janne_moren

<p>Yodobashi and other places have complete C41 kits for sale. Just pick one up and you have everything you need.</p>

 

<p>2400 dpi sounds about right for the V700 and medium format, and about 3200 or so for 35mm. That fits with my experience of using it.</p>

<p>It doesn't look like there's any difference in detail. Mostly it seems there's a different amount of local contrast only.</p>

<p>FYI, Epson has just announced the V600, a replacement for the V500 with a new scan head that seems to do the same resolution as the V700. You may want to look into that one instead, or see if you can nab a V500 on the cheap.</p>

 

<p>Part of the problem, I'm sure, is that you zoom your scans in at 100% and see lots and lots of hideous marks, dust spots, scratches and so on. With your printed images you never zoom them in that way. But seeing a scanned image at 100% is huge - it's like closely examining a print a meter wide. You're never, ever going to use that image at 100%, so there's absolutely no point in sweating the issues only visible at that size.</p>

<p>When I scan, I normally do not do dust removal at 100%. I'll just spend too much time removing tiny imperfections that will be invisible at normal sizes. I go to 50%, and move over the image fairly briskly; anything that sort of jumps out at me I remove, the rest I don't care about. And true enough, at anything like normal sizes the images look nice and clean.</p>

 

<p>Peter, first, you use the scanning software to invert the image and remove the effect of the orange mask. I'm sure Silverfast can do it. In fact, if it's not doing it, that indicates that you haven't set up the software. Have you actually set it to scan "color negative", for instance? If the software thinks you're scanning a print, not a transparency, then it will neither invert the image for you, nor will it activate the scanner backlight, which would explain why your images are very, very dark.</p>

<p>UFraw will open 48 bit TIF files. I use it for that. But it is picky about the exact file format. From Vuescan I specify 48 bit file, no compression, no profile.</p>

<p>Do the negatives look vaguely OK? Then you have some software issue with your scanning software, is my guess. It's for some reason severely underexposing your negatives as it scans. You should be getting a vaguely usable, but rather flat and perhaps washed out image by default, not something that is very, very dark the way you describe it. And if it's underexposing heavily, then pulling the brightness way up afterwards to compensate will also amplify the noise along with it, and that would easily account for the noise you see.</p>

<p>Also, have you checked that you're doing everything right with your hardware? Is the white sheet in the lid removed so the light can shine freely on the negatives? Do you see the light shining from the outside as you scan? Are you using the supplied holder for your film format - some scanners autodetect the holder and sets itself up accordingly.</p>

<p>Gimp is fine. I use it. That's not an issue. One tip (if it's Linux you're using) is to use UFRaw as a postprocessor for scanned images. It's meant for RAW files of course, but it can open TIF files (of the right kind) and is actually much better for setting levels and color adjustments than scanner software typically is.</p>

<p>As I wrote above, the optical resolution may be 3200dpi, but you're unlikely to get 3200dpi woth of scan data from a flatbed. Most likely your results are equivalent to about 2400 dpi or so - if they look a bit soft at 3200 it is completely natural. I have the V700 and it's true for that one as well. I scan at 3200, then downscale to about 2500dpi afterwards (with MF it's still way more resolution than I need anyhow).</p>

 

<p>Make that, no grain reduction nor any sharpness applied. Scanner software sharpening is typically set so that the image will look crisp when printed straight from the file - which means it's horribly oversharpened for anything else. Just turn it all off, scan at the base real resolution of your scanner (probaly around 2400dpi), then do sharpening and other things in postprocessing. Also, even at base resolution a flatbed will typically not give you a completely sharp image at 100% (the individual ccd elements don't focus really well). If that's important to you for some reason, you can downscale the image further (say, to 70% linear size) to make it look good at full zoom, and save disk space.</p>

 

<p>Fuji has its "Driwell" wetting agent (cheesy name), could look for that too. In the end, they're all about equal.</p>

<p>Richard, I didn't mean it negatively. LF seems to lend itself especially well to relatively static subjects, though, which is why scanning backs can be a reasonable approach.<br>

I don't mind a tripod; I often carry one around for my Pentax 67 anyway. I do kind of feel that since I use MF already (including a 6x9 format folder), 4x5 doesn't seem that big a step up, so LF would mean 8x10 or something like that. I really would prefer if I could take a course, or follow along somebody with an LF setup to see what it'd really be like to use.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Pentax 67 and 90mm f/2.8 with Ektar 100.</p>

<p>I would like to do LF photography, but like many people I just don't have a space to set up an actual darkroom. I can manage MF development and scanning but that's about it. And my wife - who is already more tolerant than I have any reason to expect over my photography hobby - would start giving me very meaningful looks if I suggested getting a field camera as well.</p>

