Photo Scanner Portable
Myra Krallman
I, too, held on to heaps of meaningful photos that added absolutely no value to my life because they were hidden away, and the prospect of dealing with them seemed daunting, overwhelming, not worth the hassle. So I let them sit in the attic, the cupboard, the garage.
The higher the optical resolution, the finer the detail that can be seen by the scanner. An obvious comparison - a scanner with a 3200 dpi optical resolution isn't as good as one with a 6400 dpi optical resolution.
The higher the density range (D-Max), the better the scanner can see and capture specular highlight and shadow detail. Less obvious to most people - a D-Max of 4.0 is considered perfect. Some scanners can go higher than that, but then you're usually talking about true (and very expensive) PMT drum scanners.
Like the Richter scale, D-Max is a logarithmic measurement. While a D-Max of 3.4 doesn't sound bad compared to 4.0, it's actually huge. The lower value is okay (not great) for reflective scans, but is horrible for negatives and positive film (slides and transparencies). What will happen on that 3.4 scanner is shadows will fill in with random black pixels where you can see detail in the film. Near white values will simply blow out to white. That because the 3.4 scanner can't tell the difference black and near black, or white and near white, so it assigns them all the same value. Roughly, anything that would be 85% black or darker will fill in as solid black. Anything about 5% gray or lighter will become white.
Ignore all resolution measurements you see like 6400 x 9600. The second number is meaningless. It's still 6400 dpi no matter what. The higher number is simply the length of the glass area being half again as long as the width.
When we closed our business, we sold our Creo Eversmart Supreme II. I had no interest in lugging around a 150 pound commercial level scanner in retirement. But, I also wanted something as a replacement that could come at least close to its scanning capability. After looking at every currently available flatbed scanner (meaning, still being made and supported, not just you can buy one and hope it works), the only scanner that compared is the Epson V850.
The scanning software that comes with the V850 works, but is generously described as garbage. Very few controls. I tried VueScan with it, and while that also worked, it was also highly simplified. Not the kind of control I was used to with the Creo's oXYgen Scan software. The V850 comes with a base version of SilverFast. While it took a while to get used to, it didn't take me long to decide to purchase the higher level upgrade to get the extra pro controls.
For this, higher is always better. Always. It's like taking the same photo with a $20 Kodak Instamatic and a Hasselblad camera, pointing them both at a chain link fence 200 feet away. You'll be lucky to even see any of the links in the fence in a photo taken with the Kodak, but you'll be able to see the dirt on the links on a photo take with the Hasselblad.
The optical value drops for reflective scans on my V850 (and generally any flatbed scanner), because it has to use an anamorphic lens to capture the entire width of the glass in one pass, with the lens running down the center.
The Creo Eversmart Supreme II we had always had a 5400 dpi optical resolution no matter what you were scanning, or where the original was placed. That because it was an XY scanner. The scanning head could move to any position under the glass to be centered on the original. If the size you were scanning exceeded the optical resolution, it would automatically divide up the scanning into strips and stitch them together into a single image. All for the reason of keeping the scanner within the optical capability of the lens.
Sort of, but that's only because you scanned the image far beyond the pixel density needed for a 4"x6" image. This is the same trick film scanners use. You can't control the percentage size, only the pixels per inch. So you have to choose a much higher DPI in order to have enough pixels to print a larger image.
And a 4"x6" at 1200 dpi is 4,800 pixels x 7,200 pixels. Divide that by the standard 300 dpi output virtually every print service uses, and the optimal output size is 16" x 24". In order to print a 32" x 48" image from that scan, it has to be scaled up 200%. I would never call having to add four times as many pixels from out of nowhere high quality. I'd scan my original directly to the output size I wanted at 300 dpi. That would be a 9,600 x 14,400 pixel image.
Sorry, I can't agree. I tried it when I first got the scanner and was far from impressed. Though trying it again just now, the updates have improved it quite a bit. But it suffers from at least one major, glaring error. There is no color management. Left is a 600%, 300 dpi scan from EpsonScan2, and the same size from SilverFast. I had to put the sharpening on High in EpsonScan2, but at least it produced a scan similar to SilverFast. But the color is several miles off from SilverFast. The scan from the Epson software doesn't even get a profile of any kind embedded. Scanning dozens, or hundreds of images takes enough time as it is. I don't want to spend hours trying to fix the color to match every original. Scans from SilverFast match as I can create both reflective and positive film profiles for it. It also comes with 250 orange mask profiles for color film. That is a massive time saver when scanning color negs.
I also tried VueScan again just now. It's actually worse than the EpsonScan2 software. As with the Epson software, there is zero color management. That's an instant non-starter for me. Sharpening? What sharpening? You have no choice at all. This is the blurry result I got scanning the same slide to the same size as above.
But then you have to figure out what that would be at 300 dpi for the print size you're going for. If it's wrong, you have to calculate the correct resolution to get the correct dimensions. I don't have time for that when doing hundreds of scans. With SilverFast, I leave it at 300 dpi all the time. Then all I have to do is set the dimension I want (Output) and let it figure out the percentage (Zoom).
And yes, I say dpi because that was the term everyone used for image resolution way back at the beginning of digital imaging. Including scanning software. Somewhere along the lines (Adobe?) thought it should be ppi. But to me, they mean the same thing.
That depends on what your needs are. I would look at VueScan (software) they make great software that works with a lot of scanners. I've been using it for years. VueScan is Sonoma compatible but maybe the scanner's included software isn't.
The 4.0 "perfect" D-Max thing really just means that's the minimum requirement for the hardware to be able to see and capture all visible detail. Higher values mean smoother, finer results across the image. Some PMT drum scanners had D-Max values as high as 6.5. But a 4.2 D-Max that most of the current models have should produce some very nicely detailed scans.
Film scanners tend to work one way. They scan everything at 100% of size. So with 35mm, you always get a (roughly) dimensionally 1" x 1 " scan. They create different scan sizes by jamming more or less pixels into that fixed space.
This is kind of a pain, depending on what you're used to. In the print industry, and here on my V850, everything is scanned to size at 300 dpi, standard print resolution. If I want a scan from a 35mm slide or neg at 4" x 6", I set the software to 300 dpi, size 350%. Done. No scaling afterwards to get the scan to the correct dimensions. With a film scanner, you can generally only select a handful of preset resolutions. So you have to calculate which size to use in order to get a 1200 pixel x 1800 pixel (4x6) scan. Or whatever is closest. It's either that, or scan everything at the maximum and have really huge files you may never need that much pixel information for.
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