Use simple glass plate instead of 4x5 film holder

I have the Epson Perfection V850 Pro and I find the film holders for 4x5 film that come with it a bit cumbersome to use. The plastic seems to attract dust like hell and the whole thing is wobbly and somehow unpleasant to work with.
So I thought could just put the 4x5 negative directly on the glas flatbed of the scanner and put a plain glass plate that is slightly larger than 4x5" on top of the negative to hold if flat?

So my question is: Should this piece of glass be special kind of glass or would regular window glass, or glass from a cheap picture frame be good enough?

bonk said:

I have the Epson Perfection V850 Pro and I find the film holders for 4x5 film that come with it a bit cumbersome to use. The plastic seems to attract dust like hell and the whole thing is wobbly and somehow unpleasant to work with.
So I thought could't I just put the 4x5 negative directly on the glas flatbed of the scanner and put a plain glass plate that is slightly larger than 4x5" on top of the negative to hold if flat?

So my question is: Should this piece of glass be special kind of glass or would regular window glass, or glass from a cheap picture frame be good enough?

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Hi,

regular glass will give newton ring effects at least on the glossy side of the film, so no good solution.
Anti newton glass may work if you can adjust the position of the scanner glas...

To use high resolution lens of Epson scanner, you can add a piece of normal glass between scanner glass and film, and put emulsion side toward scanner. Then put ground glass or anti-newton's ring glass on base side to make it flat. Making a steel frame as film holder is also a way for dustfree scanning.

BTW, plesae ensure all surfaces dry enough before scanning.

Yes, you can use plain glass, but you'll add two more surfaces that can have dust, smudges, marks etc on them. So your dust problem may get bigger, not smaller. Also, there's the risk of scratching the glass of your scanner when putting another sheet of glass on top of it; take precautions against this.

As to the type of glass: if you use plain glass on top of the negative, you'll get newton rings in your scans. Ideally you need to use a piece of glass with one AN surface (anti-Newton ring). This can be difficult and expensive to obtain. Some people get decent results with anti-glare glass from picture frames, which is cheap. You could give that a try, but the texture of the glass may very well end up in your scans.

The easiest way to scan 4x5 without the holder is to just put the film onto the scanner platen and nothing on top. That will give you OK scans for the most part. For optimal results you need to lift the film ca 1mm from the scanner platen. The Epson film holder is made to do this. So really the best & most convenient way is to use the holder that came with your scanner and keep it clean. You can store your film holders in a ziplock bag so they are exposed as little as possible to dirt. Frankly, I've never found the holders themselves to be much of a problem w.r.t. dust. You may want to revise your work methods and perhaps cleanliness of your workspace to cope with this.

Another problem with laying the film on the scanner glass with no holder or piece of glass to press it down is the fact that the heat from scanning can make the film bow and then move. It's happened to me numerous times.

You can get the 1mm off the scanner glass distance by putting the film on top of a piece of cheap picture-frame glass, like @MsLing said above. If you got that nice and clean, you could maybe just leave it in the scanner. You can cut a frame out of mattboard and place it over the negative to hold it down by the edges.

No matter what you do, there will be dust.

You might want to poke around here a bit:


I do wet mounting using their Variable Height holder with my Epson scanner. No Newton's rings and with a little testing you can establish the perfect focus height for your scanner. Wet mounting is a bit more work, but IMO this technique produces the best scans you'll get from a flat bed scanner. There's also dry solutions using ANR glass, if you're so inclined that direction. Regardless the path, dust is a fact of life with scanning film.

I picked up an Epson GT-X980 (850) when my Nikon LS8000 died to fill in until I fixed my Nikon LS8000. I thought all the horror stories about the holder sucking up dust was overblown, but I was wrong. These things are absolutely dust magnets. Shortly after I got the 850 I managed to repair my disabled LS8000 so haven't used the Epson much and if I do it's for 4X5 and 8X10. I find the 4X5 holder much better than the medium format holder, but still far from perfect. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm wondering about a high-class anti-static spray on the holders. Has anyone tried that? I use some on my 4x5 holders and it helps them from sucking in dust.

Alan9940 said:

You might want to poke around here a bit:

Holders and Products for the Epson V700 V750 V750-M

I do wet mounting using their Variable Height holder with my Epson scanner. No Newton's rings and with a little testing you can establish the perfect focus height for your scanner. Wet mounting is a bit more work, but IMO this technique produces the best scans you'll get from a flat bed scanner. There's also dry solutions using ANR glass, if you're so inclined that direction. Regardless the path, dust is a fact of life with scanning film.

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I use the Epson fluid mount holder and found it a good solution for dry scanning 4x5 using a piece of museum glass. Anti-Static cleaners are your friend.

Alan9940 said:

You might want to poke around here a bit:

Holders and Products for the Epson V700 V750 V750-M

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Are they still in business? I thought I had read numerous posts about orders no longer being fulfilled. IDK for sure though.

koraks said:

Are they still in business? I thought I had read numerous posts about orders no longer being fulfilled. IDK for sure though.

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I'm not sure, either. I know the website is still up because I checked before posting in this thread. I would advise the OP to initiate a contact with them before ordering. To be honest, I didn't look to see if there was a "Buy" button available.

But, as @Saganich mentions there's always the Epson Fluid Mount unit.

