Scanning old negatives

I would like to gather opinions on the most appropriate film scanner to
purchase to archive a collection of my late father and grandfathers b/w
negatives, mainly 6" x 4". Some are glass plate the most normal negs of
street scenes and faces in the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's in Australia and
New Zealand.

Would the Epson Perfection V700 Scanner be suitable? I looked at the specs
for the 750 and I doubt if I would need to go to a wet gate scanner.

Something around the Epson price range - a bit higher would be okay.

Please reply to the group

or (remove the spaces)

n e t m a s k 56 at g o o g l e dot c o m

and the subject line Scanning old negatives

"Stuart" wrote:

Would the Epson Perfection V700 Scanner be suitable? I looked at the
specs for the 750 and I doubt if I would need to go to a wet gate
scanner.

I have the V750 and like it. I don't do any wet scanning. I bought it
over the V700 because of the High Pass Optics. The better SilverFast AI
software is also nice.

"Mardon" wrote in message
. 130...
"Stuart" wrote:

Would the Epson Perfection V700 Scanner be suitable? I looked at the
specs for the 750 and I doubt if I would need to go to a wet gate
scanner.

I have the V750 and like it. I don't do any wet scanning. I bought it
over the V700 because of the High Pass Optics. The better SilverFast AI
software is also nice.

Thanks Mardon and it will scan negatives as large as 6" x 4" ? I will
revisit the V750 specs

many thanks (fell off the original post - copy and pasted from
alt.comp.periphs.scanner)

Stuart wrote:
I would like to gather opinions on the most appropriate film scanner to
purchase to archive a collection of my late father and grandfathers b/w
negatives, mainly 6" x 4". Some are glass plate the most normal negs of
street scenes and faces in the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's in Australia and
New Zealand.

Would the Epson Perfection V700 Scanner be suitable? I looked at the specs
for the 750 and I doubt if I would need to go to a wet gate scanner.

Something around the Epson price range - a bit higher would be okay.

Please reply to the group

or (remove the spaces)

n e t m a s k 56 at g o o g l e dot c o m

and the subject line Scanning old negatives


Hi Stuart,

Either the Epson 700 or the 750 will do what you need. I have the 700
and have scanned slides and negatives from 35mm up to 8x10.

The film holders supplied won't take your 4x6 negative so you'll need to
use the 8x10 frame and scan with the negatives on the glass. Positioning
can be a PIA, but with a bit of patience you can do it. You will also be
limited to the 4800 PPI lens (6400 only available when using a film
holder), but that's going to yield an approximate 1.5 Gig file which is
major overkill in my opinion.

Let us know how you make out with your project.

Hope this has helped,
Dave

On Apr 16, 7:45 am, "Stuart" wrote:
"Mardon" wrote in message

. 130...

"Stuart" wrote:

Would the Epson Perfection V700 Scanner be suitable? I looked at the
specs for the 750 and I doubt if I would need to go to a wet gate
scanner.

I have the V750 and like it. I don't do any wet scanning. I bought it
over the V700 because of the High Pass Optics. The better SilverFast AI
software is also nice.

Thanks Mardon and it will scan negatives as large as 6" x 4" ? I will
revisit the V750 specs

many thanks (fell off the original post - copy and pasted from
alt.comp.periphs.scanner)

I would second the V700/750, I use the V700 and it does well with 4x5,
but I have always used a carrier and haven't scanned from the glass.
If you can swing the V750, anything better than the V700 would be an
excellent scnner. Either scanner can take up to 8x10 neg/transparency.

Tom

Stuart wrote:
I would like to gather opinions on the most appropriate film scanner to
purchase to archive a collection of my late father and grandfathers b/w
negatives, mainly 6" x 4". Some are glass plate the most normal negs of
street scenes and faces in the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's in Australia and
New Zealand.

Would the Epson Perfection V700 Scanner be suitable? I looked at the specs
for the 750 and I doubt if I would need to go to a wet gate scanner.

Something around the Epson price range - a bit higher would be okay.

Please reply to the group

or (remove the spaces)

n e t m a s k 56 at g o o g l e dot c o m

and the subject line Scanning old negatives




As an alternative to scanning, I would suggest you try what I did. I
have used a
light box and rephotographed many slides and also negatives of various sizes
and have been very pleased with the results. I bought a Canon slide scanner
originally to scan slides, but found that rephotographing them with my
digital
camera is just as good quality and much, much faster.

.....Fred

Fred Martin wrote:
Stuart wrote:
I would like to gather opinions on the most appropriate film scanner
to purchase to archive a collection of my late father and
grandfathers b/w negatives, mainly 6" x 4". Some are glass plate the
most normal negs of street scenes and faces in the 1920's, 1930's and
1940's in Australia and New Zealand.

