Flat scanner / negative holder for making contact sheets ?

[Ko.Fe.]

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The only reason I would get V850 is LF negatives. But I ditched LF :).

I have old V550 https://epson.ca/Clearance-Centre/Scanners/Epson-Perfection-V550-Photo-Colour-Scanner/p/B11B210201

for many years now and it just good enough for everything. It doesn't scan the grain (scanning grain doesn't makes final images sharper) and it is so much easier and productive than latest Plustek I also have. 

But to be honest the whole contact prints never worked for me. I just use darkroom loupe to see. 

[grahamc]

I’ve opted for a second-hand Epson v850

spec-wise it’s much more than I need, however the v700 and v750 models aren’t available here in Aus

second hand this v850 is “only” 1.5x more expensive than the v600 new.  Purchased new here the v850 is almost 3x the price of v600 so it’s worked out quite well  

the clincher for me was that v600 is 12 negs at a time , will take 4 scans as I get 38 frames in a roll. 
 

v850 is 24 negs each scan so in 2 scans I’ll be done ... I think over time I’ll appreciate this to justify the extra hardware cost.    
 

hopefully I can plug in some decent contrast and sharpening presets to run these contact sheets for proofing purposes.  from there I can do a full scan of selected frames on the plustek, which I will scan very flat then edit in Lightroom 

Sounds good hope it works 

thanks again ! 

Edited May 17, 2022 by grahamc

[Doug A]

It sounds like you have a good solution. 

[Aryel]

On 5/17/2022 at 6:21 PM, grahamc said:

v850 is 24 negs each scan so in 2 scans I’ll be done ... I think over time I’ll appreciate this to justify the extra hardware cost.

Sounds good but the default holder will allow you to scan 18 so you will need 3 scans (unless you go without the holders). Still much quicker as it will batch scan everything. 

Edited May 18, 2022 by Aryel

[grahamc]

56 minutes ago, Aryel said:

Sounds good but the default holder will allow you to scan 18 so you will need 3 scans (unless you go without the holders). Still much quicker as it will batch scan everything. 

Thanks, I made a mistake in the post and noticed that afterwards (v850 holding only 16).  Apparently the v700 (24 neg) holders work so I might buy a set of those 

Actually I was thinking about it and if I understand it correctly the v850 will batch scan these negatives as individual output files (moving from frame to frame) ?  If that's the case I might not even need the 'contact sheets' that I was planning to produce.

I'll try both and see what I prefer for proofing

 

[Aryel]

11 minutes ago, grahamc said:

Thanks, I made a mistake in the post and noticed that afterwards (v850 holding only 16).  Apparently the v700 (24 neg) holders work so I might buy a set of those 

Actually I was thinking about it and if I understand it correctly the v850 will batch scan these negatives as individual output files (moving from frame to frame) ?  If that's the case I might not even need the 'contact sheets' that I was planning to produce.

I'll try both and see what I prefer for proofing

 

yes, it can batch scan 18 photos as individual frames. If using vuescan, you will need to correct a bit the way it splits the images (a bit annoying at first but easy enough after a few).  

[grahamc]

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2 minutes ago, Aryel said:

yes, it can batch scan 18 photos as individual frames. If using vuescan, you will need to correct a bit the way it splits the images (a bit annoying at first but easy enough after a few).  

Great thanks

[TomB_tx]

1 hour ago, grahamc said:

Thanks, I made a mistake in the post and noticed that afterwards (v850 holding only 16).  Apparently the v700 (24 neg) holders work so I might buy a set of those 

Yes, I kept my V700 holders when I replaced it with the V850 (the 700 died) just so I could quickly scan 24 frames. I seldom bulk load more than 24 so this works well.

[250swb]

If I were you I'd use Epson Scan instead of Vuescan with the V850, as I said earlier it's so, so easy to rotate scans in the preview screen before doing the final scan. Of course one other mega advantage of having a V850 is that it does medium format scans suitable for exhibition (but not 35mm), so you can now start looking for that Rolleiflex, or a 'Texas Leica', or...... 😃

[Stuart Richardson]

I see you found a solution, but I think for others in this situation, there is not much out there that is easier than just putting the film in a plastic sleeve, placing it on a light box and photographing it with a digital camera. If your lightbox is large enough (very useful anyway to have a larger lightbox for looking at negatives if you are film shooter), all you need is a good piece of glass. I would not say anti-newton, because anti-newton is more meant to be on the opposite side of the film, as it is textured and will appear hazy to the eye. I would just buy a large enough sheet of anti-reflective framing glass ("museum glass"), and put that on top of the plastic. There are unlikely to be newton's rings, but if there are, it is not so critical anyway, as this is mainly for evaluation.

