I paid less for a professional scanner than the quoted price for a new Epson 850. My scanner works great for large format film, and also for medium and small format, which I scan more of than large format. There's nothing wrong with using an Epson. If you have one, just get to it.
“You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know
My current scanner, a Creo flatbed, makes the process easy and fuss-free. The quality of the scans is sublime, on par with a drum scanner: https://www.largeformatphotography.i...ight=eversmart
What makes a Creo (and other high-end flatbeds) worth the extra money is not having to fuss with endless film plane height adjustments and newton rings. The scanner just delivers, period.
They were made for high-volume, high-quality scanning and the scanning process and results bear that out.
Originally Posted by Ari
Yes... but your former Epson also was in par. Go to page 10 in the Thread you linked, post 92 by Pali and Post 93 by me with slight edition in the pixel-peeping crop.
https://www.largeformatphotography.i...=1#post1479178
You will now if you gained much with the nice investment of replacing the Epson by the Creo... but that well made Side by Side says you gained absolutely nothing, at least for CN film.
Take it with humor: Amazing, my welcome party in this forum was an scanner riot in what I was just telling you that Epson was performing equal for LF, and several years later you link a thread that demonstrates that they are exactly equalPlease let me smile.
No problem... but see page 10
You can pixel-peep all you want, Pere, but my first Creo scan, after years of using Epsons, just blew me away with its sharpness and clarity. And I had no idea how to use the Creo software yet!
It was like wearing old, dirty, greasy, scratched glasses, then switching to a new pair of glasses.
I'd never go back to an Epson for film scanning. It's not a bad machine, by any means, but it's not on the same level as professional flatbeds.
I do print from my scans, and there is an obvious, startling difference in the prints made from Epson scans and those I've made with the Creo.
It's baffling to me why you keep touting the Epson in these situations. I don't know what you have at stake here, but you're free to do so. As for affordability, a used pro flatbed can be had for not much more than a new Epson, and the potential gains are incredible.
I know that my experience with Epson vs pro flatbed has been quite one-sided in favour of the Creo, all I have to do is look at the scans and prints.
What potential gains?
This one ?
https://www.largeformatphotography.i...=1#post1479178
This one, perhaps ?
Attachment 204938
Look, there are people that are able to edit the non optimized Epson scan from here:
https://www.largeformatphotography.i...=1#post1557266
To here:
https://www.largeformatphotography.i...=1#post1557267
Those people don't require wasting big money in problematic ancient hardware, with uncertain service, and many times having to rely in very ancient and underpowered computers and OS that are a big problem on their own.
Both the 2019 scanner comparison and this present thread totally demonstrates that those "incredible potential gains" are simply not true for LF in particular.
If you want I will demonstrate it to you, scan a LF negative with the Creo and send the negative to me. For CN you will see the same result Pali showed, for BW you will see no Image Quality improvement (like in this sampe shot) from the Creo, but you will see a different grain depiction at around x14 enlargement, not under that. I you want I'll demonstrate it to you.
Where should I focused and set the standards to improve it?
Flickr Home Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums
One point not considered regarding getting better scans is the film type. I used Tmax 100 in this experiment which is one of Kodak's formulary films advertised by them for best scanning. It's also their finest BW negative film. I believe the others made for scanning are Tmax 400, Ektar 100 and the two Portras. Also, the pro lab who developed it use Clayton F76+ equivalent (equal?) to Kodak D76. I believe Xtol provides finer resolution. What the scan results may have been if different types of film and formulary were used, I can't speculate.
Flickr Home Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums
Same bafflement here.
The principles are pretty simple, if you take an average f22, normal lens, 4x5 T-Max 100 system which equates to about 25 cyc/mm resolved at MTF50 at the image centre (from what I recall of Arne Croell's MTF tests) and feed it through a system with an MTF50 of 13cyc/mm (Epson) and a system with a MTF50 that's considerably higher, possibly equalling or exceeding the MTF50 deliverable from the film (high end scanner of choice), irrelevant of whether the notional resolution of the Epson system is higher than what the high end scanner is set to, the higher MTF system is going to visibly outperform it in terms of resolution of critical detail, to say nothing of resolving fine detail in low contrast areas and the emulsion's granularity. This is basic optical and photographic science - and yet it seems utterly beyond the ken of those whose faith is apparently based on cognitively biased reading of resolution charts.
It is difficult to truly improve noise performance from a cheap scan array of the setup Epson use such that sharpening (to attempt an MTF improvement) does not exponentially raise noise elsewhere to objectionable levels. But then again, everyone with actual experience of working with and creating files from a variety of scanners and printing routinely to a wide array of sizes knows that through bitter experience...
This is mainly to do with the supercoating being altered 20+ years ago (so it doesn't potentially show up in the scan) and finer, tighter packed grain/ dye clouds with stronger adjacency effects for better apparent sharpness. Developers may have less effect than you think - and then mainly on shadow speed & how early the granularity will creep in. More solvent developers may produce a better sharpness/ granularity relationship with modern films than something like Rodinal (outperformed by D-76 at pretty much everything apart from how much granularity it produces). You can safely ignore anything you're told about dye clouds supposedly being made bigger for better scanning (it's an incorrect assertion based on a severe lack of knowledge about fundamental emulsion behaviour) - instead they've been made finer, more tightly packed and better defined.
Last edited by interneg; 22-Jun-2020 at 10:50.
This depends on what you want... It is a very good shot anyway...
But in this case using swing instead tilt would have provided the barn's bottom in focus:
See this from top:
Anyway (IMO) best combination would have been using of both tilt and swing at the same time.
Also you could have provided even more tilt to focus better the barn's bottom.
Playing with focus-defocus you get nice effects that may help to depict "depth", or sometimes you may want to simply put all in focus by stopping a lot, but in this case diffraction may deliver a softer image, another choice with the same movements you made: if having stopped to f/22 or f/32 the DOF would be wider with better focus on the barn's bottom, at the expense of some loss in the sharp areas because diffraction. Here you have a table with diffraction limits: https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/diffraction.htm
With the view camera you tilt-swing the focus plane in the scene as you want. The Focus plane in the scene tilts-swings in the same senses than you tilt-swing the front standard or the lensboard...
...but plane focus tilts-swings in the counter senses than you tilt-swing the rear standard, or the film holder !!!
Quite easy,the focus plane moves like the front standard, and the counter if you manipulate the rear standard...
But if you operate the front standard then you also displace the image circle... the lens is like a torch illuminating in the night, the beam moves with the torch...
Just practice with next: aperture wide open locate 3 point in the scene and then manipulate the rear standard and extension until you have those three points in focus, there is a single plane that passes throught those points, this is your plane of focus.
Many times you may combine tilt and swing to put your subjects in focus. Selective focus is an advanced discipline in LF
Hey Lachlan...
Any comment about Post 2? https://www.largeformatphotography.i...=1#post1557267
How is it possible the epson matches the howtek at x20? Any theory?
Another smashing evidence? Are you lost? Need pills yet
Comment on post #2, man... does the epson perfom better than you were suspecting ?
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