Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
On Tue, 10 Apr 2001 09:04:19 -0400 Dave King ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: The other I'll call "shark's tooth", and it looks like tiny spikes at regular intervals on high contrast edges. It's a regular, stepped displacement (on the y axis of a landscape scan) of pixels which repeats every 4-5 pixels. It is most visible on high contrast edges, but occurs throughout the image. You can see it in the full res LS30 scan at my site eg the boundary of her chin against the black background. ICE was not used for this scan. As you say, this is not related to the normal 'jaggie' phenomenon which arises through aliasing. Most, if not all, LS30's seem to do it occasionally or always, with Nikonscan. As the scanner ages it tends to worsen. I don't know if v3 helps, VS certainly does. - Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio exhibit; + film scanner info comparisons
Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
The other I'll call "shark's tooth", and it looks like tiny spikes at regular intervals on high contrast edges. It's a regular, stepped displacement (on the y axis of a landscape scan) of pixels which repeats every 4-5 pixels. It is most visible on high contrast edges, but occurs throughout the image. You can see it in the full res LS30 scan at my site eg the boundary of her chin against the black background. ICE was not used for this scan. As you say, this is not related to the normal 'jaggie' phenomenon which arises through aliasing. Most, if not all, LS30's seem to do it occasionally or always, with Nikonscan. As the scanner ages it tends to worsen. I don't know if v3 helps, VS certainly does. Thanks, exact answers are reassuring even when they contain bad news. g My scanner doesn't have very high mileage yet, and I'm thinking of tradin her in on the 8000 anyway. Further enticement. Are you thinking of mounting the effort to get your hands on one for review? (I hope I hope) Dave
Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
I also would like to put a word of support for Nikonscan here. I use LS2000 and Nikonscan 2.5.1. I have tried Vuescan but just can't get it to do anything better than Nikonscan (EXCEPT reduce jaggies) so I continue to use Nikonscan. There has been a lot of negative discussion about Nikonscan - I really cannot see why people bag it so much. I get predictable output and generally excellent colour 98% of the time from negs. I don't do much slides, but they were fine too. I certainly get better results colour-wise than I could ever get out of Vuescan, and VS was *much* slower. I do agree that the jaggies is a real problem, and have not been impressed by the results of my email discussion with Nikon USA about this. I am about to send mine back for "repair" re jaggies - I have little hope but will report how it is dealt with. (remember this is in Australia). I also have troubles with focus depth of field, but that is not a software problem. re the blown highlights / loss of sky detail comment, my technique to avoid this is as follows... IME NIkonscan default auto settings cut off too much at the high end (and maybe the shadows end too), so I use the option - Scanner extras / prescan mode / low contrast neutral. This means I get the whole range of a neg into the histogram. At 16-bit there is no problem re-expanding it to get the cut off at the actual tips of the white and black points, then I can do whatever contrast enhancement etc I need in PS. Not sure how this translates to the LS30, but I think it is still valid. Julian At 05:01 10/04/01, you wrote: Rob wrote: The detail in the skies tend to "blow out" in Nikonscan with the LS30 since it only works with 8 bit data - this has the side effect of reducing apparent grain in the sky. Unfortunately Nikonscan is useless for me since I get jaggies with it, so I have to use Vuescan. I may be able to "improve" things a little by deliberately adjusting the white point, but I don't want to lose too much sky detail. The trick with the LS-30 is to hardware calibrate your monitor (PhotoCal/Monitor Spyder is great, and not too expensive), set up color management in NikonScan using the supplied scanner profile, and use the excellent NikonScan curves dialogue to tone/color correct before scanning. You'll be outputting 24 bit files to PS, but the corrections are applied in hi bit space. Then, if need be, apply tweaks with an adjustment layer before printing. Nikonscan's CM works as well as possible, with a near perfect match to the result in Photoshop. Also Nikonscan does the best color corrections out of the box of anything I've seen, on chromes and negs. And, as I noted previously, the sharpening algorithm it uses is very good. Dave Julian Robinson in usually sunny, smog free Canberra, Australia
Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Julian wrote: I also would like to put a word of support for Nikonscan here. I use LS2000 and Nikonscan 2.5.1. I have tried Vuescan but just can't get it to do anything better than Nikonscan (EXCEPT reduce jaggies) so I continue to use Nikonscan. There has been a lot of negative discussion about Nikonscan - I really cannot see why people bag it so much. My main beef with Nikonscan is the jaggies. Makes it useless for me. Aside from that problem, Nikonscan works very well, and has a far more usable interface for meaningfully adjusting scans than Vuescan. But we've already established that Vuescan's intention is to capture the most data possible and deliver it to Photoshop where it can be edited. I get predictable output and generally excellent colour 98% of the time from negs. I don't do much slides, but they were fine too. When I was using Nikonscan, I did get quite good colour, with the exception of a roll of whale-watching photos. Nikonscan wanted to change the colour of the photos to something virtually BW because of the dominance of blue in the images. In fairness, the default settings of Vuescan did the same thing (white balance) but the "neutral" settings did not. I certainly get better results colour-wise than I could ever get out of Vuescan, and VS was *much* slower. Odd. Vuescan is significantly *faster* on my computer, especially compard to Nikonscan with ICE. I suspect you are also getting significantly better results from Nikonscan since the LS2000 gives you access to the high bit options. The LS30 is restricted to 8 bits in Nikonscan and you have to be careful with adjustments to avoid posterisation. I do agree that the jaggies is a real problem, and have not been impressed by the results of my email discussion with Nikon USA about this. I am about to send mine back for "repair" re jaggies - I have little hope but will report how it is dealt with. (remember this is in Australia). I'll be intrigued if Maxwell Optics manage to cure the vibration that causes the jaggies. As far as I can see it's a design fault caused by a combniation of hardware and software behaviour. IME NIkonscan default auto settings cut off too much at the high end (and maybe the shadows end too), so I use the option - Scanner extras / prescan mode / low contrast neutral. If I ever get to use Nikonscan jaggy-free, I'll try this. :) Rob (about to travel south to Canberra) Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wordweb.com
Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
"Dave King" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do you mean jaggies are all through the image, or along the edges? The jaggies are through the entire image but are most noticeable on high contrast edges within the image. By "edge" I presume you mean the outer boundary of the entire image. The jaggies are regular slippage of the scan lines in a sawtooth pattern. They are apparently caused by the scanner mechanism moving at a particular speed - one which happens most often when using Nikonscan that scans in 64K blocks. Ed has coded Vuescan to scan line by line with a delay to prevent the vibration that results in the jaggies. If you're lucky enough to have an LS2000 you could probably also eliminate the problem by using the multiscan option since it causes the scanner to scan each line multiple times, slowing the mechanism down. The LS30 doesn't support single pass multiscanning. Rob
Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
"Dave King" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do you mean jaggies are all through the image, or along the edges? The jaggies are through the entire image but are most noticeable on high contrast edges within the image. By "edge" I presume you mean the outer boundary of the entire image. The jaggies are regular slippage of the scan lines in a sawtooth pattern. They are apparently caused by the scanner mechanism moving at a particular speed - one which happens most often when using Nikonscan that scans in 64K blocks. Ed has coded Vuescan to scan line by line with a delay to prevent the vibration that results in the jaggies. If you're lucky enough to have an LS2000 you could probably also eliminate the problem by using the multiscan option since it causes the scanner to scan each line multiple times, slowing the mechanism down. The LS30 doesn't support single pass multiscanning. Rob I asked because I wasn't sure what you referred to. The term "jaggies" is usually used to mean "pixelization", which of course is a problem of too low resolution for a given output size, and it occurs in all digital images at some point. Nikonscan has two artifacts I can see, I believe both related to ICE. One is the "serrated edge" effect caused by scanning film in mounts, and it only occurs at the edges of the frame. The other I'll call "shark's tooth", and it looks like tiny spikes at regular intervals on high contrast edges. I think it only occurs in one direction, going from memory. To be clear what we're talking about, do you mean the tiny spikes? I'm asking for further clarification because from your discription, "regular slippage of the scan lines in a sawtooth pattern through the entire image", I'm not sure my particular scanner suffers from this problem. Dave
Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Dave wrote: I don't see significant differences in grain at the print level between 100 speed negs and chromes, and print level is all I really care about. Really??! In the scans I see a huge difference between say Superia 100 and Sensia II 100. There's a *much* bigger difference when you go to Provia 100F. There is no apparent grain with Provia 100F. Sensia II shows little grain. Superia 100 or Reala shows a lot of ugly grain in highlights - particularly skies. I haven't done enough large prints to know for sure, but from the evidence I have there's a big difference between the quality of prints from slides compared to prints from negs. *However* one thing I don't recall you mentioning was what program you're using to scan with. Are you using Nikonscan? If so, I'm not suprised you have less problems with grain in the sky. Vuescan seems to increase grain in highlight areas of negs, and earlier versions put a distinct orange/brown tint in the image compared to Nikonscan. The detail in the skies tend to "blow out" in Nikonscan with the LS30 since it only works with 8 bit data - this has the side effect of reducing apparent grain in the sky. Unfortunately Nikonscan is useless for me since I get jaggies with it, so I have to use Vuescan. I may be able to "improve" things a little by deliberately adjusting the white point, but I don't want to lose too much sky detail. I'm scanning a variety of films from my files etc, but these days I tend to shoot mostly Fuji Provia 100, Astia 100, 64T, NPS 160, and NHG 800. (I guess I like Fuji :) I mostly use Fuji as well. The only non-fuji film I've used much in the last ten years is Kodak T400CN. At the moment I generally use Superia 100 or Provia 100F. My judgement is completely subjective and therefore probably not worth too much. (Take with a large "grain" of halide :) I judged the distortion by comparing the grain on monitor at 100% to how I think it would look with no distortion, and to tonal areas in the same scan with less aliasing distortion. Ah. I was wondering whether you were comparing it to grain in a photographic 10x8 print or something. My ideas about how grain looks are formed by seeing grain magnified in various ways over the years. The joys of experience. :) I'm not so fortunate. Generally, the grain in least aliased areas of 800 speed neg film looks pretty close to no distortion with LS-30 scans, to my eye. Meaning the grain is real? To me, Fuji 800 looks very grainy when scanned. I'm not sure how aliasing distortion could cause color shift, but since aliasing becomes greater at certain tonal transitions you may be seeing the additive effect of two problems overlapping. Does your printer profile posterize blues? I'm not using the same printer anymore, but regardless - the colour shift was in the scanned image. See my comments above about Vuescan and negs. Vuescan does seem to highlight odd colours in blue skies for some reason when scanning negs. This may be an old problem though - I'd have to try scanning the same panoramic frame again with the current incarnation of Vuescan. Ed has made a LOT of changes to the colour transformations since I made the original scan. Sky grain is still an issue though. Jon Cone suggests to avoid overemphasing grain when sharpening scans (I suppose equally true for aliasing distortion), never use a radius setting higher than 0.8. This is interesting. I'll have to check my unsharp mask settings. Having said that - I don't always sharpen scans prior to printing. I imagine sharpening would be more important when printing to larger sizes as you are. The largest I can print at the moment is A3+, and I have yet to try it. I've only printed to something a little smaller than A3. NikonScan 2.5, and it seems about right to me. I guess this answers my question about what program you use. :) Rob Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wordweb.com
