noshir_patel

An Epson 2450 should do the trick (under $500). You would have to make your own film carrier using some matboard or something because they don't provide one for 6x17. Shouldn't be difficult, just remember to leave a gap at the top for calibration like all the standard carriers (you'll see what I mean if you buy the scanner).

A new lens will come with instructions for mounting (at least my Nikkor did). I'd never seen one before and had mine together in probably five minutes. It's easy. Don't worry about it. You don't need a special tool. The only thing you might need is a tiny screwdriver to remove the alignment screw from the lens.

I live in Atlanta, but when I want to do nature photography, I go elsewhere. I have found the western part of north carolina and the Smoky Mountains to be the closest high potential areas (with rivers and waterfalls). I do plan on having a good go at Providence Canyon (sort of south Georgia) sometime. I've not seen much good photography from there, but I feel it should be possible. So basically I plan on a four hour drive to get to places to shoot.

 

I'm not a birder, so I know of no good bird spots. There must be some, though.

Since it sounds like you're thinking studio work, why not get a monorail instead of the Shenhao (which is a wooden field camera, right?)? You can get a Calumet Cadet (www.calumetphoto.com) new for $370. Low end monorails generally seem cheaper than low end wooden cameras and are better for studio work. Win / win situation.

I have the book, and aside from learning about Gnass Gear products I didn't get much out of it. My absolute best learning resource was the site now hosted at www.largeformatphotography.info .

As for the "look in the archives" comment, it just makes no sense when dealing with scanners (or digital in general). The offerings change and improve too frequently.

 

I would look into the Umax Powerlook III. It is an older scanner, but one that was well regarded and you may be able to get near your price range. It was still available new last I checked. I think it would produce "wall hanging" quality. (I'm not 100% sure it will do 8x10, but you can easily check.)

 

If what you want is web quality, probably anything that can scan 8x10 transparencies will work. You don't need much resolution at all starting with an original that big.

 

I have the Epson 2450, but as others have stated, it won't do 8x10.

They are very very slow. With me, they failed to ship when they said they would and didn't bother to call me to let me know either. That said, the products are well designed and constructed and have made shooting much more convenient.

If the Tachihara 8x10 is built as well as the 4x5, I don't see a reason to avoid it. I have the 4x5 and it works great.

Not only is Provia 100F twice as fast as Velvia, it has much better reciprocity characteristics. Unless you are doing really long exposures (I don't remember but maybe like 30 sec), you don't have to correct for reciprocity failure at all. It is slightly less saturated than Velvia. If I could have only one film, I would choose Provia 100F.

Really hard to tell from the picture, but it's possible you had too much front tilt. If so, things that extend too far off the ground (trees) would go out of focus.

 

See www.largeformatphotography.info for very detailed descriptions of both focusing the view camera (including movements) and optimizing sharpness (or how to choose and f stop).

Tom's idea is clever and has a good chance of working I would guess. I think the chance is much improved if you process only one box of film at a time.

Grain is very different between print film and slide film. You can get all technical about it and try to understand why or you can just accept it. At ISO 100 or slower, slides are just clearly better. (Don't know about faster since I rarely shoot it.) I like the exposure lattitude of print film, but I now shoot slide film almost exclusively to minimize grain. It has made a tremendous difference.

Um, I'd ignore the "leave the 4x5 at home" advice. If you're not backpacking, why wouldn't you bring it? I've been there in late summer but have always wanted to go in the winter or spring. There are certainly great dayhikes you can take, but whether they are "short" might depend on your definition (or, more accurately, your wife's definition). I think you need to be willing to do 5 mile round trip hikes to truly enjoy Yosemite. Nature from a car window just isn't right...

 

I do think it's hard to be original in the valley (unless you get lucky with dramatic weather or something), so if you don't want to take the cliche photos (El Capitan reflection, Vernal Falls, etc.) you might want to plan for the high country at whatever the good season is (early summer?). That said, the valley is really cool and worth visiting even if you don't bring a camera and have seen all the classic photos. They don't do it justice. And personally, I like my El Capitan reflection photo even if I'm not one of the first million people to take it...

As for other scanners in the sub-$2000 category, I don't know about all of them. The only one that I specifically know uses the two CCD approach is Epson, but there could be others. Slightly higher end Microtec and Umax scanners (over approximately $700) seem to have accurate but low resolution (1000 - 1200 dpi) from what I have read. These seem to be accepted as the "prosumer" level scanners. I was strongly considering a Microtec Artixscan 1100 (which is the same hardware as the Agfa Duoscan HiD) for it's supposedly very high dmax, but went with a much cheaper scanner since the results were acceptable and I can always get a professional scan done on a problem transparency. When true 2400 dpi high dmax flatbeds are available at reasonable prices (under $2000), I will buy one. Might be a few years.

 

My information comes from extensive internet research (including google groups, photo.net, etc.) and personal experience with an Epson 2450 (and a couple of Nikon film scanners, but these don't directly relate to the discussion here).

