Epson V550 Cropping Negative

Good afternoon everyone

I am very new to scanning and I am struggling to get the results I want.

Two things are happening, one is that the scanner software seems to be cropping my negs in some cases.
I try to manually adjust the size, but the Epson Scan interface won't allow me too. Any ideas?
(See preview 4 vs 5 below)

The other issue I have is that the scanner seems to be producing square blocks on the scanned image.
I know that these are not there as I've enlarged the same neg in the darkroom, again any ideas?

The image is very under exposed as was taken at night, could this be the issue?

Thanks

Johnny

I never liked the EpsonScan software, but some people do. When I zoom in at the bottom of the image just above the central handicap marking in the parking lot, I see the black blocks. This is a software issue with the scanning program. Looking just above that there seems to be a lot of sharpening (edge enhancement) applied to this image. The V550 may not be a world-beater at scanning negatives, but is definitely capable of better scans than this.

Try clicking on the second tab (the one that looks like a histogram) and tweak the setting there, making sure that there are no peaks at either end of the spectrum. Also click through all the options and make sure that sharpening/edge enhancement/unsharp mask and similar settings are turned off. In this case, it looks like the scanner software is trying to bring out shadow details which the scanner is not able to physical resolve. (But even then this tens to produce a blotchy appearance, not bLAck squares)

This is a challenging image to scan with its very high dynamic range and sometimes either the shadows or highlights may need to be sacrificed. Experience will teach you how to do this artistically.

OK, thanks for the help.
I guess I just need to do some more experimenting!
I've managed to scan in some images with a lower dynamic range with less issues.

Try scanning the image "document size" 36x24mm and 100% with the resolution you like.
Maybe that might help i.e. not the document/target settings that are now in place.
You could also try zooming on the prescan into individual prescans (slower but more control on each image).

You are almost there in terms of getting rid of the autocropping error that cuts off part of your negative. You want to be in normal mode instead of thumbnail. In normal mode, you can manually crop. I put up some tips in the EpsonScan section on this page:
http://www.betterscanning.com/scanning/batchscanning.html

Doug