Would the Epson Perfection V700 Scanner be suitable? I looked at the
specs for the 750 and I doubt if I would need to go to a wet gate
scanner.

Something around the Epson price range - a bit higher would be okay.

Please reply to the group

or (remove the spaces)

n e t m a s k 56 at g o o g l e dot c o m

and the subject line Scanning old negatives



As an alternative to scanning, I would suggest you try what I did. I
have used a
light box and rephotographed many slides and also negatives of various
sizes
and have been very pleased with the results. I bought a Canon slide scanner
originally to scan slides, but found that rephotographing them with my
digital
camera is just as good quality and much, much faster.

....Fred

I agree with the part about lightbox-rephotographing vs scanning slides.
Very significantly better!

However, when I tried this with negatives, I never got satisfactory
results on my attempts to neutralize the orange mask. Somehow the
hardware/software in the scanner can do this really quickly and
accurately, and a sequence of steps on PaintShopPro ended up with
mediocre results.

Dave S.

On Apr 16, 11:43 am, Dave S wrote:
Fred Martin wrote:
Stuart wrote:
I would like to gather opinions on the most appropriate film scanner
to purchase to archive a collection of my late father and
grandfathers b/w negatives, mainly 6" x 4". Some are glass plate the
most normal negs of street scenes and faces in the 1920's, 1930's and
1940's in Australia and New Zealand.

Would the Epson Perfection V700 Scanner be suitable? I looked at the
specs for the 750 and I doubt if I would need to go to a wet gate
scanner.

Something around the Epson price range - a bit higher would be okay.

Please reply to the group

or (remove the spaces)

n e t m a s k 56 at g o o g l e dot c o m

and the subject line Scanning old negatives

As an alternative to scanning, I would suggest you try what I did. I
have used a
light box and rephotographed many slides and also negatives of various
sizes
and have been very pleased with the results. I bought a Canon slide scanner
originally to scan slides, but found that rephotographing them with my
digital
camera is just as good quality and much, much faster.

....Fred

I agree with the part about lightbox-rephotographing vs scanning slides.
Very significantly better!

However, when I tried this with negatives, I never got satisfactory
results on my attempts to neutralize the orange mask. Somehow the
hardware/software in the scanner can do this really quickly and
accurately, and a sequence of steps on PaintShopPro ended up with
mediocre results.

Dave S.


I have a Bessler slide duplicator with Schneider 80 f4 Componon slide
duping lens on it and the result don't have the dynamic range of my
Epson V700 when using a D200. They aren't bad, but not as good as a
scanner. A 58mb 16bit file is a little limiting if I want to print
large. I can get larger files with the scanner too, with 4x5s I scan
at 2400ppi and get a 500mb file in 16 bits. Nice if I want to make a
16x20 print. As for the orange mask, most transpaerency scanners take
care of it in the scanning program. I have used some older color negs
with a very deep orange base, and even those came out nicely requiring
only a little play with the color.

Tom

"Stuart" wrote:

Thanks Mardon and it will scan negatives as large as 6" x 4" ? I will
revisit the V750 specs

Both the V700 and V750 will do up to 8"x10" negatives. I have found the
most convient way to scan 'off-size' negatives is to lay a sheet of thin
glass over the negatives rather than trying to use a negative holder. My
eye can't detect any degradation of the imgage by doing it this way. It
keeps the negatives perfectly flat and is far eaiser than trying to mess
with a custom negative holder.

A few months agao, someone in this group asked if the V750 could
effectively scan 35mm, low contrast, positive microfilm. I did the scans
various ways and posted the results he
http://www.JustPhotos.ca/scantest/
The sample images may be of some interest to you.

"Mardon" wrote in message
. 130...
"Stuart" wrote:

Thanks Mardon and it will scan negatives as large as 6" x 4" ? I will
revisit the V750 specs

Both the V700 and V750 will do up to 8"x10" negatives. I have found the
most convient way to scan 'off-size' negatives is to lay a sheet of thin
glass over the negatives rather than trying to use a negative holder. My
eye can't detect any degradation of the imgage by doing it this way. It
keeps the negatives perfectly flat and is far eaiser than trying to mess
with a custom negative holder.

A few months agao, someone in this group asked if the V750 could
effectively scan 35mm, low contrast, positive microfilm. I did the scans
various ways and posted the results he
http://www.JustPhotos.ca/scantest/
The sample images may be of some interest to you.

Thanks a lot for the info - I think I will try to go to the 750