I posted this earlier, but this is my ditty, and I'm stickin' to it.
I bought a new V850Pro last year and kept testing the film holders, wishing (like others) that the 6x6 one would hold 4 frames. I found the best settings for the leveling feet, different on different size holders (I have 35mm, 6x6, and 4x5 film to scan, all B&W). I also tried scanning directly on the glass (e-down) with ANR glass on top. With none of these options do I use the sharpening function of the software (Silverfast).
I’ve been scanning for 25 years or so, with all kinds of scanners, some professionally, and arrived at the feeling that I might not be getting the best scan sharpness. The film holders are inconsistent and kind of tinkertoy. I could not make contact with the BetterScanning guy (he still doesn’t list the 850 on his site), so I contacted another anr glass guy whose site is Scan-Tech, who sells glass and will talk to you. I bought a piece of glass 8x10 and decided to shim it up from the scanner glass and reach the height of best sharpness.
I did this with 2 feeler gauge sets I bought on line, cheap. I took them apart, cleaned off the oil, and started at just under 3mm in height (approximately where the film sits with a holder), using the various gauges in combinations, two equal stacks, one on either edge of the glass, with the neg (a good grain-sturdy tri-x and rodinal neg from the 70s) with the neg in between the stacks. The neg is taped base side to the anr glass in the sprocket hole areas. The natural curve keeps it flat to the glass. (This also works with 4x5 and 6x6mm)
I found the height of 3.25mm was best (all measurements were confirmed with a micrometer, purchased with the feeler gauges), and that from 3.15 - 3.35 was a decent range, but 3.25 is the sharpest. It is also sharper than scanning on the glass itself. And, what’s nice - the height is the same for all formats. I made permanent spacers using 3/4” wide .0625” thick extruded aluminum strips from a hardware store, 10” long, binding up with pieces of a high quality dense digital paper stock, reaching the right thickness, including the blue painters’ tape that binds it all together. (the same tape used to hold the neg to the glass - no residue.) I place a spacer on either side of the scanner glass, 8” apart, so I can scan anything in between, format is irrelevant, and I can mount 2 4x5 negs for scanning (holder holds only one), and 4 6x6cm negs.
My approach to scanning is one image at a time, like printing in the darkroom, so I’m not looking for rapid multi frame scanning of rolls of film, but rather the best scan I can get. (Everything is black and white). I scan to tiffs, 16 bit, open in Raw from the bridge (I like the way it sharpens, much nicer than in PShop), open and work in PShop the rest of the way. On extreme dynamic range images, I do a second scan of highlight or shadow areas, paste in over the other scan in PShop and mask out what I don’t want from the second, although the Silverfast double scan feature for shadow areas does a great job most of the time.
Opening the tiff scan in Raw allows me to tweak the ends of the range by opening up the shadows or compressing the highlights before opening in PShop for final editing.
