Epson V850 Pro

[SodaAnt]

Some very quick tweaks with "levels" and the "Local contrast" setting in Darktable, produces a much better image, with a few caveats-- there's what appears to be a light leak, there's waves in the sky(?) and a whole lotta white dots that were in the original, but not as noticeable.

View attachment 345656

Aside from the artifacts, it seems to be an OK first attempt. Personally, I don't let the scanning software do any sharpening, as I prefer to do it own my own in post. I also typically set the endpoints on the histogram to match the scan. Have you adjusted the height on the transparency holders for maximum sharpness?

Yes, that looks much better.

The vertical line 1/4 of the way in from the right edge, is that likely to be a light leak or perhaps a development artifact? This was taken with a camera I just acquired and if this is a light leak I need to discuss with the seller (KEH). I’ll look at the other negatives on the roll and see if they have this too.

The waves in the sky are puzzling. Camera artifact? Film artifact? Development artifact? Scanning artifact? I’m not sure which.

The white dots are apparently a known issue with Ilford 120 film.

 

[Brad Deputy]

The "waves" in the sky are likely a result of manipulating an 8-bit B&W image. You only have 256 shades of gray, vs. 65535 in a 16-bit image, so you may see these shade bands.

If you can take a 16-bit RAW scan of your image and post as a TIFF, it may give a better result. (though, i know the filesize limit here may hamper that...)

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Another issue I’m having is sharpness of the scans due to the film not being held flat by the negative carrier in the scanner. The negative appears very sharp when viewed with a loupe on a light box, but the scan doesn’t. Still trying to figure out a workaround for that.

What type film? The V850 holders have glass to keep to film flat. Are you using the holders or something else?

 

[SodaAnt]

What type film? The V850 holders have glass to keep to film flat. Are you using the holders or something else?

120 film. The V850 holders seem to be mis-designed in that there are plastic wedges that appear to be there to hold the glass in place, but interfere with the film. It doesn't seem possible to place the film in the holder without those wedges getting in the way. There are no "slots" such that the film can be placed under it to keep it in place in the holder.

Another problem with the design of the holder is that with 6x7 negatives if the frame spacing is on the wide side you can't get a strip of three negatives in the holder without crimping the last negative on the strip. That's what happened in my case--the frame spacing on by RB67 is wide enough that I have to cut the film into strips of two images rather than three.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

120 film. The V850 holders seem to be mis-designed in that there are plastic wedges that appear to be there to hold the glass in place, but interfere with the film. It doesn't seem possible to place the film in the holder without those wedges getting in the way. There are no "slots" such that the film can be placed under it to keep it in place in the holder.

Another problem with the design of the holder is that with 6x7 negatives if the frame spacing is on the wide side you can't get a strip of three negatives in the holder without crimping the last negative on the strip. That's what happened in my case--the frame spacing on by RB67 is wide enough that I have to cut the film into strips of two images rather than three.

Yes, Epson screwed up making the 120 holder only be able to hold two rather than three 6x7s. I've had to cut mine as well into 2's and 1's. The film has to be placed over those "wedges' not under. Then when you close down the top, the film crimps over (corrected) them. It;s really screwy. Check the manual.

 

[SodaAnt]

Okay, here's another image from the same roll, this time a vertical, so the "line" should be horizontal instead of vertical. I've cranked the levels to exaggerate the contrast in the sky and you can definitely see the line. It looks like the line increases in width going from right to left. Is this likely to be caused by a light leak? (The white crescent marks are due to my ham-handled attempt at loading the developing reel).

All of the other frames on the roll are landscape orientation and of the same scene. Some, but not all, of the frames show the vertical line about 1/4 of the way into the frame from the left side. Could the presence or lack of the line in any given frame be caused by differences in exposure time? Since this roll was shot as a test of a new camera, I exposed each frame by varying the shutter speed and aperture settings to result in the same exposure (e.g. 1/250 @ F8, 1/125 @ F11, 1/60 @ F16, 1/30 @ F22, etc.) to check whether the shutter and aperture were consistent (and they are, at least with visual inspection as I don't own a densitometer).

 

[SodaAnt]

Yes, Epson screwed up making the 120 holder only be able to hold two rather than three 6x7s. I've had to cut mine as well into 2's and 1's. The film has to be placed over those "wedges' not under. Then when you close down the top, the film crimps over (corrected) them. It;s really screwy. Check the manual.

Yeah, I saw that in the manual, Alan. And it is screwy! I loaded the film exactly as shown in the manual. As far as I can tell by researching this issue on the 'Net, it's been this way at least since the V750 Pro and Epson hasn't done anything about it despite numerous complaints. I'm looking for a 3rd party replacement...

 

[SodaAnt]

I tried VueScan yesterday and I must say it’s my favorite out of the three scanning apps I’ve tried (Epson Scan and SilverLight are the other two).

Its UI seems more intuitive to me and I seem to be getting better results. One weird thing I’ve found so far is that when specifying film type it has entries for Kodak TMax 100, TMax 400, and Tri-X, but for Ilford the only B&W film available is XP2! I noticed this while using the trial version, so I should look again now that I’ve upgraded to the professional version. It would be strange if it didn’t have the ability to choose from Pan F, FP4, HP5, and the Deltas.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Yeah, I saw that in the manual, Alan. And it is screwy! I loaded the film exactly as shown in the manual. As far as I can tell by researching this issue on the 'Net, it's been this way at least since the V750 Pro and Epson hasn't done anything about it despite numerous complaints. I'm looking for a 3rd party replacement...

I wonder if my V600 holder can be adapted to work in a V850?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I tried VueScan yesterday and I must say it’s my favorite out of the three scanning apps I’ve tried (Epson Scan and SilverLight are the other two).

Its UI seems more intuitive to me and I seem to be getting better results. One weird thing I’ve found so far is that when specifying film type it has entries for Kodak TMax 100, TMax 400, and Tri-X, but for Ilford the only B&W film available is XP2! I noticed this while using the trial version, so I should look again now that I’ve upgraded to the professional version. It would be strange if it didn’t have the ability to choose from Pan F, FP4, HP5, and the Deltas.

What is Vuescan doing with the BW film selection that varies the results? It's not like you're scanning negative color film and have to deal with the orange mask.

 

[SodaAnt]

What is Vuescan doing with the BW film selection that varies the results? It's not like you're scanning negative color film and have to deal with the orange mask.

Good question. I don’t know. I haven’t read the documentation yet.

Perhaps it adjusts for something that results in a better scan. Perhaps it does nothing at all.

 

[Brad Deputy]

B&W Film isn't linear from light to dark; if you were to plot DMAX vs. light intensity on a chart, it would be far from straight
Each B&W film has a different curve. I'm not sure how Vuescan handles that.