Are the Epson V700 / V750 scanners the "ultimate" machines now?

[robert lee]

<blockquote>

<p>I simply do a 6-10mpixel scan ... There's no real sense in storing gigabytes of scans... you have all the information ON FILM, why replicate?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You have competent equipment for 135. With most films, a 4000dpi scan from the 5000 is indistinguishable from that out of a drum scanner. A slightly tweaked machine will also digitize an entire 36 frame roll unattended in an hour. When a 6MP scan is not materially faster to do than a 21MP scan on this machine, it makes sense to digitize every frame and at the highest resolution.</p>

<p>I use a Nikon 9000 for 120 film. The workflow isn't as fast as the 5000 for 135, but essentially the same argument applies.</p>

<p> </p>

[brian_ellis19]

<p>@Michael Ferron - I said my standards might be "different." I used the word "different" to avoid any implication that I was saying my standards might be higher (and therefore better). Then to make it clear beyond a doubt (I thought) that I wasn't making a value judgment about my standards vs anyone else's, I added the phrase "different, not better." If you or anyone else took this as an insult, my apologies. None was intended and I'm frankly surprised you'd consider it an insult to say that different people have might have different standards. </p>

[jeff_smith26]

<p>The Nikon Coolscan 9000 is still available new. I had to special order one from my local camera store. Was told it would take 4 weeks. It ended up taking 7 weeks. I paid $1999.99. </p>

[wolf_weber]

<p>Thanks for letting us know, Jeff..! Exactly what the interested community needs to know, contrary to what some <strong><em>Hypsters </em></strong>here want us to believe. Even on eBay <em>some</em> have dropped their prices. A few days ago one went for $ 2450,-, brand new, USA. I, for one, went ahead as you did, ordering my replacement for under 2 K and (somewhat) in the future delivery.<br /> Patience usually pays.</p>

[cjogo]

<p>Many years with the Minolta Dimage --- love their 120 film holder --- mainly B&W ...... Have a Epson 2450 for 4X5 .........</p>

[gammanine]

<p>Excellent thread - I'm back in the market looking for a replacement for my old canon 4000. All of this discussion comes in the nick of time. Earlier while I was shopping I came across an interesting thread thread earlier today - http://photography.bhinsights.com/content/future-without-photos.html</p>

There seems to be a lot of discussion here about printing vs not printing, etc.

[brit]

<p>Like wise...a very timely thread as I am wondering how to digitze 35mm , 645, 66, 67, 69, 54.</p>

<p>The thing really holding me back are the whispers about a V700 replacement!<br>

If I knew when that was coming I'd be in a better position to decide what to do right now. <br>

Anybody have any idea on that?</p>

[kelly_flanigan1]

<p>Brian;</p>

<p>Flatbeds have been hit their 5th time constant when Vista came out and about the 1st time constant when XP came out.</p>

<p>Waiting another year for a better flatbed is like waiting another year for a better circular saw, vacuum cleaner or stapler; the product is about fully mature</p>

[digitaldog]

<blockquote>

<p>Waiting another year for a better flatbed is like waiting another year for a better circular saw, vacuum cleaner or stapler; the product is about fully mature</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Or better horse and buggy. The scanner market is pretty much a dead market and the likelihood of seeing big companies making them seems iffy at best. Maybe a repackage, but its hard to believe we’ll see much growth in this market. </p>

[brit]

<p>Hi Kelly,</p>

<p>Certainly I wouldn't wait a year. What I've googled to find is typically forum posts from the end of last year with the notion to wait a few months for the new Epsom. So more or less the only info out there points to about now being the time the sucessor is launched. I would imagine this would lead to a decent discount of the v700/v750.</p>

<p>Andrew,</p>

<p>I don't know how difficult it would be to do this nor what price it would be sold at but how about an autofocus flatbed? That would, in theory, get rid of the bugbear of film holders & height adjusters. If the 'bad scanners' are actually good scanners with bad users unable to ID the best scan height then you'd also be looking at a better than 1 in 4 chance of getting a good one. In theory! ;p </p>

[digitaldog]

<blockquote>

<p>I don't know how difficult it would be to do this nor what price it would be sold at but how about an autofocus flatbed? </p>

</blockquote>

<p>Its not difficult, its a basic business decision to build a team to make a new product, market it etc when the sale of scanners is probably pretty darn low. </p>

[brit]

