 did give a real gain but slight. The resolution was 2800 onone axis and 2400 on the other. I am not a fan of Vuescan form most applications but this may be one place to use it although I am not convinced that you will gain enough to make it worthwhile. Generally, you gt the best results from scanning black and white by scanning in RGB and then later throwing away two of the channels. This approach, of course,leaves you starting with the massive files sizes we have been discussing. I also question how Vuescan is doing the downsampling, if it is doing it in such a way that the information gained is, in turn lost. If, OTOH, it does force the machine to use the better optics it may be worthdoing just for that.

We didn't do any testing using Vuescan, just Epson software and Silverfast.

[Ed Richards]

Ted,

If you have not worked with Vuescan recently, it has been signficantly improved over early versions. Whether you get better results with RGB depends on what your software is doing. The data out of the scanner should not vary, all Vuescan does is discard two channel swithout bothering to save them, thus not balloning up the file.

Vuescan does simple averaging and down samples in even multiples of two, thus a matrix of four pixels at 4800 becomes 1 downsampled to 2400. This gives you the same effect on reducing noise as a multiple scan. You can do the same with silverfast by downsampling in PS, but you cannot load the files to do it because they are too big to load in many cases. With black and white, I can just handle a full 4800 dpi scan at 16 bits in my 1 gig machine. I pick Vuescan or Silverfast depending on the image. Some work better in one than the other. I then use a macro in PS to down sample the files. I have to use Vuescan to down sample when I do color - the files are way too large othewise. (Unfortunately, when I had the scanner test slide I had software problems and could not down sample, so I had to just scan at 2400.)

I do not want to buy a 700 just to try this, but it would use the second lense system, which seems critical to really getting any better performance. I am assuming that the primary lens system is the same as 4990. If there is a tinker out there with a 700, give it a try.

[Remigius]

If you scan a lot of 120, it may be worthwile to buy a V700 instead of the 4990 to get the (imho) better mf film holder (2 strips of 6x12 instead of 3 strips of 6x12).

[Ted Harris]

Ed,

I have used recent versions of Vuescan and still recommend it for quick scans to many but it just doesn't have the flexibility of Silverfast Ai. The process you ae outlining will indeed get your file down to a managable size but you also lose some of the advantage of looking at the results of each channel and, as some do some of the time, even blending them for a quadtone print. There is no doubt that Vuescan is good solid softwrae but it just isn't the same as Silverfast ... and not everybody needs Silverfst nor does naybody need it for all images.

As for buying a V700 just to use the better optics with Vuescan ..... if you don't have an immediate need, if you can wait 2 to 3 months you may see something interesting from Microtek.

[Michael Heald]

Hello! What kind of things? Any rumors?

Mike

[Ed Richards]

Thanks Ted,

While I would like to fool with a 700, I do not want to enough to buy one.:-) I have a working routine with 9950 that gives me good results, using both Vuescan and Silverfast - for difficult negatives I like to work with the raw scanner data and Vuescan gives you more ability to really get to the data.

After getting some excellent drum scans from Danny Burke, and doing comparison PRINTS, as opposed to pixel peeping, I decided for my images and the way I print them, that a little better resolution makes the image easier to photoshop, but the end results were about the same for 18 x 24 prints. At that point I quit worrying as much about getting more data out of the negative. I mostly try to get a reasonable density range so I do not need the better DMax of a drum scanner, and I have spent a lot of time figuring out sharpening for black and white.

OTOH, if money did not matter I would have Danny scan all of my negatives because having them be easier to work with is worth something, so I would also be interested in better flatbed.

[Ted Harris]

Ed,

The wold o scanners is one with a huge gap in price and quality. There are minor variations in performance among the various scanners in the under $1000 range. There is a reasonable increase (but still relatively small) when you step up to the Microtek 2500f which approaches $3000 in porice and is not available in the US at the moment. The next jumptakes you up to over $10,000 and this is where the drum scanners and high end flatbeds live ... all with dramatically different performance than the lower priced spreads. Point being, save your money unless it looks like you are doing enough scanning to justify one of the high end machines ... you can easily find good oens used in the 3500 to 5000 range if you have some patience and do some work looking.

[Ed Richards]

Ted,

My plan is to sit tight with consumer scaners until someone wants to buy my work.:-) If that ever happens, I will have someone else drum scan the keepers. Since this is not my day job, I have no interest in becoming a scanner mechanic, I would rather spend my time taking pictures.

[Ted Harris]

Ed ... makes sense

[neil poulsen]

I wonder if there's sample to sample variation among these scanners. Here are reviews of both the 700 and 750 from photo-i.

They recommend the V700 over the 4990 and suggest that there's a modest improvement in going to the V750 from the V700.

V700: http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%20V700/page_1.htm

V750: http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%20V750/page_1.htm

[Ted Harris]

Neil, with all respect to Vincent's results, they seem to differ from most other tests of the scanners in question.