Best source for X5 Flextight scans

gezak22 · Dec 22, 2025

Howdy folks,

I may be in the market for an X5 Flextight, and to help me make up my mind I wanted to see how the scans from it compare to my scans from the lowly and convenient V850. If I wanted to get an idea of the ultimate scan quality, is there one lab (or an independent person) whose X5 scans are a cut above the rest? Or are all X5 labs/users equally competent? If it matters, I am only interested in 120.

No need to rehash age-old arguments about the pros and cons between the V850 and X5. And yes, I am familiar with the scanner comparison tool over on LFF.

Thanks.

brbo · Dec 22, 2025

gezak22 said:
If it matters, I am only interested in 120.

I'm the first to admit that there's more to scanning than resolution, but are you seriously considering dropping $10K on a scanner that will bump your real resolution from 2.500dpi to a whooping 3.200dpi?

gezak22 · Dec 22, 2025

My thoughts exactly. Which is why I want to see a real life comparison of my negatives to see what other differences there are.

koraks · Dec 22, 2025

I can do you a scan on a Precision II. If that works for you; you'd have to send me a negative through snail mail to Europe though. I'm not sure about the differences with the X5 but iirc these are more in the area of productivity/speed and interface, not so much image quality.
However, I'd recommend saving a lot of money and a lengthy search, and get something like a modern PlusTek. Quality will be closer to the Flextight than to the Epson flatbed, but you save a heap of money you can blow on film.

gezak22 · Dec 22, 2025

I believe you, but the only thing that will convince me that the X5 is not worth it is a side-by-side comparison.

Taylor K Nankervis · Dec 22, 2025

Chasing (big, expensive) windmills.
The quality of the image on the film is vastly more important than what you get – expected or actual, out of the scanner, with any skill-set. Even an X5 cannot improve on poor exposure, lack of sharpness, inaccurate focus and colour shifts. Or even incorrect input scan metrics (an all-too common problem, still!). I guess you also know that you will be set back quite a few thousand dollars... Around $10 to $15,000+, then more on top of that for real-world training. It is not a 20 minute lunch break job going from unboxing to perfection!

Kicker: There is not a vast amount of difference between a skilled V850 scan and a scan from an Imacon or X5. Further, most drum scanners are troublesome to source parts for when (not if) they break down. They could well go the way of RA4 machines.
_________________________________
Left, Epson V700 scan, 35mm
Right, Imacon drum scan, 120

gezak22 · Dec 22, 2025

Yes, those forum resolution jpgs, of two different pictures to boot, will surely settle this debate.

Edit: Alright, one is a png. My mistake.

calebarchie · Dec 22, 2025

We still calling flextight drum scans in 2026?

Taylor K Nankervis · Dec 22, 2025

calebarchie said:
We still calling flextight drum scans in 2026?

We've called them much more prosaic names when things go pear-shaped!

Above pics are scaled down for the interwebby, and smaller still for Photrio.
.
I do not have to immediate reference the original .tif files for print output, but they are undoutbedly quite big!

Taylor K Nankervis · Dec 22, 2025

gezak22 said:
Yes, those forum resolution jpgs, of two different pictures to boot, will surely settle this debate.

Edit: Alright, one is a png. My mistake.

To be sure, Photrio is not the place to attempt to post up a 75Mb+. tif file...

brbo · Dec 23, 2025

But it will easily handle a link to a place that can handle a tiff file…

koraks · Dec 23, 2025

Taylor K Nankervis said:
Left, Epson V700 scan, 35mm
Right, Imacon drum scan, 120

Even at the tiny size presented, the difference is significant. The scan on the left looks like it was drawn over with wax crayons. Exactly what you get from a fuzzy flatbed scan combined with suboptimal sharpening. Let alone in a big print.

Taylor K Nankervis said:
There is not a vast amount of difference between a skilled V850 scan and a scan from an Imacon or X5

Yes, there really is.

gezak22 said:
I believe you, but the only thing that will convince me that the X5 is not worth it is a side-by-side comparison.

I can't give you the Plustek scan; I can give you the PII scan. Let me know if you want/ need it. No charge, of course. You pay postage on the negative.

brbo · Dec 23, 2025

koraks said:
I can't give you the Plustek scan; I can give you the PII scan. Let me know if you want/ need it. No charge, of course. You pay postage on the negative.

Side-by-side comparison Plustek vs. X5 (and part 2). Part 2 has a cheap flatbed thrown in for comparison (but not at pixel level, since the author in not a flickr pro member and flickr in the meantime changed the policy on max size for non-pro members).

koraks · Dec 23, 2025

@brbo thanks for posting that; a relevant comparison was bound to be around. I think the conclusion w.r.t. which option is preferable depends a lot on personal preferences and priorities. The examples show what I've experienced in similar comparisons as well. Personally, I'd stand by what I suggested in #4 by means of a compromise also based on this external data point.

brbo · Dec 23, 2025

I'd consider X5 (for 120 film) only if:
- I was shooting a lot of slide film (X5 does have a real advantage in the DMax department)
- I was (for some reason) averse to using pro flatbeds (that are way better and can be found for a fraction of the X5 price); I'm not going to include real drum scanners because they require a serious change in workflow, but price/performance is on their side when compared to X5

We haven't heard about OP's hopes and expectations. "Ultimate scan quality" can mean a lot of things.

loccdor · Dec 23, 2025

My local university has one of the scanners you mention.

