Scanning. Doh!

FishyFish

FishyFish

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Nige
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So...

Guess who's only just realised that, on the default settings, Epson Scan trims quite a bit from the edges of the image when scanning. :wave:

I shot a roll and a half of film at a steam rally at the weekend, and a couple of shots, when scanned were clearly not what I'd seen in the viewfinder. One, of a man and dog walking past a traction engine had the lower half of the dog cropped out of the shot, and another, with a couple of chaps beside a minature engine, had the bottom of the wheels and the top of the funnel missing. I knew that I'd composed both shots more carefully than that, so was quite pleased when it turned out that the scanner settings were to blame, and I've now altered them to not trim the negatives at all. It adds time as I now need to manually crop the edges of the images in Lightroom (although, once I've cropped a single landscape of portrait image, I can then sync the crop with all the other shots and then just do minor tweaks), but at least I'm getting the full shot now! :)

I wonder how many other shots that I've already scanned might've been marginally improved had I known this sooner?
 
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Fear not. I'm sure there are plenty more Doh!! moments ahead...
 
Hmm...

I don't recognise the problem.

I've never had negs cropped in scanning.

Am I missing something perhaps?
 
simon ess said:
Hmm...

I don't recognise the problem.

I've never had negs cropped in scanning.

Am I missing something perhaps?
Click to expand...


I think the software looks for the edges of the shot and then crops out the exterior part where there's no image data - the bit between the frames, and between the edge of the shot and the sprocket holes. On the default setting its a little overzealous, actually cropping into the picture itself. It can be changed to one of three different settings, each expanding the area that is captured.

I'll post some examples next time I'm on the PC which will show the difference.
 
I've found that too with the Epson V600 I use, if I don't want to loose full-frame edge detail I have to manually crop. Having said that, most of the time I find it doesn't tend to matter that much! I found a 'budget' 35mm film scanner I bought some years ago was also a bit over zealous with cropping and missed the edges off, so perhaps it's fairly usual?
 
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I only use the EpsonScan thumbnail option - which selects the crop area automatically - for 35mm and only when I want to scan 24 frames quickly. There is however an option under "Configure" that controls how much cropping is applied.

The thumbnail method gets confused when there are very light or very dark areas at the edge of the frame and fails to crop correctly.

More often I use manual crop to make sure I get as much as possible of the frame without cropping.

Having said that I've now got Vuescan installed on the PC with the scanner attached, and whenever I install Vuescan, EpsonScan stops working - so I can't refer to it right now.
 
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These two images show the difference it makes. The first has the Thumbnail Cropping Area set to "small" (the default), while the second has it set to "large". The second image requires manual intervention to remove the black borders, but there's more of the actual photograph present - look at the top of the funnel and the bottom of the wheels, as well as the left and right edges of the frame. The uncropped version matches what I saw in the viewfinder, where I took care not to chop off the top and bottom of the traction engine.

Scan013.jpg

Scan012.jpg
 
I've found that Epson Scan thumbnail option is easily fooled by negatives with dark bits at the edges and underexposed shots especially. It doesn't seem to work well for medium format at all. I always do manual selections for that.
 
I have never used Epson scan software. I use VueScan on all my scanners... It would irritate me no end not to get the whole image.
 
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