Hi everybody, as you may know, I have written a couple of times about my problems in getting correctly exposed and naturally colored negative scans out of my Nikon Coolscan III LS-30 using Ed Hamrick's Vuescan. A couple of days ago, Ed addressed me via e-mail about the new 7.1.18 version and its improvements as to negative film profiles. I decided to give it a try but the results are still... well... I'd better explain in detail.
I have put four files on my web page for everyone to evaluate: http://schmode.net/vuescan.jpg is a 337 dpi Vuescan scan of a tiger in Hagenbeck Zoo, Hamburg (Germany) using the settings to be seen in http://schmode.net/settings.jpg; most important amongst them are white balance as color balance method, a gamma of 3 and Fuji Reala 100 (Superia 100 does not exist) as film settings. http://schmode.net/nikonscan.jpg is the same picture scanned using Nikon Scan, sRGB, ICE on, analog gain to -0,25 and, as I always do, comprehensive use of the curve tool in Nikon Scan until the preview looks right on the money (I cannot get the Vuescan preview even *close* to this) I can see that the Vuescan version is sharper but, believe me, this is due to the 337 dpi (Ed's algorithm as to lo-dpi scanning seems to be better) - at 2700 dpi, Nikon Scan is film grain sharp with 100 speed color negative film even with ICE on. As to the colors, Vuescan seems to *extremely* give away in the highlights part of the histogram and clip the shadows at that, plus putting a blueish/magenta cast on everything. I can get better use of the highlights by setting the white point to .1 (everything above would clip them as well) but the blueish cast persists as well as the shadows clipping. I am aware that I could get some of this straight with comprehensive post-scan processing but, believe me, this ain't what I was looking for. Neither am I going to scan, check the result, correct, then scan again, check again and so forth until the result is as I can set it in the accurate Nikon Scan preview and histogram before one single full scan is done. I have uploaded the original scan http://schmode.net/scan0001.tif as well, with a link to it on http://schmode.net/scan.htm (to right click/save in case your browser does not display .tif files) should anybody be willing and able to evaluate it (those files won't open in Paint Shop Pro 7 :-(). Meanwhile, I stand disappointed again, waiting for one of the next versions of Vuescan to (maybe) correct what still seems wrong with the current one. Greetings from Germany - Ralf -- My animal photo page on the WWW: http://schmode.net Find my PGP keys (RSA and DSS/DH) on PGP key servers (use "TrustCenter" certified keys only)
