Should I Drum Scan, X1 Flextight Scan, or use the Epson V850 w/Aztek Wet Mount Kit?

[sanking]

[B]

This is the new Paradigm: Want to get top notch results from a $500 cheap machine ? Be proficient...

There is an old saying we used to say in Louisiana - Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The new paradigm for getting the most out of Epson scanners has been around a long time. Here are some links that may be useful for folks like Alan.

http://www.betterscanning.com/

http://www.kennethleegallery.com/htm...ning/index.php

https://www.largeformatphotography.i...n-V700-scanner


1) Better Scanning is/was a company from Atlanta that offered film holder systems for Epson scanners way back then, including one that provided a mechanism for adjusting glass film holder, with AN glass, to determine best plane of focus. I owned and used one of these back in the day, and still have it.

2) One of the best articles out there for working with Epson V700 and similar scanners is by Ken Lee, who is also a member of this forum. It covers about everything you would need to know to get the most possible out of a V700/750 or V800/850.

3) Nathan Potter posted some resolution tests with the V700 that agree with my own best practice with the Epson V700.

Hope this is helpful.

Sandy

[Pere Casals]

The new paradigm for getting the most out of Epson scanners has been around a long time. Here are some links that may be useful for folks like Alan.

Sandy, I totally agree, that graph plotting Epson performance vs film height is many years old, and ANR and wet mounting solutions have also been there for many, many years.

But Aztek and BetterScanning solutions were not much popular and they were absent in most of the side by side comparisons with the expensive machines...

So IMO the "paradigm" was this one:

Your enhancements only accentuate what's shit about that scanner, and, in addition, you completely ignore the horrible gradations produced by the Epson.

Many opined that the Epson was infame beyond x4... In most of side by side tests the Epson was never operated optimally, including the Collaborative https://www.largeformatphotography.i...an-comparison/ , where the Epson scan is quite bad.

I can make a list of members here that have been qualifiying the Epson as pure trash for many years, I may post hundreds of links, not necessary.


Now we can show that the Epson may shine (for LF in particular) when proficiently operated, with the new Epson ANR original holders, without having to purchase 3rd party compoments. Also present computer perfomance allows to better editing the LF Epson images.


What we were lacking is LF side by side comparisons with the Epson optimally operated, this was scarce until now.

[sanking]

But Aztek and BetterScanning solutions were not much popular and they were absent in most of the side by side comparisons with the expensive machines...

I don't remember you being around at the time but my take on this is that the subject of getting optimum performance from Epson and other flatbed scanners was widely discussed on both this forum, and other photographic sites of the period, and especially after Julio launched his business at https://www.wetmounting.com/

As for Sasquatchian's paradigm, my understanding is that he has been working with drum scanners for a very long time? Have you ever compared one of your best large format negatives color negatives with a very good drum scan and any scan with a CCD, even a high end flatbed like the Eversmart or Fuji? Even now I look at some of my drum scans compared to any other method and think, Holy Crap, how good is that?

But I have absolutely no issue with encouraging use of scanners like the V700 with 4X5 and 5X7. A former student of mine did a very nice body of work with monochrome carbon transfer with scans of 4X5 B&W film made with an Epson V850.

Sandy

[Pere Casals]

Have you ever compared one of your best large format negatives color negatives with a very good drum scan and any scan with a CCD, even a high end flatbed like the Eversmart or Fuji? Even now I look at some of my drum scans compared to any other method and think, Holy Crap, how good is that?

Sandy, my shots don't deserve a drum scan, but I've processed several hundreds of 35mm velvia frames (of two artists exhibiting internationally) that were scanned with X5, Imacons and drums. I had to re-scan some with the Epson for different reasons, the Pro scans were nicer... but...

...but then I projected the slides (or inspected in the light table) and I saw that the Epson scans were the totally faithful ones (beyond static contrast and color triangle matching). The Pro scanned slides had remarkable image enhancing applied and were quite different than the real slide. Most of the scanning services do that, a value they add is a proficient color edition, or adding some auto Image Intelligence enhancing.

If you see the image Pali linked: https://www.flickr.com/photos/palika...89861/sizes/k/ it's easy to see that those colors are not the RDP III original, in particular see the red boats. One thing is scanning and another one is post-processing.


Of course the Pro machines recovered better the ultra deep velvia shadows, but the Epson color was totally accurate. In fact the Epson is an IT8 calibrated machine and if you scan the color target you will find that reference RGB values are exactly nailed for all patches, one by one.


In the 2019 pixel-peeping you will find that the Epson exactly matches the drums and the creos while the negative is sporting refined gradations.

I'd ask you to review again the Carver's "anomaly", min 22:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9d8BukUgzI well, not everybody thinks the Epson delivers inferior color, instead many think Epson color is superior.

Nick manages color quite nice... https://www.ishootfujifilm.com/spotlight/nick-carver
And he also shots LF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_wiHZZND6I

https://nickcarverphotography.com/

Anyway today with tools like 3D LUT creator we do what we want, and color it's about taste.



________


"Sasquatchian's paradigm" is arbitrary, he also says that he has not seen an Epson since 1995 so... He is not alone, in fact.

