Batch Scanning on Epson Scanners? (V500, V600, V700, V750)

[Scheimpflug]

I'm considering picking up an Epson scanner for scanning 35mm negatives and slides, and I was wondering if anyone can provide any personal experiences as to how well these scanners work for batch scanning? I have hundreds of rolls of film and several boxes of slides from my parents which I would like to scan, so speed and ease-of-use for semi-unattended scanning would probably take priority over ultimate quality in this case.


Basically, the questions I have:

* Once you have it configured, can you just load up the negative or slide carriers, hit a button, and then go do other things and come back when it is done? Or does it require more tweaking than that?

* How often does the scanner software make mistakes? (not detecting a frame, cropping to the wrong area or wrong orientation for slides, etc?) Basically, how often would I have to manually intervene or re-scan a set after doing a full-auto batch scan?

* Are the carriers pretty easy to load, and would it be worthwhile to purchase a second carrier to allow for loading one while the other is scanning?

* How long does it take to scan a full tray (two strips of 6-exposure negatives for the V500/V600, or four strips for the V700/V750? Let's say at 2400 dpi, or some other moderate resolution (better than "for web" in case a small print needs to be made, but not the full high quality).

* Can the Epsons do a quick low-resolution "contact sheet" scan?

* How much does it slow things down to enable the hardware dust/scratch removal?


Thanks for the help. :cool2:

 

[Rudeofus]

What I write here applies to V700 and vuescan. Other scanners and other software may be somewhat different.

* Once you have it configured, can you just load up the negative or slide carriers, hit a button, and then go do other things and come back when it is done? Or does it require more tweaking than that?

You load a slide holder, which holds 4 strips of 6 negatives each. You do a preview, make adjustments for crop and exposure, then hit a button to start the real scan. If you have gained a little experience, you can do this in 5 minutes. The scan itself my take between 1 and 2 hours but won't need your attention.

* How often does the scanner software make mistakes? (not detecting a frame, cropping to the wrong area or wrong orientation for slides, etc?) Basically, how often would I have to manually intervene or re-scan a set after doing a full-auto batch scan?

Expect that you have to set crop manually. The software gets it right most of the time but certainly not always.

* Are the carriers pretty easy to load, and would it be worthwhile to purchase a second carrier to allow for loading one while the other is scanning?

I'd say they are quick to load. Since most of the time is spent on actually scanning the film, it won't save you much time but unnecessarily expose your film to dust.

* How long does it take to scan a full tray (two strips of 6-exposure negatives for the V500/V600, or four strips for the V700/V750? Let's say at 2400 dpi, or some other moderate resolution (better than "for web" in case a small print needs to be made, but not the full high quality).

Expect anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours, depending on resolution, ICE settings and whether you do multisampling. Personally I recommend scanning at the highest possible quality. You don't have to baby sit your scanner while it does its job and it's so much easier to throw away excessive data than having to search and rescan a slide/neg.

* Can the Epsons do a quick low-resolution "contact sheet" scan?

In vuescan, there is preview and of course you can scan down to 100 dpi, which is very fast.I assume other scan software can also do that.

* How much does it slow things down to enable the hardware dust/scratch removal?

ICE almost doubles the scan time as the scanner has to make another pass with IR light. But I wouldn't worry about the scan time too much, you don't have to be there while the scanner does all this.

Personally: if I had a huge stack of film to be scanned I'd consider a professional service. Scanning is certainly not the most thrilling aspect of photography but it's an acceptable task after developing a few film rolls. If you don't plan on using film afterwards (i.e. if you just want to digitize your film legacy), all the scanning experience you gain in the process will go to waste.

 

[degruyl]

I have the V750.

I (recently) found a monumental improvement when I switched computers, so the answer to "how long" varies. Especially if ICE or multi-scan is used.

A roll of film at 36 exposures takes about an hour to scan at 3600 dpi. Anything longer than that is probably processing / memory juggling / writing files to disk. Note: the slide holder only holds 12 exposures at a time. For some reason, slides appear to be faster than negatives, but that could just be my impression because I was not waiting for the scanner to finish.

