burkphoto wrote:
You generally get what you pay for when buying a scanner. The Epson V600 is very good as a print scanner. It is good to very good for scanning *medium format* film — 645 format, 6x6, 6x7, 6x8, 6x9, etc. But it is just okay for scanning 35mm slides and negatives. The FOCUS just isn't there. Effective resolution isn't very high on 35mm and smaller formats. For larger format film, the V850 is very good.
The best part of the V600, I found, was the Digital ICE feature. That's now obsolete software, because it was written as 32-bit code and won't run on MacOS 10.15 or later. However, the HARDWARE for Digital ICE can be used by SilverFast SE, which Epson provides as a free download when you buy the scanner and enter its serial number on their download site.
I'd buy the V600 or V850 for print scanning and for scanning medium format film. Better deals can be had on all-in-one printer/copier/scan/fax units with EcoTank bottled ink, if you just need office features.
A better choice, for me, anyway, is to "camera scan" my media. I already had the camera and a macro lens. If you have a dSLR or MILC and a macro lens, you have most of the things you need.
I built my own copy stand for prints, using two decent-quality video lights ($50 each with AC adapters), two light weight table top light stands ($25 total), and some PVC plumbing parts, shelving, rubber feet, super glue, and 1/4"-20 TPI hardware (about $90 total). I've "scanned" thousands of prints with dSLR and MILC setups like this — professionally — since 1980. The advantage is that raw capture gives you the ability to do some amazing image adjustments to old prints using the same tools and knowledge you probably already use for digital image processing. But you can also record great JPEGs if you meter and white balance off a photographic gray card and use a new manual exposure setting for every different magnification. (Reciprocity effects occur at macro distances of 1:10 and smaller.)
The copy stand doubles as support for my film duplicator rig, described in my attached 20-page, illustrated PDF. That uses one of my copy stand lights, Velcro, black foam-core board, and the Essential Film Holder, the ingenious gadget that makes it possible to get really high quality camera scans from slides and negatives up to 6x9 cm.
I'm currently scanning old film from my teens as a high school candid yearbook photographer. Attached is a photo from a May 5, 1973 Jethro Tull concert at Clemson University. It was "camera scanned" from about a third of a 35mm Kodak Tri-X negative I push-processed in Acufine developer. More samples are in the PDF attached directly below this. Read it in your browser by double-clicking on it.
You generally get what you pay for when buying a s... (
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Thanks much, Bill. I saw your tutorial before and thought it was excellent! But right now I don't have a macro lens (I know, I know, what kind of a photographer doesn't have a macro! I'm not a photographer, just a picturetaker...)
Awesome image you posted. An excellent plug for the camera option.