Betterscanning.com

Fred D Hummel · Sep 14, 2022

New at scanning, have V850 and have read that betterscanning film holder is the most accurate for 4x5 reasonably available. I've sent order and several follow-up emails with no reply.
Does anyone have info on what I may be missing? Website seems active, are they still offering holders? Any other suggestions?

Thanks, Fred Hummel

Eric Rose · Sep 14, 2022

I think he has gone out of business.

Fred D Hummel · Sep 14, 2022

Thanks for reply. Shame if out of business, looked like a good product. If out of business my personal thought would be a website soliciting sales would have been taken down.

Andrew O'Neill · Sep 14, 2022

I have the 750V and prefer to wet scan. The 4x5 set up for that is pretty good. For 8x10, I wet mount directly on the platen. I find wet scanning better than using the holders. Have you tried it?

Fred D Hummel · Sep 14, 2022

I have the Epson fluid mount holder and accessories from Aztek but haven't yet tried it. Still new to scanning, been spending available time on capture & development. Will get there shortly.
Thanks

jtk · Sep 14, 2022

fwiw I'm sure wet scanning is the ultimate with flatbeds HOWEVER the adjustable carrier from Betterscanning was significantly better than the non-adjustable as well as the AN glass carriers from Betterscanning. One big disadvantage with AN glass carriers is dust, which is not a problem with wet mounting.

If you're dealing with 120 film (NOT 35mm) I think you'll find that recent Epson flatbeds can be very good with any of Betterscanning's carriers up to maybe even 11X14 (as good as a cheap enlarger lens anyway) ...I found the old 3200 Epson could lead to very good letter size prints, even credible 11X14 depending on nature of image.

ALSO some versions of Epson scanners claim to have ICE for film , but most have never had it except for prints....simply something to be aware of. .

Alan Edward Klein · Sep 14, 2022

I use the Epson V850 film holders to scan 4x5, 6x7, and 35mm You have to check the height of each holder to get the best focus. Each is adjustable and it does make a difference. Good luck.

Eric Rose · Sep 14, 2022

He might have passed away or is indisposed.

richyd · Sep 14, 2022

There is a long thread on largeformatphotography. He is taking orders. Try contacting him.

jtk · Sep 14, 2022

Aztek may know what's happened. I liked the guy ...

One thing that's always amazed me about Epson is its seeming disinterest in product perfection. They've been content to simply diddle with electronics. Or maybe that's just one management group, Vs the Epson that has sold excellent paper...recovering from the mistake represented by "Archival Matt", which was beautiful paper for maybe a week or two until the whitener vaporized leaving something warmish.

Epson-brand carriers are made out of soft plastic rather than the hard stuff used by Betterscanning. It would have been easy for Epson to make proper carriers, they didn't have to be hand-built like Betterscanning, but they seem to have no interest.

jtk · Sep 14, 2022

richyd said:
There is a long thread on largeformatphotography. He is taking orders. Try contacting him.

If that is true it'd be nice to share his contact info. Betterscanning carriers have not been "large format" carriers as much as they've been 120.

Andrew O'Neill · Sep 14, 2022

richyd said:
There is a long thread on largeformatphotography. He is taking orders. Try contacting him.

It looks like he was over there as late as last month...

grat · Sep 16, 2022

jtk said:
ALSO some versions of Epson scanners claim to have ICE for film , but most have never had it except for prints....simply something to be aware of. .

I'm not sure why you keep repeating this-- the v600, v7xx and v8xx all have functional ICE for film negatives (except B&W, but that's not surprising).

jtk said:
One thing that's always amazed me about Epson is its seeming disinterest in product perfection. They've been content to simply diddle with electronics.

Now, on that, we're in total agreement.

Eric Rose · Sep 17, 2022

Is it really him or someone trying to scam people.

GRHazelton · Sep 17, 2022

I hope Betterscanning is still in business. I have its film holders for 120 for my Epson V700. With some fiddling the BS holders give corner to corner sharpness, far better than the Epson's orginal holders.

jtk · Sep 17, 2022

grat said:
I'm not sure why you keep repeating this-- the v600, v7xx and v8xx all have functional ICE for film negatives (except B&W, but that's not surprising).

#1 600 seems ancient history via Epson refurb or via Dell, don't know about the more recent models.

#2 B&W negs are happily scanned by Nikon V, dust-removed by standard ICE. Epson pretended for years that cheaper models did more than clean dust from prints.

GR, I've dragged my feet on those batteries...oops.

Richard Man · Sep 17, 2022

jtk said:
#2 B&W negs are happily scanned by Nikon V, dust-removed by standard ICE. Epson pretended for years that cheaper models did more than clean dust from prints.

