V750 vs DSLR scanning

Prest_400 said:
I happened to have a phase of pastel colored overexposed C41 film. Those results are rather easy with lab scanners and density correction but my V550 won't take overexposed (dense) color neg nicely.


I intend sometime in the future to upgrade my current m43 to an EM5II or such. That camera has a sensor shift HiRes mode that seems smart. Interestingly, I found a listing on ebay with the reason that its bit depth on that mode was insufficient for C41 (inversion) needs. Anyways, I intend to deviate towards B&W in darkroom this year, and not been thinking scanning at all.



I know the feeling, being a maximizing person. Feels that you throw a lot of what the format offers when you have subpar scanning. V550 is sufficient for 30x45 prints (6x9) but feels that the Neg has more holding there.
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I have in a similar way been looking at the Pentax K-1 with its pixel-shift mode as a viable albeit expensive alternative to the V750 for medium format scanning. This idea has been in the back of my mind for quite some time, and also the motivation for starting this thread and ask for some input about medium format scanning. The Olympus EM5II seems like an equally interesting camera and "scanner".

I have an A3+ (32,9 x 48,3 cm) print of a rather spectacular Northern Lights display hanging in my house:Auroras in near total darkness with a wooden Jetty as foreground interest. This image was shot on 35mm Fuji Provia 400x and scanned on my Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400 version 1. I have also photographed the Northern Lights with my Pentax 67ii + SMC 67 45mm f4 combination, and attempted to scan these slides and negatives on the Epson V750 with no luck. The V750 is not at all able to scan slides and negatives of such kinds of night photography (at least my V750 is not able to perform such a task).
 
Since starting this thread I have done some research and also rescanned the slide I am referring to. When I made this photograph in 2016 I realised that this scene represented very demanding light conditions for slide film. I most often use Lee GND filters with slide film, but I had only brought along a 0.6 hard edge GND, and I did not believe this would work, so I shot two Fuji Provia 100F films and one Kodak Ektar 100 film (and also some DSLR shots) without GND filters. The resulting slides have very dark and dense shadows but the highlights are preserved. Viewed on a light table there is plenty of detail in the shadows on both of the Provia 100F films, however when attempting to scan these slides on the V750, I had little success. Only when I pushed the gamma from default (1.0) to 2.0 in Epson Scan did I manage to bring out the details in the shadows. A side effect of this setting, I understand now, is a general deterioration of image quality and banding noise. Today I did several new scans of this slide on the V750, and amongst others, a linear scan, and I am gradually coming to the conclusion that this specific slide is too demanding for the V750.

Therefore I will start to research how to put together a DSLR scan rig, and see if this could be an alternative way to digitalize this specific slide.

The Epson V750 is a fine scanner, and for most kinds of 120 film scanning it does a very good job. It has not been my intention to speak negatively about the V750.

Thank you once again for sharing your experience and giving me advice. It has been most helpful!
 
bjolester said:
I have been using the V750 regularly since 2013, and scanned maybe 1000 medium format negatives and slides these five years. Deep dense shadows in slides are never successfully captured with the V750. When trying to bring out the shadows, noise and banding is always a side effect. I know because I have A-B compared scans from dense 35mm slides scanned with the V750 and the Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400 version 1, and there is a huge difference between these two scanners’ performance. The Minolta is superb.
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Agreed, the Scan Elite 5400 Mk1 is a fantastic scanner that is capable of fully resolving film grain, which the V750 isn't. Having said that I'm satisfied with the V750 for scanning 6x9 negatives to print A3 size, however I only scan monochrome film not colour neg or tranny.
 
Huss said:
a slide like yours needs a drum scan to fulfill its potential.
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I am seriously considering sending the slide for a drum scan. Thank you for your advice!

I have been studying your thread about DSLR scanning with great interest for some time.
 
Gosh , I sure hope it's a valuable slide , here in Vancouver , drum scans start at $300.00 Can. ! :( , it'll simply remain in the realm of a lottery winning . Peter
 
I prefer my Epson V700

I prefer my Epson V700

While I love DSLR scanning (or mirrorless in my case), if you can dial in your V700 and your software, you can get some pretty usable and amazing results AND batch scan a whole bunch at a time.