I thought placing the negative directly on the glass meant the scanner defaulted to its low resolution setting? The scanner doesn't have auto focus so for the negative to be in focus at high resolution it needs the adjustable holders, or you make a more substantial holder of your own which can be shimmed to the correct height. I don't know where the quoted '1mm' height comes from but the stock film holders are higher than that.

Those are valid questions and they also relate to the difference between the V8x0 and the other Epson flatbed scanners. AFAIK the 850 has two lens systems, one focused on the platen for reflective scans, and one focused a little above the platen for film. Correct me if I'm wrong. the higher-focused optical path is selected when choosing the film scanning option in the software. The scanner as such doesn't detect where the object is and whether it sits directly in the glass etc.

The lower end scanners have a single optical path that focuses about 1mm above the platen.

The depth of field of a flatbed scanner is reasonably big, resulting in only slight differences in resolving power. Back when I got my 4990 (many years ago) I did some testing and the differences in shimming the stock holder to optimal height were so slight as to not make it worthwhile to even bother with it. I now often scan sheet film directly on the glass, which works just fine as the resolution requirements are naturally also much lower if you have so much more film surface to work with. If you want a properly detailed scan from e.g. a 4x5 I'd wager to say that a flatbed really isn't the way to go anyway, although you could try to squeeze out the most performance from it if you're really persistent. The whole thing crumbles once you put one of those scans next to something from an Imacon etc., which in my experience makes it all feel very relative all of a sudden.

When I scan 120 or 4x5, I tape (with blue painting low stick tape) the edges of the film down onto a piece of anr glass, and place the glass e-down on the scanner, separated by strips of aluminum and shimming at the sides. I determined the necessary height (for focus) by buying 2 feeler gauge sets, cleaning them up and testing trial and error with the glass/neg setup until sharpness was optimum. (On my scanner, it's 3.25mm).
I use a Giottos Rocket Air Blaster to dust all surfaces - good scans and very little dust.
It's how I scan all 120 and usually 4x5. And with 4x5, if you place carefully, you can mount 2 4x5's vs the single one using the holder.

MsLing said:

To use high resolution lens of Epson scanner, you can add a piece of normal glass between scanner glass and film, and put emulsion side toward scanner. Then put ground glass or anti-newton's ring glass on base side to make it flat. Making a steel frame as film holder is also a way for dustfree scanning.

Click to expand...

May I ask two follow up questions?
Why the extra glas between scanner glass and film? Is the scanner not able to to focus on the film when it is closer to the glas?
Why is it import to put the emulsion toward the scanner?

bonk said:

Is the scanner not able to to focus on the film when it is closer to the glas?

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The scanner doesn't focus as such. It's a fixed-focus device. The focal plane is just above the glass platen, so you need to suspend the film a little above the platen to get it into perfect focus.

bonk said:

May I ask two follow up questions?
Why the extra glas between scanner glass and film? Is the scanner not able to to focus on the film when it is closer to the glas?
Why is it import to put the emulsion toward the scanner?

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1. Focal plane of lens which scans film is bit higher than scanner's glass surface. Extra glass can lift film to focal plane of the lens, and make your film extremely flat. But TBH, original Epson can still work without a piece of extra glass due to big DoF and low resolution (2000-2400Dpi) of its lens. (Someone declared that once correct optical path, available resolution will be 4100Dpi. Though I'm not sure if it is real or not, in this case, accurate focal plane is necessary)

2. Film base is smooth but not perfectly flat, some areas would contact glass, but some won't. Glass can be regarded as optical flat and film base as lenses if film base contact glass, then you will observe color Newton's rings. But a rough surface and a smooth surface can't create visible Newton's rings in macroscopic scale. Ground glass and film emulsion are both rough, however, ground glass causes more diffusion and decrease resolution, so just put emulsion side toward smooth glass, that's easy and effective.

The Epson V850 nominal focus height for their film holders is 3mm. The holders are adjustable in increments of 0.5mm which you should test to determine the best height for your machine. See link below. Page 90-91.

The red circle in my picture below shows how Epson determines which format holder (the example is for 4x5) is being used. Each type has a different set of coding holes. It also tells the machine to use the higher-quality scanning lens. If you scan on the glass, it uses its inferior lens. The green circle sites are how you test and adjust the height of the holders.
I too get more dust with the V850 holder because of its glass-type film surfaces on the holders.

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://files.support.epson.com/docid/cpd4/cpd41530.pdf

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Alan Edward Klein said:

The Epson V850 nominal focus height for their film holders is 3mm. The holders are adjustable in increments of 0.5mm which you should test to determine the best height for your machine. See link below. Page 90-91.

The red circle in my picture below shows how Epson determines which format holder (the example is for 4x5) is being used. Each type has a different set of coding holes. It also tells the machine to use the higher-quality scanning lens. If you scan on the glass, it uses its inferior lens. The green circle sites are how you test and adjust the height of the holders.
I too get more dust with the V850 holder because of its glass-type film surfaces on the holders.

https://files.support.epson.com/docid/cpd4/cpd41530.pdf

Click to expand...

In terms of the coding holes, do you know how those were used exactly? In the various scanning softwares you can usually pick between scanning off the platen vs the holders, and I would assume that was an option that was purely software selectable.

I did a little project this weekend and 3D printed a shim for my omega glassless holders. I didn’t want to bother figuring out the perfect spacing of those holes so I skipped it.

Scanned with Vuescan there was nothing that seemed amiss. Zoomed in I could see no loss of resolution and the negative was focused correctly which suggests to me that the holder lens was being used.