Epson 4990 workflow

[Turbostream]

Hi everyone, my 1st post since joining an age ago.

Just thought I would share my new found work flow with the 4990 to produce scans of an acceptable quality and sharpness.
I was always disappointed with the softness of my scans and was almost ready to give up on film, I use digital of course ( Fuji S5pro and Nikon D40x) but like to run the occasional roll of velvia 50 through my Nikon F55.
So to the method, using vuescan I found the best scans to be had by placing the film (I use strips)on the scanner bed direct and keep it flat with 2 pound coins either side of the frame I want to scan. As per this link: http://www.ontakingpictures.com/2008/03/how-i.html

Then in vuescan I use the following settings:
3200dpi
24bit colour
infra-red clean: light
colour restoration: ticked
Sharpeness: OFF (important!)

in the colour tab:
Landscape white balance.

When the scan is opened in photoshop I have then set an action up to do the following:
convert to LAB colour space
Select lightness channel
unsharp mask: amount 125%, radius 2 pixels, threshold 1
convert to RGB

This then will give a much sharper scan with out too much grain.

I had some slides scanned on a Nikon 9000 and then rescanned them my self using the above settings and you could see a difference but it wasn't that much considering the nikon is a tad over £2000!

I have posted the cropped links off the 9000 and 4990 to compare the two, the 9000 was scanned at 4000dpi and the 4990 at 3200dpi ( I wanted to use a standard value on the 4990 as the next step is 4800dpi and would be over kill).

I have printed both files to A4 and the difference is minimal, the 9000 scan is slightly smoother, just.

Not a true test I know but for the time being it is giving me good results.

http://www.pbase.com/turbostream/inbox

I hope this has been of interest to those struggling with sharpness with the 4990 and don't want to fork out for a new scanner just yet!

Adrian