My mirrorless setup consists of a Sony A7 with a macro lens + a negative carrier + a flash + a box and some white paper. The results I get are generally very good EXCEPT when their is a flare or light leak (I don't hold the macro lens flush to the negative). Then, once I have the RAW files, the issue arises as to how I turn it into a positive. I can rummage around with it in Lightroom or Photoshop but I found I could never quite nail it down and when I did, it didn't apply that way across all the frames so I'd have to edit each one individually just to get the correct color or shadow/highlight levels.
I've used VUESCAN as a way to convert the RAW files but that is sometimes not dialed in all that correct either.
PLUS the amount of physical time it takes me to scan all 36 or 72 frames is equivalent to me going out and shooting more frames...
In all, it took a LOT of my time to get my scans in and I had to dedicate much of my life to setup, take a shot of the negative, take down, color correct, edit edit edit.... Too much work.

So I turned back to my Epson V700. I played around with some of the settings in Silverfast and adjusted the holders. I also tried to make sure the negatives were not bending and remained flat.

I found the V700 results to be pretty darn good with the right amount of sharpening once dialed in and I get my life back.
 
hey bjolester,

I can only recommend to try using your digital camera.
I also own a V700 for my 120 photos and the results are not always perfect, especially for the inversion of negative films.

I stumbled across negative lab pro a few months ago and constructed myself a DSLR/mirrorless-Scanning Rig out of a 2nd hand repro stand, a kaiser led light table, an older FD Macro lens and a Lomo 120 digitaliza (and some cardboard which I use as a mask).
so far I'm super impressed by the results, especially the speed. If you don't want to print big 1 or 2 shots per negative are good enough and super fast.
Sharpness is at least as good as from the epson, rather better.

the only main disadvantage I currently see compared to the V700 is the non-availability of D-ICE.
In contrast, the camera setup will likely improve over the next years if new tech (like e.g. Pixel Shifting) comes available.

I will do a proper comparison next month and then decide which system to keep for digitizing MF.
There's also a good Facebook group for digitizing film with a digital camera and another for the Negative Lab Pro Lightroom Plugin.
 
as others have mentioned, you have to give negativelabpro.com a go for negative conversions from dslr scans.
it’s been a gamechanger for me. fantastic product.
 
Moto-Uno said:
Gosh , I sure hope it's a valuable slide , here in Vancouver , drum scans start at $300.00 Can. ! :( , it'll simply remain in the realm of a lottery winning . Peter
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$300 for 1 scan!!!!!!!

Who on earth would agree to that?!
Here in LA it is $20.
 
Huss said:
as others have mentioned, you have to give negativelabpro.com a go for negative conversions from dslr scans.
it’s been a gamechanger for me. fantastic product.
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I will have negativelabpro.com on my list when I get around to scanning with my DSLR.
 
bjolester said:
I will have negativelabpro.com on my list when I get around to scanning with my DSLR.
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although OT: it's really great. When I discovered it (already tried Colorperfect, but that's WAY too complicated and other methods) I was like..
"O.k. let's try it. This just sounds too good, and yes the video is awesome. But hey that's the tutorial / advertising video. Some results will be good, some will be bad - just with any other option"

And then I tried it....

super convenient, fast, user-friendly, self-explanatory, outstanding results on every frame,... really, really great piece of software; worth every penny!

In addition, scanner-support is currently in Beta and should be included in the next release. Super stoked for this :D


[edit] I'm in no way affiliated with the Author - just really impressed !
 
The Nikon 9000 film scanner is a very, very good scanner. Having said that, this is a 35mm negative scanned with an old $40 Epson 2450 flatbed scanner. You don't really need a lot of fancy equipment to make good scans (but having a properly exposed and developed neg along w/ Canon R 100 2 lens doesn't hurt things either). I printed this to 12x18 back before I went to a darkroom and it looks fine. The scanner captured plenty of sharp detail even though it had been made w/ the lens wide open and hand held on an SLR at 1/30. Tri-X in D76 at full strength, which is not a very sharp film/developer combination.

https://i.imgur.com/93A6GLu.jpg
 
bjolester said:
What stitching software for Mac do you recommend for DSLR scanned images?
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Do you need to stitch? I guess it depends on what camera you use. I never stitched using a D750, and now D850. I went with the D850 (and now Z7) for the extra rez.
This is a straight single scan/shot of a pano image (Noblex 135Sport) using a D850, with a 1:1 crop from the edge showing the detail. And no need to stitch:



 
Huss said:
Do you need to stitch? I guess it depends on what camera you use.
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I am planning to use my 16mp Pentax K-5iis together with the SMC Pentax A50mm f2.8 macro for scanning medium format film. I believe that I have to use stitching in order to get better results than I already am getting from the V750.
 
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