Scanning Negatives - What settings should I use?

I'm comfortable w/ settings for photos but not very clear on settings for scanning

negatives.

 

I don't want to specify a particular size (4x6, 8x10); rather I would like to have the

flexibility to edit/print at any size with the greatest possible clarity.

 

That being said, what settings should I use for my Epson 3170?

 

Thanks in advance!

Cindy

Just specify 2400 dpi resolution in the scanning software. That is enough to capture everything the 3170 can give, without creating an overly large file. Ignore print sizes, etc.

Is the Epson the best choice for scanning negatives? I'm not totally familiar with that

model, but most flatbeds do not have the optical resolution and/or maximum depth (DMAX)

to deal with negatives, especially B&W. Dedicated slide scanners struggle quite a bit with

negatives. They are all optimized for color slides (or prints in the case of a flatbed model).

You may not have the budget for them (I don't!) but drum scanners remain by far the best

choice to scan negatives. Unfortunately they are a pain to use and are expensive. One

day I'll invest in a good one since all of my work is in the form of negatives. If you learn

your software and hardware really well you can do a good job with what you have at hand.

Just giving you some options.

Colour negatives are actually easier to scan than colour slides. The range of densities on the film is much smaller and is more easily captured by the scanner. The only catch is that sometimes colour correction of the negative scan can be tricky (with a slide, you have the original as a guide).

 

The idea behind scanning at 2400 dpi (the highest usable resolution on these lower-end Epson scanners) is to capture everything you can from the film. If you want to resize later, that can be done in image-processing software (Photoshop, GIMP, etc.)

I have the Epson 4180 what I do is scan at 300 dpi with the target size at 10x10 which usually gives a scan of 25mb in tiff mode which I then save in jpeg of about 1.4mb. I'm scanning medium format slides which are a tad larger than 35mm. you might want to keep the tiff scans for further processing but 25mb uses storage space quite fast.