I just received my Betterscanning.com ANR glass inserts for my Epson V500, and scanned some color and some B&W negatives. Wow! SO much easier than messing with the plastic insert, and the film lays nice & flat. It is obvious from scanning just 5 negatives now (3 B&W, 2 color) that they are clearer. At high resolutions, I can now see the film grain - could usually not see the grain before (particularly on my Tri-X processed in Rodinal 1+100 stand for an hour) due to the film curl. The images were slightly out of focus toward the center of the negatives, but no more!
I'm already happy.
Also, I found that digital ICE (dust removal) works great on the color negatives. The Betterscanning documentation indicates that ICE might not work, but it did for me on the Kodak Gold 400 negatives I tried.
One minor tip: The ANR inserts are the right length to cover the full length of the six-negative slots, but according to the documentation they say you can not cover the whole negative strip due to the little end slots in the Epson film holder being in the way. That would limit the scanning to five negatives per slot instead of six. So, I took a sharp knife and trimmed away the end-slot flanges and now the ANR insert nicely covers all six negatives in a strip.
Here is a sample photo from the Rolla, MO Downtown Summerfest, this summer (2011).
Pentax-MX, SMC 40mm f2.8, Yellow #2 filter, Kodak Tri-X @ ISO400, Rodinal 1+100 Stand for 1 hour, Epson V500 + ANR glass insert
-Joe-
P.S. No dust to deal with. I use a badger cosmetic brush to brush off the scanner glass, film, and the ANR glass insert. I often have no dust to clone or heal out.
Originally posted by tuco Be advised, any real BW film scans will no doubt take a lot of healing tool work to clean up when you use glass. I have a glass carrier for my scanner and the small dust specs are all but impossible to clean off. It is a PITA.