Epson V600 - Ready for upgrade

[DMJ]

I have a 5D with a beautiful macro lens that I could use as a dedicated DSLR scanning system because I don't take pictures with it. But I really like my Epson perfection photo 2400 (released in 2003), still working great, always connected via usb and good enough for scanning pictures for online sharing. I would just shoot digital if I had to think too much about scanning. Here is a scan (jpeg) form a cropped 35mm neg.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

If I was into digital photography and had an expensive DSLR, than I'd explore using it to as a scanner. But it just doesn't pay for me to spend thousands for a camera system just for scanning. I was forced to upgrade from a V600 to a V850 when I started shooting 4x5s.

I did a comparison of a 4x5 Tmax 400 with another poster's Howtek drum scanner and my V850 compared very favorably.
https://www.largeformatphotography....-Epson-V850-flatbed-scanners&highlight=howtek

Here are 35mm shots with a V850 using its film holder. I haven't tried the wet mount yet.
Removing ground brush with fire - 35mm Tmax 400 | Flickr

For comparison, here are some 35mm scans done with my V600.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums/72157625526207614
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums/72157711327973481

 

[Foto Ludens]

I was forced to upgrade from a V600 to a V850 when I started shooting 4x5s.

On the plus side, wet mounting will probably not make that much of a difference for you, as your scanner does indeed focus on/around the film holder's height! (Some folks still take the time to test the film holder's various height settings, or even shimming it higher, to see if focus improves).

 

[mgb74]

I have to wonder how much of the limitations of Epson flatbed scanners are due to the plastic Epson film holders. I often struggle to keep the film flat.

 

[Auer]

I have to wonder how much of the limitations of Epson flatbed scanners are due to the plastic Epson film holders. I often struggle to keep the film flat.

I think the holders are fine really, unless of course the film is severly cupped. Most films I use dry pretty flat tho.

 

[albireo]

I have to wonder how much of the limitations of Epson flatbed scanners are due to the plastic Epson film holders. I often struggle to keep the film flat.

For 120, I found that the supplied plastic 'credit card' that came with the scanner does wonders in this regard.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

On the plus side, wet mounting will probably not make that much of a difference for you, as your scanner does indeed focus on/around the film holder's height! (Some folks still take the time to test the film holder's various height settings, or even shimming it higher, to see if focus improves).

I have to wonder how much of the limitations of Epson flatbed scanners are due to the plastic Epson film holders. I often struggle to keep the film flat.

The V850 holders are all height adjustable. When I bought the scanner, I checked each holder scanning at the different heights. I was surprised that there actually was a considerable difference in focus between the settings. After finding the best for each holder, I marked them all with a white magic marker for future use.

The V850 holders press the film against a glass in the holders' top sides to keep the film flat.

 

[Down Under]

A few brief (unusual for me, yes) thoughts about all this.

Accept that you will never get perfection with an Epson scanner for your 35mm. I bought a V600 in 2009 ad still use it for (1) all my 120 archival images (I have about 100,000 and am now at 40,000 scans, but it's driving me bonkers) and are being (slowly) scanned at 3200 dpi for I hope, future stock sales and (2) quicky 35mm when I want to bulk-load negative films to do 12 scans at a time.

If you want the best possible results, go the way of TIFF. Also check each and every image after you scan, which will eat up time like a starving alligator but you will probably find you'll have to rescan every 2nd-3rd image. Be brave, in time your success score will go up. I started at every 2nd image but have now progressed to 1 in every 4, so there is hope for all of us.

Flat film scans best. This is easily achieved with plastic film storage sheets and a few heavy books.

Read the V600 instruction manual with care and check the internet for advice and tips. A gentleman by the name of Chris Crawford posts on other photo web sites. He has generously and kindly posted one of the best simplified explanations I've read on using a scanner and post processing images. His is well worth looking up for good advice which he excels at.

Get a Plustek dedicated 35mm scanner for your 'miniature' work. I have a 10 year old 7600i that does all I want. As someone else has written in this thread, stay well away from the uber-expensive professional Plustek model, sure it can do 120 as well as 35 but for what you pay for it, I tried it in 2017, found it was largely crap, and luckily was able to return it to my retailer for credit which I'm still using up.

