Well I don’t use FB for social networking but I relented and started loggiing in again to see the forums ‘Negative Lab Pro’, ‘Digitizing film with a digital camera’ and ‘Digital Scan tools’. Lots of good information but it can be hard to find, much of it from several years ago. Yes, they were taping it although someone was using a Digitaliza holder on spacers.
Hi,
I don’t know if this has already been mentioned here but on the off chance it hasn’t I’ll add this:
Flatbed scanners like the Epson, upon startup, perform a lightsource calibration with the backlight in order to “homogenize” the illumination. If there is any debris or smudges on the calibration area(the uppermost portion of the glass, where the carriers have a cutout) then that would totally cause the kind of banding that you are observing. I would rule this out as a cause before you start disassembling/modding your flatbed.
2 Likes
Hi everyone. Firstly thanks to mightimatti (grazie, immagino tu sia italiano) for the replay. I’ve always tried to keep the flatbed clean, including the calibration part.
Now, I’ve tried the 1 mm acrylic sheet on top of another, the results are slightly better but the bends remain, I tried 1 mm sheet on top of the Fluid mount Epson holder: results are worse in terms of bends. At this point I think the problem is the interaction of the led light source with any type of transparency that’s put on top of the flatbed, the thinner the better but it doesn’t eliminate the problem.
One thing I’ve learned is that acrylic sheet behave better than glass ones, so don’t waste money on museum glass, the negative holds better and even with 1 mm it stays flat and they’re faster to clean.
A solution might be the diffusion thing Harry mentioned, might be worth joining FB again (
), or just sell the damn thing!
i’m posting the captured screenshots of the prescans I did in Silverfast where you can see the results:
1 mm sheet on top of Musem glass;
1 mm sheet on top of Fluid mount holder;
1 mm sheet on top of etched glass;
1 mm sheet on top of 1 mm sheet.
If you have any other ideas I’m all ears.
To be honest for me I can’t really see what’s going on in those latest screenshots but from what you say the stripes don’t go away and presumably are always in the same position on the bed, and in line with the direction of travel down the scanner bed? It’s true that this might also have been caused by the calibration area but something about the regularity suggests that something else is happening. I think you have always used two sheets of either acrylic or glass, certainly in these last tests you have, so that suggests to me that there is some kind of ‘prismatic interference’ going on though I just invented that term and wouldn’t want to explain it.The fluid mount accessory would only be used with an acetate/mylar sheet and if you had been able to lay the negatives on the scanner glass then again there might only be a single sheet on top holding it flat.
I definitely think that FB forum is worth a look somehow.
Harry, if you click the single screenshots I’ve posted you’ll notice the stripes in the white area of the scan itself. The most visibile ones are viewed in the “Etched + 1 mm” screenshot, the least visible are in the “1 mm” screenshot (the one with only one sheet of 1 mm acrylic on top), don’t focus on the negative, focus on the white empty space.
I’m not certain if the stripes are always at the same exact position but they are without a doubt always vertical and interfere with the whole scan bed that has a transparency on top (glass or acrylic).
What I’ve noticed yesterday is that even with an empty scan bed surface, there will be ever so slightly darker stripes, that is why the “led issue” might be worth a look.
Thanks, I’ll download them and have a proper look. Right now there’s a discussion on the FB “Negative Lab Pro” forum about the respective benefits of acrylic sheet over ANR glass. In particular that acrylic attracts dust and scratches extremely easily. Someone has posted there that he has been using a sandwich of 2 sheets of anti-reflective picture framing glass, matt sides towards the negative and raised slightly above the bed. This is with a V850 and he’s been doing it for 3 years (!). Could there be something wrong with your scanner I wonder?
Could you maybe do a full scan of your transparency area with nothing on the bed but exposed to give a mid-tone. Then take a look in youur favourite software, invert, boost the contrast etc
I do exactly the sandwich method with the two sheets of framing glasses (two types, two chemically etched sheets or two museum grade anti reflective transparent ones). I didn’t noticed it up until I started photographing black and white landscape (with a lot of neutral sky on them). I entered the FB group and it seems that it’s an inherited flatbed structural problem. The solution it seems is opening the lid and taping a strip of diffusion type white filter on top of the led arm that moves. This should eliminate the problem. I’ll try and let you guys know.