<p>Ah well here goes. Going to order a v700 right now. Nodoubt somewhere deep inside Epson and alarm bell will ring tomorrow morning "Bri's ordered! Now lets roll out the v900".</p>

[brit]

<p>Ok Its arrived and I will ask on a new thread but dupe it here...could anyone recommend a web from their favourites about this? A sort of total newby intro to film scanning with the v700? I've seen from posts above about scanning at one size then downsizing etc it can't be as straight forward as it may seem. Ditto things concerning making the scanner scan a particular area of film. I'm hoping a basic but very informative web page / site could help me get good scans faster rather than maybe going along thinking I'm doing well only to realise I need to redo the last 3 months worth of scans because I missed some good info somewhere.</p>

<p>BTW I know very little about digital things in general.</p>

[scottelly]

<p>Brian, you will need a new computer too. lol</p>

<p>Years ago, when I was using a 2 ghz single-core Athlon processor, I upgraded from 512 MB of RAM to 1 GB, just so I could view my giant TIFF scans from my HP 4995 flatbed scanner (4800 dpi). It was a choice between the more expensive Epson 4890 or that $200 HP. I was shooting 4x5 transparencies and negatives. After realizing how long it takes to scan a 20 square inch negative at 4,800 dpi I decided to scan at 2400 and 3200 dpi. My best results came from scanning at 4,800 dpi and downsizing to 3,200 dpi. Why? Because the computer was churning away, taking all night to do the processing on 4,800 dpi images. The 3,200 dpi images didn't look as good coming straight from the scanner, and the 2,400 dpi scans were almost like preview scans to me. I thought, "What's the point in shooting large format and scanning at medium resolution?"<br>

After a few scans and lots of time I realized I would need to build a much faster computer. I decided to get a Mac, because I realized I would need a really powerful system to edit multi-gigapixel scans. I never bought the Mac workstation system I wanted. It was too expensive. In fact, I realized that shooting large format was a very expensive and slow process best left to experts. I went back to shooting RAW with my ten megapixel digital. Now I shoot RAW with a 12 megapixel camera, and I'm satisfied with it, though I would love to be able to shoot wildly artistic stuff with a high-res tilt-shift lens (too expensive). If I win the lottery, I'll get an Epson 750 with a new Mac Pro workstation fully configured with extra drives to speed up my swap files, extra RAM to handle the giant multi-gigabyte files, and a 30 inch screen to view the most detail I can. I'll buy that 8x10 field camera I've been wanting and a 72mm Super Angulon XL. I'll dish out the five grand to get that amazing convertible lens I can only dream of today. Then I'll have somone else do my scans most of the time, since it's cheap enough (cheaper than film and processing anyway), and since I'll have to send out my color film for processing anyway. The scanner will still take all night to scan at top resolution (the only resolution to use), since I'll be scanning at even higher resolutions and the 8x10 film is four times the size, so it's a one picture per day process (well, maybe two if you can scan while working on the computer during the day time). But large format people are like that, right? (one picture per day)<br>

What do we really need a multi-gigapixel image for anyway? Who prints bigger than 20x30? I get beautifully clear prints at that size from my Sony R1 (a 10 megapixel APSc sensor camera with a nice f2.8 Zeiss lens). If I can get such high quality from that camera, what do I need an 8x10 for? That's sort-of where I stand right now, shooting hundreds of photos each day, and wondering how much I would miss that ability, if I were to hike around with an 8x10 in a backpack, Benbo II tripod over my shoulder, and two loaded film holders packed in with my camera, lenses, dark cloth, and light meter.<br>

I still yearn for the experience of shooting large format, I still have my 4x5, I still need to get a computer fast enough to edit the images, and I still don't know why I would need such high quality images. The main reason I yearn to shoot large format film I guess . . . I'm a romantic, and I realize that 4 gigapixels is better quality than I will ever be able to afford in a digital camera. Sure, some day I'll be able to buy a 200 megapixel SLR, but not next year . . . or even the year after that. So I hope that one day I'll have ten or fifteen grand to buy large format equipment. Of course, I'll probably spend that much on a new SLR and lenses, so I'll probably need forty or fifty grand to spend on camera equipment, which means I'll need a lot more than that, because I'd much rather spend a few grand traveling than get a bunch of equipment that I really don't need, so I'll probably really need about fifty or sixty grand. Maybe I don't need to win the lottery. Maybe I can just sell a couple thousand prints instead. Anyone got any ideas how to do that in a year or two?<br>

