Can you get full frame 6x6 scans from Nikon 8000/9000

[sfcole]

<p>Jeff,<br>

Thanks,<br>

Sometimes I wish I kept that Bronica. For some reason I worked better than with my current Hasselblad...<br>

Scott</p>

[ben_grisso]

<p>Hi Guys,<br>

so I just picked up a 9000 on ebay with the strip carrier for $2000 which seemed like a fair price and the best I could find. In terms of converting this to a glass carrier, I was looking at the Focal point website and see they sell both an AN glass and clear glass, and seems like you can use both? Or is it one or the other?<br>

Jeff and Scott, sounded like you were using one AN glass only, and that two pieces were not necessary and would not fit, but others seem to think the Nikon has extremely short depth of Field and the two pieces of glass holding the negs flat yield the sharpest results. I have a call into Focal Point for their feedback, but if anyone here has more info that would be appreciated.<br>

thx<br>

Ben</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

I have never tried a single glass carrier (but may give Scott's solution a try), but do know that stretching the film will not suffice to make the film flat, so the standard holder will be a hit or miss thing, relying on how flat the film already is (depends mostly on humidity), and i found that most of the time it was not flat enough to get a scan sharp across the frame from edge to edge.<br>Using a single glass sheet could (again: i haven't tried) land you in the same predicament. All it does is provide something for the film to rest on. It could prevent sag, but not undo any curl. Sandwhiching the film between two sheets would do that, and i can attest that the Nikon glass holder does a good job (but is expensive, provides more surfaces for dust to cling to, and occasionally produces Newton rings).<br>But considering that the single glass solution appears to be cheap enough, i'd say it's worth a try.

[ben_grisso]

<p>yes QG that was my impression as well, which is why I'm wondering if the focal point glass conversation CAN be used as a sandwich, because it seems like it from their website. But haven't spoken to anyone yet that has actually done it.</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

Ben, Scott wrote <i>"I doubt two pieces of glass would help with flatness, and anyway there's not room."</i>.<br>I disagree with Scott, and can't see how sandwiching film between two pieces of glass will leave film any option but be as flat as the glass it is between. So i'm more or less quite sure it will indeed help film flatness. ;-) Unless, of course, you assume film is flat already. But in my experience, it rarely is flat enough, and will start curling as soon as it comes out of the sleeve it is stored in (change in temperature, the dry heat of a lamp, even the tiny bit of heat from a FL-light box, the humidity we exude in our breath and that).<br>But i have no reason to doubt that there is no room for two pieces of glass in this solution.

[ben_grisso]

<p>Two other questions...<br>

<br />1) software - I either will get nikon software running on an old XP machine, or try to get vue scan running on a newer windows7/8 machine. Any thoughts between the two options?<br>

<br />2) I think Nikon carrier comes with masks (is that just the glass versions, or the strip carrier also?). Can I get by without them if I use focal point glass conversion?</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

I had Nikon Scan on XP machines, but switched completely to Nikon Scan on Win 7 machines. Using the patch you can find described on PNet itself, there's no problem installing and using Nikon Scan on Win 7.<br>Windows XP was a pretty competent OS and i you have a PC running XP you could use that. But as you know, there are no security updates for XP itself, so not good to have running on a computer in a network connected to the outer world. Win 7 is a good OS too.<br>I haven't tried to install Nikon Scan on Win 8. I don't like Win 8 and rather wait to see what improvements Win 10 brings and perhaps try to get Nikon Scan running on that, or else stay with Win 7 and worry about things much later.<br><br>I don't remember whether the holders supplied with the Coolscans came with masks or not (i think they did). But if you don't have any and want to use some, you can make your own with thin black card, a ruler and a sharp knife.<br>I don't use mask much myself. I find it's not often that you need masks.

