Scanner option

138S said:

Yes, if the shot is sharp enough, see here some measurements in table C.2 : https://archivehistory.jeksite.org/chapters/appendixc.htm

Of course from 2400 you have diminishing returns when increasing dpi. That test shows that best effective resolving is reached at max 6400 dpi scanning, this has a practical effect or not depending on the shot sharpness and personal valuation.

My recommendation with the V700 is scanning at high dpi, 3200 at least, and better if higher ...then sharpening in Ps and then downsizing to the edition imageside, which you later will downsize after edition to the release size.

Usually, for a good job you have 3 image sizes: scanning size, edition size and final release size. Today we have many GB RAM in the PC, and SSD or M.2 disks are very fast, so our workflow with the V700 can be improved. The computing performance we have today allows to not loss image quality potential.

Best is that you practice on your own, take a really sharp shot and scan at various dpi, then sharpen and downsize to the point there is no effective loss, use "bicubic ideal for reductions" choice in the Image Size dialog. Differences will be subtle, so it's about your taste and if wanting to extract the most possible.

The computer power increase has benefited the V700 specially, because to reach best quality with the V700 we have to scan at higher dpi than with Pro scanners which deliver better digitally cooked images.

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What do you mean by scanning size, edition size and release size?

138S said:

I've been playing a lot with CMS 20, including in 4x5. Datasheet says 800 lp/mm in high contrast. Like TP case CMS 20 is not pictorial film, CMS 20 is even more extreme than TP as it is made with size monodisperse crystals. You know, these are technical films adapted to pictorial usage with many drawbacks for a general usage. Those films with a very good lens, on tripod, mirror up, perfect focus and optimal aperture... they may record atonishing amounts of graphic information, of course. A 35mm shot in CMS 20 may beat some 4x5" setups using regular pictorial film !!!!

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I used Technidol to develop Techpan shot at ISO25 which supposedly helps tone down the contrast a bit. I used this combination to shoot some barns in Kentucky under exceptional conditions - except for ticks and chiggers. Under huge magnification, you can see the patterns on the tiny leaves in this scene but the Coolscan can barely show those outlines. Technidol helps but it is still very contrasty though.

George Collier said:

I made my first black and white print in the summer of 1958, in Japan at 10 years old. I’ve been hooked on image transfer of all kinds ever since, with a career in graphic arts, scanning, digital archiving, and printing technologies, as well as my own black and white personal film / darkroom work.

I still have a darkroom, shoot 35mm, 120, and 4x5, though not as much 4x5 the last few years.
Realizing that at some point I may stop printing in the darkroom (like when we leave this house), I will probably still shoot film, then scan and print digitally. (I also have a Nikon DSLR)

I have an old Epson 4990, which I’ve used for all film formats and it’s decent, but it’s time to replace it. I’ve researched dedicated film scanners, and the Epson V850. I will need to scan opaque things, but not for serious work.

A general question - comparing a film scan between the V850 and dedicated film scanners of the same price range, scanning with no sharpening, or any other enhancement (I have Photoshop and am well versed with it), on both scanners, at the highest resolution and scaling that both scanners can do (producing the same size and resolution file), would I be sacrificing any quality with the V850? I have the impression that a dedicated scanner of the same value might produce higher quality, of some kind, since it doesn't have to scan opaque materials with a flat bed option. I won’t need any productivity features of the film scanner, such as auto scanning of a strip of negatives, only the quality is important. If I got a dedicated film scanner, a V600 would do the job for opaque scanning.

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Dedicated film scanner is good but I don't think you can get one in the price range of the V850 ($1200) that can do 120 let alone 4x5.

Alan Edward Klein said:

Does it pay to scan higher than 2400 with the V850 Pro?

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I generally scan at the native scanner resolution and either have vuescan scale it down during the scan, or scale it down later, depending on the size of film I'm scanning. With 8x10 film, 2400dpi is pretty much the upper limit you can go before running into file size limitations with color negative or slide film. Monochrome black and white can do 4800 dpi. With 4x5 I always do 4800 dpi then scale it down later in software. Even though the scanner doesn't resolve that much detail, scanning at the native resolution does cut down on any internal processing or internal sampling shenanigans that the scanner might do that would affect the picture. Some scanners do really odd things and introduce artifacts when scanning at resolutions other than the native sensor resolution. I don't know if the v850 does or not because I've never tested it, simply because it's easier to have one workflow that works with all my scanners.

Alan Edward Klein said:

What do you mean by scanning size, edition size and release size?

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Imagine that your final image is 4000pix wide with 8bits/channel. You may make the edition of a 6000pix wide image with 16/bits channel that you reduce to 4000 / 8 bits when edition finished. In the same way if your edition is made with 6000 pix wide you may scan the image to get 8000pix wide.

So you scan with more dpi than "necessary" to extract the last bit of image quality (always 16 bits per channel), then you sharpen and reduce the image size while no nothing is lost to get an smaller image that's faster to edit, but still your edition is made in a resolution that's larger than your intended final image.

Finally you reduce the image size again to (perhaps) issue an image pixel for each pixel (ppi concept) the printer prints. A printer may use several dots to make pixel, hence the ppi vs dpi concept.


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Let me extend my answer...

When printing you have two choices, first is crafting a printable image that has a pixel for each pixel the printer will print, in that way you have absolute control, but this requires you craft an optimal image, also making a final sharpening at "pixel level".

Another choice is sending to printer and excedingly large image, you may send an image with 30% more pixels in a row than those that the printer will print, given ppi and print size, in that case (not printing 100%, but 70% to fit your print size) the printer driver makes the necessary size conversion. Amazingly this may yield very good result because the printer drivers today are quite wise and they know how to make a good optimization of the reduced image, even it can be better than a manually made size conversion to match the print size.

Me, I prefer crafting an image that will print 100% (one to one pixel), to have total control, or at least to preview well the final result, but I know wise people that prefer delegating that job to the printer drivers.


In the same way an image that has to be displayed in an screen may be downsized to the screen size (from edited size), reduced to 8bits/channel, and (perhaps) jpg compressed to the point we don't have a loss.


Anyway a powerful edition benefits from Photoshop layers, not to be intrussive in the image but to be able balance well our tonality management. Then sometimes the edited image may contain layers, so the PSD format file containing layers may be very big, we may want to conserve that PSD file if later we want to make modification in one of the layers in a non destructive way: this is very important if editing for a client so we can finely suit his taste, but this is also a good practice for important personal images, for this reason we should reduce the scanned size to a smaller edition size, because when we add layers then our file size my multiply the base size of the image.

Les Sarile said:

I used Technidol to develop Techpan shot at ISO25 which supposedly helps tone down the contrast a bit. I used this combination to shoot some barns in Kentucky under exceptional conditions - except for ticks and chiggers. Under huge magnification, you can see the patterns on the tiny leaves in this scene but the Coolscan can barely show those outlines. Technidol helps but it is still very contrasty though.

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Yeah... So if one is able to manage well tonality in the darkroom printing then one may craft impressive silver prints. Almost nothing is lost in the enlargement and most of the image quality in the negative is taken by the paper, if one takes care.

Recently Sally Mann last exhibition showed the most impressive big prints many have seen on a wall. Al lot of enlargements from 8x10" wet plates that are very fine grained showing exactly what the lens projected. Departing from bare glass cut in plates and some raw chem, ending in that noble and high quality, beyond the artistic work itself. That's crafting power: authenticity, "simplicity", mastering the tools, performance.