Sean Esopenko

35mm Film Scanning Comparison: Epson V700 and Nikon LS-2000

August 23, 2011

Frequently I have told people that from my experience the V700 is a great scanner at the price but compared to a dedicated film scanner, such as a Nikon, it’s not perfect.  For almost a year I have been scanning my medium and large format film with a V700 and for about half that my 35mm film with an old Nikon LS-2000.  I’ve begun shooting primarily colour negative film and I decided to show a comparison of colour negative film scans using the two scanners.  This complements my previous findings that my LS-2000 outresolved the V700 when scanning 35mm b&w film.

The above image was scanned using Hamrick’s Vuescan (a very excellent piece of software for a very low $40) on the LS-2000.  I removed the orange mask by tweaking the RGB led gain, thus ensuring all 12 bits the scanner is capable of were dedicated to resolving the image.  After extensive use this has got to be my favorite feature of Nikon film scanners.  The image was scanned at 2700 dpi to a “DNG” tiff with default sharpening performed in Adobe Camera Raw.

Above is a detail from the image at 100% with the levels adjusted to enhance what was recorded in the shadows.  Here you can see the resolution of the scanner is near “pixel perfect” producing approximately a 9 megapixel scan.  Not bad for a scanner manufactured in 1997 which I picked up used for a tidy sum of $250 but it doesn’t match my 5D classic even when using the same lenses.  I can understand why shooters of 135 film flocked to DSLRs.

This is a carefuly performed and time intensive scan produced from an Epson V700.  I used a piece of ANR glass laid in the epson holder to keep the film as flat as possible.  My holder needed the feet removed for the sharpest image but it’s different for every unit and should be checked periodically in case mechanisms drift.  I scanned at 6400 dpi then downsampled to 2700 dpi using the bicupic sharper algorithm in Photoshop.  First thing you’ll notice is the dust.  While a 2700 dpi scan with infrared dust removal takes only about 40 seconds with the Nikon LS-2000 it takes a whopping four minutes with the Epson scanner.  Plus when using the ANR glass to flatten the film digital ice can’t be used at all.  This adds a large amount of time spotting scans for dust and scratches.

This is a perfect example of dmax specifications being a complete hoax.  The LS-2000 claims a dmax of 3.6 while Epson claims the V700 has a dmax of 4.0.  In the above example where the levels in the shadows have been bumped up it’s obvious the V700 has the lower dynamic range.  I thought maybe the V700 is capturing details in the high end instead of the low end but when increasing the levels at the high end the situation was the same:  the LS-2000 outperformed the V700 across the entire tonal spectrum.  I believe the reason for this is that the V700 uses a white light source.  The LS-2000′s light source can be tweaked in colour to remove the orange mask like mentioned above.  The V700 has to dedicate a large portion of it’s tonality to removal of the orange mask.  I don’t shoot positive slide film but I suspect that those who do may see slightly better results when scanning with the V700.  The medium format Nikon scanners are discontinued and currently there are no models in production that allow the user to adjust the light source for each channel.  I think this is an extremely useful feature that unfortunately is no longer available in any models today.

Chromatic Abberation is visible around the edge of the trees and overall the image is lacking in sharpness.  When scanning 135 film I only trust the V700 to produce adequate results for web resolution images and small, 5×7 prints.   The LS-2000 scans can print to about 9×12 at the most.  I’ve printed inkjets of  11×14 images from scans of larger 6×7 and 4×5 film images with adequate results.  I haven’t been able to enlarge 6×7 scans, using the V700, to the same size and quality I can enlarge in the darkroom so I have begun long-term plans to replace my V700 with a better image capturing method.  I don’t know yet what that method will be yet but I believe I’ll need to upgrade from the V700 in the next year or so.  Until that time I’m going to be squeezing all the image quality I can out of both my LS-2000 and V700.

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