Film scanners

[benhasajeep52 50]

I don't see much difference between the model specs from what Epson gives you. Other than the 500 is a little faster then the 600??? If you really got into the manuals might find some differences. It does appear the 600 has a slightly larger transparency capacity. As it's MF holder is for 2 frames, while the 500 appears to be just 1.

 

[Josh66]

The window on the medium format carrier for the V500 is smaller. Other than that, they appear to be identical. I'm sure they ship with different software, but other than that...

You could buy the carrier for the V600 and use it in the V500 no problem.


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OK, I'm going to mess around with putting tape on the carrier today... How big would you say a 'step' would be? I don't want to do a scan every 1 layer of tape if it takes 10 layers of tape to see a difference...

 

[djacobox372]

I don't see much difference between the model specs from what Epson gives you. Other than the 500 is a little faster then the 600??? If you really got into the manuals might find some differences. It does appear the 600 has a slightly larger transparency capacity. As it's MF holder is for 2 frames, while the 500 appears to be just 1.

I think the difference between all the models is scan area, the more expensive models allow you to scan larger film (4x5 and 8x10), or more frames of the smaller sizes.

 

[Josh66]

I don't see much difference between the model specs from what Epson gives you. Other than the 500 is a little faster then the 600??? If you really got into the manuals might find some differences. It does appear the 600 has a slightly larger transparency capacity. As it's MF holder is for 2 frames, while the 500 appears to be just 1.

I think the difference between all the models is scan area, the more expensive models allow you to scan larger film (4x5 and 8x10), or more frames of the smaller sizes.

The V500 & V600 have the same scan area though. It seems to me that the V600 is just a newer version of the V500 - only difference being the MF carrier and probably newer included software.

The actual scanning unit in the top is the same size though - it would have to be since they both have the same 35mm capacity.

 

[djacobox372]

I don't know about the V600, but he V700 carriers came with little "feet tabs" that adjust carrier height to one of three settings (low = no tabs, high = tabs in one direction, medium = tabs turned around).

When I first used my V700 I noticed it's sharpness was not nearly as good as my old dedicated slide scanner. I attributed this to film carrier height.

To discover the perfect height I scanned with all three settings and compared. I noticed that the medium and high settings looked about the same, which led me to believe that the ideal setting was somewhere between the two. So I stuck a business card under the feet of tabs in the medium setting, and the sharpness was better. I then added a few layers of masking tape to the bottom of the medium tabs to match the business card thickness.

If I'm scanning badly curled film I make sure to check the sharpness and adjust the tabs to whatever works best.

The V600 carriers do not have that. I'll play around with it this week and see what I can come up with... I never thought to judge sharpness by the grain - I was always just looking at the edges of stuff.

Using the grain to focus is just a habit I adopted from making prints--focus aids in print making are actually called "grain focusers." The grain is independent from other factors that might affect focus, like depth of field and diffraction.

You probably can't lower your carrier, but you could experiment with raising it a little bit--just cut out some paper to sit it on, and see if focus improves.

 

[Josh66]

I don't know about the V600, but he V700 carriers came with little "feet tabs" that adjust carrier height to one of three settings (low = no tabs, high = tabs in one direction, medium = tabs turned around).

When I first used my V700 I noticed it's sharpness was not nearly as good as my old dedicated slide scanner. I attributed this to film carrier height.

To discover the perfect height I scanned with all three settings and compared. I noticed that the medium and high settings looked about the same, which led me to believe that the ideal setting was somewhere between the two. So I stuck a business card under the feet of tabs in the medium setting, and the sharpness was better. I then added a few layers of masking tape to the bottom of the medium tabs to match the business card thickness.

If I'm scanning badly curled film I make sure to check the sharpness and adjust the tabs to whatever works best.

The V600 carriers do not have that. I'll play around with it this week and see what I can come up with... I never thought to judge sharpness by the grain - I was always just looking at the edges of stuff.

Using the grain to focus is just a habit I adopted from making prints--focus aids in print making are actually called "grain focusers." The grain is independent from other factors that might affect focus, like depth of field and diffraction.

You probably can't lower your carrier, but you could experiment with raising it a little bit--just cut out some paper to sit it on, and see if focus improves.

I actually started a new thread on this so we didn't have to hi-jack this one further...

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/film-discussion-q/237791-adjusting-film-carrier-height.html

I couldn't lower the carrier, but raising the lid does the same thing - see the other thread for my results...

 

[djacobox372]

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/film-discussion-q/237791-adjusting-film-carrier-height.html

I couldn't lower the carrier, but raising the lid does the same thing - see the other thread for my results...

Yeah, I responded to that thread. However my response is relative to this thread as well, as it appears that the V700 just produces sharper results due to it being a higher native resolution scanner (optical density is higher).

So it looks like scan-area isn't the only reason to pay extra for the V700.