Scanning 35mm half frame negatives

I own two scanners, Epson V600 and Pacific Image XE super. Both may be used for 35mm half frame negatives.

However, the standard film holder is not too practical in the PI (one has to keep adjusting the negative strip position, because the plastic frames eventually superpose with a film frame). Resolution is not that great in the Epson for that small frame size, although the Epson holder has no plastic frames and is more convenient.

Does anyone know of film holders to recommend for scanning 35mm half frame in the Pacific Image XE super?

Thanks for any advice!

That sounds like a frame spacing irregularity that could also cause issues if you were scanning full frames. Couldn't you remove the cross-members from the Pacific Image holder? That would potentially reduce the film flatness, though.

I didn't like the 35mm plastic holders that came with my HP scanner even for full-frame use, and they were really bad for half-frame negs. When scanning transparencies, the scanner's (automatically set and not manually controllable) focus point is set a tiny fraction above the glass for a mounted slide. Getting negatives to that exact height isn't easy; just laying the negative strips right on the glass results in soft images.

I made a crude cardboard mask - just two thin pieces with a cutout for a five-frame strip (or nine half fames) sandwiched together with a piece of tape on one long side. The cut is just tall enough to mask the sprocket holes. It's not an ideal solution - with no cross-pieces, film curl is a problem, so I generally let my negatives flatten under weight for a couple of days before scanning. And I'm not skilled enough to have made the mask with a perfect right angle so I could simply butt it up against the edge of the scanner glass for correct horizontal orientation, so getting negatives perfectly aligned to the horizon can be tricky.

A crude jury rig? Yes. But with careful fiddling, it works okay a lot of the time. Here are examples, 2400dpi scans of Double-X negs from my Pen F and Pen S:

Your scans look quite good! Is that a flatbed scanner?

Maybe I should 3D-print a custom holder for the Pacific Image. The standard holder clicks into position for each of the 6 full-frame negatives in the strip. However the scanner works if one positions the holder in between clicks.

As said above any irregularities in film spacing causes the cross members to intrude in a frame.

If I can make a holder with no cross-members and no clicked positions, it should be practical.

It's a Hewlett-Packard G4050 flatbed scanner that does both flatbed scans and backlit transparency/negative scans. No automatic feed mechanism, just an old school flatbed scanner.

I'm running it with VueScan because it's not supported by HP software in Win 11, but had been in Win 10 when I got it around eight years ago. It's not a high-end device - 2400dpi maximum - more of an average scanner from the days when separate scanners and printers were still somewhat common vs "all-in-ones". I think it was in the $400-500 range when I got it.

After a quick Google, it appears there are still dual-mode scanners like this one out there from makers like Epson and Canon...

Your HP specs are not that different to those of my Epson V600. Maybe I just need to optimize scanning in my flatbed. Will try harder with next roll. Thanks for the comment.

Not to hijack the threat but as I was sloshing through the snow and muck on my morning walk today I was thinking about how much I despise scanning my half-frame negatives. I love shooting the stuff but scanning 90+ frames really gets me. I think I'll just be shooting shorter rolls in the future though.

My dream is a combo of scanner, film holder and software that could automatically scan a whole strip of half frame, generating the pictures.

For years I've only shot 24-exp rolls in my half-frame cameras. With careful loading, I typically fit 55 negs with the Pen F and 52 negs with the Pen S. That's already PLENTY of negs to scan and postprocess. (Also I'm not a big film burner, it often takes me months to shoot that many pics. A 36-load would take over a year!)

I've mostly been shooting Film Photography Project's "X2" aka Kodak Double-X/Eastman 5222. I bought a few rolls earlier this year and recently finished the first one in the Pen S... and discovered that it was clearly LONGER than usual 24s - I got 62 negs! Mind you, I'm not complaining, it's even more economical than usual!

FriedLouisStudio said:

For years I've only shot 24-exp rolls in my half-frame cameras. With careful loading, I typically fit 55 negs with the Pen F and 52 negs with the Pen S. That's already PLENTY of negs to scan and postprocess. (Also I'm not a big film burner, it often takes me months to shoot that many pics. A 36-load would take over a year!)

I've mostly been shooting Film Photography Project's "X2" aka Kodak Double-X/Eastman 5222. I bought a few rolls earlier this year and recently finished the first one in the Pen S... and discovered that it was clearly LONGER than usual 24s - I got 62 negs! Mind you, I'm not complaining, it's even more economical than usual!

Click to expand...

Double X plays great with half-frame. I've found that all the cine film I shoot works very well in half. Might have to do with half being full frame for movies. The grain just plays very well with the format to my eyes.

Yeah, it's a really great stock. It looks so much more like the Tri-X I shot back in the sixties than today's "reformulated and improved" Tri-X does. (That's no knock on current TX, I'm not gonna complain about finer grain and smoother gradation: it's remained my other standard film.)

I usually just use Double-X in half-frame, though I also shot some in my Nikkormat this year for a then-and-now exhibit of Beacon, NY (as an industrial river town in decline back in the 80s to its current renaissance as a thriving artsy community). Here are a couple - note that these are pro scans, my own scans weren't sharp enough for big exhibit prints:



I shot these with classic non-AI lenses that my folks got back in the sixties and early seventies, which had hard use for decades, then no use for decades before I began using them again in the last five years.... but none has ever needed a CLA! The church with the 35/2 (this one vintage 1972), the industrial building with the 45/2.8 GN (1969), and the towers with the 105/2.5 (1966). Man was that old Nikon gear well built!

My Canon Demi's frame spacing is very regular, so I never had a problem using the regular 35mm film holders (on a Minolta film scanner, but I guess that's the same for all others). I just switched to a coolscan 9000 (found a good deal...), and in case I'd have frame spacing issues I would just change to a medium format glass holder.
But yes, blame the camera, not the scanner or the format...