Epson v850 scanning technique

I went to my local picture framers and asked for "anti-reflective glass" they sold me 2 x sheets of 8"x10" for about $35 USD.

I sanded off the edge of the glass so that it was safe to handle. I cut a mask out of black card for the glass to sit on. This stops the glass from coming into contact with the scanner glass, and also raised the negative up to a height of about 2mm off the glass (for the high-resolution lens).

So I'm sandwiching the negative between two sheets of anti-reflective glass with the matte side of both facing inwards towards the negative. Emulsion side facing down. This obviously flattens the negative.

This effectively gives you an 8"x10" area to scan within so I can do 5 images (half a roll of 6x7 frames) with borders all at once, or a single sheet of 4x5. If you’re scanning 8x10 film you could scan directly onto the scanner bed glass and utilise the low-res lens, either with tape or a larger sheet of glass to hold it down.

As yet I have not encountered Newton rings scanning 120 film, however I have encounter some when scanning multiple strips of 35mm around the sprocket holes (ocassionally with 3 strips, never with 2 - usually when there is not enough pressure evenly across the film).

Make sure that you leave a gap at the top of the scanning bed because the scanner needs this area empty to calibrate, otherwise it won't work at all. I used the supplied holders to measure the gap required.

I scan at 2400dpi (roughly the true max dpi of the v850). Raw 48bit DNG scans into Lightroom and converted with Negative Lab Pro.