I've had mixed results. He uses little bars to hold the film in place. You place these between frames and they hold by friction.

Sometimes I find they loosen as I move the holder from my light box to the scanner. Other than that it works fine. There is a more advanced model which permits you to adjust the height of the holder to improve sharpness. Whether this will make a difference depends upon the depth of field of the scanner.

I tend to think the effect is minor.

I don't know what your regular holder looks like, but on my Epson I can only scan one 6x7 at a time and this is a bit of pain. Doug's holder allows two frames.

The MF holder for my Microtek 1800f holds four 6X6 negatives. What I like about the Fisher holder for this scanner is not having to cut negative strips into invidual frames. Unfortunately, the variable height model is not available for this scanner.....

Bill,

I am presently experimenting again with fluid mounting, this time with 35mm and dedicated 35mm film scanners. But if the M1 ever gets real I'll try it with that scanner, which uses the same physical scan setup as your 1800f. I assume what you are scanning is B&W film (?), and if it is fluid mounting has some worthwhile advantages: 1. it reduces a lot of the fine dust spots as the fluid makes a lot of dirt transparent,, the fluid mount on a glass base plate assures absolute flatness and sharpness edge to edge in scan output, and finally the fluid seems to make film grain scan to appear less obvious in a printed image.

It is not an easier method, but for anyone who wants ultimate scan quality the advantages are worth the "fidgety work".

David, the latest at microtekusa.com says October for the M1, but who knows?

I'm really interested in seeing how your experiment works out. I find myself shooting more color than black and white these days, and using the excellent B&W conversion tools in CS3 and Convert2BW Pro. But then, I recently re-scanned one of my favorite B&W negatives and there is an undefineable image quality there that color film just doesn't capture. Either way, fluid mounting should be as much of a plus for color negatives (or even color reversal film?) as for B&W......

Update: Well, I guess you have my attention with this project. I just did a little quick Google research on microscope slides. The standard size appears to be 3X1-inch, which is not much help. The good news is that I found a company that manufactures custom slide glass - and they're only about 30 miles from my house. I'll give them a call today....

Bill,

Fortunately I found a full box of Leitz 2x2 slide cover glass on eBay which I purchased from ZeffPhoto, Belmont, MA.

I will now continue the test experiment. So whether fluid mounting combined with a dedicated 35mm scanner is viable, I will know in another week.

I have no doubts it is a viable and advantageous technique with either the Microtek 1800f or the new M1.