Super short review: using 35mm ANR glass insert with epson 700 scanner

[raytoei]

My Anti-Newton Ring glass arrived today.

I only ordered one as I wanted to be sure that the ruler-sized piece of glass
worked before I would consider purchasing another 3 to make up the four rows
of the 35mm film holder on my Epson v700.

A USPS box arrived with a ruler sized glass wrapped in plastic bubbles, I was
afraid that it would be too fragile but luckily, everything was intact.

The purpose of the ANR Ring is 2-fold:

* Prevent rings of concentric circles when scanning film
* Holding the film flat to produce a better scan

I wasn't having issues with Newton Rings but I was curious whether i could wring out
more shadow details from my scanner.

Using it is relatively simple, remove the plastic clip-on negative holder top and put the matte side
of the glass on the negative on the plastic holder.

I tested several possible variables:

* 2400dpi or 3200dpi
* Flipping the negative or keeping the matte side upright (as suggested by Epson)
* Glass or Plastic top with the negative holder

Well, the short answer is Yes.

The Glass made a difference even at a lower resolution of 2400dpi. I tested on 2 set of negatives,
one was the fomapan 400 and the other was Fomapan 200. With the 400, default side up produced
a sharper image, while for the Fomapan 200, it was the reverse. There is no hard and fast rule,
the Betterscanning website suggest to test either sides of a film negative.

Here are some results, fomapan 400 developed at ei 200, developed in Rodinal stand
Leica m3 with Summarit 50/f1.5

Scanned at 2400 dpi, reduced to 800x600:

100% crop / 2400 dpi / Glass / Matte side of Negative pointing down / Auto Exposure:

100% crop / 2400 dpi / Default negative holder/ Matte side of Negative pointing down / Auto Exposure:

100% crop / 2400 dpi / Glass / Default Matte Negative side pointing up / Auto Exposure:

100% crop / 2400 dpi / Default negative holder / Default Matte Negative side pointing up / Auto Exposure:

From the above four images, the glass insert made a difference,
while flipping the negative only made a minor difference,
in the case above, there were slightly more details with the matte
side of the negative pointing upwards.

You can get the ANR glass insert from Better Scanning . com Using the 35 mm Anti Newton Ring Glass ANR Insert

raytoei

 

[Benji77]

Thanks for this!

 

[anerjee]

Thanks for the test ray. May I suggest another test? Scan the same image at 4800dpi (with or without the glass holder), and then resize it down using nearest neighbor back to 2400dpi, and compare to the original 2400dpi scan.

 

[raytoei]

two more tests.

100% crop / 4800 dpi downsampled / Glass insert / Default Matte Negative side pointing up / Auto Exposure / 16bit :

100% crop / 4800 dpi downsampled / Glass insert / Default Matte Negative side pointing up / Auto Exposure / 8bit :

raytoei

 

[raytoei]

Comparing with the sharpest three:

2400 8 bit / 4800 downsampled 8 bit / 4800 downsampled 16 bit

of the 3, 2400 and 4800 has the greatest difference, as for 8 bit and 16bit,
the 16bit has a slight increase in shadow details though i can't really tell.

Comparing the images work best when using a graphic viewer to flip through the images.

raytoei

 

[anerjee]

Good stuff.

My experience is that down-sampling helps with noise, but not with sharpness of the scans.

16-bit vs. 8-bit: the difference cannot be seen. The advantage of 16-bit is only apparent if you do post-processing, using levels and curves. 16-bit files can take more processing than 8-bit files.

 

[theanswer03]

May I ask if the ANR glass is the same as the anti reflection glass that we can find in neighbourhood frame shop? 30USD for a piece of glass seems a bit excessive to me.

 

[harky]

can show some pic of ur ANR? did u get the holder also?

 

[raytoei]

sorry, i too lazy. if you can image your school wooden ruler.
about 2-3mm thick, and like a 20cm length. that's it.
one side is matt (facing the negative), one side is clear.
glass dun need holder, just the existing one.
there is an issue that the glass will not go under the clips
of the existing holder, so i scan at 5 images at a time for now.
will revisit this issue when the remaining
glass arrives.