#Finicky framer software#

This again would lead me to conclude that the lens in this V550 has been designed to offer rather broad depth of field to allow for decent sharpness from both raised and non raised material. scann MF negative in Epson holder, shimmed with 1 level of credit cards or stacks of two levels of credit cards - no difference in sharpness scan MF negative directly on glass - no difference in sharpness of fine detailsĢ. Scanning a precision ruler lifted from one side with a pencil - good suggestion and I'll definitely try it. Still I was wondering if somehow my process can be optimized or if I can relax and this is the best I'm going to get. You're right in that I shouldn't be too bothered by details such as visibility of grain, and clearly I have not chosen to shoot film over digital to achieve ultimate detail.

I tend to keep Vuescan's processing to the bare essentials, obtain a raw file and invert/post-process in Photoshop.

Tom, the scanner is brand new and no, I did not have grain reduction activated in Vuescan. But again, depending on what the intended output is, that may not matter, and even less so when you're dealing with the larger negatives of medium format film. In the end, a flat bed scanner isn't going to be able to compete with a dedicated film scanner no matter what you do, especially if you're concerned about the grain being sharp. Once that was cleaned, it started working beautifully again. I got the Coolscan for almost nothing because dust on the mirror had degraded it to the point that it wouldn't pass the startup tests. Oh, and if this is a used scanner, it might be worth opening it up and giving everything a good (but gentle) cleaning. I can't say I've tried different holders on the Epson but the money might be better spent on a nicer scanner. I'm not knocking Vuescan but EpsonScan might be able to get more out of that scanner.

#Finicky framer software#

You might also want to try the Epson scanning software rather than Vuescan and compare the results. Do you have grain reduction turned on? If so, turn it off. The V500 is pretty decent actually, but it all depends on what you want to produce in the end. The coolscan does a better job but honestly it's not the night and day difference I would have expected. I have an Epson V500 as well as a Nikon Coolscan 8000. Can people confirm this? If this is true, then I'm suspecting that the (poor) sharpness I see is all I'm ever going to get with this scanner?Įlse, have people used after-market film holders (betterscanning? Lomography DigitaLIZA?) and seen sharpness improvements with this scanner on MF material? I have read that the V550/V600 models have a fixed optics with relatively high depth of field, compared to the better models (V700/V800) which have tighter DOF but allow for higher focus plane fine tuning. I have tried placing the negative directly on the scanner glass and rescanning in Vuescan: I see no difference in sharpness w.r.t using the Epson holder to scan. I can tell that because, while on my 35mm scans from the Minolta Scan Dual even the particles of dust on the negatives are sharp and in focus, on my V550 MF output the dust is blurry and soft. Using the standard Epson MF film holder, the scanner clearly does not resolve the grain. On a negative note, I think I'm still not completely satisfied with the V550's output. It is shocking how poor the jpeg scan from the 'professional' lab were - and I thought the culprit was the camera or film or both! On the positive side, my results *far* exceed the poor quality low-res scan that came from the lab together with the developed negatives. I set it up and tested it yesterday, with a few 6x4.5 Ektar 100 negatives shot on a Fuji GA645i. I resorted to purchasing an Epson V550, which I believe is an updated V600 with minor differences. This is, however, not feasible at the moment, as the expense to buy a dedicated medium format film scanner is too high (this includes dodgy used Nikon 8000s/9000s on ebay). Ideally I'd like to come up with a medium format workflow that resembles the one I use for 35mm.

I am just starting to explore medium format and this brings me to my question. The results are, to me, nothing short of amazing and I have no complaints about the procedure. After a few years spent shooting digital, I'm going back to film - I just seem to enjoy the simplicity of the shooting process and a certain ineffable quality of the final product.įor 35mm, I seem to have found a satisfactory workflow: I have my c41 negatives processed by a lab and do my own scanning with my old Minolta Scan Dual III film scanner + Vuescan + Colourperfect plugin.