Better scans with the Coolscan 8000

[Corvi]

Hello Guys,

I just thought ill share some of my most recent scanning experiences with you guys.

Well, it all began that i got myself an Epson V500 for Medium Format scanning. So far so good. I wasnt quite happy with the results, mostly because the holder where just pure crap, so i looked around a bit and found the holders from Betterscanning.com which came with an Anti-Newton glas insert.
I instantly ordered one, and a few weeks later it got to me and i was blown away. It was so much easier to load the film, it was much flatter and results where sharper. I was super happy.
Now i had the chance to get a Coolscan 8000 and went for it. I was blown away form the quality. Finaly i got the same quality from Medium format then i got from my Coolscan V ED and 35mm film.
Bit yet again, i was kinda unhappy with the holders. Film, especially medium format, wasn't laying flat, leading to very inconsistent results, muddy images and unsharp parts of pictures. I looked up the glas holders for the Coolscan, only to find out there were extremely expensive and hard to get. So i gave up for the next few weeks.

Now, today, i had a genius idea. I took out my old holder for the V500, took the glas and tried if it fits into the holder of the Coolscan. And viola, it did. Apart from some minor things that were in the way .. So i looked for a small screwdriver, remove two scres from the holder and the two clip-thingies which where supposed to hold the film in place before. Now the Anti-Newton glas insert was fitting perfectly. I couldn't believe my eyes.
I loaded a piece of film, and first i hesitated to load the holder with the glas into my Coolscan, but then i did it. The scanner took it, and scanned. A few seconds later i was looking at the 4000 dpi scans, and couldn't believe my eyes. It was like i had a whole new scanner. Results where absolutely stunning. I guess i made it. I found an easy way to load film and get superb results from my Coolscan 8000, with only a piece of glas avalible at Betterscanning.com. (Im not sure, but i think you can use the 35mm glas inserts the same way if you modify the holder a tiny bit.



I uploaded some pictures of the modifications i made and a comparison scan with both holders. Check them out. Check out this link for the comparison :



Well, i hope i could help all the guys and gals that felt the same about those crappy holder like me 🙂

cheers

 

[hanskerensky]

Your solution makes a remarkable performace gain in the scans. Thanks for sharing !

 

[ItsReallyDarren]

Great idea. I wish there was a way to use anti newton glass on the Nikon V and 5000 like you can on the 8000 and 9000.

 

[mfogiel]

I did the same thing as you, then I was not satisfied, because lots of MF film develops a belly under the glass and it is unsharp anyway, so then I bought the Nikon glass holder, and my scans became perfectly sharp, but the dust has become quite an issue, so one day looking through this forum I saw this advice by Dante Stella:
http://www.dantestella.com/technical/nikonholder.html

And after cleaning my holder with acohol and tensioning carefully the film I managed to get sharp scans and little dust. Highly recommended !

 

[Corvi]

I did the same thing as you, then I was not satisfied, because lots of MF film develops a belly under the glass and it is unsharp anyway, so then I bought the Nikon glass holder, and my scans became perfectly sharp, but the dust has become quite an issue, so one day looking through this forum I saw this advice by Dante Stella:
http://www.dantestella.com/technical/nikonholder.html

And after cleaning my holder with acohol and tensioning carefully the film I managed to get sharp scans and little dust. Highly recommended !

I found that page too. Also i tried it several times already. But still, the glas instert still gives me faster, easier and better results. The original holder is absolutely frustrating. I can load and scan 3 6x6 negs with the glas insert in the time i manage to load film in the other holder so that its really perfectly flat. And its a lot less frustrating ..

 

[Jamie123]

Corvi,
I did the same thing for my Nikon 9000 and it worked pretty well. However, I was still not 100% happy with the flatness I got from one piece of glass so I ordered two (one regular, one ANR) glass plates from Focal Point. I think that's also where Doug Fisher (of betterscanning.com) gets his ANR inserts from. They have custom cut glass for all the Nikon holders (including the 35mm holders) with 1mm thickness so you can use two plates in the scanner. The link is https://linux19.domainnameservers.net/~fpoint5/store/agora.cgi?cart_id=5485470.5289*WR4UX6&xm=on&product=SCANNER_GLASS but it doesn't seem to work right now. If I remember correctly the prices are something like $40 for the ANR plate and $20 for the regular glass plate. All in all very reasonable IMO.