5X4 and bigger

This is the page that I had intended publishing yesterday, but after discovering the benefit of using the height adjusters I decided to stay with medium format.

Although 5X4 is a popular format with professional photographers, and in particular studio and architectural photographers, the large format user is rapidly becoming a minority group. So full marks to Epson for still including a 5x4 film holder. The V700 5x4 holder is twice as good as the 4990 holder, it accommodates two sheets. There is also a flexible film area guide for 10x8 film and other odd size format (whole plate, half plate, 5x7 etc.). The flexible film area guide is there as a guide rather than a holder, this means you have to place the film directly on the glass surface, which could also mean problems with Newton's rings. I will check this out later

The 5x4 film holder is very robust and individual sheets fit comfortably in each compartment, once the holding frame is snapped closed there is absolutely no movement of the film. The film is gripped tight on all four edges with very little overlap into the film area. There are five height adjusters on the rear of the holder, I guess I am going to have to experiment with these to find the optimum height before I publish any samples.

A tight but good fit for 5x4 sheets	Each frame is securely held
Align the arrows to fit	Get the arrow right and your in business

The holder has two protruding lugs which fit into two holes on the scanner, this then aligns the holder in the correct position on the glass surface. I couldn't always find the holes as these were hidden by the white arrow marker on the holder and had to move the holder about in order to locate the holes, I can imagine with constant use this will cause scratch marks on the plastic surface. The same locating system is fitted on all the film holders, but with frequent use I am sure it will become second nature to fit. On the rear of the 5x4 holder are five height adjusters, get them right and your in for some great scans.

The first thing I must mention is that all scanning resolutions are available, but a full frame 5x4 at 6400dpi generates a file size of 2.06Gb, 4800dpi produces 1.16gb, 2400dpi 297.25mb, so the only real workable option is a 1200dpi scan which produces a 74.3mb file. I will use the 1200dpi setting for this section.

Full frame scans of 5x4 Ektachromes both at 1200dpi

 

Looking at the sharpness of both transparencies, they are outstanding. If you had given me these files and said they were drum scanned then I wouldn't have doubted it. The illumination is consitant throughout each frame, the colours are clean and I can't fault the scans in any way. The actual scan time for each 5x4 sheet is 1min 10sec, a lot quicker than going to a lab for a drum scan.

Details from each image 100% magnification of 1200dpi scan - USM applied (100, 1.2, 0)

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