Epson V700 and Doug Fisher / better scanning 120 holder

[rogue_designer]

Well, I'm sort of a professional. I say sort of because I make my money teaching photography at university but my "real" job is long project work, sort of doco, sort of art...

Get the school to buy an Imacon.

Seriously tho. In your situation. I'd find a way to get the Nikon 8000/9000. I use the Epson myself. But for prints that need to go larger than 11x14, I take the negs to a service to get rescanned, or I borrow a friends 9000.

If only the 9000 could also do 4x5 - I'd buy one myself.

fwiw - client scans almost always go to a service.

 

[Finder]

Well, I'm sort of a professional. I say sort of because I make my money teaching photography at university but my "real" job is long project work, sort of doco, sort of art... I don't want to sound like a git but I do need to invest wisely because at the end of the day a lot of my prints get bought for public and private collections.

I see a few Nikon 8000 scanners on ebay at the moment and judging by prior auctions they will sell for between $600 - $700US. Like someone said above, I guess I can always pay for really important scans for massive output, especially since most of my work end up in books and not on the wall. Thoughts?

The V700 is really tempting me and the new units one year warrenty, combined with the fact I can buy local, seems like a big plus.

We are in a similar boat - I work for a college and spend my photopersona doing long projects. I got the V750 for desktop publishing. I use my darkroom for exhibition prints. However, the V750 is no slouch for large prints.

 

[mfogiel]

If you guys will have some patience, I can make a little test later this week, scanning the same piece of film on CS 9000 and V750 with Doug's holder, glass, etc. This way we could quench some thirst of knowledge in this respect for those that face the scanner choice. If you have specific requests as to the type of film or scanning technique, let me know.
Marek

 

[TJV]

If you guys will have some patience, I can make a little test later this week, scanning the same piece of film on CS 9000 and V750 with Doug's holder, glass, etc. This way we could quench some thirst of knowledge in this respect for those that face the scanner choice. If you have specific requests as to the type of film or scanning technique, let me know.
Marek

That sounds like a great idea and I for one would appreciate it if you put my mind to rest! It would be great to see some MF transparency scan comparisons.
Thanks for offering!

 

[TJV]

Get the school to buy an Imacon.

Seriously tho. In your situation. I'd find a way to get the Nikon 8000/9000. I use the Epson myself. But for prints that need to go larger than 11x14, I take the negs to a service to get rescanned, or I borrow a friends 9000.

If only the 9000 could also do 4x5 - I'd buy one myself.

fwiw - client scans almost always go to a service.

Funny you should say this because the school does infact have a Nikon 8000 but it's rendered almost defunct after years of abuse from students. I'd have no problem using it for my own work except if I sit there doing my own work I'm constantly interupted by students and never actually get a chance to get any work done! That and it keeps swallowing the MF neg holder...

 

[TJV]

TJV, unless you have to scan bigger than 6x9, there's no contest, To bring a high dpi Epson scan to what I get right out of the box from CS 9000, I need to apply a 2/200 USM to start with, and this is just the beginning. It is not to say you won't get scans, but if you are after MF quality, there is no discussion, You could as well shoot with a Nikon D40 to get a result like 4.5x6 with Epson... Although it will not show up too much on screen, here's a comparison of 2 shots made with the same lens and film, the first scanned on V750:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1151910889&size=l

and this one scanned on CS 9000:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1151897301&size=l

that's a massive difference, isn't it! Still, if you can do the test on the same neg/trannie it would be more telling.