Problems with Buying a new Scanner

[venchka]

I forgot something important:

Flatbed scanners deposit crud on the underneath side of the glass. It's fairly easy to get the top off and clean the glass. My friend & I both did it to our scanners and saw an instant improvement.

 

[mh2000]

If you don't need digitalICE then an older 2880 or 3200dpi Minoltal Duoscan for less than $100 used will kill your flatbed for b&w (I have a 4990 and think it is pretty crappy, but if you give it a big enough negative it can give you enough for nice moderate sized prints... but nothing more). The Coolscan V is great for C-41 work, but it doesn't do very well with silver based b&w IMO (the cold light source does the nasty to grain).

 

[tedwin]

I've had a coolscan V and an Epson V700. I didn't like either very much. Have ended up using my digital camera. In all honesty, with black and white, I get better results this way. Some examples about half way down this thread..

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=64247

Ted.

 

[venchka]

OK, Jeremy, get a bigger camera! LOL!

 

[maddoc]

I also sold the Coolscan V ED in favor of the Epson V700 and never looked back. The differences in quality were barely visible except (!!) I manually focused, set exposure and used multi-scan mode with the Nikon. The time needed for one slightly improved scan wasn't worth the time needed (at least for me).

As Venchka has mentioned, THIN negatives are essential ! Also, the Epson doesn't like color-slides a lot, they always come out less sharp than color-negatives or B&W. That said, slightly underdeveloped B&W negative film gives sharpest scans with best range of tones. If I would need higher quality, I would go for the Nikon Coolscan 9000 or better an Imacon.

Cheers,

Gabor

 

[venchka]

Jeremy,

For $7,500 you can buy an Aztek 8000 PPI drum scanner at the Large Format Photography Forum. If that baby won't make good scans, nothing will. You could probably make it pay for itself offering high quality scans to the rest of us.

 

[mh2000]

as we "speak" so to speak, my 4990 is cranking away on some fairly dense 6x9 negatives (TMY-2) and having no problems... I don't seem to have any problem with what I would consider dense negative so long as nothing gets clipped... and also, I have no problems with the Epsonscan, Nikonscan or Vuescan, once you learn the subtlies of each you can get just as good results from all. I'm using Vuescan on the Epson now because something killed the Epson software... just saying that I think the virtues of Vuescan are often overstated... it's a fine (primitive) package, but its version of ICE frankly sucks.

 

[nanthor]

Jeremy, where do you live? And have you looked at the canoscan 4000 scanner? I picked one up off ebay for about $280.00 and it's a great scanner, dedicated 35mm. And to all the "thin" negative proponents out there...How do you get a thin neg? Do you overexpose and under-develop? So, would I set the film speed on the camera to say 64 ISO for 100 film? Thanks, all, Bob in Michigan.

 

[JPSuisse]

Hi Jeremy

I'm reading a of the advice here and, frankly, not agreeing with a lot of it. Scanning is an art and finding out how do it with which equipment is somehow the trick.

The only advice I can give you is maybe experiment around with your workflow a lot.

I'm using a Nikon Coolscan 5000 with VueScan and postprocessing in Lightroom. I find the results really good. But that's just one way. (I also have an Epson V750 as well.) Basically MY workflow that works for ME and MY HARDWARE is:

1) Scan B/W and transparencies as RAW, scan C41 as JPG
2) Always lock the exposure and base color in VueScan
3) Anything above ISO 100, I scan at 2000dpi, ISO 100 and lower, I can actually see a difference scanning at 4000dpi.
4) Do minimal post processing in Lightroom

Voilà! It's a piece of cake now for me, but I suffered until I got the details of the workflow down!!

Best of LUCK.

JP

 

[Ronald_H]

I agree that post processing scans is a skill you have to learn.

It's hard to recommend a Minolta scanner for me. You might find one for little cash (and they are actually great), but what to do if it breaks? Minolta is out of the camera business.

My first neg scanner was a Minolta Scan Dual II. It was slow, but the results with Vuescan were pretty convincing. But in a few short years I literally worked it to the death. It is utterly worn out. I'm not a pro by any means, it just isn't that well made.

My Nikon Coolscan V though is built like a tank.

 

[venchka]

Opposite

Opposite

Jeremy, where do you live? And have you looked at the canoscan 4000 scanner? I picked one up off ebay for about $280.00 and it's a great scanner, dedicated 35mm. And to all the "thin" negative proponents out there...How do you get a thin neg? Do you overexpose and under-develop? So, would I set the film speed on the camera to say 64 ISO for 100 film? Thanks, all, Bob in Michigan.

