Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to scan Ilford Pan-F ISO=50 120-size negatives with my new Epson
Perfection V700 scanner.  I tried using Vuescan software for scanning, but
the Pro version of Vuescan hangs endlessly upon startup, and I'm awaiting
tech support to help me out with it.  In the meantime, though, when I use
the Silverfast software that came with my scanner, I can actually enter the
film type and speed, and choose "scanning negatives."  The results, however,
are less than spectacular.

If I hold my negative up to the light, I see a GORGEOUS negative image,
ranging from "clear" to "black", with lots of detail/contrast being visible.
When I scan it, however, the image looks quite dark, and when I invert it in
Photoshop, everything is really washed out, and when I play with "levels" in
Photoshop, I have to move all the sliders to within PIXELS of one end of the
"levels" brightness scale, whereupon I see the image jump out at me, but
still with great compression in the brightness scale.  I'm almost thinking I
should just get a slide viewer that I can attach to my Nikon D50 dslr, and
just take digital pics of my negatives!  That would probably look a lot
better than what I'm getting now.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  I'm currently taking pinhole pics
with my Zero 2000 teak-wood pinhole camera (that takes 120 film), but I just
bought a Crown Graphic 4x5, and I want to learn how to scan b/w with good
results so that I can start shooting/scanning 4x5 b/w negatives.

Thanks,
Scott