Have you actually done this? If there are no problems with the scanner
being on it's side during use, it could certainly help with a wet
scanning scheme.
Yes. I have no idea if it will function forever though.
Like I said, I keep my slides in strips rather than cut and mounted as
individual slides, so I was hoping to come up with a way to wet mount
the full strips. Some of the ideas I've been thinking about include
using custom cut glass, or maybe using mylar instead.
That was not quite what you said:
In my case most of my film is in the form of unmounted slides
But you are right: when you mentioned the strip holder i should have
understood ;-)
I have no solution for this.
I would keep my film in strips of 6 as much as possible. Both for
filing and for scanning in the future. Keep them in sleeves in a
binder (3-hole in the US an 4-hole in the rest of the world). The
film will be or become very very flat. Mounted slides take up a lot of
space.
Nikon's SA-21 for the Coolscan holds filmstrips pretty flat - at least
for frames 2 to 5. The first and the last have it much harder when the
film is curled.
Then again the wet mounting method would only be of use for some
images only. It would be too time consuming to treat every slide this
way IMO. So for those you could still decide to cut some of the
strips.
Mylar film was sometimes used over an LF slide or over multiple 35mm
slides on a drum. It would not be very useful without a supporting
glass or perspex surface underneath.
I've considered the Coolscan 5000 too. It's hard to justify the cost
of switching since I have the FS400 already and it does a descent job .
I just had to: on a job a client wanted about 2000 pictures by the end
of the month. The prepress shop we had to use only could do about 25
or 30 a day (on their drum scanner). In that month were a lot of
holidays. There were huge waiting lists for both wide angle lenses and
digital camera's. So out of pure panic I decided to run 2 scanners
side by side on two computers. (I still had to shoot about a quarter
of the pictures.) But after about three days I stopped using the Canon
and did only postprocessing on that machine. I scanned and processed
little over 1000 slides in the following 10 days and made the
deadline.
Postprocessing time dropped dramatically with the use of the Nikon.
The noise in the shadow areas in the Canon scans required masking and
extra noise reduction for each frame. I could totally skip that with
the Nikon. Velvia is of course pretty contrasty, so there would always
be too much shadow in every slide ;-)
Canon Get gets around the noise problem by clipping most of the shadow
tone. Vuescan does a great job in bringing out shadow detail in the
Canon scans, but the alignment of the Canon's IR channel is a bit hit
and/or miss. Vuescan long had big problems with it. Hamrick
definetively had access to a FS4000 as we corresponded over this. The
problem was mainly the spread among the units. But alignment on one
unit could also be inconsistent. Probably because of heat, but there
may be other structural causes. The basic problem is that the Canon
uses an extra pass for the IR cleaning af course. Nikon uses only a
single pass, which makes it both faster and far more, no: perfectly
accurate.
I must admit Vuescan does a good job considering the problems the
Canon technique poses.
But the differences you cite are pretty much the same as I've read, so
I appreciate the real world experience. The relatively greater depth
of field on the Canon is something I can vouch for as I've never really
had much of a problem with focus over the full frame. It's something
that would be hard to give up. On the other hand, the greater speed of
the Nikon and the claimed improvement in shadow performance are very
attractive too. Can you comment about the difference in shadow detail
and noise? Do you consider it to be a major difference, just barely
noticeable, or maybe somewhere in between?
Very noticeable.
Time; noise and better IR cleaning would all be enough reason on their
own to upgrade. Said in hindsight. But the Nikon has some issues of
it's own.
Noise and cleaning can more or less be repaired in postprocessing.
So if time is no issue at all and you are very well versed in
Photoshop you could keep the Canon.
The issues -or my gripes- with the Nikon have all to do with flatness
and focus. If there is grain in my picture I want it to be even from
corner to corner. And though Velvia has a very low grain index, it
does look grainy when scanned on a desktop scanner.
Part of that is peppergrain.