Everyone (me included) who has tried camera scanning eventually gave it up. A little-discussed aspect of this is your image contrast can shoot up into the stratosphere unless you do a LOT of careful fiddling before or after the copying session. The time I had to devote to this latter task was just not worth it to me.

Learn to live with Good Enough. It's about the best you can expect with current scanners.

A few good life lessons in this thread. Learn from my mistake(s), I've made almost all of them in my time.

 

[MattKing]

Until someone comes up with a scanner that combines a camera like sensor with the film handling capabilities of something like a Pakon, this will remain the domain of those who love to fiddle.
And that type of scanner won't be cheap, due to the optics and mechanicals.
I expect that the solution will probably come from the microfilm world.

 

[Down Under]

Sorry, but I disagree. Anti-camera scanners and anti-vaxxers have nothing in common and your comment is flawed logic. The few Flat Earth Society members I've met were highly intelligent people who were amusing themselves with an outdated and as we all know, quite absurd theory. My disapproval is saved for those small fundamental minds who still believe our planet was created in seven days or those selfish types who believe it's okay to trash the world in the name of lifestyle.

We ex-camera-scanners have at least tried and tried and all run into the same problem and eventually given up. You write that the problem was something I did - respectfully, please kindly take the time to enlighten me as to what that was, if you think you know.

You posted three good images, all negatives, not slides. I had few contrast problems on camera-scanned B&W films (I recall I did have to slightly underexpose them to cut down the contrast, which affected the shadows, but never mind). As for slides, eh!! It may be that more modern cameras (I used my D700s) are programmed to handle scans.

'90s technology? ha! Doesn't this term sum up every affordable priced scanner on the market today, excepting (maybe) the super expensive whizzbang machines used by prolabs, government archives and museums? I would happily buy a Hasselblad scanner if I had the money, but on a retirement budget I have to make do with a humble Epson and an adequate if not entirely user-friendly Plustek. But then it may well be that even the 'blad scanner is old technology - I've not really looked into this so I'll say no more.

Come to think of it, are almost all if not all photo scanners not jazzed-up 1990s equipment with a few new bells and whistles, mostly in the software? I try to think of any really new innovations in today's range of dedicated photo scanners or flatbed scanners set up to do negatives and slides as well as paper prints, but for the life of me I can't. Any ideas here?

Using my older scanners I can produce images that satisfy my requirements and those of the few publishers and magazine editors who still buy my images from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. I would be happy to invest in any new scanner technology made now but sadly, my clients nowadays pay me less for my photos than they did 30 years ago, so the cost factor is too high for me.

As for camera scans, I am in favor of anything that will make our lives easier - just not at the cost of expensive gear or overkill processes. I no longer buy anything made by Sony but the 60MP Sony a7R IV scans you mentioned would surely be huge and I would be have to allow too much time resizing to smaller dimensions, so no go there for me.

 

[albireo]

A few brief (unusual for me, yes) thoughts about all this.
Everyone (me included) who has tried camera scanning eventually gave it up. A little-discussed aspect of this is your image contrast can shoot up into the stratosphere unless you do a LOT of careful fiddling before or after the copying session. The time I had to devote to this latter task was just not worth it to me.
.

I find DSLR scanning fans are a surprisingly loud bunch of people - which is especially surprising given the poor results most of them seem to obtain from their gadgets. This is based on my impression of what is posted on the main photosharing websites. Of course, it could be that the real DSLR scanning masterpieces are all kept hidden in a vault, who knows

There is a facebook group dedicated to DSLR camera scanning. They sometimes post to other photography groups, with almost religious fervor, trying to 'evangelise' people about the 'superior' quality of DSLR scans. Read: they try to convince gullible newbies to throw $$$ onto DSLR scanning when most of their queries could be solved with a much cheaper film scanner/flatbed and a modicum of study of the theory of negative inversion, bits/channel and histograms. But back to the DSLR scanning group on facebook: needless to say, the samples posted on that group are almost uniformly mediocre. I actually wonder whether the place is full of shills (NegativeLab pro supporters are a really loud bunch - which is a shame really, because the tool is decent enough and deserves to be known, in spite of being not as good as the superior and free Grain2Pixel and as Colorperfect, in my experience).

