The Epson line of flatbeds has been much maligned over the years for having inadequate resolution for film scanning.
It has been gradually accepted they got good enough for medium format but it is still common to read that for 35mm film, one really needs a dedicated film scanner.
I am in the process of going through old negatives for an old series I never really finished. I also put a roll of film in my M6 just for the fun of it. So I am again interested in small format scanning. And what I have is an Epson V750 from my medium format times.
It turns out that scanner is plenty enough for small format scans, provided:
- the intended output size is no more than 16×24″ (roughly 40×65 cm)
- the film is either very flat or held very flat
- the film holder height has been carefully tuned
My old negs have been in files for yers and are naturally very flat. I have tuned my film holder height and I don’t think 35mm is really appropriate for larger ouput than 16×24″. In my opinion, that’s considerably large anyway.
To illustrate my point, I chose what I call a good negative. It was made on tripod with my Leica M6 and Elmarit 90mm on Fuji Acros 100 exposed at IE64 and developed in Ilfotec HC (same as HC-110). The Elmarit 90 is an extremely good lens and any softness we might notice certainly will not come from there.
The software I use is VueScan and I scan the negative in “Image” mode, meaning VueScan jsut tries to show the scanned object. I scan at 3200dpi. I VueScan Color tab, I choose None for the color balance, meaning VueScan does not apply any clipping and anly minimal curve treatment to the file. The result is a low contrast file that I open in PhotoShop CS. I get this as a starting point:
I do some cropping to keep just a fine black border, invert the file to get a positive and apply this Levels adjustment:
I also apply this curve :
And I get a good starting point:
Tonalities with B&W negatives are not a problem for the scanner. Negative films have a DMax around 3 at the maximum, and for B&W that will only happen in case of severe over-development. Any film scanner on the market can easily scan through this, provided the light source is diffused. Otherwise, the Calier effect can produce blocked highlights. So it is not surprising I can get good tonality from this scanner. Well, it might not be good, but it is certainly not the scanner’s fault.
What is criticized is resolution. Let’s see what we have here. I took two details: one from the forground herbs and one from the background hotel wall:
Detail 1:
Detail2:
OK, this looks soft. However, if your screen has 100dpi resolution, like most LCD, you’re looking at a 32x enlarging factor! Let’s apply some sharpening. I applied PhotoShop simple Unsharp Mask Sharpening filter with a radius of 0.7 pixel and an amount of 323%. These value are very much dependent on the picture. Some will take less, other even more. Sometimes two successive milder sharpening are better. Let’s see what our details have become:
Detail 1:
Detail 2:
Now, remember, we are looking at a 32x enlargement. At 16x, we’d have a 16×24″ print with all the sharpness such a print needs and, in my opinion, very close to the maximum practical usage of a small format negative.
I have owned dedicated film scanners and they are indeed even sharper than this. however, with B&W silver negatives, it is a mixed blessing. The increased sharpness tends to produce exaggerated grain. With the negative I used in this example it woould probably not matter that much, but try it with some Tri-X and the dedicated scanner does not look so attractive anymore.
As Colin points out, the new Microtek M1/F1 could very well give us further progress by including autofocus. Autofocus is really what the Epson lacks. The holder height tuning thing is a bit ridiculous.
Another thing I’d like to try sometimes is to develop for much higher contrast. A film like TMax 100 could very well be suited for that experiment. The idea is that the heavy levels adjustment to get the contrast back should also amplify grain. If the neg was of higher contrast, this effect could be reduced and maybe I could get scans with even less grain.
But to answer the question in the title, definitely yes!
Stephane :: Dec.26.2007 ::
Gear, Printing, Scanning, Software ::
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