Howtek 8000 Drum vs. Epson V850 flatbed scanners

[Alan Klein]

Yes, a fantastic shot and two fantastic scans of it that I would be happy with.

If I scanned with Epson first, I would wonder “what if” and might drum or pro flatbed scan it just like Alan did. If I scanned with drum or pro flatbed first, I would be at peace that I didn’t miss anything.

Pali

Yes, I was curious as to the difference between my new V850 and a drum scanner. That's why I spent the time to do this. It makes me feel confident that for my purposes right now, the V850 is fine. If and when I get to printing, I'll deal with that separately at that time. I didn't want to start fights among everyone; only to provide information for whatever it's worth to people. Everyone has different equipment for different purposes and needs, all at different costs. I hope this exercise helps people make decisions about what they should do, not what I do or did. We're all different.

[Pere Casals]

This fully explains the focus importance with the Epsons...


To all those scanning with V700/750 and wanting to improve their workflow:

> A 4x5" ANR glass holder is $15 : https://compassmicro.com/products/sc...-v850-pro.html

> A 3rd party ANR holder is more expensive but it may add a fantastic Pro feel.

> With that you will be able to nail medium's flatness and focus, with the old holders one easily experiments a 50% loss of the possible optical performance if the sheet falls 1.2mm only. The sheet may get curled with the illumination heating during scanning !

> Using the new ANR holders you may get a sheet to sheet consistent perfomance, sometimes this may double your performance yield.

> In this way, by far, you will never reach the optical perfomance offered by a drum or a high end flatbed, but you will mostly reach or surpasse the optical performance most of the LF sheets contain, making results equal to those obtained by expensive machines, like this side by side makes evident.

> Use a cheap HEPA air purifier to eliminate dust in te room.

> A Pro scanning/edition/printing service, like that from Peter Finge, it can be a great choice for your best images. Some Pro services may offer a top notch aesthetic criterion that may refine your interpretations of the image, making impressive and spectacular that was only "very good". Some are very, very good Pros.


The other important factor is that the Epson scans require a proficient edition, see posts 1 and 2. Save TIFF 16bits/ch and edit in 16bis. It is required to be proficient in tonal edition and in sharpening, avoid overshot and be refined in the sharpening.


Let me reiterate that graph to anyone scanning with an Epson should keep in mind: A 1.2mm fall ends in the resolved feature falling from 7microns to 14microns, that 50% loss, like the graph clearly shows it:




With the Epson, be proficient!!! Then you are to smile when you see your results being top notch, for LF not inferior than those from high end machines.


Low Epson performance for LF is a urban legend, this only comes for a sub-optimal scanning/edition, and from intoxications from people having commercial interests.

Yes, a fantastic shot and two fantastic scans of it that I would be happy with.

If I scanned with Epson first, I would wonder “what if” and might drum or pro flatbed scan it just like Alan did. If I scanned with drum or pro flatbed first, I would be at peace that I didn’t miss anything.

Pali

No doubt that the Drum or the Creo are absolute references, they can take much more than the film has so for sure you miss anything important, never if scannig at high dpi with high end machines.

As you don't use much the Epson and you don't have multi-exposure enabled, you may wonder “what if”... of course.

The Epson works in its performance limit to take all what a LF negative has, IMO, as you found yet in the scanner comparison 2019, the Epson is not to miss anything with Portra or other CN.

What you may miss with TMX or Velvia LF with the Epson is usually scarce, I'm sure that something significative can be missed in some situations with an ultra sharp negative, but this is not to be seen much at x8 printing: The Epson takes 50lp/mm from film, and 50/8 = 6.25.

In fact, by checking the Tim Parking ratings it's made very clear that the Epson is incapable to take all possible image quality in a TMX sheet, by a fair extent, but the question is what pictorial importance this has, one thing is a "lab shot" and another one is real photography.

...in real photography perfect focus is scarce (we are in the DOF mostly) and ideal peak performing aperture may not be there, we have vibrations and other factors... because of that the Epson takes most what the shot has as the high end machine does. This side by side is a good example.

Another question is grain... this requires complex considerations because grain is not much seen in LF and we have to enlarge a lot and inspecting with the nose on the print to see the grain. For MF/35 is another war, anyway the drum has to go very high dpi for the grain depiction.

[Oren Grad]

Unfortunately it'll carry on for exactly as long as the mods are prepared to tolerate a sealion horking up nonsense.

It'll carry on for exactly as long as those who are annoyed by the sealion keep feeding it.

This keeps going round and round because a bunch of people all feel compelled to have the last word. Just let it be already. If someone strikes you as a sealion, add him to your "ignore" list and leave him to deliver his soliloquies without your attention.

[Peter De Smidt]

Oren, if you agree that the appellation is appropriate, why not remove the offender? He does the same thing in most scanner threads. Over and over...for years. He's on my ignore list, but he can't be avoided.

[Jody_S]

Please let me ask about post 104...

https://www.largeformatphotography.i...=1#post1558004

Where is the optical performance or the tonality difference?

Are you able to tell it?

We are all photographers here. Well mostly, I think. We can all make up our own minds looking at those 2 crops, and we don't need someone pulling photoshop curves to show us the difference. Further: if all I was interested in was resolution and sharpness, I wouldn't be shooting large format anymore, I'd be buying the latest digital toys and stitching panos.

[Oren Grad]

Oren, if you agree that the appellation is appropriate, why not remove the offender? He does the same thing in most scanner threads. Over and over...for years. He's on my ignore list, but he can't be avoided.

Peter, just want to acknowledge your comment and say that we know we have a problem and we are discussing it. It really would help if people didn't keep throwing fuel on the fire and then complaining about the inevitable result, but we also appreciate the impact of certain behaviors in creating these situations. It is not acceptable to have an entire subject area ruined for discussion.

For now I'm going to close this thread.

< ... tick tock ... tick tock... tick tock... >

OK, back open for business. Carry on!

[Jim Andrada]

Once upon a time this used to be a great subject area - I learned a lot. Now it just makes me tired and sorry I bothered to look.

[grat]

There's another forum I visit when working with 1's and 0's where any thread involving the terms "ISO" and "exposure triangle" is guaranteed to collapse in on itself with the speed and force of a black hole's event horizon.

You learn to either avoid such threads, or bring plenty of popcorn.

Here, if the topic is "scanning", as long as you avoid the two diametrically opposed viewpoints, there's still useful information to be gained.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

I figured that is how this would go. Suffice it to say in a couple of months I will be able to provide real world, side by side comparisons of my V850 and my Howtek 8000 Hiresolve.

To me, both have there place each doing something better than the other. I for one, cannot wait to use my new drum scanner.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Here is another comparison showing focus based on height adjustments of the Epson V850 Pro 4x5 film holder. No sharpening was applied. This is a different type film; Tmax 400 instead of the previous Tmax 100. While you can't see the difference looking at the whole picture, the sharpness is very obvious when zoomed in. The scanner comes with two holders for each format. So you have to check the correct height for each one. The two 4x5's were actually different. One was best focused at Middle of 5. The other was best focused at the 4th of 5, second from bottom which Epson says is the default setpoint.

Wait till you use the betters canning adjustable holder and fine tune focus. Then wet scan and last do zero conversions with scan software creating a raw tiff with no conversion formula applied. Ie, you can Reba e the cake ad nauseum to your hearts content. 1 scan, done. I will be redoing my focus in near future with finer thread pitch on screws and better target. V850 is my goto scanner, my drum will be for those special and unique images. Drum may become my daily driver at some point.

Height adjustment comparison by Alan Klein, on Flickr

Height adjustment comparison full photo by Alan Klein, on Flickr