I think it is fine to try a DSLR if you have one already. But the results are not worth the amount of fiddling involved from what I can see. Fiddling is great if one enjoys it - if you're someone who prefers to constantly align a repro stand, if you have a lot of free time to play around with all the additional variables introduced by the framework, and if you enjoy doing 'stitching' and pixel-shifting rather than studying exposure, development and composition.

Also, the idea that you should *need* a $4000 DSLR for perfect scans is extremely pernicious when film/hybrid photography is IMHO currently a very democratic hobby (at least where I live). I know plenty of students who are taking immense enjoyment from using a 40$ SLR, with a normal lens worth 15$ and a monthly consumable expense of 30$ in film and chemicals. The key here is that a well kept basic SLR coupled with a clean, good quality prime can yield fantastic negatives. Some of these people do incredible scanning work with cheap film scanners. This new category of film users has never owned a DSLR: they did their digital photography on their phones before discovering the joys of mechanical cameras. The message they should spend thousands of $ on 'film holders' and DSLR is stupid, is not based on science and facts and is one I will challenge until I live unless proven wrong by actual data and samples.

 

[albireo]

A few recent samples:

• Kodak ColorPlus 200 downsampled to 5,600x3,700 pixels. This is clearly an overkill, the film simply doesn't hold as much detail as the scanning camera could capture.
  
• Ilford HP5+ at 6,000x6,000 pixels. In this case a higher-resolution sensor and a slower film could have provided more detail, but I am fine with 36MP images for 6x6.
• Portra 400 at 5,600x4,100 pixels. This is my quick no-stitching scanning method for 645 snapshots. And here's Ektar 100 at the same resolution. This is perfection.

You are a surprisingly rude and militant user on these boards, and have been needlessly rude with me in a previous post. I usually leave people like you alone until the foaming at the mouth moves to the next thread. But I'll bite anyway.

These are good film scans, but there is nothing here you could not have obtained with a well exposed and well developed negative and a well tuned, well understood negative scanner and a little Vuescan and Grain2pixel.

Great if the workflow works for you, but I have news for you: other people are getting results that are better than yours using dedicated film scanning equipment at a fraction of the price. You don't need a DSLR to obtain the above, but, again, great if it works for you.

Now why not move on and do some actual photography, rather than spending your time on endless discussions on pixel-peeping and being rude to people who have opinions which differ from your own.

 

[Down Under]

Yes, I did mean Old Gregg and not Matt. My apology to the latter, and I've edited my original post accordingly. Now to spread a few olive branches around this thread - and try to take us back to Epson scanners.

A little sarcasm now and then can be forgiven - I can be as sarcastic as anybody when the post or the situation warrants it.

Playing keyboard warriors achieves little or nothing when it ends up hijacking a thread or taking it off topic. As we seem to have done with this one. Let's get it back on track.

I regularly go back to my own posts and re-edit them when I have cooled a bit and thought things over - now I still would like to know what it is I did wrong with camera scanning, if anyone wants to comment on this, without forgetting the OP's original purpose was to talk about the Epson V600.

Ahem... I have a V600 and for my purposes it does an okay job with 120. Not so much 35mm, tho with a little care and some post processing it gives me good enough 35 images for online posts. Big prints, not so. YMMD.

Alan's post on the V850 (#34) got my attention. This model may be worth considering as it appears to offer a few considerable improvements. Is the glass for the holders a standard feature or an optional purchase??

 

[grat]

Alan's post on the V850 (#34) got my attention. This model may be worth considering as it appears to offer a few considerable improvements. Is the glass for the holders a standard feature or an optional purchase??

Standard. Note that the clips that hold the glass in take up some space in the holder, so for example medium format film may be a little trickier to get to lie flat.

They do have 5 positions (instead of 3 on the v700 holders).

Personally, I haven't had issues on 135, 120 or 4x5 film scans-- I've only done B&W / Color negative so far. Haven't tried a positive transparency yet.

 

[PerTulip]

I am in the same boat. I have a V600 and was looking at upgrades for a while. And I was considering a V850. But I got a macro lens for a very cheap price and tried DSLR scanning.

