About a year ago I purchased one of the GTX 980 from Japan and can confirm it came to me quickly and 100% new in box. All the documents are in Japanese so you will need to download english ones online. It shows up in my Vuescan software as a V800 so I am assuming that the V800 V850 and GTX-980 are all the same hardware and the only difference is what it was shipped with in terms of packaging, documentation, software, and film holders. IF my memory serves me correctly the V850 originally came with 2 each of some of the film holders as a 'bonus' over the V800? The GTX-980 comes with one each - but they are the ones with a clear plastic element in the holder that has a surface treatment that I assume is to combat Newton's Rings.
Note that the film holder has some adjustable "feet" that is used to calibrate the focal plane. I purchased one of Vlads Test Targets for medium format and calibrated my focus and found it to be right in the middle of the adjustable feet settings. The plastic holder frames are a bit finicky if you ask me. It is sometimes a struggle to get them snapped shut and then when I open them I feel like I am going to break them. As of now I am not going to go after the ones you can get on the aftermarket because they seem expensive for what you get. As I understand it the optical path is different when using items placed directly on the glass vs those placed in a holder. There are two different focal planes - I think the setting in Vuescan between print and transparency scanning selects the focal plane to use, but I might be wrong on how this works.
I have heard people claim that there is no reason to use this Epson scanner above the 1600 dpi setting because it can't get higher resolution. So, I also performed a test using the test targets to see if the resolution of the Epson hardware can really get to 6400 dpi. I scanned a small portion of the test target (the smallest details on the target) multiple times in a row without physically changing anything at 1600, 3200 and 6400 dpi. It is easy to see the resolution increase from 1600 to 3200 AND there is an increase in resolution from 3200 to 6400 but from my eye the difference is less noticeable. This suggests to me that there is higher resolution than 3200 but that maybe the test target itself, the focus, or something else in the optical path is decreasing the sharpness. The machine outputs a file with 6400 dpi but it is only judged to my eye to be a little sharper than the 3200 dpi version. It doesn't really matter though because my computer chokes on a 6X7 negative scanned at 6400 dpi scanned to a RAW file.
the 3.25 mm you state. Is that 3.25 mm from the glass of the scanner to the under side of the ANR glass or to the negative? I am assuming 3.25 mm to the ANR glass and so to get a measurement to the plane which the negative is in we would have to add the thickness of your ANR glass?
IF you ever calibrated the v850 holder for the focal plane were the slider ramps near the center? IF yes then I could start my focus calibration for a similar ANR Glass device based on your 3.25mm
I hate it that the Epson 120 holders are not long enough to hold one more frame of 6X7 negative ... then it would match the typical medium format storage sleeve.
Any tricks you have discovered on how to keep dust under control? There are several planes to keep dust free to get a good scan (the glass of the scanner bed, 2 sides of a negative carrier, 2 sides of a negative, and the glass of the "door" on the scanner that has the back light in it.
thanks for any thoughts you might have
OK, Luftfeder, finally got to it. The following text is what I do, maybe more than you want but I keep it for such discussions.
The images show what things look like, please ask if you want more detail.
If the film needs cleaning, I do that first with PEC-12 and cotton.
Then I wipe with an orange Ilford anti-static cloth, every surface.
When dusting with the Giotto, I just do every surface, as the parts are put together, always just before they come together. Either with holders or the glass/tape thing, I get very little dust in the scan, and my typical 35mm size is 16" on the short side at 300 res.
I bought a new V850Pro 2-3 years ago 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 30 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. 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 (for my scanner). It is also sharper than scanning on the glass itself. And, what’s nice - the height is the same for all formats, no film holders involved. 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.
*Also, scanning with the glass and tape allows more freedom framing the image, and often, if sky or even toned untextured areas run to the edge of the frame (where the border of the image would be), the Epson film holder creates a dark area running parallel to the long edge - created by the holder somehow (some kind of reflection?), which will not happen taped to the glass.
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.
The Epson V850 film holders are nominally focused at 3.0mm with clicks varying that by 0.5mm. See pix.
OK, Luftfeder, finally got to it. The following text is what I do, maybe more than you want but I keep it for such discussions.
The images show what things look like, please ask if you want more detail.
If the film needs cleaning, I do that first with PEC-12 and cotton.
Then I wipe with an orange Ilford anti-static cloth, every surface.
When dusting with the Giotto, I just do every surface, as the parts are put together, always just before they come together. Either with holders or the glass/tape thing, I get very little dust in the scan, and my typical 35mm size is 16" on the short side at 300 res.
