Epson V750 2400DPI test scans

I've bought Epson 750 instead of a high end scanner, on the basis of a

reasoning, that for 13X17 or 16X20 inch enlargements, there won't be a lot of

quality difference, and the epson has brought some useful calibration tools as

well. I thought I'd better hold to the extra cash to spend it on a first

affordable and meaningful in terms of crop factor, digital back.

 

But the answer about the effective quality of this scanner is elusive, as I

have not tried to scan any of my slides on a better machine, So I post a

couple of 2400 DPI scans here, to enable other users make some analysis.

 

The Color Checker shot has been taken with a Hasselblad 500 EL/M and a Planar

CF 120 at F11, and if I manage to post it correctly, you will see an

unmanipulated version, and then a version after a noise ninja noise reduction,

plus a double USM (200,2,0 plus 200,1,0), the house shot has been taken with

the same camera and a Sonnar C T* 250 with a 2xMutar at F16 (that is stopped

down only one f stop). I want to show it intentionally, as I have been

expecting a rather poor result from this combo, and the outcome has been very

satisfactory instead. Both shots taken on Fuji RVP 100.

 

The scans have been made with the Epson scan with all the tweakings turned

off, and the film has been put into Doug's MF holder and held flat with the T-

locks.

 

Please make your comments of what you make of this, as I am quite curious

indeed - consider that these crops correspond roughly to 1/6 of the linear

width/height of the 6x6 frame (2,25 inch*2400=5400 while the crops are about

940 pixels square).<div></div>

Thanks for posting. So I am confused about the link. Is that crop just the lens alone at F11 ?? or is that with the 2x. NR or none ?? I would prefer to se an unmanipulated photo.

 

I would think that scan should be a bit sharper. Have you tried scanning directly on the glass to make sure the film is flat, or adjusting the film holders feet ?? Some people are improving sharness a bit by raising the holder.

 

At any rate thanks. I have been waiting on someone to do some scans at 2400 dpi.

Oh i see it says UNMANIPULATED.

 

Thank

Marek,

 

I don't think you have the Film Holder height dialed in yet. YES you can sharpen it after

the fact but you can get more resolution out of that scanner.

For whatever reason, the rest of my posts with the other images got cancelled by the

moderator - if anybody can give me a hint on how to stick photos within the text I will

redo the scans checking again the optimum height for the holder and using the anr glass,

just for the sake of doing away with the uncertainties.

 

Anyway, the fact is that the naked scans are unrealisticly soft, as if there were a softening

filter in action, but then they respond to heavy USM in a way impossible to replicaate on

files from a digital camera. I believe that you begin to see the "real" unsharpened

resolution only after the first round of USM (like 200,2,0). After that you approach a grain

sharp image, and it still can be sharpened more without touching the posterization effect

- in fact I sharpen the second time even the portrait shots.

>For whatever reason, the rest of my posts with the other images got cancelled by the moderator - if anybody can give me a hint on how to stick photos within the text I will redo the scans checking again the optimum height for the holder and using the anr glass, just for the sake of doing away with the uncertainties.

 

You can post a link like this....

http://www.pbase.com/tammons/image/37020546

 

>Or you can just do several posts each with an image attached at the end of each.

 

Anyway, the fact is that the naked scans are unrealisticly soft,

 

I think adjusting the feet will help sharpness.

I get much sharper scans with my Epson 3200. I scan at 3200 spi, without sharpening, and reduce to 2160 spi afterwards for more compact storage. Either way my scans are much sharper. At less than a 3 X enlargement, I show no apparent loss of detail and certainly no blurring. Other example of seen of V700-V750 scans are also much sharper. Either something is wrong with your scanner or the height of the film is way off.

Marek, please post them in this thread, rather than starting a new one for each picture.

 

The moderator.

OK, I made my homework again.

 

Here you have a SWC/M (Biogon 38mm) shot focussed at infinity at F11 and made on Fuji Astia 100F. The infinity focus along with the excellent sharpness of this lens at F11 should do away with the question of the frame itself.

 

I ran through the focussing procedure again with the Doug's MF film holder keeping the anr glass on top of the transparency for optimum film flatness.

 

I have found the optimum range between 1,75 and 2 full turns of the adjustable feet, and I've settled for the 1,75 setting, as in case of t-lock use some slight film bulging can still occur, so this way I should contain it within the best focus zone.

 

First I will show the full frame at a very low resolution, just to give you the whole picture - this scan as most of the ones that follow has been totally unmanipulated.<div></div>

This one is a crop at 2400 dpi, unmanipulated<div></div>

This is at 3200dpi, unmanipulated<div></div>

This one at 4800 dpi, unmanipulated<div></div>

And finally 6400dpi, unmanipulated<div></div>

And here is what I am getting after making a 6400dpi scan, applying a noise ninja noise reduction, applying USM (200,2,0) and subsequently resampling to 2400 dpi and applying another USM (200,1,0)<div></div>

My guess is that your film is not being held in the carrier flat, or you scanner needs a bit of a height adjustment on the film holder (or the frame you shot is out of focus, or your scanner is broken).

