More advanced scanner for 4x5 than Epson flatbed?

[nbagno]

I drum scan with an HR8000, have a Scitex Flatbed, epson V800, a couple of Minolta Multi pros, and did a bunch of wet mount scans with leaf scan 45’s on Sapphire glass. Don’t fell wet mountings much more of a setup chore than taping negatives to a mask, but I digress.

One thing that I never see mentioned regarding DSLR scanning is the work involved with dust spotting. When I wet mount my drum scans, the oil does a great job of cleaning the negatives of dust and filling in imperfections. I would have to think that DSLR scanning would have issues with this? Don’t know don’t scan that way, but one reason I only preview 4x5’s with my Scitex is due to dust spotting.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Tin Can]

I suppose nobody read about "Operation Night Watch" where they are doing a very intensive 'photographic copy' of it before restoring and after.

In public in a glass box...

Perhaps the biggest and highest quality SCAN to date...even under the paint...

A painting too big to move.

[Oren Grad]

I would have to think that DSLR scanning would have issues with this?

I expect it would be no better but no worse than the dust nuisance we already have with both flatbed and dedicated rollfilm scanners. Dust problems have to do with the film-holding function of the device rather than the image-capture function, so shouldn't be any different when you substitute a different image-capture device.

[Larry Gebhardt]

I suppose nobody read about "Operation Night Watch" where they are doing a very intensive 'photographic copy' of it before restoring and after.

In public in a glass box...

Perhaps the biggest and highest quality SCAN to date...even under the paint...

A painting too big to move.

Thanks for the link. Looks like a really cool undertaking.

[Pere Casals]

new A7RIV offer a multishot mode. ... So fewer setups will be needed to match the Epsons.

Larry, of course the better the camera the less the shots we need, but anyway I'm a bit skeptical about the effective improvement from pixel-shift compared to a simple sharpening or to averaging several shots without pixel shift.

I guess that with this high pixel density other factors may limit the real performance.

new A7RIV offer a multishot mode. ... So fewer setups will be needed to match the Epsons. probably easily besting the Epson in one shot for 6x9.

A V850 should take some 55MPix effective from a 6x9cm, it would be a surprise to me if the comming A7RIV (with pixel shift) delivers more than 40MPix effective with a good lens.

Anyway sure that the R IV will be very good for dslr scanning.

[interneg]

I compared my Eversmart Supreme Scanner (not wet mounted ) to a 100mp Phase One scanning system... They were both equal to my eyes in the final print.. It was an old map, I was quite amazed with the ease of using the Phase system.. problem is I already have the Creo and if it does equal quality then purchasing the Phase (even if it was a financial reality) would not make sense.

I would like to try the same experiment with a colour neg and transparency to see if I can see a difference.

I am devastated that the Flextight is going the way of the Dodo Bird. could it be due to global warming?

Long story short, the Flextight needs quite a few major upgrades to multiple aspects of hardware & software - the number I was told was in the 1 million GBP range for R&D that has to be recouped in 3 years.

The core of the Phase One Cultural Heritage system (the stand etc) is, I understand, made by Cambo - I think it's their RPS system - all told, about 10k GBP of kit, but you can then put whatever camera system you want on it. I think the new 61mp Sony with the multi shot mentioned upthread has a lot of potential as a scanner.

[Tin Can]

Go to this link and see an old panographic scan. Done with Phase One.

First time to see it. Impressive even on a monitor.

You need to click into it. Look at the hats...

[Peter De Smidt]

I have way less spotting with scans from my Dslr scanner than from my Cezanne. A sticky silicone roller is very effective at minimizing dust.

[Greg]

I have way less spotting with scans from my Dslr scanner than from my Cezanne. A sticky silicone roller is very effective at minimizing dust.

What has worked for me for removing dust: For years had used an (orange) Ilford Antistatic dust cloth in the darkroom to clean my negatives. Never left any marks or micro scratches. Replaced it with a new one every few months since I assumed that most of the dust that it removed had to be embedded in the cloth. Then happened upon several NOS Static Master Jr. brushes made long ago by Nuclear Products Co. Their radio active elements probably still charged but who knows. I inserted the brushes in a vacuum cleaner nozzle with about 5mm of the brush sticking out of the nozzle. Turn the low powered vacuum on and run the end of the brush back and forth on both sides of the negative with the vacuum turned on. Vacuum is located on the other side of the darkroom wall with a Rube Goldberg engineered on/off switch (Hey it simply works). If I remember (theoretically) the Static Master brush was supposed to "neutralize"? the surface of the film with its nuclear charge... up for debate on that one. In any case this contraption is very effective at removing dust.

[Sasquatchian]

I know that with Flextight you had to set the sharpening to a negative amount in order to fully turn it off. In some versions of Hell/Heidelberg drum scanners there was a small amount of hardware USM going on regardless, and maybe that is what was referred to above, but I've been using Howteks for over twenty years and when you turn sharpening off in
Trident, it's off - nada - no sharpening. Had long conversations with Panazzo regarding that back in the day. I assume DPL is the same but only used that for a month before returning it. In all the comparison scans I've made between my Howtek's and anything else, there's no comparison. The expensive high end flat beds pale in comparison. The Hell's are limited by their large minimum aperture. The Epson's, well, you'd have to have a really mis-aligned Howtek to get to their level. The Flextight's flare like crazy and don't really hold the film flat from edge to edge. I've made a few test scans using a 5DSR and a Zeiss Milvus 100mm Makro or the new Canon T/S-E's, all of which go to 1:2 and those are pretty good too but not nearly as good as Trident for inversion of color negs.

Back in the mid 90's we used to buy Kami and C-42 overlay material and wet mount to a flat bed. It improved the scans and completely eliminated Newton's Rings. Wasn't that hard to do or control and could easily be done on a glass over a light box. The Kami itself not only improved high res scans but also improved the rendition of subtle highlight detail - something about the optical effect of the fluid in suspension with the mylar sandwich. That only made a difference with a sensor that could sense the difference though. Yeah. There's a difference on the high end too.