It's a little more initial start-up effort, but you may consider putting together a digital camera, macro lens, copystand, film holder, and light source and digitizing that way.

Below was an early test of the system. A deep crop of course. The investment was approximately $1500. It takes 20 minutes for me to scan a roll of 135-36, and less to scan a roll of 120 6x4.5.

Epson Scan

Pentax K-1 with Pixel Shift

Lachlan Young · Dec 23, 2025

Taylor K Nankervis said:
There is not a vast amount of difference between a skilled V850 scan and a scan from an Imacon or X5

Wrong for the following reasons

Taylor K Nankervis said:
cannot improve on poor exposure, lack of sharpness, inaccurate focus

Most of the high-end CCD scanners (whether they be flatbed or flextight) have very similar sensor/ optics packages (the main difference often boiling down to whether they do automatic XY stitching and if there's a glass platen and a mirror in the optical path) and drastically outperform the Epson (and pixel resolution matters not a jot if there isn't the MTF transmission to support it). If they aren't, there's something very fundamentally off-kilter about the scanner, the operator or the original neg/ transparency. The ultimate acid test is to put the negs of an Epson defender through an enlarger, it's often horribly revealing.

PMT drum scanners (and camera scanning) generally can outperform the CCD scanners a bit for some aspects of transparency scanning.

brbo · Dec 23, 2025

If you prefer looking at actual data that various systems produce rather than reading about different takes people have on this...

Camera scan vs. X5 scans (not mine).

gezak22 · Dec 23, 2025

Thank you for all the input, but I want to compare my V850 scan to an X5 scan of the same negative. I guess I'll send the negative out to the nearest X5 scanner and post results when I have them.

brbo · Dec 23, 2025

In the end you will learn that it's your V850 scan vs. your X5 scan that you need to compare.

In other words, send your negative to five different outfits with X5. That is after you sent you negative to five different people with V850. You might learn something from that.

albireo · Dec 23, 2025

loccdor said:
It's a little more initial start-up effort, but you may consider putting together a digital camera, macro lens, copystand, film holder, and light source and digitizing that way.

Below was an early test of the system. A deep crop of course. The investment was approximately $1500. It takes 20 minutes for me to scan a roll of 135-36, and less to scan a roll of 120 6x4.5.

Epson Scan

View attachment 414231

Pentax K-1 with Pixel Shift

View attachment 414232

You can get that level of quality on 35mm by spending 150$ on a Plustek 8100.

Nothing to set up, nothing to maintain apart from a mirror clean every 3 years, and a tiny desk footprint.

It will be slower than your DSLR approach, but not that much slower if you're stitching or pixel shifting (Which as you know you should, to make up for the interpolation issues of your Bayer sensor).

gezak22 · Dec 23, 2025

brbo said:
In the end you will learn that it's your V850 scan vs. your X5 scan that you need to compare.

In other words, send your negative to five different outfits with X5. That is after you sent you negative to five different people with V850. You might learn something from that.

Understood. My starting point is to see what an expert X5 operator can do, so I can then determine if the effort required to reach that level is worth it to me. While I would not call myself an expert V850 user, I have had it for over 4 years now, so I am more than comfortable with it.

I did this exercise about two years ago where I compared my scan to an IQSmart3 scan, and I concluded that the difference was not worth the effort. But perhaps the Creo operator was the limiting factor? Hence this thread: Who is an expert X5 operator so I don't have to send it out to 5 different people?

koraks · Dec 23, 2025

gezak22 said:
I did this exercise about two years ago where I compared my scan to an IQSmart3 scan, and I concluded that the difference was not worth the effort. But perhaps the Creo operator was the limiting factor?

Likely, yes. If the difference was marginal, then something was horribly wrong with ~~the drum scan.~~ scratch that; see @brbo below.

gezak22 said:
Who is an expert X5 operator

The Flextights are relatively straightforward to work with. There's not a whole lot to mess up apart from running it uncalibrated (for focus) and perhaps leaving too much of the auto-adjustments on. On a drum scanner there's a couple of parameters that have a profound influence on fine detail rendering; a Flextight is from a user perspective more comparable to Epsons, Plusteks etc.

brbo · Dec 23, 2025

IQSmart3 is a flatbed scanner with a true 5.500dpi resolution.

A while ago @Steven Lee posted (among others) 6x6 scans from Creo iQ3 and X5.

Maybe @gezak22 can share the results of his comparison...?

koraks · Dec 23, 2025

brbo said:
IQSmart3 is a flatbed scanner

I stand corrected.

This may be of interest: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/comparing-imacon-x5-creo-iq3-and-sony-a7r-iv-scans.200990/

Best source for X5 Flextight scans

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