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
I guess you've probably got a few replies already, but here's another! Try here: http://www.imaging-resource.com/IRNEWS/archive/current.htm#Nikf Regards, Mark T. At 07:40 PM 8/04/01 -0700, you wrote: I just resubscribed to the list today after months of ISP problems. Would someone please forward (off list) to me the Coolscan 4000 review mentioned in this thread or point me to an archive where I can find it? Thanks, Pat - Original Message - From: "Dave King" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com == Mark Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.adelaide.net.au/~markthom
Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Dave wrote: I don't see significant differences in grain at the print level between 100 speed negs and chromes, and print level is all I really care about. Really??! In the scans I see a huge difference between say Superia 100 and Sensia II 100. There's a *much* bigger difference when you go to Provia 100F. There is no apparent grain with Provia 100F. Sensia II shows little grain. Superia 100 or Reala shows a lot of ugly grain in highlights - particularly skies. I haven't done enough large prints to know for sure, but from the evidence I have there's a big difference between the quality of prints from slides compared to prints from negs. In general grain doesn't bother me, it's an artifact of silver halide technology I've grown to accept. I *do* want to see it in the print, and I want it to look very similar to how it would in a very good equal size analog print. How it looks on the monitor doesn't concern me really. When magnified you'll see significant differences in grain size and structure between various emulsions, yes. As a general rule, it's pretty easy to inadvertently overemphasize grain in digital, so I try to avoid that. *However* one thing I don't recall you mentioning was what program you're using to scan with. Are you using Nikonscan? If so, I'm not suprised you have less problems with grain in the sky. Vuescan seems to increase grain in highlight areas of negs, and earlier versions put a distinct orange/brown tint in the image compared to Nikonscan. I haven't used Vuescan since figuring out how to get what I want out of NikonScan. The detail in the skies tend to "blow out" in Nikonscan with the LS30 since it only works with 8 bit data - this has the side effect of reducing apparent grain in the sky. Unfortunately Nikonscan is useless for me since I get jaggies with it, so I have to use Vuescan. I may be able to "improve" things a little by deliberately adjusting the white point, but I don't want to lose too much sky detail. I see some artifacts from ICE on edges of tonal contrast areas on the monitor, but again, in print it's a non-issue, so I've been able to ignore it. I'm scanning a variety of films from my files etc, but these days I tend to shoot mostly Fuji Provia 100, Astia 100, 64T, NPS 160, and NHG 800. (I guess I like Fuji :) I mostly use Fuji as well. The only non-fuji film I've used much in the last ten years is Kodak T400CN. At the moment I generally use Superia 100 or Provia 100F. My judgement is completely subjective and therefore probably not worth too much. (Take with a large "grain" of halide :) I judged the distortion by comparing the grain on monitor at 100% to how I think it would look with no distortion, and to tonal areas in the same scan with less aliasing distortion. Ah. I was wondering whether you were comparing it to grain in a photographic 10x8 print or something. My ideas about how grain looks are formed by seeing grain magnified in various ways over the years. The joys of experience. :) I'm not so fortunate. Or perhaps you are g. Generally, the grain in least aliased areas of 800 speed neg film looks pretty close to no distortion with LS-30 scans, to my eye. Meaning the grain is real? To me, Fuji 800 looks very grainy when scanned. "Real" is a relative term. Aliasing is a "reaction formation" to real grain, to varying degrees of visual distortion. If the distortion artifacts don't obliterate the grain structure completely (and to my way of looking at it they don't), then at *lower magnifications* (prints) the essential qualities of the original are more or less intact. Fujicolor 800 looks relatively grainy because it is. But it has a smooth structure, and looks great in large prints. Wouldn't shoot architecture on 35mm with it :), but for personal work I love it. Sometimes it "packs up" on smaller prints (don't know better way to describe it), to me it looks better at bigger print sizes oddly enough, but I don't mind it small either, it does what it does. So much improvement in high speed neg films in the past couple of years. I wouldn't have considered an 800 speed neg film years ago except in "emergencies". I'm not sure how aliasing distortion could cause color shift, but since aliasing becomes greater at certain tonal transitions you may be seeing the additive effect of two problems overlapping. Does your printer profile posterize blues? I'm not using the same printer anymore, but regardless - the colour shift was in the scanned image. See my comments above about Vuescan and negs. Vuescan does seem to highlight odd colours in blue skies for some reason when scanning negs. This may be an old problem though - I'd have to try scanning the same panoramic frame again with the current incarnation of Vuescan. Ed has made a LOT of changes to the colour transformations since I made the original scan. Sky grain is still an issue though. Jon
Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Rob wrote: The detail in the skies tend to "blow out" in Nikonscan with the LS30 since it only works with 8 bit data - this has the side effect of reducing apparent grain in the sky. Unfortunately Nikonscan is useless for me since I get jaggies with it, so I have to use Vuescan. I may be able to "improve" things a little by deliberately adjusting the white point, but I don't want to lose too much sky detail. The trick with the LS-30 is to hardware calibrate your monitor (PhotoCal/Monitor Spyder is great, and not too expensive), set up color management in NikonScan using the supplied scanner profile, and use the excellent NikonScan curves dialogue to tone/color correct before scanning. You'll be outputting 24 bit files to PS, but the corrections are applied in hi bit space. Then, if need be, apply tweaks with an adjustment layer before printing. Nikonscan's CM works as well as possible, with a near perfect match to the result in Photoshop. Also Nikonscan does the best color corrections out of the box of anything I've seen, on chromes and negs. And, as I noted previously, the sharpening algorithm it uses is very good. Dave
Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Dave wrote: Nikonscan's CM works as well as possible, with a near perfect match to the result in Photoshop. Also Nikonscan does the best color corrections out of the box of anything I've seen, on chromes and negs. And, as I noted previously, the sharpening algorithm it uses is very good. Er, but as I noted previously, Nikonscan is *useless* for me as it produces jaggies. Vuescan is my only option. Yes, I really like the colour adjustment facilities in Nikonscan, but they're no good to me if the output is garbage due to a bug. Rob Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wordweb.com
Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Dave wrote: Nikonscan's CM works as well as possible, with a near perfect match to the result in Photoshop. Also Nikonscan does the best color corrections out of the box of anything I've seen, on chromes and negs. And, as I noted previously, the sharpening algorithm it uses is very good. Er, but as I noted previously, Nikonscan is *useless* for me as it produces jaggies. Vuescan is my only option. Yes, I really like the colour adjustment facilities in Nikonscan, but they're no good to me if the output is garbage due to a bug. Rob Do you mean jaggies are all through the image, or along the edges? Dave
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
At 04:11 PM 7/04/01 +, you wrote: Jeremy Please take a real sharp slide ( glassles) and select the auto focus in the middle of the picture and scan the slide ( standard mode) Move the auto focus setting out from the middle against the side of the picture and scan. Compare the information in the middle and corner of the 2 slides. Don't tell me that you not can se a big difference in the sharpness I have done this test on 2 different ED 4000 and same results. Best Regards Mikael Risedal Can I just add to this - *please* make sure that the test slide is a 'curved' one. Old Kodachromes in cardboard mounts are often like this - you may have to look harder to find a plastic-mounted one with a good bend.. Sorry if I am stating the obvious. :) Regards, Mark T.
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
On Sat, 07 Apr 2001 15:07:11 +0930 Mark T. ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Eeek. I thought grain-aliasing and film resolution was covered in either lesson 1 or 2 when you do Filmscanning 101..! :) When I first came across this, and began to suspect it was an aliasing phenomenon, I was unable to find any references anywhere. Not one. It didn't exist, and nobody had questioned why images which produce near-grainless prints should suddenly produce easily-visible grain in scans. Nevertheless, it seemed to be that it was completely intelligible as an aliasing artifact, so I wrote it up as a tentative explanation. About a year later, Pete at Photoscientia noticed the same phenomenon and did some research. Like me, he found no reference material, except the material I had posted about it at my site. He contacted me and we discussed what we were both seeing and that we were not hallucinating but it appeared that scanners were, which was reassuring for both of us. We agreed that the fundamental mechanism was aliasing arising from grain pattern interference with the matrix of pixel geometry. His investigations resulted in the feature at http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Grain.htm which remains the most thorough attempt at an explanation - you still won't find it in any text books AFAIK. Apart from Pete's Acer review at www.photoscientia.co.uk, I have still not seen *any* other review of a scanner which mentions it, though many wrongly assert that 2700ppi is enough to image film grain even from ISO100 materials. I have even been contacted by a manufacturer rep and asked if I could suggest any reason why a user was reporting massively exaggerated grain with ISO400 film, so I don't think this problem is widely correctly perceived, let alone understood - probably because many reviewers and others within digital have minimal experience of film photography. It may be that the engineers who design scanners have a huge file on the problem, and I would be astonished if they do not as aliasing is very well understood and many techniques are being developed to deal with it, especially within digicams. But mfr's. mouthpieces, the marketeers, are hardly going to tell us about it, as it devalues the sellable notion of scanning as a near-perfect process. Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio exhibit; + film scanner info comparisons