I used my D850 with AF-S 105/2.8 Micro (mounted on tripod, lighting table below negatives). I just got into it, but after "scanning" a dozen 135 negatives: anything I did with the V600 (EpsonScan, VueScan) was completely blown away. I did not try 6x6 or 4x5 yet (I want to stitch multiple DSLR "scans"), but a scanner upgrade has been postponed....

 

[Down Under]

.... I have a V600 and was looking at upgrades for a while. And I was considering a V850. But I got a macro lens for a very cheap price and tried DSLR scanning.

I used my D850 with AF-S 105/2.8 Micro (mounted on tripod, lighting table below negatives). I just got into it, but after "scanning" a dozen 135 negatives: anything I did with the V600 (EpsonScan, VueScan) was completely blown away. I did not try 6x6 or 4x5 yet (I want to stitch multiple DSLR "scans"), but a scanner upgrade has been postponed....

If this works for you, that's great. Go for it. In my case, my (few remaining) clients are publishers and they require the highest quality I can give them, so a proper scan is a must. No color shifts or fringing or any other flaws. Not even any sharpening. My V600 and Plustek are not top-line scanners, but with careful work I can get good enough quality to satisfy their requirements. I'm amazed at the high quality of my published images, but as I've learned over the years the trick to selling stock is to produce good enough images to save the editor or the art director having to do any but the most basic work on them.

I miss the good old days when the bulk of my sales consisted on B&W images taken with my Nikkormats. In the early '70s I went to Bali with two Kodak Retinas and a Rolleiflex and shot 90% Tri-X (imagine, in that light!!) and 10% Fujicolor. All my images sold (nowadays nobody can even give away Bali images, there are so many online) including a lovely sunset scene shot in B&W, with a temple in the background and a few monkeys swinging on tree vines in the foreground. A German travel mag bought and printed this as a color full page spread, with an orange-yellow color tint over it to simulate the setting sun and that was it. And then wanted to pay me only their standard B&W photo fee...

Scanning has greatly expanded my markets but these have now declined anyway thanks to the web and the proliferation of free digicrap by amateurs. I remind myself that this is the 21st century and entirely another world.

I too will be looking at the V850 in the next few months, these are hideously expensive in Australia but my V600 and Plustek are getting long in the tooth and if I am able to scan good quality with the 50,000+ images I have yet to do with a better Epson, this may be the way for me to go. For an easier life in my dotage...

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Yes, I did mean Old Gregg and not Matt. My apology to the latter, and I've edited my original post accordingly. Now to spread a few olive branches around this thread - and try to take us back to Epson scanners.

A little sarcasm now and then can be forgiven - I can be as sarcastic as anybody when the post or the situation warrants it.

Playing keyboard warriors achieves little or nothing when it ends up hijacking a thread or taking it off topic. As we seem to have done with this one. Let's get it back on track.

I regularly go back to my own posts and re-edit them when I have cooled a bit and thought things over - now I still would like to know what it is I did wrong with camera scanning, if anyone wants to comment on this, without forgetting the OP's original purpose was to talk about the Epson V600.

Ahem... I have a V600 and for my purposes it does an okay job with 120. Not so much 35mm, tho with a little care and some post processing it gives me good enough 35 images for online posts. Big prints, not so. YMMD.

Alan's post on the V850 (#34) got my attention. This model may be worth considering as it appears to offer a few considerable improvements. Is the glass for the holders a standard feature or an optional purchase??

The V850 comes with two holders for each format - 35mm strips, medium format 120 and 4x5. All have glass in them as standard. The film holders have adjustments tabs to set best focus height which you only have to check once when you get the machine. Having two film holders for each format is handy. It allows you to be setting up for the next scan while the first scan is underway. There's also 35mm slide holders (12 slides) to scan your old slides. These are height adjustable but there's no glass to flatten the film. There is be no point with film being held in carboard slide holders.

Larger format 5x7 and 8X10 are held by a plastic strip holder (I haven't tried it as I don't shoot larger than 4x5). However, they have to be scanned on the scanner platen glass with a second lens that is not as good as the main lens that scans the aforementioned smaller format film holders. Of course, with the 5x7 and 8x10, you're dealing with a lot more real estate. So resolution requirements are less critical for some people than the smaller formats.

