EPSON V500 / (300, 700) - best techniques

Cobalt60 · Joined: 01 Mar 2007 Posts: 544 Location: Central Europe

Guys,

as I see quite a bunch of you is nowadays using one of those EPSON scanners I tink it's a good idea to collect the "best techniques" in one thread.
So which settings and/or techniques do you use for the best results for 35mm pos/neg/bw ... MF pos/neg?

General rules seems to be to scan at 2800dpi and maximum bit colors, plus what I frequently see is "everything off" (ICE etc) and maybe some "medium sharpening".

Personally until now (using V500) I scan at 2400dpi, tend to have "all off", too, incl sharpening and try to use the histogram in the EPSON soft to do some balancing.

How about you? What about using Vuescan Smile

? Which are your fav settings for the best results?

Katastrofo · Expire: 2013-11-19

I use an Epson 4490 (precursor to the V500) and for 35mm I scan at
2400dpi. USM is set to low (99% of the time) and everything else, off.
48bit color and 16bit greyscale, always, and I generally don't fool with
the histogram but run all scans through Bibble, which makes a TIF file.

Medium format is scanned at 1200dpi, other settings as above.

I'm happy with the OEM software, might experiment with a trial version
of Vuescan to see if there's any improvement. I've talked to folks on
other forums that bought the Vuescan software, but eventually went back
to the OEM software finding the results just as good if not better, and
more user-friendly. I've also seen comments where people find the
Vuescan easy to use and better results, so dunno.

Rolf · Expire: 2015-12-26

I use the V700 mainly for my 6x6 film format. Sometimes for the 35mm too.
I use 4800 dpi and max. number of colours/grey tones, all other standard.
Nothing special.

Scanned files will be edit with my normal PP, like Photoshop or others.

Never used Vuescan or Silverfast with my scanners. Always standard software of the manufacturer (Epson or Nikon)

Wink

Excalibur · Expire: 2014-04-21

Well on my V750 if I want the best quality from 35mm that this scanner (IMO) could achieve, would scan at 4800....using the histogram with the Epson program can cause problems and is a skill to learn, most of the time what Epson chooses works...after scanning it's best to use Photoshop to enhance the shot, but erm that's another skill to learn.

I have Vuescan and silverfast and IMO they are the worst programs I've ever come across for being soooo unfriendly, but some people bother to learn how to use them and like them.

Attila · Expire: 2025-11-18

PaulC · Joined: 23 Dec 2008 Posts: 2318

The scan dpi I use depends on the size I will want the final image to be. You can read that off the bottom of the preview window in MB. The size in MP will be roughly a third if you scan as 8bit TIFFs and a sixth if you scan at 16 bit TIFFs. I generally use 16bit.

I scan to get a considerably larger original than I want. because that means I can clone out dust and other problems more easily before reducing to the desired size, as well as straightening and cropping.

I turn off all the auto options. When I get the preview scan I go to the histogram and pull out all four sliders to rocover the information that the "auto" mode wants to chop off. That gives me a muddy looking preview that then has to be carefully balanced with sliders, curves and the other controls to get the best appearance I can (without cutting more than a very little off the sides of the histogram to boost the blacks and whites a bit).

I also preview scan to show the black edges of the neg and the white of the scanner background. This gives some absolute black and white points, though you may want to ignore those and pull the sliders in to the closest you have to b and w in your actual negative area.

I have no idea if this is the right way to go about it, but it is the best solution I have come up with so far for my V500. It is a fantastic scanner but very, very difficult to master.

koji · Expire: 2012-12-27

In my case (fairly long after I have been doing many things differently)

The scan dpi is 2,400 for 35mm, and 1,200 dpi for 120 film.

I use only "professional mode", all options are off including sharpening.

Scan without any options except EPSON automatically adjust
bottom and top by cutting from pre-scan histogram. I used to pick
widest area to move slider left of the mountain and right of the
mountain. But I do not do this anymore, more PP time required.
I feel sometime I loose some dynamic range of original images,
but I am content with this.

I set to 48 bit colour, into TIFF format. This output is the input
file to the next stage of Capture one (C1) processing.

In here the second stage, I adjust exposure and highlight recovery
done by automatically by C1 and white balance too, though depend.
Also I fix some colour balance slightly in this stage.

C1 is easier to adjust horizontal level, though I have not used
spot elimination, which is designed for Digital Camera dust removal.
(I tested spot elimination, it does not work for dust at the scanning time.)

Default USM is applied by C1, values are 130, 1.3, 1 (%, pixcel, threshold).

C1 generates the final (sort of) JPEG file.

Using C1 as PP is 1) easer to do, 2) all the selected files can be done automatically
(I am lazy), and 3) I used C1 to develop all the DSLR's RAW files. The outputs look
similar or consistent to my eyes.

I use PS(E) mostly cleaning film-dusts by stamping tool, and changing the size
for web uploading. Occasionally use to adjust human skin colour.

I keep .tif files as ORIGINAL (same as RAW file) and .jpg files for viewing/web page.

So scanning part is to get my kind of RAW files. Sorry not helping the best way,
or I have no way or no time to achieve a better method. Scanning is nightmare for me,
so I do not touch any button and tweak some other things on the scanner V700 I use.

peterqd · Expire: 2014-01-04

Very useful thread for me, thanks Cobalt. I've learned quite a few tips to try out.

When I first get the negs back from the lab I usually scan them quickly in auto mode on the V700, basically to use as thumbnails and to select the ones I want to go further with. Auto mode works quite well for "ordinary" shots but it crops quite a chunk off all the edges.

For special pictures I rescan in Prof mode, generally keeping filesizes to about 20MB (top quality jpg), not sure what resolution that would be. I use the preview thumbnails, although I find altering the settings for these is tiresome. When I select more than one I can't adjust the settings so I have to do them one by one. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I have everything turned off including sharpening, and then do all processing in Photoshop.

martinsmith99 · Expire: 2013-11-18

I find moving the 4 sliders out produces a muddy scan full of noise. Now I just drag the bottom sliders out until I get the exposure I want. I scan straight to JPEG as TIFFs take up too much space, slow the PC down when opening in PS and I really can't see the improvement.

Oh, I pretty much only scan B&W negs so I set to greyscale mode.