Anyone had success with Epson 4490 and negatives?

[hhk]

I can't believe how bad the results were when I scanned 35mm colour
negatives with this scanner. They are very blurry. I have tried full
auto mode and then professional mode with a bunch of different settings.
No luck. It's also incredibly slow, taking 10 minutes for each 4
frame transparency.

Does anyone have advice for this scanner? It's likely going back to the
store but I thought I'd throw up a post here to see if it's user error.

Thanks,

HK

 

[Lorenzo J. Lucchini]

I can't believe how bad the results were when I scanned 35mm colour
negatives with this scanner. They are very blurry. I have tried full
auto mode and then professional mode with a bunch of different settings.
No luck. It's also incredibly slow, taking 10 minutes for each 4
frame transparency.

You mean 2.5 minutes per frame? That doesn't seem very long to me,
especially at 4800 dpi (which is what I suppose your scanner does, given
its model number).

About blurriness and badness, you should probably post an example image at
native resolution (not on the NG! ;-) contact me if you don't have any web
space to host it) for people to understand just how bad is "bad".

Keep in mind that Epson scanners are generally blurrier than other scanners
by construction, but the blurriness brings advantages that other scanners
don't have.

[snip]

by LjL
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Noons]

hhk apparently said,on my timestamp of 28/10/2005 6:40 AM:

I can't believe how bad the results were when I scanned 35mm colour
negatives with this scanner. They are very blurry. I have tried full
auto mode and then professional mode with a bunch of different settings.
No luck. It's also incredibly slow, taking 10 minutes for each 4 frame
transparency.

That's a good speed, in fact. Also, try scanning at 2400dpi
instead of 4800. You'll get less blur. Yup, sounds impossible
but it can well happen.

If you're prepared to invest some time, then for 4800 dpi
you need to make your own strip mounts out of thick black paper
which you can get at any newsagency and then use those to hold the
negatives with the emulsion side down. The standard Epson
holders for 35mm keep the strips waaaay too far from the glass
for good focusing at 4800. And IIRC, the 4490 is fixed focus
just like the 4990 so it won't get any better. If holding the
film nearer the glass doesn't solve the problem, then you got a
unit that has suffered mis-alignment: return it.