[dkevin]

Hello all,I am very inexperienced K-1000 owner/user. I am looking to get into scanning my own negatives. I have a chance to buy an older Epson scanner model V500 for a few dollars. I am a bit blitzed by all the information and opinions about scanners and 35mm film. Do you think it would be a decent scanner to start with? I would use it to scan old photographs as well as my C-41 35mm developed negatives. Thanks for your input!

[CarlJF]

It depends on your expectations... I have a V500 and it does a decent job for my old 35mm negatives and slides. However, the quality is not up to what you will get from a traditional chemical processing. But for web usage and 4x6 prints, it's good enough. I even printed a decent 8x10. If it's cheap, there isn't much to lose by trying it.

[jcdoss]

I purchased a V550 as my first scanner. You can load 12 frames in at a time and scan them as a strip or as individually tuned frames. I like it, but I wonder how good the film holder is... I'm not convinced its doing a good job flattening the negatives. I wonder what others think?

[dkevin]

There's a seller on Ebay who has glass inserts he claims eliminate the uneven curl of the negatives (anti-Newton rings?) and enables much more detail in the negative scans. Being a newbie, I have no idea if this is snake-oil or a genuinely helpful product. I saw it when I was looking for negative holders for the V500.

[jcdoss]

Thanks dkevin. I saw that a while back. I don't remember the asking price, but it seemed steep as I recall. I've tried a few kinds of black and white film, incidentally, and TMax was the worst with regard to curling.

[17dew]

Hello all,I am very inexperienced K-1000 owner/user. I am looking to get into scanning my own negatives. I have a chance to buy an older Epson scanner model V500 for a few dollars. I am a bit blitzed by all the information and opinions about scanners and 35mm film. Do you think it would be a decent scanner to start with? I would use it to scan old photographs as well as my C-41 35mm developed negatives. Thanks for your input!

Check out this thread https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/107-film-processing-scanning-darkroom/309...n-article.html It has a link to an Epson scan article.
As noted it's for the V750 but is the same for the V500

[Alex645]

You get what you pay for, but we get what we can afford! I have a friend that used her Epson flatbed scanner to scan her slides and negs and was extremely happy with it. They are on par with the less expensive ($100 range) film scanners. If your intent is to share your images on the web or print no larger than 8x10, it's a good choice.

I use a 4800 dpi Minolta Dimage Multi-Pro film scanner using VueScan as the interface software. Nikon made a similar model years ago and Plustek makes the equivalent today for about $2K. There are much cheaper film scanners if you don't need to scan 120 film. Essentially the difference other than dpi is the bit depth of the scan. Also having dust and scratch removal filters (software) can be very helpful. Note: Higher res film scanners are generally much slower than flatbed scanners using adapters.

What works best for me:
B&W: Develop it myself, scan it myself. (I use both a darkroom and Lightroom. If you don't do a side-by-side comparison, the inkjet print looks excellent. But if I do an identical image with gelatin silver, it is perceivably better.)
Ilford XP2/Kodak BW, or any C41 color neg: Pay lab to develop, and low res scan to CD or dropbox. Then after reviewing the roll, I'll high res scan it myself.
Fujichrome Velvia: Pay lab to develop, use a good loupe* and light table to review, then high res scan myself.

*Tangent alert: Of all the awesome stuff at B&H, I was enamored by their loupe/magnifier display case. Although others will have their favorite objectives, my best loupe is a Pentax that I think has been discontinued. A real gem compared to my other loupes: Pentax 5.5x Loupe 60051 B&H Photo Video

To answer your question: Yes, if the price is right for you, the Epson is an excellent and practical scanner.

[pathdoc]

Alex645, did your friend have a backlight insert of some sort, or did she just slap the negs on an ordinary flatbed and run with it? I've heard this is sometimes tried with passable results when nothing else is available, as the inside top cover is white and offers some back-reflectance/transmission effect.

I am thinking of giving it a go as I am almost always able to get a good negative scan with just the old slide-copier side of the bellows kit and my 35 Limited Macro jammed in the end (the focus capability is close enough and then some), BUT neither of the free online editors I have seen (PIXLR, Polarr) seems able to correct for white balace and remove the blue colour cast I am always getting (PIXLR, at least, has a one-shot inverter filter which produces excellent results in the respect of negative-to-positive).

[Alex645]

Alex645, did your friend have a backlight insert of some sort, or did she just slap the negs on an ordinary flatbed and run with it? I've heard this is sometimes tried with passable results when nothing else is available, as the inside top cover is white and offers some back-reflectance/transmission effect.

