Unwanted 'cropping' when scanning with Epson v700

[Gilo25]

I have an Epson V700 which I am generally happy with and use with the supplied software, but occasionally I experience the following problems.
In 3 out of, let's say, 20 rolls there are a couple of images per roll which get previewed and scanned with the upper and lower edges cut. In other words, while all the other images in the roll (with exactly the same settings) look exactly like the image on the film, occasionally there are 1 or 2 images which, no matter how I set the settings, come out cut both in the preview and the actual scanning. They appear oblong, squeezed, and they do not reflect the ratio between height and width of the original negative (nor of all the other scanned images of the same roll). It normally (but not necessarily) happens with images which are slightly darker. It's like if the scanner 'thinks' that the holder is much thicker than it is and cuts off a portion of the image instead.
Also, occasionally the scanner doesn't seem to recognize where one image ends and the other one begins and it cuts the images in 2, e.g. half body in one photogram and the other half in the other.
Any idea why is that of how to correct this?

 

[Austerby]

I've seen exactly the same happen and just go to the manual setting to position the framelines for the scan. It may take a bit of trial and error to position them accurately. It's a tedious feature of the Epson scanning software so you may want to try one of the others.

 

[oscroft]

Any idea why is that of how to correct this?

Yep, don't use the automatic framing mode - is it called "Thumbnail"? (I'm away from my scanner and can't look).

The EpsonScan software is very poor at identifying the edges of images (especially, as you say, when the images are a bit dark). If you look closely, you'll probably find that it is very slightly cropping all your shots too.

Instead, manually frame the images yourself using the marquee tools in the preview window (If it's not clear how to do that, I think it's explained in the online instructions) - position your own marquee around each shot, click "Select All", and scan.

I've been doing it this way for a long time (with my previous Epson scanner too), and it's actually quicker than the automatic method, because that was getting it wrong on enough scans that I spent more time sorting out the bad ones than auto mode was saving me in the first place.

 

[wray]

Just go into the configuration menu. Choose Preview and set the thumbnail area to large. Now it's set to scan into the film edges and you'll always have the entire frame visible.

 

[oscroft]

Choose Preview and set the thumbnail area to large. Now it's set to scan into the film edges and you'll always have the entire frame visible

That will help it frame images more widely where it was previously doing its regular minor crop. But it won't solve the problems with it completely failing to find the edges of some images (chopping large chunks off, merging two images into one, etc), which is common.

 

[Gilo25]

Thank you all, I will try and let you know the outcome.

 

[xvvvz]

The problem with letting it over-crop and include too much is that the extra area will factor into the auto exposure calculation and can throw that off. So you gain in one respect and then can lose in another. I just go with manual batch scans. As the previous poster said, in the end it is faster to manually crop because you don't have to worry about going back to check and rescan. Here are some tips I put up:

http://www.betterscanning.com/scanning/batchscanning.html

Doug