If you want extremely quick and easy evaluation, it is possible to set up an iphone to invert the colors in the accessibility settings. You can set it up so that if you triple click on the right button, the colors on the screen will invert. If you open the camera app, your negatives will appear as positives on the screen. You can just hold them up to the light, or use a lightbox. The only downside to this is that the photos taken are not "negatives"...as soon as your turn your phone back to normal, the pictures will also be normal. But if you just want to look over a contact sheet quickly, it is a useful little party trick. Also useful for showing noobs images on a contact sheet, who may not be as used to looking at negatives as us dinosaurs...

[johnwolf]

1 hour ago, Stuart Richardson said:

I see you found a solution, but I think for others in this situation, there is not much out there that is easier than just putting the film in a plastic sleeve, placing it on a light box and photographing it with a digital camera. If your lightbox is large enough (very useful anyway to have a larger lightbox for looking at negatives if you are film shooter), all you need is a good piece of glass. I would not say anti-newton, because anti-newton is more meant to be on the opposite side of the film, as it is textured and will appear hazy to the eye. I would just buy a large enough sheet of anti-reflective framing glass ("museum glass"), and put that on top of the plastic. There are unlikely to be newton's rings, but if there are, it is not so critical anyway, as this is mainly for evaluation.

If you want extremely quick and easy evaluation, it is possible to set up an iphone to invert the colors in the accessibility settings. You can set it up so that if you triple click on the right button, the colors on the screen will invert. If you open the camera app, your negatives will appear as positives on the screen. You can just hold them up to the light, or use a lightbox. The only downside to this is that the photos taken are not "negatives"...as soon as your turn your phone back to normal, the pictures will also be normal. But if you just want to look over a contact sheet quickly, it is a useful little party trick. Also useful for showing noobs images on a contact sheet, who may not be as used to looking at negatives as us dinosaurs...

Well said. I completely agree.

If I understand correctly from the above, the Epson flatbed approach requires two scans and stitiching. I guess it depends on your shooting volume, but that wouold put me off. 

I take a snap on the lightbox with my GR III and invert in LR. I tried my phone, which allows an inversion preset, but the quality isn't as good. The sheets look better if not shot through the plastic, but aligning the strips accurately without a holder isn't worth the effort.  

John 

[grahamc]

14 hours ago, 250swb said:

If I were you I'd use Epson Scan instead of Vuescan with the V850, as I said earlier it's so, so easy to rotate scans in the preview screen before doing the final scan. Of course one other mega advantage of having a V850 is that it does medium format scans suitable for exhibition (but not 35mm), so you can now start looking for that Rolleiflex, or a 'Texas Leica', or...... 😃

Thanks for the info - Epson Scan is is for these proofs then .

Don't tempt me about the Rollei 🤣

[250swb]

8 hours ago, johnwolf said:

 

If I understand correctly from the above, the Epson flatbed approach requires two scans and stitiching. I guess it depends on your shooting volume, but that wouold put me off. 

 

'Stitching'? The software dumps all the scans into the folder you create to save them in. As for 'two scans', the V850 comes with two sets of negative holders so you scan one and then when it's done the next one is loaded and immediately available. The Epson Scan software does also invert both colour and B&W negatives, which saves a lot of time compared with the hard work of getting accurate results by inverting in Lightroom.

[grahamc]

8 hours ago, johnwolf said:

Well said. I completely agree.

If I understand correctly from the above, the Epson flatbed approach requires two scans and stitiching. I guess it depends on your shooting volume, but that wouold put me off. 

I take a snap on the lightbox with my GR III and invert in LR. I tried my phone, which allows an inversion preset, but the quality isn't as good. The sheets look better if not shot through the plastic, but aligning the strips accurately without a holder isn't worth the effort.  

John 

Fair comment . yes the process I'm going to try will give me 2 files.   I'm not going to stitch them together though I'll just use 2 'sheets'.

I've probably confused things by using 'contact sheet' considering it's the name of something so well established (an actual contact sheet of a whole roll)... all I really want is to see all the images in a quick ish way and I don't care if it's over 2 or 3 pages/output files really. 

To be honest, now having gotten to know these scanners capabilities a bit better I'll probably be bulk scanning each roll (via 2 x batches) which will give me 38 individual files (1 per frame).     Gets me to the same end result really as I just want to see them quicker than feeding them one by one through the Plustek 

Edited May 19, 2022 by grahamc

[grahamc]

5 minutes ago, 250swb said:

'Stitching'? The software dumps all the scans into the folder you create to save them in. As for 'two scans', the V850 comes with two sets of negative holders so you scan one and then when it's done the next one is loaded and immediately available. The Epson Scan software does also invert both colour and B&W negatives, which saves a lot of time compared with the hard work of getting accurate results by inverting in Lightroom.

