I have to say that the results with B&W negatives have blown me away. Below you can see a comparison between a DSLR 'scan' and a scan with the Epson. The DSLR scan is done by photographing a 6x6cm negative (120 format) with my 16Mpx Nikon D5100 equipped with a Sigma APO DG 75-300mm lens in the macro position. The Epson V500 scan is made using standard settings at 4800dpi. When comparing both images, even at less than 100%, it is clearly visible how much sharpness the Epson adds. With this sharpness comes all kinds of dust and scratches problems. You can try to prevent them by cleaning your negatives or even give wet scanning a try. I didn't, since this is just a test.
The Epson V500 also has digital ICE, a technology to reduce dust and scratches when scanning negatives. Sadly, the working principle of this technology is not compatible with black & white film. On colour film, however, it gives incredible results. The image below was scanned with and without digital ICE. I didn't make an effort to clean the negative, yet it comes out nearly usable.
What is a bit of a setback is the tonal curve in the color film scan. I only tried 1 scan (my main interest is in B&W), but when I compare the analog printed picture with the scan of the negative, it is clear that some more work is needed. The picture had a lot more tonality in the skintones and some more detail in the blacks. I guess that you have to play a bit with the tone curve of the Epson scanning software to get this perfect. The example scan above is a small detail out of a 35mm scan and clearly shows the tonality problem.
When I went back to black & white I tried to compare different scanner settings. The leftmost image has all scanning options switched of. The second image is with the unsharp mask option enabled. The third one has all options enabled: unsharp mask, backlight correction, and noise reduction. Just for fun I included a fourth image scanned with digital ICE. As you can see, this is not usable on B&W negatives.
I will be scanning with just the unsharp mask option enabled. Since I will mainly scan 6x6 negatives (created by my new Holga 120, more on this later) I will reduce the scanning resolution to 2400dpi. The maximum resolution of 9600dpi is way too high and can only be used when scanning smaller areas.
In general, I'm very happy with my purchase. The scanner is fast, software installation (on a Mac) was easy (I just downloaded the most recent version from the Epson website) and the negative holders are adequate. I will also use it to scan non-transparent positive documents since it's so fast. Colors also seem to be quite accurate without calibration.
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ReplyDeleteI have the same set up and found that by only enabling the unsharp mask, it gives me better pictures than anything that I could achieve using Lightroom. I only correct exposure and contrast in post.
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