120 negatives being cut off by scanner

[steve_agocs1]

I hope this is the right forum for this question! I have an Epson Perfection

(sorry, don't have the model # in front of me) negative scanner and I have use

dit for 35mm and 120. It includes film carriers/holders to scan 120, slides and

35mm. It works fine for 35mm, but for some reason, it cuts off a few milimeters

of each 120 negative I scan. Any ideas why this would happen and what to do to

fix it? I just scanned two negs that were attached and it lopped off the bottoms

of each of them. Thanks in advance!

[Ed_Ingold]

Turn off the auto-thumbnail option and set up the scanning frames manually.

[doug grosjean]

My own Epson Perfection (2450, I think) only has a scanning width of 1.9", while a MF negative is about 2.25".

 

Perhaps that's what's happening on yours? If so, no way to fix - that's just the way it is. Don't compose so tightly in the frame.

[custom film holders for fl]

To expand on the advice above, go in to Professional mode, click on the little arrow to the right of the Preview button, choose Normal, repreview, now draw your marquee manually. You can draw multiple marquees, each with individual "exposure" setting, to create a batch scan.

<p> Doug<p>

<a href="http://www.betterscanning.com">New film holder designs for Epson, Agfa and Microtek</a>

[yann1]

I had exactly the same problem with my Epson Perfection 2450, until I found the manual mode, it was hard because my system is all in Chinese... But I found it at last. Maybe tricky to find, but play with the buttons and you'll find it.

[rstobbe1]

And then you set up your scanner software as described above and realize, that the camera

you use produces slightly larger negatives than other medium format cameras ... e.g. Rollei

SL66 negative area is a bit (1 mm) bigger than the image area of a Hasselblad 500. I am able

to scan the whole image since I use Doug Fishers MF holder.

 

Regards Ruediger

[steve_agocs1]

Like I'd already been doing, I set it all up in manual, turned off all auto-cropping tools, etc and still getting the negs chopped. Next I went into the "configuration" button at the bottom of the scanning software window and it had different sizes for the medium format negative. All that did was overscan one of the negs, so it showed the black between the negatives and part of the top of the next negative, but it didn't fix the problem. You don't have to line the negatives up on the carrier in a special way, do you? Doesn't the software determine where the negatives begin and end, and process them like that? Can you not scan multiple medium format negatives at the same time? This is very frustrating...

 

Now I'm noticing that one of the negatives is scanning full size, but it's the second one that is being cut off, but it's not at the end of the film carrier or anything. I slid the negs up so that the first negative, the one that is not being chopped off, starts at the top of the carrier's edge. That resulted in the first negative being full size, but the second one still being cut off.

 

Now I did the opposite and am moving the one that gets cut off to the other side of the carrier to see what happens... Nope, still nothing.

 

So, one negative is being scanned full size, and one negative is being cut off at the same point, over and over again, no matter where I position it on the carrier. It's a fairly dark photo, do you think the bottom of the neg is so dark that the software is "seeing" it as the carrier or the border between the negs and chopping it off as a result?

 

Okay, turned off the auto-exposure and ran the preview one last time and it still cut off at the same place. Any ideas???

[rstobbe1]

OK, from your last message I assume that you are using the Epson scanner software. Here

is the method I use. After having done adjustments like scan resolution etc. I do a preview.

Remember to do the normal preview and not the thumbnail which the scanner tried to size

itself. Then in the preview window you can remove existing scanning frames with one of

those buttons and then draw new scanning frames around the negatives to be scanned. As

long as you do not adjust these frames the scanner will scan these frames, no matter if

they match your negative or not.

 

Regards

-- Ruediger

[simon_platt1]

Steve

 

Try downloading and using Hammrick vuescan it gives much better control than the software supplied with the Epson.

[charles_champness]

Rüdiger Stobbe is on the right track, he described a similar method than i use, but what i do is this:

 

1. preview

 

2. delete all auto framed negatives, except one!

 

3. select that frame

 

4. change dimensions to 58mmx58mm (this gives a 2mm clearance around my frame, see how much you need?)

 

5. move frame until every corner/side is 2mm clear from frame

 

6. all other corners will automatically line up

 

7. check resolution and colour type

 

8. scan and save

 

9. then go back to the preview (File/Acquire etc... don't do a new preview!)

 

10. simply move the 58mmx58mm frame over the next frame

 

11. scan, save and repeat.

 

i use canon software, but i'm pretty sure most software will let you give in specific dimensions, then just set a dimension that will gaurantee to get the whole frame in (it'll always be the same size anyway right?) that way if you have a dark area in one corner/side of your picture, you don't have to guess where the frame should be, you just line it up on the other corner/side. this method also speeds up the whole process because i use less memory for one picture at a time as i would for the three all at once automatically. this helps when the pictures are 300MB each, and i reduce the total scan time of an entire fim down to less than 45min, instead of 1-2hrs!

 

cheers, hope this helps.