Scanning film negatives with Vuescan

[zeitoun]

I am thinking to move to Vuescan to scan BW negatives with an Epson V550. I have recently migrated to Linux and the Epson scan software appears to work very poorly in that environment. My specific question is whether Vuescan can do "batch" scanning of strips of negatives or whether one has to scan each picture individually. I hope the former as the latter would be quite time-expensive. A quick look at online Vuescan manuals did not yield an obvious response.

Thank you for any help or suggestions.

 

[Doug A]

Yes, Vuescan can do batch scanning of strips of negatives. I used it for a number of years with the OEM negative carrier in a Epson V600.

 

[zeitoun]

Thank you, Doug.

 

[Coldkennels]

I just dug out Vuescan to scan some medium format in a long-neglected Canoscan.

Yes, it has batch printing functionality, but using it is so counter-intuitive and glitchy that I've given up and gone for scanning each frame one at a time. I can't seem to get it to auto-select the frames, nor to save and remember my custom crops. It's an utter pain in the ass.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Here's a tutorial that I wrote on how to do batch scanning in Vuescan:

Batch Scanning Tutorial for Vuescan

 

[p.giannakis]

I just dug out Vuescan to scan some medium format in a long-neglected Canoscan.

Yes, it has batch printing functionality, but using it is so counter-intuitive and glitchy that I've given up and gone for scanning each frame one at a time. I can't seem to get it to auto-select the frames, nor to save and remember my custom crops. It's an utter pain in the ass.

I also had problems with my canoscan 8600f and Vuescan. I switched back to native canon software.

 

[Coldkennels]

Here's a tutorial that I wrote on how to do batch scanning in Vuescan:

Batch Scanning Tutorial for Vuescan

I followed that exact tutorial earlier - found it through DuckDuckGo when I couldn't understand the eccentricities of Vuescan's interface.

To put it bluntly, with a Canoscan 9000f and medium format film, it just doesn't work. I followed the tutorial to the letter, hit scan... and found only the badly-placed auto-selected crops in the save folder when the scanner was finished. I don't know why - maybe it's a Canoscan issue, based on what @p.giannakis is saying. But if I was trying to do 35mm, I'd have just given up on the Vuescan/Canoscan combo altogether on the spot. Manually going through 12 frames wasn't too painful - just frustrating that it doesn't work properly.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I followed that exact tutorial earlier - found it through DuckDuckGo when I couldn't understand the eccentricities of Vuescan's interface.

To put it bluntly, with a Canoscan 9000f and medium format film, it just doesn't work. I followed the tutorial to the letter, hit scan... and found only the badly-placed auto-selected crops in the save folder when the scanner was finished. I don't know why - maybe it's a Canoscan issue, based on what @p.giannakis is saying. But if I was trying to do 35mm, I'd have just given up on the Vuescan/Canoscan combo altogether on the spot. Manually going through 12 frames wasn't too painful - just frustrating that it doesn't work properly.

Sorry it didn't work. I have never used a Canon scanner. I have used the Nikon LS-8000ED and the Coolscan V and both worked with those instructions. You might try emailing Hamrick Software and letting them know that batch scanning isn't working on your Canon. They're constantly updating Vuescan to fix issues that people report.

 

[p.giannakis]

My experience with canoscans is that the drivers that came for different operating systems were a bit hit and miss. With the latest driver for win10 Vuescan and scangear would just crash.

I uninstalled it and installed the original driver that came with the CD and Scangear worked well but Vuescan produced horizontal lines. So I stayed with Scangear. Maybe with other scanners it works well.

 

[Bob Michaels]

There is an alternative that actually was the standard 20 years ago. That is edit FIRST, THEN scan. It is quite easy to edit from a neg, in many respects easier than a second generation such as a scan. With a good loupe, sharpness is more apparent, density and tonality can be quickly learned, and the key factor of the photo delivering the desired impact is there. When you are scanning only a small portion of the frames, you can devote whatever time is necessary to make sure you do the best scan possible. The only way editing first does not work is for those who have already convinced themselves before actually trying.

Some of us got into this "edit first, then scan" from already processing 35mm E-6 at home where manually mounting slides was a PITA. You started by realizing some frames were not worth the time to mount, then became more selective over time.

 

[zeitoun]

Thank you, Chris. I will have a serious look at your tutoriial