I bought a new V850Pro 2-3 years ago 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 30 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. 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 (for my scanner). It is also sharper than scanning on the glass itself. And, what’s nice - the height is the same for all formats, no film holders involved. 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.
*Also, scanning with the glass and tape allows more freedom framing the image, and often, if sky or even toned untextured areas run to the edge of the frame (where the border of the image would be), the Epson film holder creates a dark area running parallel to the long edge - created by the holder somehow (some kind of reflection?), which will not happen taped to the glass.
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.
The V850 will output 6400 or 3200 in resolution. But you're only seeing the pixels. There is no difference in actual data from a 2400 scan, which is what I use.
Also, you didn;t specify if you added sharpening. The V850 program nominally sets increased sharpness to the auto scan routine, even on manual. You have to uncheck it. Did you?
Are you saying it is interpolating the pixels for resolutions higher than 2400? That it physically samples at 2400 and then outputs higher resolution through interpolation of the pixels? Without "sharpening on" I would assume that this interpolation would increase any image fuzziness (by placing a grey pixel between a white and black one) Do I have my logic correct?
Alan - I don't think Silverfast claims to increase D-Max, I think it increases shadow detail in a second pass (you select whether you want it or not) by reallocating the response to detail in the neg and the transition into midtone values.
By definition the scanner has no dmax. It has a specification of the maximum optical density that it can still scan. This may sound like a case of semantics, but the distinction is relevant to the question. What happens with a high-density sample is that the scanner basically doesn't see much light anymore. This means that the signal is small and hence, after A/D conversion, what remains is a data width of just a few bits in which tonal differences can be discerned. In other words: density resolution (not to be confused with spatial resolution) is really limited. In practice, this is visible if you try and scan an extremely dense negative (try the densest steps on a Stouffer T2115 transmission step tablet for instance, those >2.0logD) or the darkest parts of a slide, and then increase contrast in that part of the scan to see the tonal differentiation. You'll notice that the result gets incredibly grainy. The grain you're looking at really isn't grain, but rather digital noise that results from thermal effects in the scanning sensor and the A/D conversion. The idea behind multiple pass scanning is that this thermal noise is averaged out across different scans (samples). In principle, this should give a slightly cleaner signal - at least to an extent.How does Silverfast increase the dMax of the scanner with a second scan to open up the shadows without creating noise?
Dear Alan,
not sure I follow the text:
"The V850 will output 6400 or 3200 in resolution. But you're only seeing the pixels. There is no difference in actual data from a 2400 scan, which is what I use."
Are you saying it is interpolating the pixels for resolutions higher than 2400? That it physically samples at 2400 and then outputs higher resolution through interpolation of the pixels? Without "sharpening on" I would assume that this interpolation would increase any image fuzziness (by placing a grey pixel between a white and black one) Do I have my logic correct?
I will check my sharpening setting next time I scan but I use VueScan and think I tried to turn everything off to just get the hardware output.
I know modern post processing software can essentially upscale the resolution by doing the same kind of interpolation. If I am interpreting your comment correctly is it your suggestion to scan at 2400 and do any upscaling (if needed) in post?
I have not directly compared the scan speed/sound between the different resolutions but my memory tells me that there is a speed and sound difference at these higher resolutions suggesting to my ears that the physical scanner is making smaller increments. I will have to check this out, maybe the speed difference is due to software latency as it interpolates?
Also going from memory from what I have read on the V850 (but maybe the sources were wrong) that it uses two different physical light paths for the reflective vs transparency scanning and that they operate with different base resolution capabilities - with the transparency resolution being higher. This dual light path necessitates the negatives needing to be held about 3 mm above the scanner bed because of the focal plane of that light path whereas the focal plane of the reflective scan is at the scanner bed glass. Is this correct to your knowledge? It would make sense to me that I would want higher resolution system for transparency scanning vs reflective scanning.
thank you
David
yes, I don't know what Epson was thinking when they went to the new holders for the V850. They're not only dust magnets, but when you try to clean them all you seem to be doing is rolling the dust around to a different spot. I don't have this problem with my Nikon Coolscan LS 8000. Yes, you have to clean and keep clean the Nikon glass carrier, but at least you can get the dust off a lot easier.On my V850, I use a set of pre-ANR holders (from a V800?) because I found the ANR glass a dust magnet. That also allows me to use 3D printed holders for 127 and 16mm. And scan two strips of 4 6x6 negatives or 2 4x5 (or four strips of 35 mm) at a time.
Sorry, I don't understand; what does this mean? Something has gone lost in translation I think.As far as I know the Epson GT-X980 has a lower dynamic range width of D-Max
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