Digital BW, The Print

Hi George,

Regarding "contact sheets" you can get what you want from a good quality
flatbed. Personally I'm not fussed about seeing the frame numbers or the very
far edges of the frame, so a machine like the Epson Perfection 4870 which has
film holders that take four strips of six 35mm frames will allow you to scan a
whole roll in a couple of unattended passes. This is much less hassle than
feeding individual strips into a Nikon, or worse still fiddling with the film
holders between passes as you must do with most other dedicated film scanners.
For this reason alone, if you have any volume of film to deal with then it
makes a lot of sense to have a 4870 for batch scanning PLUS a dedicated film
scanner for the high quality stuff. If you really want the look of a
traditional contact sheet, you can lay the films on the glass of the Epson and
get acceptable scans, although Newtons rings will likely show up. You'll have
to make the sheet out of two separate scans, but it shouldn't take too
long.

On the second point, your contact at the photo store doesn't appear to know
much about scanner light sources. He's half right -- the Nikon is a bit "hard"
and will produce fairly grainy and contrasty scans. The contrast is the
killer, since it reduces the effective dynamic range of the scanner.
Unfortunately the Minolta is even worse; it has probably the harshest light
source of all the desktop 35mm scanners. The flatbeds are much better, since
typically they have diffuse flat-panel light sources. They may not offer the
outright sharpness of the dedicated film scanners, but they're much better
than they were a few years ago and will do the job admirably unless you're
fixated on getting the best possible 16x20s out of your 35mm negs. As further
plusses they're cheap and you can use them to scan medium/large format film
and of course prints too. The Epson 4870 is the current cream of the crop
among inexpensive flatbeds, so I'd check that out first of all. There's an
active
group of Epson 4870 users near here if you want to dig for some further info:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/epson4870/

If you think the scans are too soft for your liking, then the options are
unfortunately quite limited. The Nikon 8000/9000ED have relatively soft light
sources, as does the old Leafscan 45 which Austin swears by. The Microtek
AtrixScan 120TF (formerly produced by Polaroid as the SprintScan 120) may also
be worth considering. These all have disadvantages though, in terms of expense
(Nikon/Microtek), availability (Leaf/Polaroid) and, some say, reliability
(Microtek). If you're interested in finding out more about the Leafscan 45,
then there's a group for that too:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Leafscan/

Sorry for the information overload that you must now be experiencing, but sad
to say, there's no easy answer to this one! =(

HTH

-= mike =-

-----Original Message-----
From: glemasurier
Sent: 27 July 2004 00:33
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Scanners for B&W


I have two questions about how to get my old B&W negs ready to print 
digitally:
1.  A camera shop guy says I can't make contact sheets on an inexpensive 
scanner because they only have one light source and all I'll get is the center
third of the negative strips. Anyone out there scanning neg strips for contact
sheets?

2. The same camera shop guy said the Nikon V scanner isn't acceptable for 
B&W because of the light source. He says I have to have the Minolta 5400, 
which is $300 more, of course. Is he right? I want to scan B&W negative film 
and some color slides. I want to make 13 X 19 prints.

Cheers,
George Le Masurier


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