Canon 9950f Shim Test

Hey folks,

I decided to play with my scanner this morning. I just got back some film, and

I wasn't entirely pleased with the results that my Canon 9950f scanner was

giving me. Knowing that focus issues were probably 10-20% of my problem, I

decided to find out what happened if I put some shims under the 35mm slides.

The shims were 35mm slide mounts, without slides. A half-shim was made by

cutting a slide mount in half with a penknife. Scanning settings were 4800dpi,

auto-tone, HQ, and nothing else was turned on. Film was Kodachrome KR-64,

exposed a few months ago and developed last week by Dwayne's. Camera was a

Canon Rebel Ti with 28-80 USM (metal-mount) lens.

Crops consist of three different locations in a single image of a building: 1)

the front of a truck, 2) a soda brand sign, 3) an oil brand sign. Crops are

100%, and were done in MS-paint to resist the urge to clean up the images in

any way. No USM or other sharpening was applied.

NO EFFORT WAS MADE TO MAKE A SCIENTIFIC TEST. I was just curious, and have no

desire to make a more detailed test. The scanner fills my occasional need to

post film images on the internet, nothing else.

To my eyes, the results suggest that one slide mount shim provided *slightly*

better results than the default location of the film. Results were much less

sharp with two shims. The half-shim test was problematic, because cutting the

mount created dust and an unlevel surface.

I don't expect that I'll bother putting shims in. But I had a little fun.<div></div>

John,

Using tape around the edges of the slides? I like that, there's a whole lot of control there.

I was suggesting using tape for creating thin spacers for your mounted slides....

If you're using cardboard, especially if corner-damaged/warped, you might re-mount with thinner mounts...Pako (or Pakon) plastic mounts are thinner/flatter than most cardboard and some GEPE glass mounts are as well.