Scanning 4x5 Negatives

Hi there,

I've been scanning my 4x5 negatives on a friend's Heidelberg Tango drum scanner for 10 years. I wanted to maybe get something comparable to that for my own studio? (at a more affordable price)... and was wondering if the Epson V850 comes close?

Does anyone have experience with both of these scanners to compare?

I do have an Epson 4990 that I use to view my negs before the final scans on the Tango. However, the detail of the 4990 does not compare to the Tango, but I don't know if the newer models have improved?

Also, I scan my 4x5 negs "full" with the black border, but can't find if these newer Epson models allow you to scan without the negative holder? (The negative holder on my 4990 crops the negs).

Finally, my output prints are between 30x40 in to 50x60 in in size. Not sure if the Epson V850 scanner resolution scans that high?

I also looked at the Epson V800 model, but it seems the V850 has newer features.

I appreciate any input, thank you!

Maritza

A consumer level flatbed won't compare to a drum scan. The resolution is not there. Besides the drum scanner, there is a Scitex flatbed scanner, which is the size of a small refrigerator. Hasselblad makes Flextite X1 and X5 scanners, which are closer to drum scan quality and handle 4x film. If you have something worthy of a mural-sized print, you would probably be better off paying for a drum scan as needed.

I have had some success with flatbed scanners, placing the film emulsion side down on the glass, inside a mask cut from black cardboard, with a cover glass to hold it flat. The cover glass can be non-reflective picture frame glass, which has a texture to prevent Newton's Rings, but won't affect the scan since it is on the backside of the film. This is contingent on the best focal plane being at the surface. Some scanners change the focus in transparency mode to about 2 mm above the glass. In that case, you need a holder.

As you know, there is very little border on the long side of 4x5 (or cut film) negatives.There is more border at the ends. The Flextite clamps the ends and pulls the film tight on a curved base. A drum scanner uses tape to hold a cover sheet to the drum, with scanning fluid trapped underneath. You can do that (wet scanning) with a flatbed too, but besides removing scratches, I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

A consumer level flatbed won't compare to a drum scan. The resolution is not there. Besides the drum scanner, there is a Scitex flatbed scanner, which is the size of a small refrigerator. Hasselblad makes Flextite X1 and X5 scanners, which are closer to drum scan quality and handle 4x film. If you have something worthy of a mural-sized print, you would probably be better off paying for a drum scan as needed.

 

I have had some success with flatbed scanners, placing the film emulsion side down on the glass, inside a mask cut from black cardboard, with a cover glass to hold it flat. The cover glass can be non-reflective picture frame glass, which has a texture to prevent Newton's Rings, but won't affect the scan since it is on the backside of the film. This is contingent on the best focal plane being at the surface. Some scanners change the focus in transparency mode to about 2 mm above the glass. In that case, you need a holder.

 

As you know, there is very little border on the long side of 4x5 (or cut film) negatives.There is more border at the ends. The Flextite clamps the ends and pulls the film tight on a curved base. A drum scanner uses tape to hold a cover sheet to the drum, with scanning fluid trapped underneath. You can do that (wet scanning) with a flatbed too, but besides removing scratches, I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

Thank you, Ed, for your insightful response. Yes, I will continue to use my friend's drum scanner, as it seems no consumer scanner is close to a drum scan yet.

You can do that (wet scanning) with a flatbed too, but besides removing scratches, I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

True dinks it isn't!!

An absolutely filthy and tedious undertaking. Leave it to the devotees of Grot-o Graphix. The preparation, turps, taping, scanning, and especially the clean up (and deodorisation of the studio!!) is an abomination. Yes, I have gone through this twice, in retrospect just for a lark, and rightly disprove the populist opinion that a flatbed scanner and wet scanning is equivalent to a drum scan. It is not. Flatbed scanning technology seems to have progressed at a token-effort pace with no attempt to approach drum-scanning quality. True though, Epson's scanners are terrific for everyday jobs; I put mine to heavy use scanning many hundreds of Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides from the 50s to early 1990s.

Flatbed scanning has undergone an interesting evolution. Early scanners used a single lens and a line array sensor. Apart from minor scattering, one pixel on the array was equivalent to one pixel in the scan. I paid about $1300 for my first 8"x12" photo scanner with 1600 dpi resolution. Later the single, high quality lens was replaced with micro lenses coincident with the line array. The optical resolution increased dramatically, so you could buy a 2400 dpi (or more) scanner for about $300. The problem is that the image of the micro lenses overlapped, so the effective resolution was about half the optical resolution. Now there are some affordable photo scanners which have returned to the single lens design, some with focusing ability. Perhaps in order to control cost, the back illumination is often restricted to a 4"x8" strip, whereas early photo scanners illuminated the entire field (great for creating contact sheets). The practical resolution seems to have stalled at about 2400 dpi, but that's still a lot of pixels for 4x5 film.

In short, a flatbed scanner is good to have, and can do a respectable job recognizing its limitations. Among other things, color accuracy is better than ever. I would be lost without one next to my computer. A scanner in hand is worth two across town, and most of us don't have a friend with a drum scanner.

I have quite a few 4x5 negatives and slides in my library, but most are a mix of 6x6 and 35 mm. For the latter, I don't even use a scanner any more, rather a copy attachment for a digital camera. A 24 MP camera will "scan" 35mm at 4000 dpi, the same as a Nikon Coolscan, only quiet and 5x as fast (if you include prep and loading).

The Canoscan 9000F flatbed/scan can produce usable images from 4x5 prints or negatives.

It is NOT a drum scanner though, and only you can determine if the quality meets your own standards.

• example from 4x5 Combat Graphic, River Basin Surveys 1962

  
  

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• Plus-X Filmpack

  
  

Found this blog about drum scanning with comparisons using the Heidelberg Tango...

http://drumscan.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-is-drum-scanner.html

I always suspected the light source (halogen or Xenon) played a significant part in getting accurate and well defined detail and color. Flatbed scanners use spiky spectra LED or fluorescent tube. The link above shows the Tango's two MR16 halogen bulbs.

So is it for web or print ?

Any scanner at all, from a $200 flatbed from a flea market to any of Epson's and Nikon's offering, can be (and so very often is) used to scan and post images to the web, and the max resolution only needs to be 1600dpi resampled to 100 for web viewing. Monitors are not calibrated like-for-like (white point/grey point, gamut), nor is resolution.

The pointy question is how well a scan that you need for exhibition translates to printing, say up to 1 metre-plus across (for example, from a 6x7 transparency). Only a drum scanner can get the job done when the outcome is a large, faithfully detailed print, no fiddling in post (all exposure metrics done in-camera) and output as an unlayered, print-profiled .tif It will be a large file, especially if it is in colour.