Scanning negatives

[LesR]

You know what it's like, when people know you are into photography everyone in the family gives you all the old negatives.
I have an Epson 4870 photo scanner with carriers and was wondering if there are any books or general information someone could point me towards that could be of use for settings etc before I start wading throught 100's of negatives and then find I need to start again.
Thanks

Les

[Malcolm_Stewart]

I've had one of these for a few years, and I must have done thousands of scans, from A4 documents etc., through 5" x 4" film, down to 35mm and smaller. It's probably the best scanner I've used, but it can take time getting to know where it's fighting against you. (Laws against imaging banknotes etc.)

My first recommendation is to get it into the "Pro" mode when starting up so that you are in control of the settings. I installed Silverfast which came on the CD, but it's of little use for my material, and I don't use it any more.

For 35mm slides and negs, I normally scan at 2400 or 4800, and for larger negs etc. at appropriately lower resolutions. (4800 is the optical resolution of the scanner - anything higher is interpolated) If I'm doing 35mm negs in strips, the batch mode works quite well - get back if you don't know how to activate it.

[LesR]

Thanks Malcolm, I'll give it a go.

Les

[Wheelu]

This is probably obvious to anyone with a grain of sense but it took me a while to realise that you can get on with processing images in PS while your scanner grafts away in the background. Just set it running, make a cuppa, by which time the first image should be ready to process.

I have also experimented with Silverfast and returned to Epson's own software while I would agree with the recommendation to us the so called Pro settings.

Further, turn off all of the bells and whistles, i.e. dust removal, grain reduction and unsharp mask - the benefits do not outweigh the shortcomings. Just use the scanner for scanning and sort out the rest in PS or equivalent.

Have fun!

[LesR]

Thanks "Wheelu" I will.

Les

[LargeFormat]

Further, turn off all of the bells and whistles, i.e. dust removal, grain reduction and unsharp mask - the benefits do not outweigh the shortcomings. Just use the scanner for scanning and sort out the rest in PS or equivalent.

I use the Epson 4990 for medium and large format and a Coolscan 5000 for 35mm. I'm afraid I don't agree with Wheelu about turning off ICE. By all means turn off the others but getting rid of dust in PS will keep you going for ever. I've tried everything to ensure my film is clean but nothing really works. ICE slows down the scanning but it's a heck of a lot quicker than touching up in PS.

[Rupert49]

Further, turn off all of the bells and whistles, i.e. dust removal, grain reduction and unsharp mask - the benefits do not outweigh the shortcomings. Just use the scanner for scanning and sort out the rest in PS or equivalent.

Totally agree ... I do exactly the same with my V500. PS makes the 'bells & whistles' side of things really easy to do these days, and after all it's the quality of the 'raw' image that needs to be as good as you can get it.

[LesR]

Thank you all for your help.

Les