6x12 on Nikon 8000ED scanner?

[Christian Sigg]

AFAIK the maximal scan area on the 8000 is 6x9, has anyone ever tried to scan a 6x12 in two halves (eg. two times 6x7) and stitch them together in photoshop? What were your results?

(i'm asking this to find out whether it makes any sense for me to go 6x12 or stick with 6x9...)

regards, chris

[Howard Slavitt]

I haven't done it, but I've read several other reports of others who have and it supposedly works well. (You may try Ian Lyons' site, he may have discussed it for the SS120, but it's the same concept for the Nikon 8000ED.) The keys to pasting together in Pshop, are 1) invert the colors of one of the two halves, 2) make its opacity only about 50%, and 3) you won't be able to light the two halves up exactly, most likely, because the angles at which you feed them into the scanner will likely be at least slightly different. However, if you fade between the two halves when you paste them together you can get great results. I've pasted halves of 35 mm together to get panoramics and have gotten excellent results. Until you get really good at it, you should plan on spending about an hour per image pasting, or more. About 2-3 years ago I tried various stitching programs and found that I got better results doing it manually, but there may be newer, better image sticthing pprograms out now.

[David E. Rose]

Corel Photo-Paint has a built in stiching program. It is not automatic (probably a good thing). If you are willing to fuss with it, it works well.

[giancatarina]

1- i don't think that tou will find a lot of difference between a 6x12 scan and a 4.5x9 (cropping into a 6x9), you don't have to spend hours on photoshop 2- 6x12 holders are incredibly expensive compare to regular 6x9 3- trouble with film flatness in 6x12 holders 4- by cutting into 6x9 you need less roll of film, process... 5- you just have to carry one holder to make 6x9 and panoramic images in the other hand, if you want to make traditional BW prints, i believe that the difference in film size is more obvious ! the joker : buying a sinar zoom holder, cropping 6x9 for now, and make a second image in 6x12 for the future (next nikon scan...)

[Christian Sigg]

thanks for all the tips.

chris

[Mikko Kuivalainen]

And one more thing... I got best results when I turned autoexposure off.