The real problem with negatives is color balance, which is not a scanner issue per se. (with slides, you don't even have to change the exposure: just load the trays in the same direction and rotate the scans. If the slide looks great on a light table / projected, it will be great scanned.).

I use silverfast (tried vuescan, and it is equally capable and cheaper, but I already had silverfast. I was not blown away by it). Epson scan might actually be the way to go in this case, though: just put it in auto mode and let er rip.

Be vigilant about dust and good luck.

 

[Doug Fisher]

To echo what others have indicated, processing time when using ICE, etc., is going to vary immensely based on how powerful of a computer you are using, so it is hard to give a general time estimate.

I would do some testing before I used multi-pass scanning because many scanners do not return to the exact same starting point and thus you get passes that are not aligned which can affect sharpness.

Autocropping is often fooled. For many of us, it seems to be faster in the end to just set up a manual batch scan and know that you got the full frame the first time versus going back to do comparisons of each scan to find which ones will need the inevitable rescan.

Doug

 

[pellicle]

Hi

I do it like this:

in my view ...: bulk scanning with Epson flatbed

 

[cooltouch]

I've done quite a bit of bulk scanning with my Epson 4990, which is similar to the V700 in capabilities. I don't use ICE or dust removal, so my scans don't take all that long. I don't use ICE because the images are noticeably softer when it is engaged, and I don't use the dust removal toggle because this feature adds unacceptable artifacts to the images.

When set to 2400 ppi, my 4990 takes maybe two to three minutes per slide or negative, so a holder full of 24 negatives will take somewhere around an hour, a holder full of 12 slides will take about half that long. It's running off my PC's firewire port, so I don't know if this is faster or slower than USB 2.0.

I've tried the demo versions of Vuescan and Silverfast, but I've just never seen the point to them. I use Epson Scan and it does everything I need it to. It has an auto-detect feature for the individual images, which seems to work pretty well, the few times I've used it. But I prefer to manually set the "marquis" for each image. It takes a little longer but eliminates the possibility of error.

As for contact sheets, I've never done it, but I don't see why you couldn't. You can crop the marquis to whatever size you want and then just dial down the resolution.

 

[GRHazelton]

I've been generally pleased with the results from my V700 for 35mm, both slides, BW negs, and color negs. While I've used 4000ppi I'm not sure it is really better than 3600. I have found that if the film strip is significantly curled lengthwise its very difficult to get a good scan.

I rarely use Digital Ice, since it takes so long and with care the images I want to print - certainly not all of them! - I can clone out dust, etc, fairly fast. In fact since I've set up a BW darkroom (back to the dark side and wet work) I will probably use the scanned BW images as little more than a contact sheet and data base, so I might be able to scan at lower res and save time and hard drive space.

I've been able to print acceptably sharp 13 x 19 prints from 100 ISO C41 images shot with my Pentax LX on a tripod. Some day I should pop for a drum scan and see what the difference is.

Medium format, which I've just got into with a Pentax 645n is another story! Just a cautionary note to those with 120 negatives.

The stock Epson holders are difficult to load, at least for me. And worse, the film tends to sag, making a sharp scan almost impossible. I've loaded the film upside down, putting the curl up, hoping that the sag would counteract the curl, helps a bit. I've ordered a replacement MF carrier from betterscanning.com, along with Anti Newton's Ring (ANR) glass. I hope this will do the job - after paying big bucks (for me) I want that big negative benefit.

If the ANR glass helps MF scanning I may order a strip for those curly 35mm negs.

I just noted a post from Doug Fisher. Are you the spirit behind betterscanning?

 

[GRHazelton]

The MF carrier with ANR glass from betterscanning.com arrived and I calibrated it according to the instructions. Tedious, but not difficult. The difference it makes is well worth the cost. At 3200 dpi "pixel peeping" suggests that an enlargement of 2 or 3 feet would appear sharp from a normal viewing distance - 2 or 3 feet. Images are sharp, corner to corner.