SG said:
The
main problem I have had with the SA-21 is when the end frames of the
strip have been badly bent over by the processing lab while cutting the
film, there was no choice but to use the FH-3 to get a good scan. I won't
be using the lab in question again
Quite frankly, that sort of film handling is disgraceful and I am not at
all surprised at your decision, but I hope you demanded compensation,
even if it was only limited to the cost of processing & replacement film
by their terms and conditions.
Unfortunately, the average man-in-the-street does not value negatives at
all - "isn't that just the old film they give back so they don't have to
dispose of it?". Consequently a lot of poor handling never gets
reported, so they never put the corrective measures in place to avoid
its repetition.
I find the FH-3 a real pain to accurately place the strip and then not
have it move as you close the holder, the more curled the strip the harder
this is. Also you have to be careful moving the metal sleeve to change
frames, unless you hold the plastic halves firmly together one can move
with the metal sleeve and at the very least you will have to reposition
the film all over again (and hope it wasn't scratched in the process).
The FH-3 (and its FH-2 & 1 predecessors) certainly won't win any
ergonomic awards, but once you get used to it, the problems you refer to
are easily avoided. The procedure I use for the FH-3 is to move the
plastic insert so that frames 2 and 5 are visible in the apertures of
the outer case before opening it (ie. one frame extends out of either
end). Unclip the two ends of the plastic insert from each half, which
requires a slight twisting motion, and then open the outer case. With
the lower half placed on a clean flat surface, place the film strip on
the holder and fold the upper half over, clipping the outer case closed.
Finally, clip the two halves of the plastic insert together at the end -
this is important to avoid both the problem that you have experienced
above and, I suspect, the problem you refer to below.
Strange, I had never noticed any top/bottom crop with the SA-21, but there
is a clear left/right crop from the frame dividers on my FH-3.
If you use a camera which does not provide a 100% image on the focus
screen, which means all but a few top range models, then the top &
bottom crop of the SA-21 probably isn't an issue. If you do have such a
camera and frame accurately at the time the image is taken, then the
problem is very obvious and irritating.
The figures I gave in the previous post came from the SA-21, MA-20 and
FH-3 specifications. I have measured the aperture on my FH-3 and it is
exactly 24x36mm +/- 0.025mm, compliant with the specifications of both
the FH-3 and a standard 35mm frame. There are two possibilities for the
width cropping that you are observing.
The first is that your camera is producing images slightly wider than
the 36mm width of a standard 35mm frame. Since the frames are placed 8
sprocket holes apart, which corresponds to 38mm, the standard sized
frame should leave a 2mm border between adjacent frames. Some cameras,
not many though, have a slightly wider film gate, reducing this border,
however even those that do don't show the extra width in the viewfinder,
so you won't use that extra frame width to compose the image with. The
limit of course is a 38mm wide frame, which means that each frame of a
film strip has no border between that and the next frame. Check your
film strips and see if your camera is producing standard 35mm frames -
its easiest to see just looking at the frame gap - it should be around
75% of the gap between sprocket holes. If this is the case then the
problem is that the camera doesn't fully comply with 35mm conventions,
so the compliant FH-3 has to crop some image that shouldn't be there in
the first place and probably wasn't there on the display you composed
the image with.
The second possibility, and the more likely, is that the two halves of
the inner section of FH-3 haven't been clipped together properly as
described above, causing the mask between frames to appear larger than
it actually is, since the mask on the top half obscures some of the
frame on the bottom half and vice versa. Ensuring the two parts a
properly clipped together should avoid this possibility.
For the SA-21, if you scan the full active area at 4000ppi using a clear
film strip (completely fogged slide film or unexposed negative film)
then you get a 37.8x25.1mm image with 3946x5959 pixels. However, the
top and bottom of that image are masked by the SA-21 - as well as the
left hand corners. Cropping the image to avoid the masked area results
in a 37.0 x 23.4mm image with 5825x3686 pixels. This is slightly wider
than the standard size of a 35mm frame, but not as high - hence it crops
standard width 35mm films. However it will only crop extremely overwide
frames and that might be why you don't see any width crop with this
adapter but do with the FH-3. However the FH-3 is the only adapter
which is fully compatible with the 35mm spec.
The big problem I have with the MA-20/FH-3 combination is that as most
of the weight of the FH-3 is hanging out of the scanner, it droops down.
If the scanner is standing vertically then the spring in my MA-20 is
not strong enough to hold the FH-3 parallel to the scanning plane and the
scans are not in focus across the whole image. If you turn the scanner
on its side then the FH-3 still droops as it is not a tight enough fit
into the MA-20, the result is scans that are in focus across the image
but rotated slightly.
To be honest, this isn't something I have noticed. I don't use the
LS-4000ED on its side, having seen exactly the rotation problem you
describe on older Nikon scanners. However I have never had any problems
with the film plane being rotated out of the plane of focus when it is
used upright and this should be much more obvious in the LS-4000 I use
than it is on a Coolscan-IV.
In fact, looking at the combination in front of me just now, it requires
quite a lot of pressure on the FH-3 to cause the film plane to rotate
against the springs and lift off of the lower reference guides in the
MA-20. At a guess, probably 10x the weight of the entire FH-3 suspended
from its end, or about 100x the torque provided by the difference
between the part of the FH-3 internal to scanner and that left
overhanging it.
What is obvious on inspection though, is that the springs in the MA-20
are somewhat less than robust, being part of the injection moulded upper
part of the ABS plastic assembly. If the springs have been overstressed
beyond their elastic limit (possibly by inserting a slide when one is
already present) or the two halves of the MA-20 are not properly clipped
together then insufficient force would be available to keep the FH-3 in
the plane of focus, resulting in the problem you describe.
The upshot? Well I'm none too impressed with either solution and that
is putting me off upgrading my CS-IV to one of the new Nikon scanners.
It might be worth buying, or borrowing, another MA-20 to be sure that
this isn't the problem. They are not expensive - B&H stock them at
$18.95 which is well below the £17.95 VAT exemption limit for UK
imports.
My currently workflow is to use the SA-21 and take advantage of the
batch scanning. If I get an image which it doesn't work well with it
(like the bent end frames) then I fall back to the FH-3 and accept I
will have to fix the rotation afterwards.
I use a similar approach for different reasons - vertical crop. ;-)