<p>With that said, I am a bit surprised over one thing - here's the reasoning: LF cameras are mostly used for static subjects. The film plane size ranges from big to ridiculously huge. LF cameras are easy to hack by the user (indeed, they're meant to be). Larger sensor area means a lot more tolerance for error (you don't need high sensor or grain density to achieve high quality). Scanning backs already exist, but they are aiming for maximum quality at steep prices. So why have people not tried adapting cheap hand scanners to make low-budget scanning backs for LF cameras?</p>

<p>Even if you ran a no-budget no-name handheld document scanner over the ground glass by hand you'd still be looking at a pretty decent-sized image by any standards. I'm amazed that there aren't any do-it-yourself plans out there for hacking a document scanner as a scanning back, and that no manufacturer has released kits for people willing to try it. There's a number of reasons for using a specific format camera and absolute image quality or resolution is only one of them after all.</p>

<p>Robin, any general purpose developer is fine. D-76 is a classic (Ilford ID-11 is the same thing); XTOL is popular but you need to mix a fair amount at a time so not as practical. HC110 and Rodinal are liquid developers and perhaps easier to use (though I have honestly yet to try either). Pick one to start with, use it for a while, then you can start playing with other developers and so on. They're all cheap so no worries there.</p>

<p>Same thing with film - everyone has their favourites (it's HP5 and Fuji Acros for me, currently) but none of them are bad, and none of them are easier or harder to process than any other. Pick one, use it for a while and get to know it. Then play around with others.</p>

<p>The only specialized things you need for development is a developing tank with reel (there's plastic ones and metal. People have religious wars over which is better. Either is fine), a changing bag, and the three chemicals: Developer, fix and washing agent.</p>

<p>Most people do without stop bath and the rest with no ill effect. A washing agent is basically a detergent; it's not strictly necessary but it's silly cheap and it prevents water spots on the negatives so might as well use it. The rest - thermometer, bottles and so on - you can get from places like discount stores, kitchenware stores and so on. I use our kitchen timer as a clock, and empty 300ml sake bottles to store developer (had the fun of drinking them first too). Just don't use your normal kitchen stuff, and mark this stuff clearly with a felt-tip pen you you don't use any of this for food by accident. You should be able to set yourself up for 50€ or less in total, I think.</p>

<p>BW development is really easy. It's a pretty tolerant process, so you'll get something usable at least almost no matter how much you manage to mess it up. BW developing itself just needs any spot with a sink - the bathroom will do fine. The chemicals are not hazardous, and at the amount you use for home development you can dump it all down the drain (I checked with my local office). For medium format it's also a lot faster than sending it out, and a lot cheaper. But yes, you'd need your own, decent quality scanner to do it; that's an expense (and another source of hair-pulling frustration at times) that you might want to do without for the time being.</p>

<p>I would perhaps hold off on developing my own color film if I were you. It's a fair bit more sensitive to temperature and times than BW is, and the savings are not nearly as high. If sounds really, really strange that only one place in Ireland develops E-6 - you're not mixing it up with Kodachrome by any chance? Anyway, I'd agree that while slide film looks gorgeous on a light table, negative film is probably the better way to go if you want to end up with digital scans (like most of us).</p>

<p>Don't sweat the film and development cost. You naturally shoot a lot less with an MF film camera than you do with a digital one (or a 35mm camera for that matter). On a typical whole-day outing with my wife I would take perhaps 50-60 shots with my DSLR, but with my Pentax 67 I struggle to actually use up all ten frames of one roll in a single day. The format makes you slow down and think - and what you think, more often than not, is "Umm... nah, that won't really make a good picture after all". If you shoot two or three rolls a month, the total film and development cost ends up less than a single evening at the pub.</p>

<p>Get a manual cable release; not becacuse it's better or anything, it just feels more "filmish" ^_^</p>

 

<p>Abhijit, don't feel locked into the format. You're showing your images and the format should conform to them, not the other way around. Decide on the largest permissible horizontal and vertical size - say, 950 and 520 so there'll normally be a little air around them too - then leave each image in their "best" proportions and just scale each down so neither dimension is larger than allowed.<br>

By the way, an eloge from me to you for your decision to show decent-sized images and not ruin them with intrusive watermarks.</p>

<p>Abhijt, I have 1024 pixel wide screen. But the application window takes a little bit of that - not much, but giving me a little less than the full 1024 so I get a horizontal scrollbar as a result. On the top and bottom, the menus, tabs and so on take their part - and once the horizontal scrollbar appears that grabs another dozen pixels at least. If you did something like 960*540 that would be almost as big, but give various browsers, themes and so on enough leeway to fit your images comfortably.</p>

<p>Michael, the V700 holders have adjustable height. You don't need the Betterscanning holders for that with the V700.</p>

<p>It looks pretty good. Clean, easy to navigate. I don't find it slow at all, but either my connection is fast enough or you've changed the site already.</p>