I have had some serious issues with the epson film holder with my V750, (and am at present waiting for the arrival of the same MF film holder which was used for your test, and for which I have high hopes) but I still get much much better results with MF film (Although I have to fiddle with it and rescan it sometimes to get it to sit in the stupid epson carrier properly... stupid epson)than you did in your post.

For instance, this is from a 645 color neg shot at f2. I scanned it at 2400 dpi, no modifcations (such as USM) applied. It doesn't look great at 100%, but it doesn't look terrible either. I'll let you be the judge though. I just put it in the carrier and into the scanner, I didn't really fiddle with it too much. I could probably get it to look a bit better.

 

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1875529

(click on "o" to see orig.)

It seems to resolve about 1600 ppi from these examples. Meaning you can downsize the files 33% linearly without any loss. It's about the same as my Epson 2450. If your minimum detail level in print is 180 ppi, then you can enlarge about 8-9x. A 16x16 print should look acceptable. Cropping to 16x20 is probably pushing it a bit. Personally I prefer 240 ppi for a quality 16x20. 180 ppi (unaliased) is 2.5 lp/mm; 240 ppi is 3.3 lp/mm; 300 ppi is 4 lp/mm. For 20x30 and up 2.5 lp/mm is pretty good, for a 16x20 3.3 lp/mm, and for smaller sizes 4-5 lp/mm. For many printers (like my Epson 7600) you need a RIP to resolve 4 lp/mm, the stock drivers will only get close to that with line art not unaliased photographic content.

 

My personal opinion is 6x6 is a little small for flatbed use if you like to make quality 16x20 sized prints. 6x7 is better (less crop, bigger original), while 4x5 can really shine.

Also, the softness originates with the scanner's lens, so USM isn't the best sharpening method. PS CS2 Smart Sharpen with the Lens Blur filter will do a better job since it's a deconvolver. (But it can't work miracles!)

I have been playing around with my 4870 since it was new. I also have a drum scanner, but occasionally I will run the 4870 through the ringer one more time, tweak the height, although it rarely helps much, more this time though, but recently I was a bit confused because over the last two years i will occasionally get a very sharp scan but only seldom.

 

Now I think I have finally boiled it down, maybe.

 

It seems the the Epson scanners do resolve more detail than I originally thought, but at very low contrast. Pretty much mush in some areas like the grass in this one. It does however respond fairly well to high contrast very sharp film, although none of them have the Dmax to handle this stuff properly. Similar to the camera lens/film system equation.

 

At any rate here is a crop. This is the 4870, Bluefire film, 2400 dpi scan and probably the sharpest scan i have ever gotten out of my 4870 at 2400 dpi. This has medium USM applied in Epson scan.

 

Here is the original and a couple of Minolta 5400II scans that follow. No comparison to a 5400II scan, but for an Epson scan its not that bad and looks like it would go 10-12x maybe.

 

Also this was slightly under developed so that does not help.

 

http://www.pbase.com/tammons/image/66640819

 

Here are 2 crops. The one on the left is the med usm B+W scan the one on the right shows exactly why this scanner is fuzzy IMO. Good old lens aberation or CA, and this one really shows it. This was scanned as a color slide.<div></div>

I've been using the v750 for a couple of months and I just put up a blog entry regarding

my results. I've found it to be an excellent machine overall but like everyone else I am not

a fan of the supplied film holders. I've compared a scan from the Nikon 9000 to a scan

from the Epson. The Nikon image has been sharpened in the Nikon scan software, and it

is a much higher res scan (4800 16x oversampled vs. 2400 on the Epson). I just don't

have the patience or access to do a true 1 to 1 comparison. The results are my daily use

results - with the Nikon I pushed for the best possible (USM, DeIce, Oversampling) - with

the Epson I go for what I need (2400 dpi, 48 bit color, no-deice, PS USM, custom color

profile). The scanning time was about 30 minutes on the Nikon (roughly 480MB file

resulting) and the epson took about 2 minutes (120MB file). Check it out if you're curious.

 

<a href="http://www.photographyri.com">www.photographyri.com</a>

Those look good, but i have a question. In that last comparison the elec tower. How was that sharp crop to the right scanned ??

 

I read the text and it sounds like the high rez lens can be used any time ?? Is that right ?? As I understand from previous articles, the high rez lens does not come in until 6400 dpi.

 

Did you try putting the film directly on the glass ?? Supposedly there is a way to get that to work.

 

Also what camera and what film ??

I don't know if it can be used at any time - simply because I haven't tried it at all DPI. I can

say that when "film holders" is selected and thumbnails on or off you can get the high

resolutions lens at 2400 DPI. In this particular case I was using the auto thumbnail option

with the "film holders" option for the sharp image at 2400DPI and "film area guide" for the

less sharp image at 2400DPI. I didn't move the holders or reload the film, just two scans

in a row. Until the software was updated (or unless I missed it in the original release I had)

you weren't able to hand select the scan area without using "film area guide" thus hand

cropped photos were by default lower res. However, I updated my software and noticed

the thumbnails check box, turned it off with the "film holders option" on and cropped the

same slide and got the full resolution.

