Espon V750-M Pro Scanner

[AVCHD]

New to digital thing. I shoot 8x10 slide film all the time. But the labs who print from 8x10 by using enlarger are disappearing. Then I consider to use film scanner for my 8x10 slides and then ask labs to print it.

Is Epson V750-M Pro scanner is good enough if I need my prints up to 20"x24"?

[Greg Lockrey]

New to digital thing. I shoot 8x10 slide film all the time. But the labs who print from 8x10 by using enlarger are disappearing. Then I consider to use film scanner for my 8x10 slides and then ask labs to print it.

Is Epson V750-M Pro scanner is good enough if I need my prints up to 20"x24"?

Yes

[Daniel_Buck]

yes, you should have no trouble getting 20x24" prints from an 8x10. My guess (based on what I have seen with 4x5's) is that probably any scanner that will scan an 8x10 film will easily give you enough for a 20x24, since it's just over a 2X enlargement during the scan.

[marschp]

New to digital thing. I shoot 8x10 slide film all the time. But the labs who print from 8x10 by using enlarger are disappearing. Then I consider to use film scanner for my 8x10 slides and then ask labs to print it.

Is Epson V750-M Pro scanner is good enough if I need my prints up to 20"x24"?

If you've never done any scanning before then its worth asking around about the 'art' of scanning in order to set your expectations at the right level. In my experience bringing your scanning in-house requires a considerable amount of effort and understanding. I've been using an Epson 750 Pro now for several months and am still not getting satisfactory scans with it. Despite following all the advice about colour profiling and using the best scanning software, I still find scans are too dark, with loss of shadow detail. That requires an amount of post-processing in Photoshop before the resulting image looks anything like the original transparency. Take a look at my pbase site (Out and About gallery) for a few examples of recent 5.x4 scans. Paul.

[Joanna Carter]

... I still find scans are too dark, with loss of shadow detail. ...

You may already know this but, I have found that altering the gamma on the scan up to but not more than 2.4 can help in this regard.

[Greg Lockrey]

You may already know this but, I have found that altering the gamma on the scan up to but not more than 2.4 can help in this regard.

Or paying attention to the Levels histograms and output setings. The more you do at the scanner requires less to do in Photoshop where a lot of noise is added when you make your corrections.

[Joanna Carter]

Or paying attention to the Levels histograms and output setings. The more you do at the scanner requires less to do in Photoshop where a lot of noise is added when you make your corrections.

But surely, if you have profiled the scanner, you should have completely flat settings for levels and curves, etc, that never change from scan to scan? However, the one thing that can change without altering the profile is to increase the gamma.

[Steve Kefford]

Or paying attention to the Levels histograms and output setings. The more you do at the scanner requires less to do in Photoshop where a lot of noise is added when you make your corrections.

I have never heard of level changes in PS adding noise. Posterisation, perhaps, but not noise.

However, provided you are working on the same number of bits, there should not be any difference between doing the level edits in PS or the scanner sw. There might be workflow issues, but the end result should be the same.

Steve

[Brian Ellis]

20x24 prints should work fine with the V750 and 8x10 film. I've used the 4990, the predecessor of the V750, with 8x10 b&w negative film and obtained excellent results with prints close to that size.

I've never had any trouble with scans being consistently too dark with a properly exposed negative. OTOH, I use Silverfast Ai and have spent many many hours studying the book "Silverfast:The Official Guide" and other resources as well as attending the excellent scanning workshop that Ted Harris and Michael Mutmansky teach so I fancy myself to be a pretty good scanner person (or if I'm not it isn't the fault of the machine).

[Michael Mutmansky]

Oh great Brian, blame it on us... If there's any problems, they're all Ted's fault, I'm sure.

Actually the only issue I see with large prints from a consumer scanner is DMAX. For B&W scanning, you won't generally run into a problem, but with chromes, you may(or may not, depending on your expectations, etc.) find yourself somewhat dissatisfied with your shadow detail.

This is inherent to the lesser expensive scanners, and there are some tricks to squeeze a little more out of them, but in the end, they won't hold shadow detil a well as a higher-end scanner.

Adjusting the gamma or applying a curve to open up the shadows can help compensate, but there comes a point where there is no more usable information, and that point will be a little worse with consumer gear. Profiling won't help that.

As adjustments are made, the noise that is inherent in the shadows will become more visible, and this is a key area where the shadow performance of a consumer scanner will become apparent when compared to a better device.

Unfortunately, beyond the V750, there isn't much to choose from until you get into the $4,000 range for a used higher-end scanner, so you don't have much of a choice.

I, for one, would be very careful to check the shadow performance of the scanner with a few scans before i decided it was the way to go.


---Michael