ANR glass for scanning?

[melek]

OK, real question here. I'm having trouble keeping my medium format negatives flat when scanning. I see a couple of eBay sellers offering Anti-Newton Ring glass.

Has anyone tried this? I'm using an older Epson, which has the older negative carriers.

[Captain Slack]

I got one for medium format negs for my Epson V700 from betterscanning.com. It helps a lot. Especially if you're doing old, curly negs like I was at the time. Really helps keep them flat.

[Philip]

Yep, me too: I got the betterscanning ones for my Epson V700. They work like a charm -- except when the curl is so great that the film can't stay on the rails of the film holder. (I just had some Tri-X with that problem.) That's when I prefer using the glassless holders from Lomographic, the "Digitaliza" or "Digitalisa" (I can't tell if it's an S or a Z....). The Digitaliza grips the very edges of the film when you've forced them flat with an ingenious magnetic grip. Lomographic produce 6cm and 35mm holders and I've got both -- they both work well with curly negatives.

The anti-Newton glass is acid-etched on one side to give an almost frosted look. Handier people than I am have made them themselves but, unless you're experienced in cutting, sanding and etching glass, I wouldn't recommend that.

[Martolod]

i have the betther scanning holders and glass slides.work well. although i mostly use glassless holders these days also brom better scanning with their clips.does the trick

[P C Headland]

Go down to the local framing shop and get some anti-reflective glass cut to fit in the channels of the existing holders. Most of the time I can just lay the glass on top of the film strip, by laying the film so it curls up at the edges. I don't usually worry if it is emulsion side up or not. For badly curled film, I tape the film to the glass. I've done this on both my old 3170 and current V700.

I also got a sheet of AR glass cut to fit the 5x4" holder so I can scan 9x12cm film sheets - I just tape the film to the glass, and put the glass in the holder.

[Tom Hildreth]

I used Gepe ANR slidemounts to scan my 35mm negs for years. It works well to flatten the negs edge-edge, but it introduces four new surfaces for dust and dirt deposits.

CORRECTION: The statement above applies to print making with an enlarger, though I think the pros and cons above would likely apply to a scanner.

[Bennybee]

Interesting topic. The 6x6 neg holder of my Epson V600 is pretty much worthless : the neg strip sometimes falls through the holder along one side because the edge doesn't get gripped and most of the time the neg strip also bows down towards the glass plate.
Out of curiosity I just googled 'Digitaliza' and stumbled upon loads of interesting things people do nowadays, like Xpro, scanning tips, etc. Loads of websites with fun stuff done by (young?) people who just discovered film. Some of it maybe fun for once or twice only, but nevertheless...

[epatsellis]

You can, but what I use is plain glass, with a twist..

Take a piece of glass and lightly mist hairspray on it, let it dry thoroughly, place neg emulsion down, psuedo ANR on top and like magic, works just as well...when burning copy negs in process cameras, we often lightly sprinkled some offset powder on one of the sheets (basically rice or potato starch, super finely ground), same idea.

[Philip]

That is brilliant!

.

[Martolod]

brilliant hack