V700 vs V750 for prints, 110, 126, disc

[dale_lundy]

<p>The question of scanner choice (V700 vs V750) has been much discussed. However I have a specific question that I have not seen addressed.</p>

<p>For 35mm I use a Nikon Coolscan 5000 with NikonScan software, editing in Lightroom, and occasionally Photoshop. So 35mm is not an issue. I have no MF. </p>

<p>I have inherited from family members (a) old family photos (no negative), and (b) assorted negatives -- 110, 126, disc. I want to get very good scans from these, as this will likely be the only time they will be preserved.</p>

<p>I am deciding between a V700 and a V750 for this purpose. I understand that either wet scanning or adjustable height holders from betterscanning.com seems to mean more than which scanner to choose. However I still need to choose one.</p>

<p>Given I can add wet scanning to the V700, and the V750 coating doesn’t seem to make much difference, the only significant difference seems to be software. (If your experience disagrees, please say so.) Is there a substantial advantage in the software on the V750? I am running Windows 8 64-bit. I expect I'd still edit predominantly in Lightroom.</p>

<p>Any experience you’d share on either machine scanning prints, 110, 126, or disc on either machine? Any reason you'd recommend one over the other for this purpose?</p>

<p> </p>

[marc_bergman1]

<p>Dale,</p>

<p>I think you already have the scanner you need for these, (110,126, Disc), formats. Your Coolscan 5000 can do the job as long as it can hold the negatives. I wonder if you can use Gepe slide mounts to hold the negatives and scan as negatives.</p>

<p>Here is the Gepe page showing their slide mount for special sizes.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.gepe.com/website/index.asp?pageID=269">http://www.gepe.com/website/index.asp?pageID=269</a></p>

<p>As far as your photos a scanner such as the Epson V500 should be able to give you good scans.</p>

[david_henderson]

<p>The v700 should copy your prints well enough though obviously any imperfections would be carried across unless you edit them out in post. </p>

<p>You already have the best version of these tiny negs you're going to get. Scanning won't improve them- it will only give you two copies which adds security if you store them separately. And bear in mind that you're using a flatbed to scan tiny negs. There's no way you're going to get the quality available to you now from the much better Coolscan from the larger 35mm negs. So I'd also be looking to find a way to get the Coolscan to make these scans too. Is there a glass holder available for that Coolscan ( my experience lies with the 9000 where there was) and if so do you have it. </p>

[dale_lundy]

<p>I agree with both of you that if I can find a way to use the Coolscan, that would be best. I've read that at least the 110 and 126 can be done with an FH-2 holder, except that those aren't available.</p>

<p>Marc, I appreciate your suggestion. I have a lot of 126 negatives from various family members and mounting them would take far too long, I think. Also the link seems to show glass-mount slides and I actually had to remount some older glass-mounted 35mm slides I had because the Coolscan wouldn't handle them--though perhaps Gepe has non-glass mounted versions. I haven't had time to check yet. The V500 for prints only probably would make sense if there is a solution to the negative problem.</p>

<p>David, so far I haven't found any holder for the Coolscan that will handle 110 or 126 except I saw one the other day that required modifying the MA-21, which I might do, but would prefer not to. If anyone knows of a holder that would handle either size I'm anxious to hear about it. I agree that I'd rather use the Coolscan if I can. The main reason for thinking about going with either the V700 or the V750 was that I have found holders for 110 and 126. The discs will likely be a problem regardless, but fortunately I was given very few of them.</p>

<p> </p>

[dale_lundy]

<p>Les,<br>

I took a quick look through the box of old film I'd inherited and it wasn't exactly as I remembered.</p>

 

<ul>

<li>126 - Most of the old film I inherited is 126. All my old pre-DSLR film is 126, so that is far and away the largest group.</li>

</ul>

 

<ul>

<li>110 - I didn't find any 110 but I know I had some that I'll find as I go through, but apparently not as much as I thought I remembered.</li>

</ul>

 

<ul>

<li>MF - I had some individual negatives I'd forgotten about (measure about 2.25" x 3.25" image size). But those would take a different scanner anyway.</li>

</ul>

 

<ul>

<li>Disc - I inherited more discs than I thought. Not sure exactly how to begin scanning these.</li>

</ul>

<p>So...</p>

<ul>

<li>Can I scan 126 with the FH-3?</li>

</ul>

 

