Scanning Panorama Negatives with Minolta 5400

[markus_ehrenfried]

Does anyone know if it is possible to scan panorama negatives (like the 24x65 or 24x66

format from a Hasselblad X-Pan or a Noblex 135) with the Minolta Dimage Scan Elite

5400? I understand that it is necessary to scan the negs in two steps (each 'half'

separately) and stitch them together in Photoshop again. The reason why I'm asking is: I

often notice that my scans are *slightly* tilted with this scanner, which is not a big deal for

24x36 and usually I just crop them. But I guess it will be a problem if I would try to

combine two slightly tilted halfs of a pano negative again. I have no pano negs to test it

myself but think about getting a pano camera.

 

BTW: who else uses this scanner and gets tilted scans? Is it a fault in the mechanism? It

seems to be at least not only my device, I heared of that already several times.

 

Thanks for you help, Markus

[daniel_staver1]

You could try to cut away one of the separators between the frames in the film holder. The scanner seems to include a liberal amount of space outside the film area, so my guess is that it might just be enough to cover a whole panorama negative in two scans without repositioning the negative. You do so at your own risk though, I haven't actually tried this myself.

 

You should lock all settings in the scanner software so that the two scans are be identical. Then it should only be a matter of merging the two files in photoshop without any further adjustments.

 

Haven't noticed any problems with tilted scans myself.

[john_brewton]

You may be getting tilted scans due to not setting the negative in the holder properly :). As to pano shots, I would try cutting through one of the dividers and see what happens. OTOH, you might ask Minolta before you waste a film holder...

 

Try page 40 in the manual. Perhaps if you adjust the input size to the new adjusted cut out size you could get it to scan?

[mendel_leisk]

I think cutting out a divider will not help, for scanning panaramas. Both Minolta software and Vuescan are expecting a certain frame size, and have a travel limit per frame set accordingly. Neither program will continue moving the film because it doesn't encounter a divider, I think.

 

I have cut out a divider on one of my holders. I'd replaced it due to broken tabs, so it was expendable anyways. I wanted to get as close to top and bottom of the frame as possible with my Scan Dual holder, which crops a bit. Note when you remove a divider, the film is less restrained, and focus will suffer a bit.

 

Maybe ask Ed Hamrick about this? It should be physically possible.

 

In the interm, it should be very easy to stitch two overlapped scans, especially with locked exposure, they being perfect matches.

[hon_soon]

I'm currently scanning my X-Pan Negatives & Transparencies using the Minolta 5400, and they work out ok in most cases.

I'm not brave enough to cut the separators out as I couldn't find anything in the minolta software that would let me change the scannable frame size. (Although I seem to recall some discussion in one of the older threads about being able to do this in Vuescan, but can't be sure)

 

I do find that the 2 scans I need to do are usually slightly tilted about 70% of the time despite my best endeavours. Isn't a huge problem as it tends to be only about 1-2mm on screen when viewed at 200% scanning at 5400dpi (not sure how many pixels that adds up to), and just use the clone tool to blend out the mis-allignment.

 

I've found that I need to focus the scanner each time nearish where I intend the 2 scans to be joined, otherwise the grain/texture of the scans where they join sticks out like sore thumb.

 

BTW: Generally scan my negatives as transparencies and then just invert and apply a curve layer to cancel out the blueish mask, otherwise I keep forgetting to lock the exposure.

 

cheers

[craig williamson]

Hello All,

 

I was wondering the same thing about the Minolta 5400 myself - I've just finally purchased a long desired XPan II just over a week ago and I'm expecting my first batch of negatives back from the lab tomorrow.

 

I sent an email to Konica Minolta querying whether removing the dividing strips would allow the scanner lamp to 'carry on scanning' so to speak, but as these other gentlemen have pointed out on this post, it would seem that whether the dividers are there or not, it will have no bearing on the actual scanning. The scanner simply stops after it's covered a 35mm frame size.

 

This is the email reply I received from Minolta a couple of days ago:

 

"Sir,

 

There is no provision for scanning XPAN film with the DiMAGE Scan

Elite

5400.

 

The scanner does not scan outside of a 24x36mm area, this is not

relative

to the frames within the holder itself.

 

You will need to carefully scan the image as two halves and stitch

together

to achieve the final result.

 

Regards,"

 

...So there you go then. Nuts.

 

Craig.

[markus_ehrenfried]

Craig,

 

could you please tell us what exactely you did to re-combine the two halfs and how it

worked? perhaps post pictures? I guess after scanning the first half one has to eject the

film holder, reposition the film, scan the second half, right? How much overlap does

photoshop need? Any problems with tilted scans or the way the image is cropped? what's

about sharpness: do you focus the scanner on the overlap region?

 

Thanks a lot! Cheers, M.

[craig williamson]

Hi Markus, pleased to make your aquaintance.

 

I'll drop a reply here to you when I get my first batch of negs back from the lab - I was expecting them to be delivered today but they're not here yet for some reason, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed they'll arrive tomorrow, which will give me something to do over the weekend at least!

 

This'll be my first batch of XPan images I'll ever have scanned in so I foresee a lot of playing around with the scanner to see what works best. I've also got an Epson 4870 flatbed scanner which I'll no doubt give a whirl as well to see how well that copes. I don't really use it much for scanning negs/slides but it doesn't do a bad job for a flatbed.

 

What does intrigue me about the Epson 4870 scanner though (which has only just occured to me since starting writing this message) is that you get various film holders bundled with it: 35mm, 6 x 4.5 med format, 5x4 large format and interestingly enough a 6 x 12 holder which is geared towards big panoramic negs from cameras like the Horseman, Linhof range et al.

 

I wonder if there's any way of making a homemade mask to exploit the sheer size of the 6 x 12 holder to cater for XPan images? Hmmmmmm.....

 

I'll let you know how i get on and i'll try and post some images if I can.

 

Cheers,

Craig.