Need Advice about Photo Scanner

[busygirl]

I've inherited a bunch of black and white negatives dating back to the 20's and they are all various sizes from 2x4 up to 4x6. I've been reading up on the all Epson scanners and I thought I had my mind made up with going with the V500 (plus the price was right) then I got some feedback that I should get the V750-m Pro because it comes with the fluid 8x10 fluid transparency since I have some weird size negatives that the other holders won't accommodate but its way too pricey for me. Can anyone explain to me a work-around? I've read about just placing the negatives on the glass of the black bed scanner and I've read about how you need to create your own mask for the sizes that it won't accommodate like with the V500.

I have considered just having the negatives sent out to be digitized but I actually like doing this as a hobby and may be considering doing it on a smaller scale for friends and making a little money on the side. Any feedback is appreciated! Thanks!

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[mdarnton]

You might consider doing what I've been doing, putting my negs on a light table and photographing them with my digital camera. I have a moderately sophisticated setup for doing this, D300 Nikon and macro lense, with a stand and negative carrier, but you could just as easily lay a neg on the table with a simple mask around it to block out the extra light. Alignment is absolutely critical, as is a good camera/lens combo. You don't say what equipment you have, so I can't give much more advice. For smaller film this works better than any flatbed scanner, since flatbed REAL resolution is never all that high--never as much as the makers' advertise, for certain.
Flatbed film scanner test - Rangefinderforum.com

[sm4him]

I have a V500 at home and a GT-2500 at work. I've scanned probably thousands of very old family photos, slides and negatives with my V500. I wasn't smart enough at the time to just google a solution, but I basically just ended up creating my own frame/mask out of black cardstock for the oddly-sized negatives. Once I had an initial setup that worked for me, it went pretty easily. Time consuming to be sure, but worth it.

I had a bunch of oddly-sized negatives that were also badly curled; they were my grandfather's and had not been stored very carefully by the relative who had them. Some were ruined by water and heat damage, so I wanted to go ahead and save as many as I could of the ones that were still salvageable. I can't quite recall what I made to hold the curled up ones in place, but it was basically a double layered frame, where I could slide the curled negative in between the layers and keep it from curling back up.

So, yeah, you can do it with a V500, if you don't mind the amount of time it's gonna take.

[bhop]

I have a V700. It's cheaper than the 750, but still scans the same sizes. I scan directly on the glass, but don't use any masks. I have some anti-newton ring glass to keep the film flat, which I got from betterscanning.com