I am thinking of giving it a go as I am almost always able to get a good negative scan with just the old slide-copier side of the bellows kit and my 35 Limited Macro jammed in the end (the focus capability is close enough and then some), BUT neither of the free online editors I have seen (PIXLR, Polarr) seems able to correct for white balace and remove the blue colour cast I am always getting (PIXLR, at least, has a one-shot inverter filter which produces excellent results in the respect of negative-to-positive).

As I recall, there was no backlight insert, but there is a film holder (one for negs, one for mounted slides) insert for the Epson flatbed scanner. She was either using the Epson software to invert the color negs or SilverFast scanner software.

Because of the orange stain on color negs, just inverting will leave you with that blue/cyan cast, which is correctable on PS, but not as efficient or accurate as software designed to convert various color neg emulsions. For example with VueScan, there are menu options for Kodak, Fujifilm, or even Generic, and then different emulsions and ISOs for Ektar or Gold or Portra, etc.

[pathdoc]

Because of the orange stain on color negs, just inverting will leave you with that blue/cyan cast, which is correctable on PS, but not as efficient or accurate as software designed to convert various color neg emulsions. For example with VueScan, there are menu options for Kodak, Fujifilm, or even Generic, and then different emulsions and ISOs for Ektar or Gold or Portra, etc.

Okay, thanks. Will give that a go and see how things turn out.

[dkevin]

The scanner arrived yesterday in the mail and I am looking forward to checking it out. It came with the software CD and all the cords (power and computer cords) too. I bought it from a thrift store and paid about $40 total. I thought it was a good price for someone who was being cautious (cheap) to learn how to scan negatives and pictures and edit the images. My thought was that if I good at doing this and was frustrated by the limitations of the scanner, I could throw down the big(ger) bucks and get a more sophisticated unit. Anyway, I am going to plug this in and check it out and I'll let you know if it works ok. Thanks for the helpful advice!

[pathdoc]

Because of the orange stain on color negs, just inverting will leave you with that blue/cyan cast,

So I went back and looked at this statement again and I thought "Orange stain, eh? How else can we remove that?" Sure enough, digging through my filter collection yielded a selection of tungsten/daylight orange filters, including one in 49mm, and I thought why not? First one I tried was a stunning success, both with the in-camera and pixlr's invert filter - at least inasmuch as whites in the picture were actually white - but others were less noticeably corrected. I shall have to download VueScan's software and see if I can import the jpegs into that and correct them from there.

The only other things I'm trying to determine at the moment are what level of exposure to use and whether playing with depth of field makes any difference. On the one hand, I am very, very close; on the other, I am actually using a professional-grade film and slide holder, so you'd think things would be held pretty flat.

Finally, I wonder if better results could be had going with a tungsten lamp, a particular spectrum of compact fluoro, or even a diffuse LED bulb of some sort.

[Alex645]

So I went back and looked at this statement again and I thought "Orange stain, eh? How else can we remove that?" Sure enough, digging through my filter collection yielded a selection of tungsten/daylight orange filters, including one in 49mm, and I thought why not? First one I tried was a stunning success, both with the in-camera and pixlr's invert filter - at least inasmuch as whites in the picture were actually white - but others were less noticeably corrected. I shall have to download VueScan's software and see if I can import the jpegs into that and correct them from there.

The only other things I'm trying to determine at the moment are what level of exposure to use and whether playing with depth of field makes any difference. On the one hand, I am very, very close; on the other, I am actually using a professional-grade film and slide holder, so you'd think things would be held pretty flat.

Finally, I wonder if better results could be had going with a tungsten lamp, a particular spectrum of compact fluoro, or even a diffuse LED bulb of some sort.

Ideally, your light source should be as full spectrum as possible. Many fluorescent and tungsten sources have a very uneven spectrum which will poorly render some colors, even with correction. If you can find an LED solution, that would give you not only the most consistent results over time, but also not generate heat that can buckle the film. There are full spectrum tungsten and fluorescent options, however, that will be less expensive.

[hjoseph7]

For $40 the V500 is not a bad scanner especially since you can batch load a bunch of negatives at a time. I have the V750 and contrary to what some folks say the software it comes with is great. I just wish Epson wasn't so crazy about plastic. Not sure about the V500, but the V750 is 85% plastic...

[SpecialK]

I have a chance to buy an older Epson scanner model V500 for a few dollars

Biblically speaking, a "few" is eight. So, I think that would be a decent price :-) Try it and see. I had an Epson 4900 (?), for considerably more money, for the family history project that included merging nine-section newspaper pages in PP...