[filmscanners] Re: Epson Photo 2450

["" <gannet@jtel.net>]

> I too have the 2450 and am very impressed so far especially for
> the $$$'s..
> Could you elaborate on your method / how-to?? /make those contact
> sheets out
> of 3 strips of 35mm negatives..the holder only uses 2 strips, so I assume
> you are lining them up on directly on the glass..yes??..How about
> placement
> on the scanner..??How about getting the 35mm negs "flat" on the glass??
> Hope you can help..

Sorry I didn't reply to this sooner.

The negs are simply kept in your typical 6-strips-to-a-page VueAll pages.
The pages are laid right on the glass.  I made a cardboard guide that helps
to get the positioning right, and also holds the edges down, but I made
proofs for a while before I had that and the results are the same; the guide
is simply convenient.

Not only do I find this more convenient than doing 2 strips at a time, I
don't have to actually handle the film strips, and I get the emulsion name
and at least one set of frame numbers on each strip.  I find that -very-
handy.

It appears that the depth of field of the scanner is such that flatness is
not an issue.  Note that reflective materials go right on the glass, but the
neg holders raise the negs off the glass, so one would assume that this is
accounted for by the designers.  Of course, it's not a super-sharp scanner
in the first place, so maybe we could say that it's equally-unsharp. :)

Sometimes you get something like a Newton's Ring effect that causes some
distortion or localized color funniness.  Also there are issues on neg films
with light leaks from the strip ends and the sprocket holes.  These cause
localized orange marks, looking not unlike over-agitation.  For proofs, this
simply doesn't bother me.

At 600 dpi, the full 3-strip scan is 37MB at 24-bit.  This is big enough
that a single frame just about fills the screen at 1024x768, and I find that
plenty for proofing.  I scan all the rolls at once, 3 strips at a time,
using the Epson Smartpanel Scan To File feature.  I can do this while eating
dinner or watching TV, and just feeding sheets every few minutes.  Then I
pull them into Photoshop, rotate them and stitch the 2 scans for a roll
together, and save as level-8 JPGs.  This gets the size down to about 3 MB
or less per file.

It's all quite straightforward.

Gannet
St. Petersburg, Florida USA
gannet@jtel.net

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