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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River Light
August 02, 2011
My wife’s and my first anniversary was spent at Banff National Park in Canada. She brought sketching supplies and I brought my Mamiya 6×7 and did some walking and sight seeing in and around the town of Banff. We also checked out the galleries and the Whyte Museum. The day developed into spotty showers with some moderate cloud cover and while eating dinner the lighting finally started to get good. We took a scenic drive and I raced down a hill to catch this image before the sun disappeared over the mountains.
It’s amazing how much colour Ektar can show in a scene. Thankfully negative film is biased towards the hilights so the sky wasn’t lost in the photograph. I have a spot meter now so I was able to just barely expose the forest enough to ensure some detail and retain the sky. The V700 has a hard time rendering the shadowy regions, however, compared to what I usually see in analog enlargements in the darkroom. I’d like to see what this image looks like in the darkroom when I have some time.
Shot with a Mamiya RB67 Pro-S through a 50mm F4.3C on Ektar 100. 1/8th sec at F32 if I remember correctly. Scanned via EpsonScan on a V700.
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First Contrast Reduction Mask – Dust Like Crazy
July 24, 2011
So I did my first contrast reduction mask. The above is an 8×10 print from a 4×5 colour negative image with a contrast reduction mask sandwiched against the negative. Because the negative is a negative of the image, you end up masking off the darker regions of the image, getting more exposure in the hilights for a more natural contrast adjustment compared to burning & dodging.
Without the reduction mask Fuji CA paper is just too contrasty for tough scenes like this, blowing out the sky almost completely and rendering the upper-left tree into complete darkness. There is about 10 stops of difference between the white clouds of the sky and the dark shadowy region of the tree. It’s important to get the registration bang on.
This is an example where I misregistered by about 0.25mm and it gave a similar look to the “emboss” filter in photoshop. Not desirable! It was also before I finished dialling in the colour balance (which I’m starting to get the hang of).
I contact printed Ilford FP4+ B&W 4×5 film under the enlarger with white light (0,0,0) on my Omega dichroic II’s “low” setting for 1 second. I exposed 5 negatives from f 5.6 to F22 to see the effect and after some prints with a few of them I liked the F22 shot the most. They were tray developed in D76 1:1 for 9 minutes (about iso 50 according to ilford’s documentation).
I feel quite liberated now that I know how to do masking and while the registration wasn’t perfect it’s not as intimidating as I thought it was. The only serious trouble I’, having is dust exposing into the contrast mask. I used a rocket blower like crazy on every single surface (colour negative, b&w negative, plexi glass for weight) but dust was exposed into every single reduction mask I made.
When I solve this dust issue in the mask negatives I’m going to have for some beautifully toned prints. I can’t wait!
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35mm Film – Hit and Miss
July 20, 2011
I don’t often get excited about the images I shoot on 35mm film but occasionally I do. I really want to see how this enlarges in the darkroom. I printed a couple images from the same roll using my colour darkroom but overlooked this one based on what I saw in the contact sheet. I’m starting to grow fond of it however and I want to see what it looks like enlarged to a good size. Images where the viewer gets to peer into somebody’s personal space interest me and this is one of those images. Plus the colours are wonderful and the contrast makes the bushes “pop”.
135 Kodak 160VC film. Canon Elan 7e camera with a Zeiss 35mm T* Distagon 2.0 ZE.
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First Colour Prints
July 18, 2011
This weekend I printed my first few colour prints. I enlarged a bunch of 35mm film to 9×14 inches to get a feel for the roller transport unit and gain some experience with white balancing. I decided to move on to some 4×5 negatives and print full-sized 16×20′s. Boy am I happy with the results! They’re very large, very sharp and the dynamic range is excellent. The shadows go deep and dark but there’s still plenty of detail to be seen. While the “dynamic range” may not be as deep as what I see from glossy inkjets from my Epson R3000 the tonality is stupendous. There are no dot patterns to be seen either, just smooth tonality, even among the finest of details.
The tonal range seems to fall perfectly compared to the troubles I’ve been having with inkjet prints, too. Part of the reason for the chromogenic RA4 prints looking the way they are is because What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG). I make adjustments and alter my approach and I see the results in the final print. I’m not spending hours and hours on an image, viewing it on the monitor, then lamenting over the print not looking similar to what I see on the monitor. Removing that intermediary viewing stage makes me concentrate on the final, printed image and I feel the results are great when I’m forced to do so.
While the print on the left required about 6 proof prints to get what you see the print on the right was printed immediately after with the exact same settings. The results were pretty close to well balanced with a slight bit too much cyan. Determining the density (brightness/darkness) was easy but colour balancing is turning out to be much more difficult than I thought. I still need to come up with a good & fast workflow for determining a good colour balance quickly. At least I have a “starting pack” determined for Ektar 100 4×5 shot in mild shade. Note taking is much more important when enlarging colour, I’m finding, compared to enlarging B&W. Overall it’s much more difficult.
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Colour Darkroom 100% Ready. Finally.
July 14, 2011
So my colour darkroom is officially ready for use and in operation. I finished modifying an old Ilford CAP-40 roller transport unit. It’s a device that takes your paper in with rollers and rolls it through each bath. You get extremely consistent development times and temperatures which are very important for the colour enlarging process. CAP-40′s are cheap and abundant because they’re designed for the slow times of Ilfochrome. They’re great machines, however, made of titanium parts due to the heavy acidity of Ilfochrome bleach but they’re too slow for the short development times of RA4. So I swapped out a pulley wheel for a larger one, installed a new drive belt and slowed the machine down from 3 minutes to 1 minute. It works like a dream!