Seriously, the Epson scanner is amazing. It will give you better results than that cheap HP I used, and that's more than enough to produce incredibly good quality images. No, it's not the ultimate scanner, but it is probably the ultimate value in a flatbed scanner, and it's made by one of the best and most reliable companies in the business, as I'm sure you know. Scan at top resolution (expect to leave it overnight if you're scanning 4x5 large format film or larger), and downsize to a resolution you can actually manipulate in Photoshop, like something around 20 or 30 megapixels.<br>

It's going to take some playing around. Have a few nights available, because you're going to be up late!<br>

Good luck!</p>

[brit]

<p>Wow Scott I nearly missed this reply.</p>

<p>Would you believe I've only just got around to trying to use the scanner properly. I'm quitepeeved off at my first attempts with colour negative. For instance I generally get a setup and do a couple of shots at different apertures one after the other (= no great differences between then other than dof) and two 6x9 negs side by side on the scanner are hugey different. I mean I know I did them all on a certain colour background but one is sort of that colour whilst the other looks like its been shot against a grey background. Wild. I was hoping for better.</p>

<p>So far the Dual core laptop is managing ok but I've been looking at newer PC's since my 1Gb 1.5GHz single core PC is suffering. Even the dual core (2Gb) has run out of memory and refused some Photoshop edits on me. You can get hex cores now, overclocked ones at that. They must be amazing on 64 bit systems ... the ones I were looking at (but can't afford) can take 16Mb of memory on their MoBo's. I have yet to get to a 5x4 scan but I'm confident I can do it with my current line up it can do it considering it did OK with the 6x9's (taking about 5mins).</p>

<p>The thing I do need and soonish is more HDD space. Right now 1Tb external HDD are coming in at about 50UKP which is amazingly cheap IMO.</p>

[scottelly]

<p>I found a cool 2 TB external drive from Western Digital Brian. It was $189 at CompUSA about a month ago, so I'd be willing to bet it will be cheaper now on-line. What I liked about it was that it works as a network drive, with a 1 Gb Ethernet port (that way it doesn't use one of my fire-wire ports). I'm working with an iMac now (24 inch dual core 2.33 Ghz with 3 GB of RAM). I have 4 external hard drives connected to it right now. Three are firewire 400, so I can only use two at a time (for some reason they don't daisy-chain like I expected, so only two will work in a series at a time). I also have a 1 TB firewire 800 drive from Western Digital, which seems to be working quite well. I need another one right now. Imagine me with an 8x10 camera?!? lol<br>

I'm planning to get a switch and a couple of those network drives, when they come out in 3 TB or maybe 4 TB versions. That will be my ultimate solution hopefully, but of course, now there is the new USB 3 drive I just saw at Costco for $100. It was 1 TB, and I'm looking for a netbook right now with a USB 3 port, because if I'm going to buy a netbook, then I need one with USB 3, of course!<br>

Computers just aren't fast enough yet, and Windows 7 really SUCKS! I still plan to get that Mac Pro workstation some day . . . hopefully next year . . . after I get the new Sigma SD1 and a bunch of Sigma EX lenses. Then, eventually, I'll get myself a 4x5 field camera and an Epson V750-M scanner (or whatever is the best value by then). I've found that shooting is the key, not equipment. I still want stellar quality though, and there is no replacement for large format. I'd like to hear more about your experiences when you start scanning 4x5 film Brian.</p>

[myattphotoandfotoart39]

<p>Perhaps this has previously been discussed? How to flatten the 120 negative in its epson V700 film holder. It makes a difference if the negative bows even a little. As of now I "<strong>sandwich</strong>" the negative in its holder above and below with strips of stiff contact paper leaving exposed only the frame I wish to scan. I do the same on the Microtek 120ff scanner. I am attaching an image which depicts what I am trying to describe. The image is the microtek film holder which holds only1 film strip but the idea is the same. In the attached image the frame I am set up to scan is the frame in the second slot. Is there an after market vendor out there you sells a film strip holder with cross <strong>"ribs" </strong>perhaps between frames (like the coolscan 35mm holder) to fix my problem?</p><div></div>

[myattphotoandfotoart39]

<p>I have ordered medium format film holder and ANR glass for the V700.</p>