[ben_grisso]

<p>So my 9000 is here, with the 869S carrier. I got it up and running on Windows 7, using the latest Nikon scan software and the workaround that others have posted.<br>

<br />The first thing that is clear is the size of the full frame from my camera (Rollie) does not fit in the 869S carrier. The second thing that is clear is the 869S carrier also does not keep the film flat evenly across the entire plane, and so the sharpness of the grain varies in different areas of the scan.<br>

Based on others feedback so far, I already suspected both of these issues were likely, so no surprises there.<br>

The next step was the convert the 869S to a glass carrier using two pieces of focal point glass, regular on the bottom and AN on the top. The first problem here is that removing the two stretch grippers from both sides of the carrier does not increase the usable scan area (meaning my full frame is still not visible in the carrier with these two items removed). This required me to further remove the entire stretching mechanism (with the clamp, etc). This frees up a lot of potential scanning area on the side where it was removed, however the film and glass are not supported on that side. Using the glass sandwich though, I didn't feel like this was an issue.<br>

<br />So, using the above setup I can now physically SEE the full frame of my neg, but when I go to scan it, the scanner does not capture it. I do not see any way in the software to adjust the size or position of the capture area (aside from using the strip film offset, but that only controls the space between frames, which is the opposite axis to which I am trying to capture full frame, which is "side to side" not "top to bottom".<br>

<br />It appears in the scans that there is some wasted (white) space around the full frame (black) on one side of the scan, and if I cannot adjust either the capture size or position, it's possible if I grind that edge of the plastic carrier, I might be able to capture 1-2 mm of usable space.<br>

Here is an example of what I have on the moment (which is black on three sides).<br>

<img src="http://i1113.photobucket.com/albums/k512/b_grisso/eca7d105-f32a-45f7-a61b-2e31f76cfa63_zps291ips6f.jpg" alt="" width="999" height="1024" /><br>

<br />QG, I believe you have both the 869S and 869G carrier? Could you kindly tell me if the visible area in the 869G is any wider than the 869S, or if it's simply using the same base plastic platform? If the 869G is wider, it might be easier to go that route. rather than trying to completely modify my 869S carrier. If it's not any wider, I might have no choice.<br>

I welcome any feedback. I assume other people have run into this problem. Surely it's possible to get full frame 6x6 scans on the Nikon 9000 ?!?!</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

Ben, I'll measure both holders a.s.a.p. and report back.<br>The scanner will have a hard limit as far as scan width is converned. I never paid attention to it, since i can get the full width of the Hasselblad's 6x6 frames. I don't know, but think it not impossible that your scan above shows that limit.<br>Meanwhile, have you measured the width of your camera's 6x6 frames? Hasselblads produce 56.5 mm wide frames.

[ben_grisso]

<p>Thx QG for checking the measurements.<br>

My negs (rollie) are only 56mm, which is very confusing because it's smaller than your hasselblad and yet you posted a picture in this thread showing full frame side to side on your film with the 869S carrier.<br>

my 869S carrier did not allow for full frame and in fact I had to partially disassemble it in order to even physically create the potential for full frame.<br>

very confusing. Are you sure your frame size is 56.5mm ?<br>

are we looking at variations in the 869S carrier itself (that seems really unlikely?)</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

Ben,<br>I was indeed wrong about the Hasselblad frame size. It's 55 mm. Not 56.5 mm.<br>The glass holder has an 'aperture width' of 56 mm exactly.<br>The stretch type holder is - by its nature - indeed variable, from 54.7 tot 56.5 mm.

[ben_grisso]

<p>QG, thank you for that information. I didn't measure my stretch holder before taking it apart, I think I was getting 56mm at the "widest" but I would have to put it back together to check that.<br>

hmmm, sounds like I am out of options unless I come up with a custom solution. I'm surprised and disappointed that a product geared around medium format scanning has this problem.<br>

I welcome feedback. I guess I could try filing out one edge of the carrier to try and expand the aperture in the hopes that extra space would be captured by the CCD. In my picture above you can see a strip of white/grey on the left side, which I'm hoping to access by modifying the carrier.<br>

It seems the max pixel dims on the scanner are 8964. My neg (at 56mm) takes up 8800, which leaves 164 extra pixels, which is almost exactly 1MM. So at best I could have one half mm on each side of the neg, which is going to be extremely finicky to position in the carrier for each frame.<br>

Why do they have to make this so hard. lol.</p>

[ben_grisso]

<p>The solution to this problem is to use the 869GR carrier. Create your own custom mask (that mimicks the hole pattern of the stock 6x6 mask). works great! too bad it only took me two years, and tons of testing with the 869S, 869G, and 869GR carrier. Now I can actually get started on scanning my negs instead of trying to solve this problem.</p>