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Tony, You're to be commended for bringing this problem to our attention. I've mulled it over a bit and come to some conclusions. I could be wrong however, so with that in mind, here are my opinions. It seems to me from eyeball guessing that my LS-30 is resolving grain in 100 ISO films at roughly 40-80% distortion, which looks pretty bad on the monitor at 100% view. 800 speed color neg film does much better at what I would guess to be roughly 25% distortion. The silver lining to this cloud is aliasing distortion (with the LS-30) looks worse on screen than print, IMO. When the ink hits the page aliased grain looks more or less like analog grain, being worse in certain tonal areas than others. Personally I don't find the actual image degradation objectionable, even all that noticeable, in prints of full frame negs up to 24x36 inches with slight interpolation to reach that size. Perhaps this explains in part why this problem hasn't assumed greater weight in the work a day world. Still, other things being equal (they never are), I would prefer less aliasing distortion. But I suspect that when aliasing distortion levels are kept under about 100%, the effect in print will be *relatively* negligible. Dave King PS - Just for funsies I recently printed a max res file from an Fuji S1 digital camera to 24x36. While the image was remarkably good in many respects, and completely grain (pixel) free in areas of even tone, image resolution was far less than from even 800 speed neg film scanned in the LS-30. For the time being at least I'll take the grain, aliasing and all. - Original Message - From: Tony Sleep [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2001 1:18 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 On Sat, 07 Apr 2001 15:07:11 +0930 Mark T. ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Eeek. I thought grain-aliasing and film resolution was covered in either lesson 1 or 2 when you do Filmscanning 101..! :) When I first came across this, and began to suspect it was an aliasing phenomenon, I was unable to find any references anywhere. Not one. It didn't exist, and nobody had questioned why images which produce near-grainless prints should suddenly produce easily-visible grain in scans. Nevertheless, it seemed to be that it was completely intelligible as an aliasing artifact, so I wrote it up as a tentative explanation. About a year later, Pete at Photoscientia noticed the same phenomenon and did some research. Like me, he found no reference material, except the material I had posted about it at my site. He contacted me and we discussed what we were both seeing and that we were not hallucinating but it appeared that scanners were, which was reassuring for both of us. We agreed that the fundamental mechanism was aliasing arising from grain pattern interference with the matrix of pixel geometry. His investigations resulted in the feature at http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Grain.htm which remains the most thorough attempt at an explanation - you still won't find it in any text books AFAIK. Apart from Pete's Acer review at www.photoscientia.co.uk, I have still not seen *any* other review of a scanner which mentions it, though many wrongly assert that 2700ppi is enough to image film grain even from ISO100 materials. I have even been contacted by a manufacturer rep and asked if I could suggest any reason why a user was reporting massively exaggerated grain with ISO400 film, so I don't think this problem is widely correctly perceived, let alone understood - probably because many reviewers and others within digital have minimal experience of film photography. It may be that the engineers who design scanners have a huge file on the problem, and I would be astonished if they do not as aliasing is very well understood and many techniques are being developed to deal with it, especially within digicams. But mfr's. mouthpieces, the marketeers, are hardly going to tell us about it, as it devalues the sellable notion of scanning as a near-perfect process. Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio exhibit; + film scanner info comparisons
aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Dave wrote: It seems to me from eyeball guessing that my LS-30 is resolving grain in 100 ISO films at roughly 40-80% distortion, which looks pretty bad on the monitor at 100% view. 800 speed color neg film does much better at what I would guess to be roughly 25% distortion. I presume you're comparing 100ASA print film with 800ASA print film? (as opposed to 100ASA slide film) Out of interest, exactly which brand/types of film are you using? How did you judge the distortion? Compared to what? The silver lining to this cloud is aliasing distortion (with the LS-30) looks worse on screen than print, IMO. I'd agree with this, although in some cases the amount of distortion (aliasing, grain, whatever you want to call it) is ugly at much lower print sizes. I have a panoramic print on my wall at work on Epson Panoramic Photo Paper - the ocean and beach looks fine, but the sky has an ugly brown discolouration caused by grain aliasing. The film was either Fuji Superia 100 or Reala. Generally however, the printer does tend to be more fogiving than the monitor - the "grain" usually ends up less intense in a print. Rob Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wordweb.com
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
I just resubscribed to the list today after months of ISP problems. Would someone please forward (off list) to me the Coolscan 4000 review mentioned in this thread or point me to an archive where I can find it? Thanks, Pat - Original Message - From: "Dave King" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Dave: Please explain what process you are using to get from negs or trans to a 24x36 ( I assume photographic) print? What scan DPI, print DPI, print process, etc. Thanks. Mike M. Dave King wrote: Tony, You're to be commended for bringing this problem to our attention. I've mulled it over a bit and come to some conclusions. I could be wrong however, so with that in mind, here are my opinions. It seems to me from eyeball guessing that my LS-30 is resolving grain in 100 ISO films at roughly 40-80% distortion, which looks pretty bad on the monitor at 100% view. 800 speed color neg film does much better at what I would guess to be roughly 25% distortion. The silver lining to this cloud is aliasing distortion (with the LS-30) looks worse on screen than print, IMO. When the ink hits the page aliased grain looks more or less like analog grain, being worse in certain tonal areas than others. Personally I don't find the actual image degradation objectionable, even all that noticeable, in prints of full frame negs up to 24x36 inches with slight interpolation to reach that size. Perhaps this explains in part why this problem hasn't assumed greater weight in the work a day world. Still, other things being equal (they never are), I would prefer less aliasing distortion. But I suspect that when aliasing distortion levels are kept under about 100%, the effect in print will be *relatively* negligible. Dave King PS - Just for funsies I recently printed a max res file from an Fuji S1 digital camera to 24x36. While the image was remarkably good in many respects, and completely grain (pixel) free in areas of even tone, image resolution was far less than from even 800 speed neg film scanned in the LS-30. For the time being at least I'll take the grain, aliasing and all.
Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Rob wrote: Dave wrote: It seems to me from eyeball guessing that my LS-30 is resolving grain in 100 ISO films at roughly 40-80% distortion, which looks pretty bad on the monitor at 100% view. 800 speed color neg film does much better at what I would guess to be roughly 25% distortion. I presume you're comparing 100ASA print film with 800ASA print film? (as opposed to 100ASA slide film) Out of interest, exactly which brand/types of film are you using? How did you judge the distortion? Compared to what? I don't see significant differences in grain at the print level between 100 speed negs and chromes, and print level is all I really care about. I'm scanning a variety of films from my files etc, but these days I tend to shoot mostly Fuji Provia 100, Astia 100, 64T, NPS 160, and NHG 800. (I guess I like Fuji :) My judgement is completely subjective and therefore probably not worth too much. (Take with a large "grain" of halide :) I judged the distortion by comparing the grain on monitor at 100% to how I think it would look with no distortion, and to tonal areas in the same scan with less aliasing distortion. My ideas about how grain looks are formed by seeing grain magnified in various ways over the years. Generally, the grain in least aliased areas of 800 speed neg film looks pretty close to no distortion with LS-30 scans, to my eye. The silver lining to this cloud is aliasing distortion (with the LS-30) looks worse on screen than print, IMO. I'd agree with this, although in some cases the amount of distortion (aliasing, grain, whatever you want to call it) is ugly at much lower print sizes. I have a panoramic print on my wall at work on Epson Panoramic Photo Paper - the ocean and beach looks fine, but the sky has an ugly brown discolouration caused by grain aliasing. The film was either Fuji Superia 100 or Reala. I'm not sure how aliasing distortion could cause color shift, but since aliasing becomes greater at certain tonal transitions you may be seeing the additive effect of two problems overlapping. Does your printer profile posterize blues? Generally however, the printer does tend to be more fogiving than the monitor - the "grain" usually ends up less intense in a print. Jon Cone suggests to avoid overemphasing grain when sharpening scans (I suppose equally true for aliasing distortion), never use a radius setting higher than 0.8. That's the way I tend to work editing Agfa T-2500 scans, but I usually turn on ICE and sharpening together in NikonScan 2.5, and it seems about right to me. Dave
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
I scan at max res on a Nikon LS-30 (2700), bi-cubic interpolate in one step up to live area size, 20" wide letting length fall (about 30"), never crop for the big prints, and print on Crane Mueso with spectro profiled Epson 7000 running Generations Enhanced ink at the minimum dpi for good quality, 240 dpi. The result looks great even with the nose pretty close to the print surface. I'm nearsighted, and never loupe the prints. :) Dave - Original Message - From: Michael Moore [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2001 11:06 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 Dave: Please explain what process you are using to get from negs or trans to a 24x36 ( I assume photographic) print? What scan DPI, print DPI, print process, etc. Thanks. Mike M. Dave King wrote: Tony, You're to be commended for bringing this problem to our attention. I've mulled it over a bit and come to some conclusions. I could be wrong however, so with that in mind, here are my opinions. It seems to me from eyeball guessing that my LS-30 is resolving grain in 100 ISO films at roughly 40-80% distortion, which looks pretty bad on the monitor at 100% view. 800 speed color neg film does much better at what I would guess to be roughly 25% distortion. The silver lining to this cloud is aliasing distortion (with the LS-30) looks worse on screen than print, IMO. When the ink hits the page aliased grain looks more or less like analog grain, being worse in certain tonal areas than others. Personally I don't find the actual image degradation objectionable, even all that noticeable, in prints of full frame negs up to 24x36 inches with slight interpolation to reach that size. Perhaps this explains in part why this problem hasn't assumed greater weight in the work a day world. Still, other things being equal (they never are), I would prefer less aliasing distortion. But I suspect that when aliasing distortion levels are kept under about 100%, the effect in print will be *relatively* negligible. Dave King PS - Just for funsies I recently printed a max res file from an Fuji S1 digital camera to 24x36. While the image was remarkably good in many respects, and completely grain (pixel) free in areas of even tone, image resolution was far less than from even 800 speed neg film scanned in the LS-30. For the time being at least I'll take the grain, aliasing and all.
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Copy of Larry's message: "Review of the new Nikon CoolScan 4000 at the Imaging Resource Newsletter: http://www.imaging-resource.com/IRNEWS/ *** Larry Berman" Maris - Original Message - From: "Pat Perez" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2001 9:40 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 | I just resubscribed to the list today after months of ISP problems. Would | someone please forward (off list) to me the Coolscan 4000 review mentioned | in this thread or point me to an archive where I can find it? | | Thanks, | | Pat | | - Original Message - | From: "Dave King" [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 | | | _ | Do You Yahoo!? | Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com |
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
At 10:06 PM 6/04/01 -0400, you wrote: Review of the new Nikon CoolScan 4000 at the Imaging Resource Newsletter: http://www.imaging-resource.com/IRNEWS/ Interesting article, but I start to question it when I read: quote In all our prior film scanner reviews, the highest resolution we'd encountered was about 2800 dpi. Since film grain was fairly evident at that resolution, we felt there was little purpose in going to even higher resolutions, since we reasoned that would emphasize film grain even further. endquote Eeek. I thought grain-aliasing and film resolution was covered in either lesson 1 or 2 when you do Filmscanning 101..! :) And they haven't encountered 4000 dpi before... Maybe the full review will be better..
