Drum scanning: To oil mount or not

i just bought a little screen 1015ai drum scanner for scanning my

4x5" transparencies. before i made some comparations between my old

polaroid 45ultra , imacon 646 and 848, a howtek 4500 and another drum

scanner, made in a scan factory ( this have been the worthest scans ).

cause i am new to drum scanning the results of my oiling are not

good,- but if i scan without oiling the scans are very good, how they

come out of the 1015. there are no newton rings....( and i dont

understand why they are not visible....maybe for the little drum which

has the 1015? ) and the scanns look sharp and with very good color

resolution. visible better than the 848 imacon scans.....( comparing

the howtek i havent scanned the same image till now - the howtek

scanns have been oiled ). why should i mount in oil if it is so

difficult? are the results really better and in which aspect are

they......i would like to hear your opinion about oil mounting or

not.....cause if i dont use oil the scanner is so practical to

use.........

greatings from germany

I used a 1015 for a number of years; I used oil mounting rarely,

only if newton rings were visible.

 

When the drum is absolutely clean and the transparency is not

"oily" (sometimes E-6 processing leaves a very slight "oily"

finish) there is rarely (<10% of the time) any problem.

 

If it is working OK, don't worry about oil. When you need oil, it will

be very visible.

We do not use a drum scanner but our Scitex has an oil mount option. We have never used it but were told by the techs that at very high magnification it becomes necessary because of emulsion imperfections that read as grain or noise. We have observed this in 35 mm transparencies scanned to 40x60.Fortunately this was not an issue in those prints.

 

The reason you don't get Newton rings is because the emulsion on the glass side has a bit of texture acting like an anti-newton glass.

 

I agree that if you are getting good scans without oil, don't mess with it if you don't have to.

 

Good Luck,

 

Mr. Monkey

Rainer, I use the Scitex too and there is no need for oil mount, excellent glass surface. Before, I had a drum scanner and after trying messing up with oil mount and having a nice 4x5 slide get loose and be scratched to death, I tested dry mount and have never needed anything else. I too would suggest that you try it first, especially if you scan MF and LF slides. Sometimes very overexposed slides might produce newton rings in washed areas, but generally if you lay the emulsion side on the drum, the emulsion will have enough of texture to avoid the NR. What oil mount does is soften the grain by producing a diffusion effect. If it's really needed because your magnification is extreme, or if you have too many small scratches on your film, then oil mount would be appropriate.

By the way, Mark, may I ask, if you use the Scitex ftp download site, how did you obtain a password for it? I used to download software upgrades from there but they placed this barrier last year. Nobody answered the emails I sent. Paul

Paul,

 

Their service is diabolical. We obtained a few downloads from the ftp site but now we can't get through either.

 

I believe they will give a password for a download only if you call first and pay a fee.

 

They charge us $50 to talk for two minutes on the phone. In fairness though they have to support their whole company on a relatively small volume of scanner and other equipment sales.

Ouch! Mark, that's not what I liked to hear but I too can understand. Those pay lines are a real plague though. Maybe as for many companies, Internet has cut the grass under their feet and they take the money where they can. By chance the Eversmart are so good that they hardly need servicing.

Paul,

 

My greatest interest is in getting an OSX version of the Evermartscan application. I have a feeling that they would rather have me get an IQSmart. The software for that is OSX native.

 

We rarely need service either. We handle everything in house.