Unfortunately my colour prints won’t be seeing the net too frequently because they’re just going to be too damned big to scan. I’m getting pretty close to requiring a separate portfolio site with a selection of works available for purchase as prints. This weekend I’ll be printing an edition of 16×20′s of Winter Wetland – Turner Valley, a 4×5 film shot taken during the winter in Turnery Valley, located in Alberta, Canada. It’s an extremely sharp shot and from the proofs I’ve printed it’s MUCH more sharp than the detail my V700 can record, even at 80 “megapixels”. I can’t wait!
I may have possibly sold some work at a recent show which will be great because the money will go straight into colour 4×5 sheet film and a few other things I need for my colour film process. Unlike with a digital workflow colour film needs to be balanced before taking the shot or else strange cross curves develop. I’ve seen the results where it can be described as cyan hilights and red shadows. While in photoshop you can just create colour balance layer and adjust the hilight and shadow colour balance you can only apply overall colour adjustments in the darkroom. This means the light needs to be measured before hand for it’s colour temperature then colour correcting filters screwed onto the camera’s lens. It’s not a big deal because it already takes me a long while to take pictures with the large format Wista 45SP. Note that I didn’t pay that price for my camera. I paid about $350 for mine, including a multicoated fujinon 180mm lens, and mine was manufactured in the 1970′s. Despite it’s age it performs admirably and many people still shoot with this system today. The camera’s remained virtually unchanged since the 1970′s and there’s no reason to change it. Large format is the only area of photography where you can buy a Schneider lens for under $400 and get better pictures than the Leica boys do. I love it :).
On a side note: I realized when printing some proofs of this image that I’ve been circulating the above version on the net with the hill on the left. Unfortunately this wasn’t how the landscape was and I printed the proofs with the image flipped, putting the hill on the right as it should be. I have a feeling the composition will work in a very similar manner for those who haven’t seen the image before but it looks like a completely different image to me. This image has been viewed for so long and so many times by me that it looks completely alien when reversed. Just thought I’d mention that.
Comments (3) | More: Calgary, My Process, Photography, Rural Alberta
And the Rain Did Cometh
July 13, 2011
See that little spot where the rain’s coming down? Calgary was right there. Shot with my Sigma DP2. Stitched with PTGui. Blended & processed with Photoshop. I still have yet to print this. I’ll be buying ink on payday. It’ll be about 13×28 inches.
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More Sigma DP2 work and almost printing RA4
July 11, 2011
I’ve been building up a series of little 5×7 prints from my recently acquired Sigma DP2. They’re more or less “sketches” of work that I plan to take further with medium & large format film photography. This little camera renders the nuances of fine lighting detail similar to my Schneider Super Angulon does so it does a great job at working out the “feeling” of an area before I bring out the big guns.
Colour printing in the darkroom is getting closer to “ready.” I have been using a Jobo CPA-2 to process the paper and yesterday I finally had a proof print that wasn’t horrible. Last weekend and Saturday I was having trouble with cyan hilights and brown/red shadows. I was trying to determine if it was cross curves in the negative I was printing or contaminated developer. Yesterday I settled on my losses and mixed up entirely fresh RA4 developer and ran a test print again. I was pleased to see dark shadows that weren’t ugly brown like before so it was decided my developer wasn’t mixed up to par. This stuff is extremely sensitive to variances in proportions between the ABC parts. This time around I used a 10mL syringe and carefully measured out the portions for 1L of developer replenisher.
The CAP-40 is just about ready. I have the replacement pulley and it’s center hole has been bored to fit the machine. It’s installed and now I’m just waiting on getting the belt. Once that’s done I have to order some bleach-fix and developer starter and then I’ll be using a roller transport machine. I can’t wait! While the jobo machine is better than trays the RA4 process is just too quick for the jobo. It’s fine for film which has 3 minute development times but the 45 second development time of RA4 is just too much of a hassle to do in a drum. Plus the developer has to be used one-shot which is a serious waste compared to replenishment.
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Storm Clouds Moving On
July 02, 2011
I was heading home on Thursday and thankfully I brought a half decent camera with me. During the day I heard thunderous claps as rain was pouring down upon everything and the sky was full of grey mess. It even hailed for a short bit and all I could think about was “what will this look like on my way home?” As I was driving home I could just barely see the storm clouds and thankfully they were travelling slower than my car. By the time I reached home I had them right above me, requiring me to lean myself forward in the driver’s seat to look up through the windshield to view them in their entirety. They were so large!
So I shot twenty-four exposures as fast as I could, about 2-3 seconds between each exposure then spend the evening massaging them into place to produce this image. It’s available in an open edition, printed with my new Epson R3000 with archival K3 inks at 13×27″. I’m pricing it at $350 with acid-free mat and backing or $600 framed. I have a pretty good connection for framing so let me know if you’re interested in framing one of these. I can get something pretty snazzy at a good price ;).
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Connections – Ruberto Ostberg Gallery
June 16, 2011
I’ve been accepted into the annual, juried show at Ruberto Ostberg Gallery in Calgary, Canada. The show runs from June 17th to July 9th. The opening reception will be happening Friday, June 17th 5-9pm (tomorrow). I plan to steal away for an hour or two from helping my wife, owner and operator of Sketch Art Supplies, cover her booth at The Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo which opens on the same day (tomorrow). I’m exhibiting two large-format black and white darkroom silver prints of local Calgary architectural and industrial sites. There will be a lot of artists’ work present so be sure to come check out the show!
Ruberto Ostberg Gallery, 2108 18th Street N.W., Calgary AB, T2M 3T3, 403-289-3388