Sounds great . I'm looking forward to getting started 

[250swb]

10 hours ago, Stuart Richardson said:

I see you found a solution, but I think for others in this situation, there is not much out there that is easier than just putting the film in a plastic sleeve, placing it on a light box and photographing it with a digital camera. If your lightbox is large enough (very useful anyway to have a larger lightbox for looking at negatives if you are film shooter), all you need is a good piece of glass. I would not say anti-newton, because anti-newton is more meant to be on the opposite side of the film, as it is textured and will appear hazy to the eye. I would just buy a large enough sheet of anti-reflective framing glass ("museum glass"), and put that on top of the plastic. There are unlikely to be newton's rings, but if there are, it is not so critical anyway, as this is mainly for evaluation.

If you want extremely quick and easy evaluation, it is possible to set up an iphone to invert the colors in the accessibility settings. You can set it up so that if you triple click on the right button, the colors on the screen will invert. If you open the camera app, your negatives will appear as positives on the screen. You can just hold them up to the light, or use a lightbox. The only downside to this is that the photos taken are not "negatives"...as soon as your turn your phone back to normal, the pictures will also be normal. But if you just want to look over a contact sheet quickly, it is a useful little party trick. Also useful for showing noobs images on a contact sheet, who may not be as used to looking at negatives as us dinosaurs...

The traditional use for contact sheets as a record is for accuracy and posterity, not as an ephemeral guide. If two shots have a subtle difference in composition they can be closely accessed on a proper digital contact sheet and the best chosen, otherwise the photographer is doomed to scanning two images to make the choice, if each takes ten minutes (or more) for a full res scan that means one of them has wasted the photographer ten minutes. If faced with a 36 exposure film it doesn't take long before the photographer starts to wish they'd done it right in the first place. But maybe a Flextight would cut scanning time down, is that the answer, 😄 ?

[Stuart Richardson]

I am not suggesting doing it terribly, but I kind if disagree with you about “accuracy”. A contact sheet is always a compromise, as you only have one exposure for the entire roll. Usually that is not super helpful for all shots on a 35mm roll. That said, I follow your Flextight suggestion! I shoot primarily 120 and large format, and I have an x5 at my lab, so I tend to just scan every frame at a medium resolution and go back to full resolution for the important negatives. 
But I think that making a contact sheet good enough for evaluation is not hard, and another advantage of doing it with a camera is that you can shoot raw and have a lot more leeway after the fact to edit the contact sheet after it is taken to brighten certain images or darken others etc. 

[TomB_tx]

At one time I scanned contact sheets, but lately with the V850 I just batch scan each roll (using V700 24 holders) at medium resolution with one click (Epson scan) and then review them at nice size on the monitor. Many I just use from that scan if for on-line use, and can select any that I want to do a more detailed scan.

Occasionally - if my darkroom is active for prints - I'll still do a traditional contact sheet on the enlarger. There's something about going over a contact sheet with a loupe that takes me back 50 years...

[johnwolf]

5 hours ago, grahamc said:

Fair comment . yes the process I'm going to try will give me 2 files.   I'm not going to stitch them together though I'll just use 2 'sheets'.

I've probably confused things by using 'contact sheet' considering it's the name of something so well established (an actual contact sheet of a whole roll)... all I really want is to see all the images in a quick ish way and I don't care if it's over 2 or 3 pages/output files really. 

To be honest, now having gotten to know these scanners capabilities a bit better I'll probably be bulk scanning each roll (via 2 x batches) which will give me 38 individual files (1 per frame).     Gets me to the same end result really as I just want to see them quicker than feeding them one by one through the Plustek 

Hope It didn't sound like I was challenging your solution. I wasn't. I think the main thing is to be organized and systematic about managing our film assets, especially as rolls multiply. 

I view my contact sheets as a long term catalog and often go back to old ones and see things anew. Really enjoy that process. To be able to quickly cross-reference the LR file and the negative sheet is important to me. But that's probably another thread topic.

John

 

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[johnwolf]

3 minutes ago, johnwolf said:

Hope It didn't sound like I was challenging your solution. I wasn't. I think the main thing is to be organized and systematic about managing our film assets, especially as rolls multiply. 

I view my contact sheets as a long term catalog and often go back to old ones and see things anew. Really enjoy that process. To be able to quickly cross-reference the LR file and the negative sheet is important to me. But archiving this stuff is probably another thread topic.

John