Cutting and stitching together LF negatives

[Bennyblue]

Hello

I have lurked here for a long time and have a question.

I have a coolscan 9000 and am seduced by LF (but not by the fact that decent LF scanners cost the earth)

Has anyone attempted the (sacreligious) cutting of a 4x5 neg into quarters and then scanned them into a 9000 ?

Obviously a fair bit of photoshop manipulation would be necessary to restitch them.

If I have time I will try this with a 6x7 neg this week but would be interested if anyone wlse has tried this

Cy

[Greg Miller]

It's the "cutting" part that would be problematic. Generally with stitching you would want to have some overlap between scans to make the stitching seamless. If you cut the negative then you will have no overlap. I have never tried it, but stitching 2 cut pieces of scanned film back into one seamless images sounds like a very difficult proposition. You would have to but the 2 layer together in photohop, which I'm pretty sure leave a very noticeable seam. You would then be left with the chore of making that seam disappear.

[Bennyblue]

Hi Greg

Thanks for the response. Those are my concerns as well.

Also, compensating for any slight rotation in any of the scanned quarters (which would be inevitable) appears on first blush to be extremely difficult.

I will have a root around and see if any suitable software exists.

Cy

[Brian Ellis]

Actually "decent" scanners cost relatively little. A new Epson 700/750 costs about $700 and will do an excellent job with 4x5 and 8x10 film as long as you don't print larger than about 16x20.

[Bruce Watson]

Actually "decent" scanners cost relatively little. A new Epson 700/750 costs about $700 and will do an excellent job with 4x5 and 8x10 film as long as you don't print larger than about 16x20.

Yes. You can get a scanner that does a reasonable job with LF film for about the cost of a single LF lens. And a mid-level used lens at that. I'm not talking about a 110mm SS-XL here.

Cutting the film will invariably damage the film along the cut by definition. If you enlarge this much at all you'll have trouble covering up the damage. And damage like this is particularly difficult to repair because the eye is so good at seeing straight lines. I'm just saying if you are expecting to make a large print, say an 8x enlargement, you are probably wasting your time.

As usual, the only way to know for sure is to try it and find out.

[sanking]

Hello

I have lurked here for a long time and have a question.

I have a coolscan 9000 and am seduced by LF (but not by the fact that decent LF scanners cost the earth)

Has anyone attempted the (sacreligious) cutting of a 4x5 neg into quarters and then scanned them into a 9000 ?

Obviously a fair bit of photoshop manipulation would be necessary to restitch them.

If I have time I will try this with a 6x7 neg this week but would be interested if anyone wlse has tried this

Cy


If you were able to scan four parts with some overlap there would be no problem stitching four parts of a 4X5" negative. In fact, Photoshop CS3 or higher could do it for you. However, apart from the obvious downside of cutting a negative into four parts, stitching it together would be very difficult because you have broken the link between the files and the only way to stitch would be manually, and you would have to repair the entire stitch line. I do a lot of stitching of MF negative and will assure you that this scenario would be nothing short of a nightmare for me.

My opinion is that you will get far better results with an Epson V700 or V750 than with the method you propose.

Sandy King

[Walter Calahan]

No no no, don't do it. Get a flatbed scanner set up for 4x5!

[Greg Gibbons]

Actually, I just got a brand new V700 for around $550, including shipping. And for all the complaints about it not being as good as a drum scanner..... it works a lot better than cutting and stitching, I'm pretty sure. :)

[Bennyblue]

Thanks for all the useful replies

It makes sense that if you're going to enlarge significantly, any blemishes/defects arising from the cut area will be magnified.

[Nathan Potter]

If you're locked into 4X5 and can only scan 60X90 mm You can take four shots on 4X5 (presuming a static scene) then cut each of the four images to 60X90 mm size with sufficient overlap of the four interior edges to facilitate an easy stitch. Helluva way to go about it but you will end up with around 320 Mp file from a Nikon 9000. This would certainly far exceed the capability of a V750 scan. :eek: :eek:

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[Mike1234]

If you want to work with overlapped images just take two 4x5 shots... one with 1/4" shift either way and 1/4" rise or fall. You'll need to include a little extra in your frame because you'll end up cropping a bit. Then scan the left frames of one neg and the right frames of the other. There's your overlap. You'll need to be careful about subject movement and lighting changes though. Oh, and you can use the upper pieces form one neg and the lower pieces from the other if that better suits the job. Either way you have 1/4" overlap and some cropping.

Otherwise, just repair the damaged done by cutting of the one neg. If done well, you'll never see the seams. This method would would be my choice if shooting sheet film

Yet another option is to shoot roll film using shift/rise/fall and stitch four or six or eight overlapped images together. IMO, this is by far the best method given your scanning options.

[Joanna Carter]

Just a quick thought; take a 35mm shot of the 4x5 on a lightbox, then scan the 35mm film :D ;)

[Greg Miller]

Hi Greg

Thanks for the response. Those are my concerns as well.

Also, compensating for any slight rotation in any of the scanned quarters (which would be inevitable) appears on first blush to be extremely difficult.

I will have a root around and see if any suitable software exists.

Cy

The rotation is no problem. In Photoshop, just use the "measure" tool to draw a line down the bottom or top edge of an image , then do Image / rotate / arbitrary. This rotate the image so that edge is level. Do that fo both images and they should line up.