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
"Jeremy Brookfield" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The software (Nikon Scan 3.0) is so buggy as to render the scanner useless to all intents and purposes. Have you tried Vuescan? Does it work? Rob
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
The latest release of Vuescan is supposed to support the 4000. Tom "Jeremy Brookfield" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The software (Nikon Scan 3.0) is so buggy as to render the scanner useless to all intents and purposes. Have you tried Vuescan? Does it work? Rob
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Rob Geraghty wrote: "Jeremy Brookfield" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The software (Nikon Scan 3.0) is so buggy as to render the scanner useless to all intents and purposes. Have you tried Vuescan? Does it work? Yes, it works quickly and (so far) reliably. Howver, I have difficulties with the color management. Nikon Scan 3 produces well balanced colour without manipulation. None of Vuescans 7.0.12 color balances comes even close to being reasonable. I also miss Nikon Scan's curve control (I have figured out how to use the new LCH dialog properly). Also I cannot find Vuescan's ICE GEM option (is there one?) With the LS2000, I prefered Silverfast to Nikon Scan 2.51 because of the better colour manipulation options. To sink further down to Vuescan's limited controls would not be acceptable to me. Jeremy
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Jeremy Please take a real sharp slide ( glassles) and select the auto focus in the middle of the picture and scan the slide ( standard mode) Move the auto focus setting out from the middle against the side of the picture and scan. Compare the information in the middle and corner of the 2 slides. Don't tell me that you not can se a big difference in the sharpness I have done this test on 2 different ED 4000 and same results. Best Regards Mikael Risedal From: "Jeremy Brookfield" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 09:05:26 +0200 Rob Geraghty wrote: Hopefully someone will produce a more balanced review - hopefully comparing the Nikon 4000 with another 4000dpi scanner. I got my 4000 last week. I can only compare it to the 2000. It is clearly a major improvement - the improvment in dynamic range is noticeable - the higher resolution does show more detail and not just film grain. - I do appreciate the firewire connectivity over SCSI - I have no problems with edge to edge sharpness / film curvature with the (glassless) slide mounts I use. But. The software (Nikon Scan 3.0) is so buggy as to render the scanner useless to all intents and purposes. In general each and every scan will crash (in one of several dlls). I have found a technique to avoid the crashes but I need to do the preview / manipulation, scan and save as TIFF in three separate starts of the product. Totally unacceptable. The software is not labelled as beta but its quality is not even of beta level. Other than scratch removal, I have not played with ICE as it is guaranteed to crash my scans. Perhaps Silverfast will support the scanner in the near future. I have never had much faith in Nikon software. Rob PS I have no doubt the Nikon 4000 is a nice scanner. :) Yes, it is a "nice" scanner, shame about the software Jeremy Brookfield _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Jeremy Please take a real sharp slide ( glassles) and select the auto focus in the middle of the picture and scan the slide ( standard mode) Move the auto focus setting out from the middle against the side of the picture and scan. Compare the information in the middle and corner of the 2 slides. Don't tell me that you not can se a big difference in the sharpness I have done this test on 2 different ED 4000 and same results. Best Regards Mikael Risedal From: "Jeremy Brookfield" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 09:05:26 +0200 Rob Geraghty wrote: Hopefully someone will produce a more balanced review - hopefully comparing the Nikon 4000 with another 4000dpi scanner. I got my 4000 last week. I can only compare it to the 2000. It is clearly a major improvement - the improvment in dynamic range is noticeable - the higher resolution does show more detail and not just film grain. - I do appreciate the firewire connectivity over SCSI - I have no problems with edge to edge sharpness / film curvature with the (glassless) slide mounts I use. But. The software (Nikon Scan 3.0) is so buggy as to render the scanner useless to all intents and purposes. In general each and every scan will crash (in one of several dlls). I have found a technique to avoid the crashes but I need to do the preview / manipulation, scan and save as TIFF in three separate starts of the product. Totally unacceptable. The software is not labelled as beta but its quality is not even of beta level. Other than scratch removal, I have not played with ICE as it is guaranteed to crash my scans. Perhaps Silverfast will support the scanner in the near future. I have never had much faith in Nikon software. Rob PS I have no doubt the Nikon 4000 is a nice scanner. :) Yes, it is a "nice" scanner, shame about the software Jeremy Brookfield _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Jeremy Please take a real sharp slide ( glassles) and select the auto focus in the middle of the picture and scan the slide ( standard mode) Move the auto focus setting out from the middle against the side of the picture and scan. Compare the information in the middle and corner of the 2 slides. Don't tell me that you not can se a big difference in the sharpness I have done this test on 2 different ED 4000 and same results. Best Regards Mikael Risedal From: "Jeremy Brookfield" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 09:05:26 +0200 Rob Geraghty wrote: Hopefully someone will produce a more balanced review - hopefully comparing the Nikon 4000 with another 4000dpi scanner. I got my 4000 last week. I can only compare it to the 2000. It is clearly a major improvement - the improvment in dynamic range is noticeable - the higher resolution does show more detail and not just film grain. - I do appreciate the firewire connectivity over SCSI - I have no problems with edge to edge sharpness / film curvature with the (glassless) slide mounts I use. But. The software (Nikon Scan 3.0) is so buggy as to render the scanner useless to all intents and purposes. In general each and every scan will crash (in one of several dlls). I have found a technique to avoid the crashes but I need to do the preview / manipulation, scan and save as TIFF in three separate starts of the product. Totally unacceptable. The software is not labelled as beta but its quality