I won't get into the DSLR scan debate. For me, I don't own a DSLR so it would be quite expensive to buy one just for scanning. The V600 served my purposes for ten years and for the last year or so I've been using the V850. I always used Epsonscan. I don't shoot negative color any longer although there are some scans of various negative color film on my Flickr page. So I can't comment on that other than it's harder to get best colors than from chrome film. You can see all different scans and scanners on my Flickr page for comparisons.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

@Alan Edward Klein the Southest album on your flickr is excellent. Which medium did you shoot it on?

Thanks. I guess you mean Southwest album: 1" sensor - Digital. A pocketable Sony RX100iv. I shoot Sony digital on my vacations. Film is for home use. The Sony hides away in my pants pocket and it's just easier to schlep around a tiny camera at my age. Plus, my wife doesn't complain as much about all the pictures I take. Yet, I create video slide shows that look terrific on my 75" UHDTV.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

You are right, web/monitors is easy. But isn't digital archiving the hardest benchmark to hit? As I am accumulating more and more negatives I am getting more and more paranoid. I feel OK about the 35mm negatives, as far as I am concerned every bit of information has been sucked out of them with my current scanning tech, but as my stash of 6x6 negs grows I am getting more and more uncomfortable realizing that they need to be scanned using a better method for archival purposes, especially color (supposedly they fade over time).

Why are you worried? Who's going to look at them after you're dead? Your kids won;t care. And your wife's next husband will throw them out.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

@Alan Edward Klein Accidents, mostly. Frankly, the storage part is by far the biggest downgrade/headache for me after switching 100% to film. I am much more comfortable managing digital assets (do this for a living). Binders, shelves, humidity, dust, temperature and plastic sleeves all terrify me. My dream setup is to develop a roll, digitize it on a molecular level and toss it to the trash right away.

Well, if you keep the film you can always scan it later. But let's face it. Unless it's a super shots, and even Ansel didn't have that many, most shots you never or rarely ever look at again. If you want immortality, you're better off scratching out a image of a bison on a cave wall.

 

[MattKing]

@Alan Edward Klein Accidents, mostly. Frankly, the storage part is by far the biggest downgrade/headache for me after switching 100% to film. I am much more comfortable managing digital assets (do this for a living). Binders, shelves, humidity, dust, temperature and plastic sleeves all terrify me. My dream setup is to develop a roll, digitize it on a molecular level and toss it to the trash right away.

Almost all 1975 - 1979 and all in great shape.
Stored in a normal bookcase.
Admittedly, all black and white:

The colour negatives from that period are individually sleeved and kept in envelopes in boxes, stored on shelves. The ones I've checked are fine.

 

[Foto Ludens]

My dream setup is to develop a roll, digitize it on a molecular level and toss it to the trash right away.

You are making a huge assumption about the forwards compatibility of your digital files. Ideally computers decades from now will be able to open them, but we cannot/do not know that they will.

 

[Wallendo]

You are making a huge assumption about the forwards compatibility of your digital files. Ideally computers decades from now will be able to open them, but we cannot/do not know that they will.

I have issues related to that with an old PhotoCD. The problem there was that Kodak picked a variant disk format for their PhotoCD product which was infrequently supported.

Images stored in the cloud or on hard disks or equivalent shouldn't be much of an issue as it would be easy to batch convert images stored in an older format to the latest and greatest if needed.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

@Foto Ludens You are right in that it is a popular sentiment. But as I said above, the computer domain is my domain, I know exactly what will happen to my files during my life time and there's zero need for assumptions [1]. All of my fear, uncertainty and doubt is sitting in front of me on a bookshelf in plastic film sleeves. Once it's in a computer, I have 100% certainty of its future.

[1] you will be able to read all of your image files 50 years from now.

I scan most of my personal files. What concerns me when I die if before my wife, is that she won't know how to retrieve them.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I have issues related to that with an old PhotoCD. The problem there was that Kodak picked a variant disk format for their PhotoCD product which was infrequently supported.

Images stored in the cloud or on hard disks or equivalent shouldn't be much of an issue as it would be easy to batch convert images stored in an older format to the latest and greatest if needed.

Right before I die, I'd like to disassemble all my molecules and store them in the cloud for reassembly down the road.