No, the problem with Epson scanners is as follows... If Epson says the scanner is 1600 dpi, what they mean is it has two 800 dpi CCDs. It takes the output of the two, interleaves the pixels, and produces a 1600 dpi result. The problem is the physical pixel size is too big, so a single "1600 dpi pixel" has information from adjacent "1600 dpi pixels" averaged into it (at a smaller weight than the main pixel). In theory this is still better than a single 800 dpi CCD, but not nearly so good as a real 1600 DPI CCD.

 

As such, I prefer to think of my "2400 dpi" epson scanner as a 1200 dpi scanner with 4x multi sampling. Some noise does get averaged out when I resize the image.

Yes it is possible. Quite easily in fact, but with a major drawback...

 

You take the shot with a wider lens pointed the same way you would have pointed the view camera and crop from one side. If you think about it, this is exactly like using shift on a view camera. You will of course lose a lot of quality from cropping.

 

Alternatively, you could try to correct (with perspective tools in Photoshop) a picture where the camera was pointed the wrong way, but you will probably find that you needed to use at least a slightly wider lens anyway in order to not lose the upper and lower edges of one side of the final picture. It would seem to be a big pain to me.

On a budget, I'd say go for a low end 4x5 system. Cheaper than any medium format panoramic setup (and most other medium format systems as well). After cropping, you will have slightly less film than a 617 format camera, but still enough to produce at least a 16x40 print. And you will have all the advantages of a view camera (movements, etc.) and will be able to do fantastic 4x5 ratio pictures as well. You might want to make some kind of cardboard mask for your ground glass to help visualization of the final crop.

I own the Epson 2450. It is a great scanner with a couple of drawbacks. First, it is somewhat noisy (of course I'm comparing it to my Nikon Coolscan 4000... a very good 35mm film scanner). Second, the transparency holders are somewhat hard to use if your film is significantly curved.

 

Scan at 2400 dpi. It doesn't get better detail than 1200, but when you resample down you get rid of a lot of noise. (Multi scan noise averaging is difficult on this scanner due to registration problems.)

 

You can make simple modifications with tape and cardboard that will hold film flatter in the holders. I have done this on occasion. Also, you can turn your film upside down and flip in photoshop if you are having newton ring problems from film sagging to the glass. I'm sure better holders could easily be fashioned out of black mat board. Make sure the cutout at the top is there for the scanner to get the white balance right.

 

I have printed up to 20x24 with this scanner and the results were great. There may be occasional transparencies that give you problems. For them, there is always the professional drum scan...

 

Get an antistatic dust brush to clean your film before scanning. You will save a lot of photoshop spotting time.

Thanks for the link. That stuff is really cool. Surreal still life sculpture...

I have tried a few places in Atlanta.

 

My current favorite is Moakler's (http://www.moakler.com/).

I have also used Colorchrome Atlanta and Color Genesis but on occasion got back chromes with a little more curl than I'd like (makes them hard for me to scan). None of three have scratched my film or anything like that.

A 90 mm lens is a 90 mm lens for purposes of angle of view at a given film size (within tolerances... not counting wierd lenses like fisheye).

 

If your film size is 6x7, it doesn't matter what 90mm lens you choose for angle of view (assuming full coverage).

For what it's worth, the Epson 2450 is good enough for 20x24 lightjet prints (I've done it). For these, most places recommend 200dpi 8 bits per channel at the final print size. For inkjet prints, 240dpi is good enough in my experience, but at large sizes, I don't see why anyone would pick inkjet over lightjet. Frankly, after seeing my photos as lightjet prints, I'm just not happy with my Epson 1200 anymore...

 

For 30x40 the math would be 30x200x40x200x3 = 144mb. Higher resolution scans sized down might be a little better than scanning at exactly the right size depending on the scanner and film (minimizing grain aliasing and such). West Coast Imaging recommends 300mb drum scans for 4x5 and I'm inclined to agree. You can also produce better crops from a higher resolution scan.

The great part of using LF is you can use a nice wide angle lens and crop. Who knows where those fireworks are going to explode?

If you ever want to scan for digital printing (this is the route I go), 4x5 can easily be done by a $400 scanner. I don't know if there is a good cheap scanner that can scan 8x10 transparencies.

I have the Epson 2450 and I would recommend it to anyone on a tight

budget. On a larger budget, I would probably recommend the Microtec

Artixscan 1100 (because of higher dmax and glassless light path) but

I have no personal experience with it.

 

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With the 2450, newton rings can be a problem with curved film because

the film carriers don't keep your film flat enough to stay off the

glass, but it is possible to get around this by mucking with the

holders. (I turn the film upside down, weight the edges that pop up

with notecards and quarters and then invert in PhotoShop. I will

probably make my own film carrier out of matboard or something if I

continue to get curved film back from the lab.)

 

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From 4x5, enlargements to 20x24 look good (from a lightjet), and 6x9

on your 2000P will be in the same ballpark as far as enlargement

ratio goes. Larger than that, and I think the scans might have

inadequate sharpness, but I haven't tried it.