is not even of beta level. Other than scratch removal, I have not played with ICE as it is guaranteed to crash my scans. Perhaps Silverfast will support the scanner in the near future. I have never had much faith in Nikon software. Rob PS I have no doubt the Nikon 4000 is a nice scanner. :) Yes, it is a "nice" scanner, shame about the software Jeremy Brookfield _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Vuescan's "Clean" option on the Filters tab is the ICE control. Maris - Original Message - From: "Jeremy Brookfield" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2001 9:27 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 | | | Rob Geraghty wrote: | | "Jeremy Brookfield" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | The software (Nikon Scan 3.0) is so buggy as to render the scanner useless | to | all intents and purposes. | | Have you tried Vuescan? Does it work? | | Yes, it works quickly and (so far) reliably. Howver, I have difficulties with | the color management. Nikon Scan 3 produces well balanced colour without | manipulation. None of Vuescans 7.0.12 color balances comes even close to being | reasonable. I also miss Nikon Scan's curve control (I have figured out how to | use the new LCH dialog properly). Also I cannot find Vuescan's ICE GEM option | (is there one?) With the LS2000, I prefered Silverfast to Nikon Scan 2.51 | because of the better colour manipulation options. To sink further down to | Vuescan's limited controls would not be acceptable to me. | | Jeremy | | |
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
Jeremy Please take a real sharp slide ( glassles) and select the auto focus in the middle of the picture and scan the slide ( standard mode) Move the auto focus setting out from the middle against the side of the picture and scan. Compare the information in the middle and corner of the 2 slides. Don't tell me that you not can se a big difference in the sharpness I have done this test on 2 different ED 4000 and same results. Best Regards Mikael Risedal From: "Jeremy Brookfield" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 09:05:26 +0200 Rob Geraghty wrote: Hopefully someone will produce a more balanced review - hopefully comparing the Nikon 4000 with another 4000dpi scanner. I got my 4000 last week. I can only compare it to the 2000. It is clearly a major improvement - the improvment in dynamic range is noticeable - the higher resolution does show more detail and not just film grain. - I do appreciate the firewire connectivity over SCSI - I have no problems with edge to edge sharpness / film curvature with the (glassless) slide mounts I use. But. The software (Nikon Scan 3.0) is so buggy as to render the scanner useless to all intents and purposes. In general each and every scan will crash (in one of several dlls). I have found a technique to avoid the crashes but I need to do the preview / manipulation, scan and save as TIFF in three separate starts of the product. Totally unacceptable. The software is not labelled as beta but its quality is not even of beta level. Other than scratch removal, I have not played with ICE as it is guaranteed to crash my scans. Perhaps Silverfast will support the scanner in the near future. I have never had much faith in Nikon software. Rob PS I have no doubt the Nikon 4000 is a nice scanner. :) Yes, it is a "nice" scanner, shame about the software Jeremy Brookfield _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
To get to VueScan's ICE equivalent use any cleaning mode. To get to the ICE GEM equivalent go to the medium or high cleaning modes. Gordon Jeremy Brookfield wrote: Rob Geraghty wrote: "Jeremy Brookfield" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The software (Nikon Scan 3.0) is so buggy as to render the scanner useless to all intents and purposes. Have you tried Vuescan? Does it work? Yes, it works quickly and (so far) reliably. Howver, I have difficulties with the color management. Nikon Scan 3 produces well balanced colour without manipulation. None of Vuescans 7.0.12 color balances comes even close to being reasonable. I also miss Nikon Scan's curve control (I have figured out how to use the new LCH dialog properly). Also I cannot find Vuescan's ICE GEM option (is there one?) With the LS2000, I prefered Silverfast to Nikon Scan 2.51 because of the better colour manipulation options. To sink further down to Vuescan's limited controls would not be acceptable to me. Jeremy
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
- Original Message - From: "Gordon Tassi" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2001 7:06 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 To get to VueScan's ICE equivalent use any cleaning mode. To get to the ICE GEM equivalent go to the medium or high cleaning modes. Gordon Thanks for the tip. Is there any way to control the use of GEM separately from the scratch removal modes? Nikon Scan 3.0 offers the following choices: Digital ICE : off/ on (normal) / on (fine) Digital ROC : (values 0 10) Digital GEM : (values 0 4) Jeremy
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
No there is not, unfortunately, though we have asked Ed Hamrick the developer if he could/would do so. Maris - Original Message - From: "Jeremy Brookfield" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2001 6:00 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 | | - Original Message - | From: "Gordon Tassi" [EMAIL PROTECTED] | To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2001 7:06 PM | Subject: Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000 | | | To get to VueScan's ICE equivalent use any cleaning mode. To get to the | ICE GEM | equivalent go to the medium or high cleaning modes. | | Gordon | | Thanks for the tip. Is there any way to control the use of GEM separately | from the scratch removal modes? | | Nikon Scan 3.0 offers the following choices: | | Digital ICE : off/ on (normal) / on (fine) | Digital ROC : (values 0 10) | Digital GEM : (values 0 4) | | Jeremy | |
Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000
"Larry Berman" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Review of the new Nikon CoolScan 4000 at the Imaging Resource Newsletter: http://www.imaging-resource.com/IRNEWS/ It reads more like a promotion than a review. The fact that they've never looked at the Polaroid 4000 or the Artix 4000 amazes me. To claim that Firewire is "essential" to produce a 67MB file in 100 seconds is silly. SCSI II can manage that in a few seconds, and I suspect USB would come close to getting under the 100 second mark. Hopefully someone will produce a more balanced review - hopefully comparing the Nikon 4000 with another 4000dpi scanner. Rob PS I have no doubt the Nikon 4000 is a nice scanner. :)