<ul>

<li>For scanning 110 is there any modification or anything unusual necessary?</li>

</ul>

<p>Dale</p>

<p> </p>

[dale_lundy]

<p>Les, thanks. I have seen that filmscanusa.net has some holders that require you to modify the MA-21. I didn't see that your approach would require this, and you've confirmed it.</p>

<p>Given that 126 film is 35mm wide, it seems it should fit in the holder just fine.</p>

 

<ul>

<li>The 36mm frame is 36mm x 24mm.</li>

<li>The 126 frame is 28mm x 28mm.</li>

<li></li>

</ul>

<p>That would tell me that width is no problem, but that a small amount of the bottom and top are likely to be cut off. Is there someone with an FH-3 who has tried using it on 126 film who can verify this?</p>

 

[a._t._burke]

<p>Mr. Lundy....</p>

<p>The 110, 35 mm, and 126 (less a few mm's top and bottom) will work in your Nikon, along with Minox, 16mm and some other offbeat formats. The disc will not work unless you want to pop the film part out of the disc. </p>

<p>On eBay, you can pick up 2"X2" standard reuseable plastic film holders for all the sizes mentioned above. 2"X2" is the standard 35mm slide holder size. I have had success clipping negative film off the strip and putting it in the slide holder to run through the machine. Just go ahead and use the negative setting, rather than positive. They actually made slide holders that would hold disc film that was removed from the disc, but they're very scarce. The drawback to using slide holders with a small opening in it is that sometimes the auto exposure is off because it's seeing so much lack of light from more holder and averaging to a wrong exposure. So reset the exposure manually. Also 110 slides from some processors were delivered in a smaller sized slide holder meant to go in a mini-projector. There are adapters where you can put that small slide piece into a 2"X2" holder. However, the easy way is to remove the film chip and use a take-apart plastic appropriate slide holder. </p>

<p>A. T. Burke </p>

[dale_lundy]

<p>I think I'll focus first on the 126 and the MF since I have the most of those two.</p>

<p>For the 126, clearly the Coolscan is the better machine to use. Marc and A.T. recommended using Gepe slide mounts. I've not been able to find these anywhere with a 126 size opening. Do you mask, or does the stray light coming through the opening not cause a problem? Les recommended the FH-3. In theory it should cut off only 2mm on each side, roughly similar to what you'd lose with a 126 slide mount. But since the 35mm frame is centered and the 126 is not, I'm wondering if that's all you'd lose or not. On the other hand intuitively it seems this should be faster than doing a slide mount for the volume of film I have.</p>

<p>For the individual negatives (roughly 2.4" x 3.5"), it seems I'd need to go with either a V700 or V750. Of course that would also do the prints. There seems to be some sentiment that a film holder from betterscanning.com is better than the one from Epson because height adjustability lets you set focus precisely. That puts me back to a V700 vs V750. From what I read the hardware difference seems slight. Whether Silverfast is better than EpsonScan seems to be a matter of debate.</p>

[dale_lundy]

<p>I decided to tackle one approach at a time. So I got a FH-3 off eBay. It arrived yesterday. As expected, the 126 film fit in the holder, though I had to manually reposition the film for each frame, which was also expected. It took a while to learn how to get a consistently good scan, but my first impression is I'm satisfied with the results, and it may be one of the least time-consuming ways to do it.</p>

<p>That still leaves me with some old prints (no negatives) and some individual 620 B&W negatives to scan. I'm guessing that the best choice for those is the V700 or V750, but I'd like to listen to anyone who wants to weigh in. Thanks for your comments so far!</p>

 

[david_henderson]

<p>If by "best choice" you mean an affordable route to obtaining decent scan quality then I think you're right. If OTOH you mean the very best quality you can buy then there are professional flatbed scanners often used by labs that will almost certainly give a better result. If however the limit of your ambition is to enable the production of prints of say 12" x 8" then there really is little need to go there.</p>

[john_shriver]

<p>The most important difference between the V700 and V750 is that the V700 comes with the crippled version SilverFast LE, and the V750 comes with the full version SilverFast Ai. If you like SilverFast (which I do), that's the reason to get the V750, to have 16-bit-per-color scans. So that's why I bought a V750 for medium-format and larger.<br>

But unless you're trying to pull details out of grossly mis-exposed negatives (which I do scanning vintage negatives), you may not need 16-bits-per-pixel, especially for scanning old prints.</p>