Comparison Between Epson V850 and Creo iQsmart2?

[Tim Layton]

Has anyone shared or know of a recent wet mount scan comparison between the Epson V850 and the Creo iQsmart2 or iQsmart3 scanners?

Thanks

Tim

 

[Hank.Film]

I have an iqsmart2 and a v600 if that would work? What are you specifically interested in? Resolution between the two? Negative or slide?

 

[Tim Layton]

I have an iqsmart2 and a v600 if that would work? What are you specifically interested in? Resolution between the two? Negative or slide?

Hi Hank. I mostly scan 4x5 large format c-41 color negatives and E-6 transparencies. What is your impression of the c-41 color negative auto-inversion of the iQsmart2 with Oxygen? What version of Oxygen software are you running? What do you think the benefits of the iQsmart2 are from your experience?

 

[Hank.Film]

Hi Hank. I mostly scan 4x5 large format c-41 color negatives and E-6 transparencies. What is your impression of the c-41 color negative auto-inversion of the iQsmart2 with Oxygen? What version of Oxygen software are you running? What do you think the benefits of the iQsmart2 are from your experience?

I tend to scan negatives without inversion and convert them in negative lab pro, but I’ve generally been happy with oxygen scans inversions the times I have used it that way. I use oxygen scan 2.6.3 on a mac iBook G4. Oxygen scan is a little confusing and the iqsmart2 can’t produce the raw DT files the iqsmart 3 produces so scanning as an uninverted linear tiff works better for me so I can do my edits non destructively in Lightroom.

Benefits of the iqsmart in general would be that the top glass is on a spring so when you close the lid it holds your negatives flat without the need for a film holder. Also it comes with large masking sheets that cover the full bed of the scanner for each type of format. For 4x5 you can load six sheets and oxygen scan will automatically detect the crop area for those sheets.

I haven’t tested it really against the Epson, but sharpness and resolution is similar between the IQ2 and coolscan 9000. Major downside is no digital ICE and especially with color negative (because the dust appears white, rather than dark with slide film) any dust is very very apparent. Wet mounting helps a bit but any 4x5 takes quite awhile to clean up for me no matter how much I try clean before scanning.

There is a Facebook group Orphaned Scanners with more knowledgeable people than me. I bought mine from Scan Solutions about 2 years ago and it was shipped in a big wooden box and packed really really securely. It’s very large and very heavy so you really need two people to get it out of the box and move it.

 

[Tim Layton]

I tend to scan negatives without inversion and convert them in negative lab pro, but I’ve generally been happy with oxygen scans inversions the times I have used it that way. I use oxygen scan 2.6.3 on a mac iBook G4. Oxygen scan is a little confusing and the iqsmart2 can’t produce the raw DT files the iqsmart 3 produces so scanning as an uninverted linear tiff works better for me so I can do my edits non destructively in Lightroom.

Benefits of the iqsmart in general would be that the top glass is on a spring so when you close the lid it holds your negatives flat without the need for a film holder. Also it comes with large masking sheets that cover the full bed of the scanner for each type of format. For 4x5 you can load six sheets and oxygen scan will automatically detect the crop area for those sheets.

I haven’t tested it really against the Epson, but sharpness and resolution is similar between the IQ2 and coolscan 9000. Major downside is no digital ICE and especially with color negative (because the dust appears white, rather than dark with slide film) any dust is very very apparent. Wet mounting helps a bit but any 4x5 takes quite awhile to clean up for me no matter how much I try clean before scanning.

There is a Facebook group Orphaned Scanners with more knowledgeable people than me. I bought mine from Scan Solutions about 2 years ago and it was shipped in a big wooden box and packed really really securely. It’s very large and very heavy so you really need two people to get it out of the box and move it.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience with the iQsmart2.

I am currently deciding between the iQsmart2 and the iQsmart3, also from Scan Solutions. The higher native resolution and the faster scan time of the iQ3 vs. the iQ2 are not a big deal to me, but I was very interested in the quality of the DT raw files of the iQ3. It would be helpful to know whether the DT raw files justify the extra expense of the iQ3. If you know anyone that has direct experience with this, please let me know. I don't have access to Facebook, but maybe I can ask a friend that does to check out the Orphaned Scanners group you mentioned.

I appreciate your help.

Thanks

Tim

 

[analogwisdom]

Have you seen this page already?

Collaborative Large Format Scanner Comparison

www.largeformatphotography.info

It doesn't have the V850 but the V750 is effectively the same thing.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Any of the high end CCD's should knock the spots off the Epson, even at low resolutions. If they aren't, then there's something very wrong with the scanner or whatever you are feeding it has major shortcomings. A lot of the online 'tests' are more often demonstrations of a library of potential operator errors rather than usable comparisons.

I'd also be hesitant about overly favourable ratings of the Coolscans - they had potentially good optical/ sensor packages in less optimal mechanical arrangements, and that comes through in the outcomes.

And almost all high end scanners' software seems to have quirky ideas about C-41 inversion, which can be readily negated by sensible use of white point placement in the scan and inversion in Photoshop etc.

Final thing is that most of the claims about onboard 'raw' files on scanners using 3xCCD sensors are questionable at best, nonsensical at worst. They're usually just a linear tiff file stuffed into a file format only readable by the manufacturers' software. In the 1990s there were potentially reasonable explanations for this, apart from pure marketing, but today there's no good reason for it.

 

[_T_]

Do you have a computer that can handle files of 334MP or 554MP? You would need a pretty beefy system just to do basic stuff like color correction or to clean up dust and scratches.

 

[koraks]

Do you have a computer that can handle files of 334MP or 554MP? You would need a pretty beefy system

This is well within the capabilities of a higher-mid-range PC from about 10 years ago, let alone what you'd typically buy today. It's more a question which application you use to do the editing. E.g. GIMP can have outright horrible performance even if you have oodles of memory, while Affinity is snappy and instant even if you're editing a 400+MPix file - as I'm doing right now on a sub-$300 second hand old clunker of a PC.

 

[_T_]

Interesting. Maybe I need to look into affinity.

 

[Tim Layton]

Have you seen this page already?

Collaborative Large Format Scanner Comparison

www.largeformatphotography.info

It doesn't have the V850 but the V750 is effectively the same thing.

I have not seen this, so thank you for sharing this.

 

[Tim Layton]

Any of the high end CCD's should knock the spots off the Epson, even at low resolutions. If they aren't, then there's something very wrong with the scanner or whatever you are feeding it has major shortcomings. A lot of the online 'tests' are more often demonstrations of a library of potential operator errors rather than usable comparisons.

I'd also be hesitant about overly favourable ratings of the Coolscans - they had potentially good optical/ sensor packages in less optimal mechanical arrangements, and that comes through in the outcomes.

And almost all high end scanners' software seems to have quirky ideas about C-41 inversion, which can be readily negated by sensible use of white point placement in the scan and inversion in Photoshop etc.

Final thing is that most of the claims about onboard 'raw' files on scanners using 3xCCD sensors are questionable at best, nonsensical at worst. They're usually just a linear tiff file stuffed into a file format only readable by the manufacturers' software. In the 1990s there were potentially reasonable explanations for this, apart from pure marketing, but today there's no good reason for it.

Very helpful. Thank you.

 

[Tim Layton]

Do you have a computer that can handle files of 334MP or 554MP? You would need a pretty beefy system just to do basic stuff like color correction or to clean up dust and scratches.

I do. I am currently editing drum scans of my 8x10 film in the latest edition of Photoshop and the files are very large, like in the range of 4+Gb. My Mac has no issue with the edits.