Wednesday, February 24, 2010

a tale of two scanners










i've talked about alt scanning methods elsewhere but i wanted to do another side-by-side comparing an epson perfection v500-scanned b/w image and a window-scan of the same image. the scanned images were taken with the diana mini, using expired efke kb 400 and diafine developer. the jury is still out on window-scanned color images (i don't always love the blues that come as a result of inverting the image) but i love it for b/w images. in particular, i love the rich sepia tones it provides the images--after, of course, i've inverted the images in photoshop. because window-scanning involves taking macro photographs of the negative, it also allows for more freedom and variation in the way the negative is photographed--close-up, at an angle or on a bend, etc.--and whether it's over- or under-exposed.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi-

Just discovered your blog (fellow MDer!) and was browsing your entries and came to this post. I also have a v500 scanner and have noticed that scans (in default/auto mode) don't look right unless you mess w/the settings. Worse, there is no guide on how to optimize the Epson software to give the best results.

Perhaps the thing to do is to buy third-party software and avoid the Epson program. I've read good reviews for silverfast, but I don't know if it is also good for color negatives and slides.