Underexpose. Normal to overdevelop. Set ISO higher than box speed.

My friend & I with the negatives so thin you can't find the unesposed edges of the film got there by different menas: I shot at night, developed in Rodinal 1:100 for an hour with little agitation. Westley found his normally exposed negatives severly underdeloped in some very old and obviously dead Diafine. In both cases, the negatives appeared blank to the naked eye yet produced useable scans. Go figure.

No doubt normal to dense negatives scan just fine. My limited experience suggests that thinner than normal negatives appear to scan better. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's the scanner. Maybe it's the film. I didn't mean to state this as fact or gospel.

 

[mich8261]

Jeremy,

Have you looked at the scanner reviews on Photo-i? They don't specifically address the V500 or the Nikon V, but some of them do interesting comparisons between flatbed Epson models and high end dedicated film scanners. Have a look.

 

[gdi]

Jeremy,

Have you looked at the scanner reviews on Photo-i? They don't specifically address the V500 or the Nikon V, but some of them do interesting comparisons between flatbed Epson models and high end dedicated film scanners. Have a look.

I keep seeing that comparison referenced - but I wonder why the Nikon scans always seem to be poorly executed? Here is a different result from a guy who obviously uses Nikons a lot and seems to get much better results with it.

Check out his various sample links (too bad he doesn't seem to have a proper web page set up).

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1018&message=30243142

 

[historicist]

I've just sold my Coolscan IV as I'm using mostly medium format these days, and have started scanning some 35mm with my Epson V500.

While I would agree that scanning is a bit of a dark art and most scans, even out of a good scanner, will need a bit of levels etc. before they look as good as a Walmart scan which has already had this editing done automatically, the V500 doesn't seem to be very good with 35mm.

I have had excellent results from it with medium format, but with 35mm the results aren't anything like as good as they were from the Nikon.

At least on my experience, I'd go for the Nikon Coolscan V. I also have a sneaking suspicion that in the long term, the value of Coolscans will stay high, as there won't be any new dedicated film scanners to buy. I sold my Coolscan IV for a fair bit more than I paid for it.

 

[JeremyLangford]

I keep seeing that comparison referenced - but I wonder why the Nikon scans always seem to be poorly executed? Here is a different result from a guy who obviously uses Nikons a lot and seems to get much better results with it.

Check out his various sample links (too bad he doesn't seem to have a proper web page set up).

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1018&message=30243142

Wow, thank you for the link. I saw that a while back and then couldn't find it when I tried later.

This gives me hope that a Coolscan V will fix my problems. There is clearly a huge difference in these scans.

Coolscan 5000

http://www.fototime.com/75C05119C29A417/orig.jpg

Epson V500

http://www.fototime.com/A389407801876DB/orig.jpg

 

[mh2000]

thanks for the link! I'm glad I saved the $500 and bought a discontinued but new 4990 over the V750 since it appears to be almost as good... which isn't that... when compared to my Coolscan... also, now I know I'm not crazy or inept.

...well maybe not...

🙂

 

[MikeL]

Which one Coolscan which one V500?
Both at 2400 dpi, 100%
Both scanners are good scanners for reasonable sized prints. The computer screen is less forgiving.

For web postings, the scanner is not the limiting factor, in my opinion.

 

[jonmanjiro]

Which one Coolscan which one V500?
Both at 2400 dpi, 100%
Both scanners are good scanners for reasonable sized prints. The computer screen is less forgiving.

For web postings, the scanner is not the limiting factor, in my opinion.

There's clearly more detail in the leaves in the first photo. But both shots look soft and could do with some USM. Softness aside, judging by the extra detail my guess is that the first shot was scanned with the Coolscan and the second shot was scanned with the V500. How'd I do?

 

[maddoc]

Which one Coolscan which one V500?
Both at 2400 dpi, 100%
Both scanners are good scanners for reasonable sized prints. The computer screen is less forgiving.

For web postings, the scanner is not the limiting factor, in my opinion.

On my screen they look identical (Lenovo Thinkpad X60), can't tell any difference...

 

[MikeL]

But both shots look soft and could do with some USM. Softness aside....

Now don't go insulting one of Doc's favorite lenses, the pre-asph summilux. 😉 I borrowed one and this was a crop of a f2 shot of a negative I just scanned.