If a slide is partly out of focus it will start showing Chromatic
Aberration (CA) in contrasty lines or even spots. I use wide angle and
extreme wide angle lenses a lot so I am used to it. It is possible to
deal with some of it in postprocessing. But when it gets nasty is when
it starts to affect the IR cleaning. I must admit I only saw that with
Vuescan.
The lens of the Nikon or the whole system of the Nikon seems more
prone to CA than the Canon. I wish I had done the same tests on the
Canon, so I would be sure. The same goes for flare. I had it cleaned
within a month and there was no difference at all.
NikonScan's cleaning feature worked better than Vuescan's on
(slightly) out of focus parts of the image. (I used versions 8.1.xx
and the earlier 8.2.xx of VS. It may have been improved: have a look
at the recent version notes.)
So have you actually done wet mounting with either of these scanners?
If so I would love to hear more about your experiences, recommended
fluids, etc.
Yes with both. I used Kami fluid on the Canon. Mainly to repair some
havily damaged negatives and slides. And just for a bit of testing as
well. There may have been a slight difference in grain, but not a lot.
The problem is: I was not looking for that then and I do not have that
scans here.
There was a huge improvement in regard to scratches and dirt.
I had used wet mounting of 4x5's on my Microtek flatbeds and got some
Kami fluid for that.
With the Nikon I had no access to Kami fluid anymore and I tried to
emulate that with all the usual oils one has around the house. Kami
smells slightly of citrus as I recalled, so I tried both PCA, a
natural citrus peel based cleaner from the graphics workshop, and Goo
Gone which is a petroleum distillate based household cleaner here in
the US. Well I can now say: both are no Kami fluid ;-)
Simple very light uncoloured oil, like used to lubricate a sewing
machine or rasor works reasonably well for experiments.
True Kami Fluid has no bubbles and cleans much better afterwards.
I started experimenting on the Nikon when I could not get some slides
in focus in one go. There are software solutions for merging pictures
with different focus, but for scans this is not perfect. With
additional focusing between scans you have a lot of alignment
problems, much worse than with multiple scans at the same focus.
(If you ever try multiple scanning: remember to focus by hand. Old
darkroom hands know about popping and preheating.)
With the Canon I never had problems with alignment of the slide or
negative in relation to the sensor. (Or I never noticed.) That is
because the stage for the holder is a structural part of the unit.
With the Nikon you do not only have different holders, but different
stages as well.
So I started out with calibrating a couple of slide mounts and a FH-3
to the MA 21. When I still got no sharpness from centre to corner I
used glass mounts. But the anti-newton grain of the glass showed up.
Ordinary glass would have Newton rings. Indeed it did.
Interestingly I noticed a slight improvement of the peppergrain issue
with wet mounted slides. I did some experimenting with regular glass
as used in antique glass only slide mounts, both underneath and/or on
top. I stopped because of the mess. And decided to find myself a small
bottle of Kami somewhere.
They sell it by 6 big bottles only; one bottle may last you a
lifetime. AFAIK it is the only scanning fluid left on the market. Just
as well, because it was by far the best: I remember learning it with
ordinary oil when I was in school in the early eighties and I always
made a mess of it.
For most scan jobs I now use the FH-2 or FH-3 with the MA-21. For
difficult slides I use specially picked, filed-out and calibrated Gepe
mounts. I take two grey frames without glass from the ones with glass
on top and no glass underneath. They have a metal insert, which I file
out a bit. They will snap together very tightly and will hold a slide
as flat as possible.
With perfectly flat strips, I use the SA-21.
I mostly scan using NikonScan. It takes care of the IR cleaning and
does away with some of the peppergrain. For some scans I use Vuescan
as a processor of raw scans (as raw as Nikon Scan is capable of). Some
go directly to Photoshop.
Having said all this, I must admit I have put scanning on hold at the
moment, though I still have a ton of slides to go.
The main reason is the Ds1mkII that is in my bag ;-)
If you think that is the end of all worries, google on *sensor
cleaning* ;-)
regards, wim