[Sasquatchian]

"Of course the Pro machines recovered better the ultra deep velvia shadows, but the Epson color was totally accurate. In fact the Epson is an IT8 calibrated machine and if you scan the color target you will find that reference RGB values are exactly nailed for all patches, one by one."

But you claim that the Epson can actually do better than a 4.0 d-max so why aren't their shadow details better than the drum scanners? And Kodak IT8's are really crappy. A much better solution is the Hutchcolor target on Velvia which are all hand measured and what I've been using for longer than I can remember. Of course they aren't available anymore so Wolf Foust's targets are the second best bet. It's not hard to make a scanner profile and use it, but all it does is help you get a scan with no input on your part that more or less matches the film on the scanner. The fallacy with this approach has always been that that's not really what most people want. I remember getting scans done back in the day - the day being the late 1980's, prior to Ps - for promo pieces, insisting that the scanning house match the tranny, not knowing that that's not really possible in any real sense of the word and not really understanding about film gamuts versus output gamuts at all back then. So, it really depends on who your scanner operator is. When I scan commercially, and I'm doing less and less of that lately, I deliver two scans - one that looks just like the film, or as close as possible, and a second that is MY interpretation of the film by a long time very successful film and digital photographer and a drum scanner operator at the highest level anywhere in the world. The scanner input profile does give you a source profile for conversion to appropriate working color spaces, which, in a workflow that I have come up with for color negs, is actually used in the scanning process, as it's a very visual process but needs a source for that initial color conversion. The more you know about scanning, the less relevant IT8's and such really are, but you won't understand that until you get to this level.

[Pere Casals]

But you claim that the Epson can actually do better than a 4.0 d-max so why aren't their shadow details better than the drum scanners?

No. I claim 3.38D with multi-exposure, which is a value that to me it's pretty fair for the V700. This is all that I've been claiming all these years.

But I discovered last week that now Silverfast guys do claim that the V800/850 is 4.08D able with multi-exposure, checked under ISO norm 21550:2004





Personally I don't know if the new 4.08D value is fair or not, I don't claim it, also I don't know if hypotetic superior rating may come from the new illumination or from new firmware.

This is something I'm eager to check well to see if it's true, but it would be pretty nice if now the cheap Epson has improved DMax substantially...

What I know is that M-E enhances quite a lot results with ultra dense velvia shadows: way better deep shadow detail and atonishing noise cancellation.

So, it really depends on who your scanner operator is. When I scan commercially, and I'm doing less and less of that lately, I deliver two scans - one that looks just like the film, or as close as possible, and a second that is MY interpretation of the film by a long time very successful film and digital photographer and a drum scanner operator at the highest level anywhere in the world.

I totally agree, this is the most important value an scanning service adds. Proficiency in digital edition is not easy for many home users, and having a refined aesthetic criterion for color or tonal edition is an uncommon virtude.

I was only pointing that many scanning services, when delivering the raw and the edited scan, it may happed that the delivered "raw scan" is not that raw and it can include a good deal of Image Enhancing, with slides this is easily seen when the colors in the scanned slide differ from the real slide. I've seen many people attributing those enhanced colors to the drum performance, but it's post-processing.

[Alan Klein]

I started another thread where there's a comparison between the Howtek 8000 drum and Epson V850 flatbed scanners.
https://www.largeformatphotography.i...67#post1557267

[Steven Ruttenberg]

I have a large number of 4x5 Fuji Provia 100 transparencies and 4x5 Kodak Ektar 100 negatives, as well as a large number of 6x17/6x12 medium format Fuji Velvia 50 transparencies and 6x17/6x12 Kodak Ektar 100 negatives that I’ve been taking and had processed over the past year. They’ve been sitting in my cabinet for a while now, so I’d like to finally move on with them and get them scanned, edited, and printed.

Since I’m a relatively impecunious MFA photography student, I’m trying to get the very best quality scan for the dollar, so that I have the option to print large Gursky/Struth/Jeff Wall-like prints, hopefully with as little loss of resolution as possible. Unfortunately, my school doesn’t offer much in terms of scanning. :/

I have the option to use the X1 Flextight Imacon scanner for $30 per hour, or borrow an Epson V850 flatbed scanner, but have to purchase the Epson wet plate mount and a Aztek wet mount kit. I can also sink basically all of what little money I have into drum scanning at about $60 per 4x5 negative/transparency and $50 per 6x12/6x17 medium format negative/transparency.

The final goal in to have (hopefully) amazing large scale prints on the order 6’ x 8’, very roughly speaking.

Right now, I’m leaning towards the Epson V850 w/Epson wet plate mount and Aztek wet mount kit, especially since I’ve heard it’s relatively close (but I suppose not quite that close) to drum scanning, but I’m not yet sure.

What have you guys tried and/or recommend?

Many thanks!

Wet scan with anr glass

[Peter De Smidt]

Wet mounting defeats the purpose of ANR glass. Use one or the other.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

I use it to hide scratches and force film flat, etc. If i just use anr it doesn't work so well and it is the way I have been using my V850 for 2 years now. It certainly does not hurt.

I would say what resolution I scan at, but then every single person would start pointing at charts and graphs and personal experience to convince me I am wrong. While I am no photographer to look up to, I know what my results are and they work for me.

And isn't that really the point? What works for you?