trouble with 35mm negative alignment in Epson 4490

[JJ]

Recently picked up an Epson 4490. Although it seems to be scanning photos
ok, I am having trouble getting it to align properly on 35 mm color
negatives. I place the negatives into the holder exactly as in the
instructions. There might be 5 negatives per stripe. The first one
generally aligns ok, but by the third there is a separation between the
third/ fourth negatives. Just to see what would happen, I took one of the
color negative strips and cut it up into its 5 parts and scanned
individually. Worked fine that way. However, I have LOTS of negatives I'm
trying to scan into digital and I don't like the idea of having to cut them
up. These color negatives are from the 1950's- 70's and they are clean.
Any fixes or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
JJ

[Alan Browne]

Do you mean that it's not lining up on the edges of the actual frames?

Are they otherwise "square"?

Can you post (downsized) copies of the okay and problem images?

[JJ]

Thanks, Alan. Here's an example of a poor turnout:

http://www.imagebam.com/image/929aed61924112

Of course, I blotted out the faces, but you can see the vertical negative
separation line and the software doesn't seem able to differentiate between
the negatives properly. These are typical of the negatives I'm trying to
convert from the 1960's-80's.

Thanks in advance for any help,
JJ

"Alan Browne" <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote in message
news:bLadnUceF8WjeaHW...@giganews.com...

[Alan Browne]

That's way off!

I should have suggested this earlier, a better NG is actually
comp.periphs.scanners
I would bet this is covered under groups.google.com for the NG above.
eg, don't just post the problem, search the google repository.

[Charles E Hardwidge]

"JJ" <JJ...@eroltz.net> wrote in message
news:hhj5ns$lpu$1...@news.eternal-september.org...

> Thanks, Alan. Here's an example of a poor turnout:
>
> http://www.imagebam.com/image/929aed61924112
>
> Of course, I blotted out the faces, but you can see the vertical negative
> separation line and the software doesn't seem able to differentiate
> between the negatives properly. These are typical of the negatives I'm
> trying to convert from the 1960's-80's.

This is just a wild assed guess but the separation crawl looks like the
software is expecting a different size. Read through the link and see if it
gives you any pointers, or try the demo of Vuescan and see if you get a
different result.

http://www.betterscanning.com/scanning/batchscanning.html

--
Charles E Hardwidge

[JJ]

"Charles E Hardwidge" <bo...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:089%m.20755$Ym4....@text.news.virginmedia.com...

Thanks for this link. The information there seemed to get the ball rolling
for me. Turns out these are non-standard negative sizes, so I had to
manually draw the box around each one but I can save this as a template
which makes future scans quicker.

About the only faults I see with this scanner are noise and being slow. The
Neat Image plug-in for Photoshop will take care of the noise, but I don't
think I can speed up the scanner any. Seems to do a lot of warm-up time for
film negatives.

Thanks again for this helpful info,
JJ

> Charles E Hardwidge

[Charles E Hardwidge]

"JJ" <JJ...@eroltz.net> wrote in message

news:hhju0i$82b$1...@news.eternal-september.org...

> "Charles E Hardwidge" <bo...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
> news:089%m.20755$Ym4....@text.news.virginmedia.com...

>> http://www.betterscanning.com/scanning/batchscanning.html

>>
>
> Thanks for this link. The information there seemed to get the ball
> rolling for me. Turns out these are non-standard negative sizes, so I had
> to manually draw the box around each one but I can save this as a template
> which makes future scans quicker.
>
> About the only faults I see with this scanner are noise and being slow.
> The Neat Image plug-in for Photoshop will take care of the noise, but I
> don't think I can speed up the scanner any. Seems to do a lot of warm-up
> time for film negatives.

The link was a bitch to find but I'm glad it got sorted. Always a pleasure
to show Alan Browne up as a book smart pseud.

You could try experimenting with averaging multiple scans in Photoshop to
get rid of the noise. If your scanner has accurate gearing and you don't
mind scanning each batch 5+ times it can kill noise and retain detail better
than any noise reduction software.

--
Charles E Hardwidge