kurt_meyer2

Many of the responses to your question have assumed you were post processing the negatives in a wet darkroom, but you are post processing them digitally so the method to control tonal range is different. It sounds like you just need to use Curves or Levels in your post processing program to clip the black end of your image's histogram. Some people prefer to apply controls during the scan itself but I prefer to get a 'flat' scan in a tiff file to preserve all the information in the negative and then manipulate. Of course you need a properly exposed negative to begin with, but through the magic of sliders you can always get fully saturated blacks from any negative.

<p>FastStone Image Viewer. Free, although they suggest a $35 donation if you like it. It is fast, intuitive, and powerful. If you need to print, or need that final increment of quality, or have a particularly difficult image, or need a database engine, Lightroom is better. But if you need to do a quick tweak of an image, or want to crop and clean up a couple hundred images from the ski race for the parents, FastStone is great. I use both. </p>

With the V700, do you use any of the multi-pass functionality? I am equally concerned with improving the tonal smoothness at the bright and dark ends of the range as I am with improving resolution. Peter, you have me about ready for a trip to the hardware store in search of glass and high-paraffin lamp oil.

<p>Thank you Peter. The image of the "Jekyll and Hyde" store has wonderfully subtle tonal gradations at the black end of the scale while still showing detail even in a fully sunlit white shirt. Also nice clouds in many of the images...I love to try to capture clouds. Wet mounting...hmm...I never really considered that but now you have me thinking about it.<br> <br /> The darkest areas in my scans, if not clipped, show a mottled appearance. When I was using ScanGear, it just clipped them away to black and gave the images a punchy contrasty look and I never knew what I was missing. However, when I redid them in VueScan, new details were revealed except at the cost of the mottled appearance in the areas closest approaching black. I end up clipping them just enough to clean up the worst of it.<br> <br /> Here's a link to an album of mine. In this bunch, most are early efforts done with ScanGear except the 6x7 grassy landscape with faraway trees which was done in VueScan. <br /> https://www.flickr.com/photos/kdmeyer/albums/72157656055293183/with/22658107859/<br> <br /> No need to apologize for phone shots. I took a couple of my favorite shots ever earlier this year over a lake at dusk on an overmatched Motorola smartphone. The color balance is completely wacked out, the camera chose 1,600 iso with its tiny sensor and applied such aggressive noise control that they look like paintings. One I converted to b&w and did some tone work on it, but for the other I just straightened the horizon and squeezed the contrast a bit and left the rest in all its unbalanced glory.<br /> https://www.flickr.com/photos/kdmeyer/albums/72157656622972260</p>

<p>Have you scanned 120 negatives with a Canon 9000f or 9000F MkII or possibly an Epson 600, and also used an Epson 700-750-800- or 850? If so, was there a noticeable increase in quality moving to the high-end Epson? <br /><br />I've spent much of the year learning how to use my 9000F MkII, starting with ScanGear which worked decently well through the beginning of my learning curve, trying Silverfast which I gave up on, and finally finding VueScan which is an improvement over ScanGear now that I know how to take advantage of its options. I do a minimum of processing with the scanning software, just ensuring no clipping in the capture's histogram and saving all manipulations for Lightroom 5.7. At this time I bought the Canon I considered the Epson, but had a sense that the Canon was going to deliver about 80% of what any flatbed scanner can do for about 20% of the cost of the Epson plus the apparently necessary Betterscanning holders. Also, I wasn't sure how far I would want to go with the whole business and thought the Canon with its low price was a good way to test the waters. <br> <br />Well, I'm having a blast using film again and printing is much more fun when my fingers don't come out smelling like chemicals. I wonder now how much better the Epson 850 might be in the two areas I've found wanting: smooth handling of the darkest and lightest areas of the image, and resolution. The multi-exposure and multi-pass features that Vue Scan offers with the Canon are wasted because the images don't register perfectly resulting in loss of resolution.<br /><br />Realistically I'm not doing a lot of printing bigger than 13x19 and most of it's smaller than that, but if I'm going to go to the effort to scan negatives and process them in Lightroom I want to maximize the quality of the input file, and if spending some money now on the Epson will enable my process to yield noticeably better files, I'd like to do it now rather than later. Already I am rescanning the negatives I scanned in ScanGear because VueScan gives me better files. <br />So far I've mostly scanned black and white. Getting good color scans is still a challenge but my lack of skill in that area is probably still limiting me more than the equipment.<br /><br />I don't want to spend a couple thousand on vintage hardware like Nikon 9000 or old SCSI Imacons. The Pacific/Braun 120 film scanner models, as well as the Plustek 120, seem to have problems. The new Imacons look sweet but $13K is out of my range. I know I can pay a lab for a seriously good scan of any image the Guggenheim asks me to print for them after they notice it on my Flickr page:) But I still want to squeeze the maximum pixel-peeping pleasure out of what I can afford.<br /><br />So, if you've got experience with the mid-level and the high-level of flatbed negative scanning, is the difference noticeable?<br /><br />Thanks!<br /><br />Kurt</p>