Still scanning & some questions popped up.

I’m still full speed ahead with re-scanning my negatives, and I’m not even halfway yet. But luckily I still think it’s a blast…. For now at least.

But all this re-scanning, got me thinking.

How do I know that the scanner is completely sharp?
It’s just because some of the photo’s – especially the 35mm – are still not quite in focus, I think. How do I know if it’s just me that missed the sweet spot in the field or if it’s the scanner missing it now?

Well on some scans I can see a bit of the text on the edge of the film and that look’s sharp, So the conclusion must be that the image should be as sharp as it can be, because the image and the text is at the exact same distance from the scanner head.
Then on some the dust – if there is any 😉 – is sharp, then I guess that the image should be sharp as well. But here I’m not so sure because the dust is either farther away or closer to – depending on which side of the negative, it is – the scanner head, I know it’s not much, but I don’t know the depth of field of a scanner. I tried googling it, but didn’t find a final answer. I found out that some scanners have a DOF of around 2mm
But at the end my personal conclusion is that if the dust is sharp so is the image.

I did all my scans so far with my Epson V500 – both the 120 and the 35mm. But the circumstances is that I had to move my computer, scanner and all my other photography stuff from the studio where I normally sit, to a temporary setup at home.
Which means I now have my beloved Epson v700 scanner at home, and of course I much rather scan the negs on that then on the v500.
And that gave me my sharpness answer. As it turns out the scans weren’t completely sharp on the v500, that I can see now that I made a test scan on the v700, because here they are sharp.

My second question was, how do you know that the scan you see is a true representation – color and contrast wise – of the negative?
Again the v700 got me the answers. I use Vuescan, and when I switch between the preview thumbnails on the v500, the color and light/contrast changed almost all the time, even though I’ve chosen “none” in the color settings. Which I found kind of odd.
Then when I switched to the v700, there was no problem at all, then I switch between the preview thumbnails.
How do I know if they are correct? Well, I guess I don’t know for sure, guess I just got to trust the software/scanner 🙂
I did a little comparison of the slide film, and I think the scan on my computer vs. The positive/slide film in my hand, looked a lot alike.[/vc_column_text]

Here are three 100% cropped images of the same photo.
(scanned with different scanners and software combinations)

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