Hello all, I just stepped up from a Canoscan 8400f and bought an Epson V700, this post might be a little jam packed with a ton of questions so please bear with it!
1. Today was the first day I started scanning and I was doing great with my slide film. When it came to scanning the black and white film all the scans came out with very little contrast and almost as if they were shot on colour and then "grayscaled." Can anyone help me out with this? I have scanned the same shot with my Canoscan previously and compaired the two. Even after multiple tweaks and edits I still couldn't get the Epson scan to look anywhere close to the Canoscan one.
2. I'd like to do some printing with my Epson scans and at the most I'll be printing up to 13x13(shooting on MF 6x6), should I be scanning at 6400dpi or am I safe scanning at a lower DPI?
3. Can anyone tell me the benefits of using the SilverFast SE software over the Epson scan software?
4. Any tips or helpful suggestions for custom settings on the V700? I primarily scan slides or black and white 6x6 film. Right now I have all the settings like USM and colour correction turned off. Do any of you suggest using Digital Ice? I'm not familiar with how it works but I'm a little afraid it might take away detail from the film.
Thanks for all the tips...I apologize if any of this had been asked before. I posted some questions about scanning on APUG and got flamed/directed to here, ha!
1. Did you use the histogram tool to set the black and white points?
Did you use create a curve to adjust the tones/contyrast (called gradation
tool in SilverFast, tone correction in EpsonScan)?
EpsonScan is actually a little easier to use as it provides some canned
curves in a dropdown list.
2. Scanning at 6400 dpi will use the high res lens in the Epson, but the
scanner is only capable of resolving something like 2400 anyway, so you
will generate a hugh file for not much return. Using a BetterScanning film
holder and lower resolutions yields fine results for me. Bottom line: try
scanning 6x6 film at both 6400 and lower resolutions and see for yourself!
3. SilverFast SE and EpsonScan seem pretty equivalent to me; you may get
more functionality in the full SilverFast product. I mostly use Vuescan
with my V700 and it does a good job.
4. Digital ICE only works with color negs or slides. And Epson does say:
"Images scanned with Digital ICE may appear softer than your original
image."