I’ve spent a lot of time recently trying to improve my scanning technique. I’m fortunate to have both an Epson flatbed V700 scanner and a Nikon 9000 ED medium format film scanner. The Epson produces acceptable scans for everyday use and it is much faster than the Nikon. It has fixed focus and the scans are never really sharp. Don’t use a flatbed to judge the quality of your camera! The Nikon is in a different league. It focuses on the grain of each negative. The only thing that could make it sharper is even flatter film. To get the best from it I use a glass carrier with AN glass on the top. It comes with masks for MF film but not 35mm film. Nikon to their shame stopped supporting the Nikon Scan software some time ago. It doesn’t work with 64 bit Vista or later Windows. A search on the web finds a good fix which is easy to implement and then it works just fine with MF film. The 35mm glassless carrier is OK with flat film but not so good with curvy film like Ilford HP5. I use the glass carrier for scanning 35mm film but the Nikon Scan software doesn’t work for this so I use Vuescan. Vuescan is a good but quirky programme which works with just about any scanner and any version of Windows. It took me ages to work out how to use it but now it is fine.
Epson Scan works well and is good for scanning a whole film quickly. 35mm is pretty much automatic. Odd sizes like my square Robot pictures or XPan panoramas are easy to do. I load up four negative strips into the holder and preview the lot. Then quickly draw boxes around each frame. It is important to get the crop box within the negative otherwise the auto exposure doesn’t work properly. With practice this takes less than five minutes. Then I scan the lot – no more than 2400 dpi and even 1200 dpi is as good as you are likely to get. It can then be left scanning by itself whilst I do something else. Afterwards I load up the last two strips and repeat. All done and the quality is just fine for the web, FlickR and review.
Then over to the Nikon. For the very best scans I load the negs into the glass holder. I have cut accurate masks for 24×36 and for my Robot 24×24 negs. If I do any of my XPans again I will cut a mask for those too. I use Ann’s CraftRobo cutter to cut the masks. This makes a neat and precise mask and makes it very easy to use with VueScan. Masks are an unfortunate imperative. Sure you can do the scan without one but more often than not there will be irritating lines at the edges and the whole scan has a slightly uneven appearance. This is especially noticeable for light snow scenes where an unmasked scan is simply unusable in my experience.
If you have trouble cutting a mask then I’m happy to do masks for any size negs for a nominal sum to cover costs and postage say £10 per mask. You lose a tiny bit of negative at the edges but the improvement in scan quality is amazing. TMax or Acros 100 reveal detail right up to the full 4000 dpi available with the Nikon. I’ll give more details another time about how I use VueScan with the Nikon to scan my Robot Royal square negs. I’ll post photos of the masks in use.
Some essential points I have found to scan a good monochrome negative with the Nikon 9000. First is to remember that most changes in the scan are done afterwards in the software. Essential to get a good focus – choose the point carefully. Mask the negative – this can’t be managed afterwards. Just about everything else can. Before you save the scan, make sure it is scanning as a colour slide/positive. For some reason this will give a better tonal range without losing shadows or highlights. Believe me its worth the extra step afterwards. Adjust the histogram in the scanning software to just match the full tonal range and no more. Crop the scan before you do any of this to just smaller than the mask (remember that when you take the picture!). Then save (in greyscale to reduce image size). You then need to invert the image in the image processing software such as PS or lightroom.
