Digital BW, The Print

Hi Lew,

The lid has a light source for transparent materials and there is 
another for opaque things in the box - and you tell the software which 
you are scanning.

I've used several types of page over the years, but mainly the 
Clear-File brand which are more or less as the name suggests. Also some 
others slightly less clear. Both seem to work pretty well. The only 
things that don't are the old glassine? paper ones, and I simply re 
rehouse the negs in clear filing sheets. Some of those old filing sheets 
are falling to pieces anyway, so it seems a good idea in any case.

There might be a very slight loss in quality, but they certainly look 
pretty good on screen - and I did a batch to send to a museum earlier in 
the year and they were find. You do have to carefully set the black and 
white points to get them right, as the auto setting on the scanner which 
works fine for most things will try to reproduce the empty areas outside 
the film as well, and you have to limit it to the range on your negs.

I've not had problems with Newtons rings. Probably the dust on my negs 
helps:-)

Regards,

Peter

Peter Marshall    -    Photographer, Writer: NUJ
petermarshall@...  
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Lew wrote:
> Thanks, Pete:
>
> I take it that the lid of the scanner contains the light source, the bed 
> is clear glass & the scanning lens move underneath... is this correct? 
> Not that I'm interested, but this sounds like it works for 
> transparencies & negs, not opaque material like prints. How does the 
> scanner handle these?
>
> Don't the PrintFile pages reduce sharpness and/or cut down on the 
> density range of the negs?
>
> Also, from my attempts to work with another scanner and some very curly 
> film, putting a sheet of glass on top produced Newton rings rendering 
> the scans unusable. I didn't try glass over PrintFile, though.
>
> Thanks again for taking the time to respond at length!
>
> Peter Marshall wrote:
>   
>