For most flatbed scanners, the focus is fixed and their DOF is such that they can easily accommodate a mm or two of film curvature. For best results, a glass plate works well to hold the negative flat, with the caveat that the glass itself must be extremely clean and the thinner the better to prevent optical effects. You have to be careful that the shiny side of the film (opposite the emulsion side) is not in contact with polished glass (ANR glass is best, but expensive).
My film scanning rig for medium format and Minox is a glass plate hinged over a channel which I made from a couple of pieces of 300gsm paper and taped into position on my flat panel light box. This nets about a 0.8mm high channel through which the film can be drawn The light box's panel is not glossy so I capture the negs with the emulsion side up, preventing all Newton rings, and flip them for correct orientation in image processing. The captures are all made using raw mode on the camera which nets the greatest flexibility in tonal capture and editability. With my usual copy camera setup (Leica CL and one of two or three Leica R lenses that I find useful) this nets a 24 Mpixel image (at the limit, depending upon format proportions and/or how much 'slop space' I want to have to make centering the negative in post accurate. If find this to be quite good enough for most any size prints or web presentations I have in mind, even if it's nowhere near what the Nikon Super Coolscan 9000ED scanner could resolve from a 6x6 cm negative (and more than it could resolve from a Minox negative!). I can use the same setup for 35mm film formats but there I find the Nikon Coolscan V ED is still a better choice, since it makes handling lots of frames semi-automatic (set up a six frame strip, then say "scan" and walk away for 20 minutes while it works and outputs both VueScan TIFF and raw files at the same time). It's not much different time-wise for setup, just a bit more time consuming to do the actual scanning with the carriers I have. One key thing is that with the Nikon I have the APS film scanning carrier, and it's the only way I can scan APS film without destroying the film cassette. For the little APS film that I have to scan, it proves to be a plus to see it retrieved nicely. For Minox and Disk Camera formats, the negatives are indeed teensy so I go to the Leica Summicron-R 50mm or Macro-Elmarit-R 60mm fitted to the bellows and have to rack out a 2.5x to 3x magnification for a decent capture. Holding the Disk film is pain, I made a little jig with a small C clamp to hold the film from the center hub, but luckily the disk itself is rigid and doesn't need to be flattened or clamped. I only did Disk once or twice, my brother had one of those cameras, and it is really very difficult to get any quality out of those tiny negatives. Minox negs are only a tiny bit larger but the MInox lenses have all be of superlative quality and the film is much, much easier to handle, making getting decent results out of them far easier. Fun fun fun... I have the last rolls of both Minox C and Hasselblad 500CM film sitting on my desk to scan today. It's somewhat amusing: the aggregate film area of a roll of 36 exposure Minox film is about equal to one frame from the Hasselblad... The whole roll of Minox frames is only 32 square mm larger than one 6x6cm film negative. :) G > On Dec 16, 2019, at 8:21 AM, John <jsessoms...@nc.rr.com> wrote: > > On 12/13/2019 21:00:07, jco...@iinet.net.au wrote: >> I have the Epson V500: when my mother reached her 100th. birthday in 2018, >> my brother and I scanned all of her negatives, ranging in size from 1.5inches >> square to 6x9cm and going back in time to the 1900's. We were unable to scan >> the >> 110 size negs as the scanner's holders can't really hold them flat enough. >> The >> scanner did an excellent job (I have to confess we used the Epson software >> for >> this job!) overall, even with some really flat and mushy originals: makes me >> think some early cheap cameras really did have bottle-bottoms for a lens. > > > > John in Brisbane > > > > > > > > When I was in school we just used a piece of glass to hold paper flat while > exposing it. I wonder if that would work to hold negatives flat on the > scanner bed? > > Maybe cut out an appropriate sized hole in a piece of black construction > paper to fit the 110 negatives and hold both down with the sheet of glass? > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