I’m wondering whether the brand of museum glass makes a difference. Are you using Tru Vue Museum glass? I have tried their product and find it very good.
As for wet mounting, which may still be the “gold standard”, you don’t need to use messy material that is hard to clean afterward. You can use film cleaner. You need to work quickly with it because it evaporates, but that’s the whole idea. It keeps the film flat while it’s still wet, but once it evaporates there is no mess and nothing to clean.
Oh - and I should add: Schott also makes an anti-Newton glass, which while expensive, is also excellent.
1 Like
I was told by my (very knowledgeable) film guy that it’s the scanner. I too had that issue with my V850 and he said they switched from a tume illumination to LEDs on the 850 and it’s the uneven illumination that causes that banding. It was worse for me on thin negatives. I eventually switched to camera scanning
1 Like
Mark: yes, I’ve tried using isopropyl alcohol, for me it’s just too much of a hussle. I guess I could try again and see if the problem remains. If I remember correct the transparent one I use (not the chemically etched one) is a True Vue.
mnboore: no doubt about that. Maybe the V 700/750 with their fluorescent tube illumination might be a better solution.
…P.S. Mark knows the Epson V850 very well, he wrote a review on it for Luminous Landscape when it came out in 2015. That is behind a subscriber paywall now but I hope he doesn’t mind me posting this link that I came across:
Also this thread on DPReview might be relevant, “Dry scan with Epson Fluid Mount Accessory”
Oh what an incredible work! Thanks Harry for letting me know and thanks to Mark for the dedication.
I’ve actually find my preferred method. I dry scan with two sheets of museum glass and I find it quick and somehow satisfying (on this regard I had found a post somewhere by a photograph which name I don’t remember that used this method and from which I took the inspiration, if I find the link I will post it). The only problem are the bands that occur. As I said to Mark, I could try with the fluid mount again, although i find it more tedious, largely because fine positioning a 3 shoot 6x7 film strip in order to get all of the 3 shoots is not always easy. Once the film is flat and sandwiched between fluid mount, liquid and glass it’s difficult to move around, a problem I have eliminated by simply dry mounting it. Glass quality might be a factor (undoubtedly as light produced by the led source must travel through it but honestly I have no idea where to get better ones here in Italy without breaking the bank, Mark I don’t know who Schott is unfortunately), a bad V850 also might be the case (surely though it must be a big batch 'cause I’m not the only one having the problem), but my uneducated theory is that this is a structural problem. Maybe not always occurring, maybe not always noticeable, but a structural one none the less. Maybe through optimum non reflective high quality super fancy ANR glass it can be reduced. It would be interesting to do a side by side comparison with a V750, but I don’t think I can find one in my vicinity.
A note of color: yesterday evening I was looking to the Italian Wikipedia page of Ansel’s f/64 group. There is his Church, Taos Pueblo, New Mexico shot from 1942. I don’t know if it was scanned as negative and then digitized or what but it has the same goddamned bands! 
1 Like
Hi guys. Hope you doing alright. I finally found the time to make the mod suggested in the FB’s Epson group by our saver, mr. Stephanus Christian Eka Adisetya. It seems that the banding problem is caused by uneven led lightning. I don’t know if all the V850 (might be interesting to do some surveys with a V750 that it’s not run by led) have the same problem or some are fortunate enough to never encounter these pesky things. A lot have manifested the problem though.
The solution, as anticipated from Harry, is finding a way to diffuse the led light by applying some kind of diffuser. Mr. Adisetya suggested a Lee Colour Filter 250 H.W. Diffuser, I followed the suggestion and found one: if you are in Europe like me, in Thomann.de website (link). I applied the diffuser onto the led strip by opening the lid (easy 6-7 screws) and taping it directly there.
Thanks to everyone and I hope, for those that have my same problem, to find this thread. Bye.
Brilliant that you’ve resolved it, not that brilliant of Epson though, a Quality Control issue perhaps instead of a design fault. I have a feeling that if it had occurred with the (non LED) V700/750 models then we’d all know about it by now.
1 Like
Absolutely agree. Unacceptable from Epson, not for the cost and not if it’s publicized as a tool for professional photographers for digitizing their negative collection.