Digital BW, The Print

Hi,

I make 'contact sheets' on a V750 by putting the negs in their 
transparent filing sheet directly on the glass bed, with the 8x10 film 
area guide (210x257mm) in place. Depending on the type of filing sheet 
you can scan 4 or 5 rows of 6 or 7 rows of 5 at a time. Most of my negs 
are in strips of 6, and I usually scan the top 4 rows, then scan the 
bottom 4 (which means I'm scanning the middle of the 7 rows twice, but 
saves having to alter the scanner settings.) Not having to take the 
strips out and fit them into a frame is an incredible time saver, as 
well as reducing the handling risk to negs.

(It would be possible to scan a whole film at a time - 6 strips of 6 - 
just as I used to print them on 8x10 paper - by putting the strips 
directly onto the glass bed and putting a glass sheet on top of them, 
but too time-consuming. I used to make contacts in the darkroom before 
putting them in the filing sheets and would probably try working that 
way on the scanner with newly processed films.)

I scan into Photoshop, then having dealt with a dozen filing sheets or 
so I join up the pairs of scans to give the full sheet for each film - 
not really necessary but only takes a few clicks to copy one, increase 
the canvas size on the second, paste, position, flatten and then save - 
using the film reference number.

The Epson software is fast and does a reasonable job for the scanning at 
600dpi which gives me a decent size image to look at on screen if I want 
to zoom into a frame. Mostly the sheets lay flat enough - I thought I 
would need a sheet of glass on top, but most seem ok without. It takes a 
little while to adjust the histogram - setting the film base to be very 
close to black and the densest parts of the negs to white - largely 
because the software was written by someone who didn't understand what 
it should do. But if your exposure and dev were consistent you won't 
need to alter it. Colour film is a little trickier as colour balance 
also has to be set, but for b/w its best to scan as grayscale.

It should work with any scanner that says it can handle 8x10 film, not 
just the V700/750.

If I want to make a print I use a neg scanner on the particular frame, 
but the contacts don't need to be clean to do the job, though I give the 
filing sheets and glass a wipe with an anti-static cloth.

Peter Marshall    -    Photographer, Writer: NUJ
petermarshall@...     _________________________________________________________________
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and elsewhere...... 



Lew wrote:
> The 700/750 can do a max of 24 35mm frames at a time (4 strips of 6 
> frames each). I have years of 36 exposure rolls to do.
>
> steve wrote:
>   
>> I use a Epson 4990. The model has been replaced by the 700/750 (more expensive). The Epson 600 would work but won't do a whole roll at once.
>>
>> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Lew <lew1716@...> wrote:
>>   
>>     
>>> Ok, newbie here. What equipment do I need to scan an entire roll of bw 
>>> (35mm or 120) into a digital proof sheet, similar to wet darkroom 
>>> contact sheets?
>>> Thanks.