<p>Some issues:<br>

* The images are a bit too large for my screen (1024x768, running firefox maximized). I end up getting both vertical and horizontal scrollbars. They're just a _little_ too large though; shrinking them by perhaps 10% would probably fix it nicely.</p>

<p>* The gray text is a little too dark to read. Of course, you don't want it to grab focus from your images either. For the slideshow countar at the bottom it's fine, but for the menu at the top, how about using Javascript MouseOver function to change the text color to white when you hover over the menu area? That shoudl give you the best of both. For the information tab, make the text white or near-white; the grey really is hard to read, and it's not really competing with an image there.</p>

<p>* The slideshow text at the bottom is a little cramped, with "prev" and "next" jutting right next to each other making one word - that may well be my smallish screen again of course.</p>

<p>* Oh, and speaking about the Information text, it sounds a little pretentious to talk about yourself in the third person ^_^</p>

 

<p>The V700 holder will take 3 6x6 frames to a side, for a total of 6 frames total. I scan with the original holders; they work well enough for 6x6 and 6x7 if you just make sure the film is decently flat before you scan.</p>

<p>Vuescan gives you very good results once you get it to do what you want, and it does some extra stuff like multiscanning that can be useful. Just be aware that the interface is quirky at best, and things like setting up multiple scans is frustrating enough that I usually give up and scan the frames one by one instead.</p>

 

<p>Good luck. The multi crop function in Vuescan is completely, utterly dysfunctional. You basically need to set the number of boxes ("X images" and "Y images") the same number of rows and columns as you have images, then try - and fail - to actually place the edges approximately between the shots with the "spacing" parameters. In the first tab you can set a list of which crop boxes to scan from in turn, and try to adjust the actual crop box to the right image for each one.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, it seems Vuescan thinks it knows what you want to scan better than you do yourself, so if your crop goes too far outside the limit set by the outer crop box it will switch to the next closest crop box by itself and you'll find that you're resetting the area and parameters for a different image - one that you may already have spent some time setting up once and now you're ruining it without even knowing it. And sometimes - I have no idea what triggers this - the scan will be cut where the outer box nds, not where your crop box does, so you end up with a partial scan.</p>

<p>I do use this for scanning 6x6 images. It is barely more convenient than simply scanning each frame one by one, manually. For 6x7 and 6x9 I don't bother - it takes me more time to try to use this stupidly useless function than just scan manually.</p>

<p>If they could just get rid of those container boxes altogether (I have not idea what they're supposed to be good for). What I would want is to simply say, for instance, that I have 6 images I want to scan. Then let me set which image I'm setting up right now - just like it works already - but without those outer boxes.</p>

<p>Vuescan is great at it's core, but then the user interface has a number of these incredibly frustrating, completely dysfunctional issues. Another dumb, easy to fix thing is that "Enter" is bound to "scan". So if I enter a number in a entry box and (from old habit) press Enter to make the number stick, Vuescan will start scanning. I'll have to abort and I'll have lost half the settings I just spent time to set up.</p>

 

<p>Positives: Nice images, I think.</p>

<p>Negatives: Text is too small for me to read. Skip all music altogether (the dialogue asking you in the beginning is annoying). The screen flickers and shimmers as it switches from one image to the next but also in between - there's no way I can actually focus on the images. The weird white mouse arrow is really big and obvious, and lags as I try to move around (why not just let me have my usual arrow?). I have no idea how to stop the slide show - as it is, it's way too fast. The scroll bar thingy at the bottom moves all the time, grabbing my attention.</p>

<p>Overall, it feels like a website trying to work like a desktop application. Maybe if you jsut let it be a website instead, it would let me focus on your images. They are the point, after all.</p>

 

<p>It must depend a lot on what clients you have and what they expect for results. I know that Chris Willson uses medium format and a V750 to do magazine-related stuff: http://travel67.wordpress.com/</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Ilford XP2 400 c41 BW film results looks just fine in my experience; it does not jump out as notably different than traditional BW film. It likes being just slightly overexposed (shoot at iso280 rather than 400, say). One notable difference is of course that there's no real grain anymore. Makes for a smoother image but less perceived sharpness.</p>

<p>While I happily use XP2 (I have a couple of rolls still) I do prefer traditional BW (my current favourite is HP5), in part because of the grain and the greater variety of films, but also because I can develop them myself, which is faster and cheaper than having a shop do it. If you don't want to develop yourself, XP2 is preferable.</p>

<p>Part of the reason is likely the smaller maximum aperture. Other things equal, a smaller open aperture means fewer compromises needed in the optical design.</p>

<p>I use a WLF on my Pentax67, and it is indeed possible to shoot in portrait mode. It takes a bit of practice to realize the controls are switched 90°, and you look a little silly, but it is doable. I like WLF (easy to use with glasses), I mostly shoot landscape, and as the prism finder alone is a third of the weight of the camera I find the tradeoff more than acceptable.</p>