ICE is typically a combination of hardware/software feature, and the hardware ICE does not work with B&W film since it uses IR. So if Nikon V works with B&W dust removal, then it's probably just a property of whatever software you are using, and has nothing to do with the hardware scanner per se

jtk · Sep 18, 2022

Richard, ICE is software...implementation is hardware...Epson Vs Nikon are hardware (and marketing) matters.

If ICE was simply IR Epson and others would have had no problem with it.

fs999 · Sep 19, 2022

The ICE technology works from within the scanner, so unlike the software-only solutions it does not alter any underlying details of the image. Subsequent to the original Digital ICE technology (circa 1989), which used infrared cleaning, additional image enhancement technologies were marketed by Applied Science Fiction and Kodak under similar and related names, often as part of a suite of compatible technologies. The ICE technology uses a scanner with a pair of light sources, a normal RGB lamp and an infrared (IR) lamp, and scans twice, once with each lamp. The IR lamp detects the dust locations with its unique detection method, and then inpainting is applied based on this data afterwards. The general concept is locate scratches and dust on the RGB image and mask them.

From Wikipedia.
And it does not work on silver contained films (B&W and older, except with Kodak BW400CN and Ilford XP2 Super when processed in C41).

Alan Edward Klein · Sep 19, 2022

fs999 said:
From Wikipedia.
And it does not work on silver contained films (B&W and older, except with Kodak BW400CN and Ilford XP2 Super when processed in C41).

It does not work with Kodachrome either due to it's layering approach of the three primary colors.

brbo · Sep 19, 2022

Kodak's own scanner, the "pro-lab" Kodak HR500 Plus was equipped with Digital ICE that could scan Kodachrome slides effectively; however, this scanner was discontinued in 2005. Nikon produced the Nikon Super Coolscan LS-9000 ED scanner with a new version of ICE (Digital ICE Professional) from 2004 until it was discontinued in 2010. This was capable of scanning Kodachrome slides reliably, dust- and scratch-free, without additional software. LaserSoft Imaging released an infrared dust and scratch removal tool (iSRD - Infrared Smart Removal of Defects) in 2008, that allows Nikon's film scanners for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, as well as many scanners from other manufacturers to make high quality scans of Kodachrome slides. Fujifilms system for dust and scratch removal, called "Image Intelligence", works on a similar principle as Digital ICE and will also work on Kodachrome film.

(source)

jtk · Sep 19, 2022

fs999 said:
From Wikipedia.
And it does not work on silver contained films (B&W and older, except with Kodak BW400CN and Ilford XP2 Super when processed in C41).

My HP4 films will be disappointed to hear that they weren't scanned nicely. And they weren't even processed in Rodinal!

Most are buying the bs that ICE is something other than Applied Science Fiction's patent. Companies paid to use several levels...Epson dragged its feet...the wretched Minolta (which I owned, tested, and dumped) did well with ICE but took 5X time VS Nikon for each scan). Some are buying the story that ICE didn't work well until Lasersoft, and that it didn't work perfectly with Windows . Mine has been plug-and-play from the Win 98 through todays Win 11 (and, fwiw, I never had problems with Win when it updated)

Wikipedia is a bunch of enthusiastic nut-cases, people like us, usually wonderful, often goofy. It can't be trusted without verifying. Your high school teachers warned you about that.

LSS-9000 is still excellent with Kodachrome, but my humble Nikon Coolscan V suffers except with a few shifting Kodachrome lab un-announced iterations. However it does use any Kodachrome remarkably well for B&W printing...I've made remarkably good 13X19 B&W prints Kodachrome.

When Coolscans were introduced only uncles shot 35mm weddings...pros shot 120. Q: why would Nikon market to wedding photographers? A: they didn't.

jtk · Sep 19, 2022

fwiw, one of my two Photrio Media images demonstrates a Kodachrome shortcoming of Nikon Coolscan V's ICE. I think it's fun in this odd result. and that does print well as B&W. My alibi for that shot is that I didn't yet know DSLRs were lurking.

Velvia et al continues to be a fair alternative to Kodachrome and it scans beautifully on Nikon.

adeyoujo · Sep 20, 2022

GRHazelton said:
I hope Betterscanning is still in business. I have its film holders for 120 for my Epson V700. With some fiddling the BS holders give corner to corner sharpness, far better than the Epson's orginal holders.

It seems that as of Aug. 10. He still is. Not sure of the why's and the whats going on with being so hard to get a hold of. I had thought it was health related, but don't know for sure.

jtk · Sep 20, 2022

I doubt he ever made significant money with his excellent film holders.

I bought a collection of various models, they were all better than Epson's.

Today I bought an open box Epson 550 which may be better than the seemingly discontinued but still expensivve 600 using those Better Scanning carriers.

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