Perfection V700
From Silvergrain Research
Contents |
Epson Perfection V700 (and V750)
(日本名 エプソン カラリオスキャン GT-X900)
Perfection V700 and V750 are two very similar flatbed scanners specifically marketed for photographers. They are the latest in 2006, and they deliver excellent results for film scanning, even when compared to sub-$2000 dedicated film scanners. There are already excellent reviews on these scanners:
The above reviewer focuses mostly on color slides and color negatives. In this article, I'll review V700 mainly for B&W film scanning.
Scanner Build
The scanner is reasonably well built, although it is not as heavy duty as older Epson Expression 1600 series. V700 is considerably lighter, less expensive, but provides better results. Except for the build quality, V700 is superior in almost every regard.
Other visible changes from Expression 1600 are as follows. Perfection V700 is shipped with the transparency unit (lighted lid) assembled. The locks for transportation are entirely slide switch based, and they do not require loose screws like some of the older models. V700 also uses external power supply cable (like laptop computers) while older scanners took AC100-240V directly from the wall.
Negative Carrier
Negative carriers are not much better than older Epson flatbed scanners, or any flatbed scanners from any manufacturer. If the scanner is targeted for serious photographers, why don't they provide better negative carriers? It is a major disappointment with this scanner.
With the flimsy Epson plastic negative carriers, it is possible to obtain excellent scans but with much frustration. The scanner gives best image resolution when the negative is at the focused plane, which is a couple of millimeters above the glass. For absolutely best results, it's necessary to focus in by trial and error, but the Epson carrier has only a crude means to do this. Also, negatives are held between two plastic pieces, and the plastic pieces are held together by snapping nails. They are unreliable, because it's hard to know whether the pieces are latched without feeling each latch by finger. I am also unsure how long the carriers will last.
For medium format (120 or 220 sizes) only, Doug Fisher makes a more heavy duty negative carrier for this scanner.
Doug Fisher's negative carrier
Variable height dual negative carrier for V700 and V750
This negative carrier is generally better built and the focus can be adjusted continuously by the turning of the screw (although you can go by half turn increments), there is one annoying shortcoming. This is the way the film is held in place. The film is held by T-lock inserts, but these are not strong enough to hold the film in place securely, if you have to blow air to remove dusts off the film after inserting it to the carrier. In other words, if you use this negative carrier, you must blow the film and work on perfectly dust-free surface and bring the negative carrier straight to the scanner, without further cleaning the negative by blowing. (On the other hand, with the flimsy Epson negative carrier, you can load the film first, blow air to clean the neg and then scan them.)
Software
The V700 scanner comes with EPSON Scan software, Silverfast SE, and Photoshop Elements. I don't understand why they include Silverfast SE and Photoshop Elements. If the scanner is aimed at serious photographers, don't they expect that the users already have Adobe Creative Suite CS2, or at least Photoshop CS2? Also, all serious photographers I know have either Vuescan or Silverfast Ai. In short, we are paying extra money for some software that we don't need.
Epson Scan Software
Epson scan is a simple software but it is very easy to use and effective. It produces scan output of reasonably accurate color from color negatives. One big drawback is that it does not run on Linux. On Mac OS 10.4.6, the software works very smoothly, and it provides excellent 16-bit TIFF's for b&w negatives. The software works perfectly with conventional b&w negatives. However, Mac OS X version of the Epson Scan is rather poorly made, and its user interface is not unified with the rest of Mac softwares.
If you scan films in a negative carrier, the scanner will use a separate optic system to provide maximum resolution. This must be selected on the software as well, or you'll get out-of-focus scans. Also, if you use a negative carrier, preview button provides an option to parse out individual images into thumbnails. This is a very convenient feature. By default, the thumbnails are cut out with rather tight cropping (so that non-image borders are not included) and so are the scanned images. That is, some image parts around the frame edge will be lost. To avoid this, and to obtain the maximum image area, click on the "Configuration..." button at the bottom of the window (for some reason this is accessible from not Cmd, on Mac) and maximize the thumbnail size. Of course, you'll have to trim the junk outside the image later in Photoshop or Gimp, but to me, this is preferred, rather than losing a part of the image.
If you choose "professional" mode (and you should), the exposure will be manual adjust by default. The auto exposure works well for most images, but you'll have to turn it on yourself by clicking on the leftmost icon of the 5 buttons about halfway on the panel (right under "Adjustments").
I also prefer to uncheck all processing, such as unsharp mask filter and grain reduction from Epson software. I'd rather perform these operations on an image editor. To me, batch scanning should be analogous to shooting in "raw mode."
One potentially useful processing is "Dust Removal" function. It seems to work well in spotting small dusts on negatives, but I have not done close examinations on images scanned with this option turned on. It slows down the scanning and processing significantly. Also, read photo-i review on this function before using it for anything important.
Scanning with Vuescan
Vuescan provides more close control of the scanner and image processing on the scanned data, but it does not provide thumbnail view of preview. It has a rudimentary batch mode, but in order for this to work, the images must be perfectly aligned like grids. It doesn't detect image borders but it simply adds offsets from the first frame.
So, for most film scanning, at least for 35mm and 120/220 sizes, I prefer Epson software to perform batch scanning and do all post-scanning processing in Photoshop CS2.
However, when I have some tricky negatives, I prefer Vuescan. Also, whenever I don't need a batch operation (like scanning of prints) I prefer Vuescan for greater control.
Scanning with Silverfast
Although Silverfast comes with the scanner, I haven't used it.
Image Quality
Density Range
Manufacturers always hype about the maximum readable density. So I have tested my scanner for this spec using a calibrated density wedge and custom software. Above the optical density (OD) of 1, the sensor's sensitivity declines gradually. By OD of about 2.4, the sensitivity has gone down to about half the maximum value (at OD below 1). This scanner is usable for normal negative density range, but it would not be a good choice for extremely dense films, if information in dense area (OD > 2.0) is important.
Method: Stouffer TP35C was scanned by V700 and Vuescan 8.3.52 on Mac OS 10.4.7 with 16 pass and 300dpi. CCD raw signal was saved in grayscale 16 bit mode for analysis. Using a custom MATLAB program, reading values (ordinate) were obtained for eacy density value (abscissa) by averaging a sufficiently large area in each patch to reduce the effect of scanner noise and granularity. The actual calibrated density values provided by Stouffer are used for the abscissa.
Note that I used 300dpi at 16 pass, and averaged a lot of pixels. This is to reduce the measurement noise. With a higher resolution and individual pixel values, the scanner won't be able to resolve high densities as shown in my plot, because the noise will rise.
Perfection V700 Density range test results (PDF)
Scanning Speed
One drawback of this scanner is scanning speed. A plain vanilla scan of a 35mm film single frame image takes about 2 minutes (with no ICE, no dust removal). Digital ICE is irrelevant for b&w films, but dust removal works for reasonably clean but not perfect films. This adds up another 4-5 minutes. However, because of the batch scan workflow, the slowness is not as fatal as with dedicated film scanners.
