[HUG] Re: OT: Epson flatbed scanners (in particular Epson 4490)

Ok finally we figured it out... there are three small holes on the top of the frame to mount the negative / positive films to be scanned. They must be used by the scanner to figure something about the registration of the whole film holder. If for any reason the holes are covered during the preview, the scanner will produce garbage results. So BE CAREFUL to always leave those holes uncovered for perfect quality.
Now how hard would have been for Epson to put an arrow next to those holes with a message alerting not to cover them? Talk about NOT user friendly! 

Francesco

Joe Chan wrote:

Francesco,

It sounds like scanning documents is working correctly but not films.
The noise and the banding usually occurs when a film is scanned with
insufficient illumination from the scanner's illumination unit and the
scanner software then tries to compensate for the underexposed image.

Have you checked the transparency unit is working - when scanning films,
you should see the lamp in the lid illuminating the film.

If the lamp isn't on, check you have selected the option to scan film
instead of documents in your scanner software.

Another thing to check if all the above are OK - with my Epson 4870
scanner, I find that the lid containing the film scanning unit can
somehow be mis-aligned with the scanner. I find that if I close the lid
and then push it towards the front of the scanner, then film scanning
works fine

Joe Chan

-----Original Message-----
From: hasselblad-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:hasselblad-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Francesco
Gallarotti
Sent: 24 September 2007 03:32
To: hasselblad@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [HUG] Re: OT: Epson flatbed scanners


Oliver,
I just bought the 4490 (refurbished at 90 dollars from epson store) and had very little time to test it so far. What surprised me was that I performed the following test with the following results 
1) scanned a black and white document at 72dpi - perfect quality
2) scanned a CD cover at 300 dpi - perfect results
3) scanned a 120 film positive at 1200dpi - horrible yellow vertical lines and incredible digital noise and solarization 
4) scanned a 120 film positive at 300dpi - same horrible results
5) scanned a 120 film positive at 50 dpi - same pitiful results. At this
point I was ready to return it. I was doing this testing in the office and while I left the desk for a second a colleague tried again test #4 this time with perfect results. I will keep testing again on Monday as I didn't have any more time left on Friday afternoon, but I just want to alert you that for some weird reason the scanner might have these initial misbehaviors... Not sure what the technical cause would be. 

Francesco

Oliver Bryk wrote:
I am considering whether to build a website and populate it with images scanned from selected negatives going back more than 15 years. Because I am not in a position to buy a dedicated MF film scanner, and
the scans would not be used for printing, I am looking at the Epson flatbed scanner with a film strip holder. I gather from the product manual http://tinyurl.com/2rrosa that the film strip holder accepts only two 6x6 frames at a time. Having learned in my youth to always expect the worst, I wonder whether the frames that are not going to snapped into the film holder will be damaged. I would love to hear from anyone who has experience with this contraption. Oliver 



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