Optimum Resolution & Sharpening Settings for Epson Scanners

How to get the most out of your Epson V700, V750, V800 or V850

Have you ever wondered what would be the best settings for your scans with an Epson flatbed scanner? Well, there are two ways of getting those values and one of them is a s simple as reading this blog post. I did some testing with an USAF 1951 resolution target and I will share my findings with you. These settings work great on my scanner, with my mounting solution and chances are that they work for your flatbed scanner as well. Of course the optimal way of doing it, is investing some time and money and do your own tests. In this blog post I will explain what is required to do the tests and provide you with the link to some more detailed explanations. So it is totally up to you if you want to do your own tests or play around with my settings and see if they work for you.

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Epson Scan Tutorial for Color Negative FILM

Epson´s consumer scanners all come with "Epson Scan", a scanning software for all needs. Many scanner operators however tend to use third party software for their scanning tasks. Today I will show you how to get good results from Epson Scan, but I will also try to elaborate the drawback of Epson Scan and why Silverfast will give you even better results in the end.

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Scanning Example - Castro Night Shot

After my video tutorial in the last post, I thought a short follow up post with a detailed example would be helpful. So, no video today, but some further explanations on how I scanned the photograph below. But just in case you have missed the video, I highly recommend going back and watch it. It will give you a good overview of all the tasks required during the scanning process.

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Scanning Color Negative Film

I always wanted to write about scanning color negative film. Now I was finally able to put together this site with lots of useful information to get started with scanning color film. The main part of this section is the video tutorial that can be found below.

While positive film seems so much easier to scan, obviously you can see the positive image already, it seems some kind of mystery to scan print film. The first thing you hear is, that you cannot get accurate results due to the orange mask. The orange mask and the fact that the image is inverted are of course two complications we have to deal with, but these challenges are not as complicated as you might think. The biggest problem is that we need to accept the fact that there is no accurate or "correct" scan that we retrieve from the scanner. Even during darkroom printing all prints were interpretations. The old Ansel Adams quote about the score and the performance is also true for color film. Once you have accepted this, you are good to go!

Make you own scans, your own interpretations, give the scans your artistic voice. That is what makes home scanning so fascinating.

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Scanning Negative Film with Silverfast - Introduction

Introduction

When I started scanning film, I thought it would be an easy process. I severely underestimated the learning curve required to become a good scanner operator. I intentionally use this term, as it precisely describes what you do when scanning film. Beyond the basic operation of the scanner and software, you need to make basic artistic decision when scanning, similar to those made by master printers in the traditional darkroom.

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