 

It may have been the case that you didn't engage the high res lens with hand cropping

until you reached the 6400DPI threshold with the originally shipped software, but it is not

the case now. I believe it always used the better lens when you allowed auto thumbnails -

even with the original software. One of the key things to note is that I am using the Epson

software and not the SilverFast. I never got SilverFast to do exactly what I wanted because

it didn't seem to engage the high res lens when I wanted it to.

 

In other words, with the newest Epson software, you can use the "film holders" options

turn off auto thumbnails and hand select your scan area at 2400DPI and engage the higher

resolution lens. I may have not noticed this option in the original software; but I just don't

think it was an option (I got my scanner in June). So, you can get high quality scans

without being 6400 DPI on a hand select. I believe that the high res lens was always being

used on auto thumbnailed images. This may have lead to problems with people using

charts to compare quality if they didn't have the higher res lens engaged (which you

wouldn't know unless you were aware of the two lenses) because I don't think the hand

selected scans used the higher quality lens until recently (via the software update).

 

Camera Hasselblad 500C/M, T* 80mm Planar lens, Fuji 120 film - probably Astia. Colors

unedited from scans.

With regard to the specifics - I have a pretty limited gallery up at the moment, but for each of

the pictures in the gallery the film/camera info is listed - it's a mix of 35mm and MF. <a

href="http://www.photographyri.com">www.photographyri.com</a>

 

All the film has been scanned in the v750 and probably cleaned in PS, but it gives you an

idea. I'll try to put up other scans over the course of the next week or so.

I recently purchased a used Heidelberg Circon scanner and some Silverfast software. I do

opitcal printing and, now, just started to scan negatives. It is very interesting to print in

the darkroom and then leave and print digitally, espicially if I am using the same image.

For what I've done so far, the optical still kills the digital. But, if I have a film flaw, the

digital is a real plus.

 

Whatever, regarding sharpness, your scans are not sharp. Before I got the Circon, I played

with an Epson 3170 my wife has. I tried different shimming heights, as well as two sheets

of anti-newton glass(1mm thick each). I couldn't find the right shimming height. It really

didn't seem to make that much difference. The anti-newton glass did help, because of the

film flatness. The so called carriers that came with the scanner are garbage.

 

In other postings I read questions about the V750, V700, 4990. They all had to do with

focus. The Circon, although older, does have manual focus. In autofocus, the resolution

looks about as good as your scan samples, but if I manually focus it, the grain is sharp as

well as any defects. It's highest dpi is 2400 over an area of about 4" by 15".

 

I am not very good with PS, but each time I've used any USM and so, the totallity has been

effected. I've printed 11x14's from 35mm negs that are very acceptable?until they are

placed next to an optical print of the same neg. I've done cropped area samples of a

35mm neg 2400 dpi scan streched to 20" long, and I would think that a full print would

work. (I ran out of roll paper and the light-magneta cartriage light was flashing, so I could

do any full prints.)

 

I did do a project using a 6cm x 24cm copy negative?I had to copy a WWII battalion

photo, @7.25"x26", for a customer, using the 3170. I made a negative holder for the

negative, that would hold it flat. It took a lot of work in PS to balance the shadows,

highlights, and midtones. I did loose some highlight detail. I also had to sharpen slightly.

The outcome was salable. After getting the Circon, I did a test scan of the same negative,

using a Silverfast film profile for Delta 100. After manually focussing, the first sample print

was not only sharp, but almost acceptable.

 

I guess where I am going is that the older scanner, which cost new six years ago $15,000

and can now be had for about 3% of that, can still out scan the newer scanner, because it

can be focussed, althoug the dpi is limited. Another thing I have read, is that the chassis

construction is very important, because of all of the movement that goes on during the

scanning process. This may be why some scanners are sharp some of the time.

 

Thanks for your time

 

Richard Curtis, ARC Photgraphic

EPSON V750 error message? I have a problem with both Epson scan and Silverfast 6.5 that tells me I cannot scan a 4x5 Tranny over 1200 dpi. The message is "Image format is too large. Try reducing the resolutio....." I am scanning my 4x5 set at original and I would like to scan at 6400 dp i at least . Any thoughts? I get the same message when scanning 6x9 trannies at 6400 dpi set at original size.

Hi,

 

Allen, i have bought a circon to and i will happy to compare our result.

I find a lot of noise and i compare with eversmart and epson 4900.

I don't know if it is normal...

 

I use winxp and silverfast.

You can find me here: philippe@usine-a-photo.com

 

crop of 4x5' color negative at x3 res

http://www.photos-de-friches/eversmart.jpg

http://www.photos-de-friches/circon.jpg

 

Thanks

Philippe<div></div>