Lars
Active member
Wetmounting has a few advantages:
- Completely flat film means it's possible to get the sharpest possible scan
- No Newton rings - with the 869G you have to examine each and every scan, and if there is a clear blue sky in an E6 frame for example then it can be very frustrating. Fixing Newton rings in post-processing is not realistic.
- Slightly higher contrast - film surface does not have mirror finish so it diffuses light very slightly, leading to loss of contrast around edges between high and low density. With wetmounting the surface is clear and glossy.
- Some people say there is an advantage WRT grain structure, perhaps it's true with b/w film but I don't see much of a difference with E6.
All in all, quality could be said to be 10-20% better by some subjective scale. Most of all it's a time saver - you know scans will be sharp and good so no need to rescan.
- Completely flat film means it's possible to get the sharpest possible scan
- No Newton rings - with the 869G you have to examine each and every scan, and if there is a clear blue sky in an E6 frame for example then it can be very frustrating. Fixing Newton rings in post-processing is not realistic.
- Slightly higher contrast - film surface does not have mirror finish so it diffuses light very slightly, leading to loss of contrast around edges between high and low density. With wetmounting the surface is clear and glossy.
- Some people say there is an advantage WRT grain structure, perhaps it's true with b/w film but I don't see much of a difference with E6.
All in all, quality could be said to be 10-20% better by some subjective scale. Most of all it's a time saver - you know scans will be sharp and good so no need to rescan.