Volker Kuhlmann wrote:

> My experience with the film scanner is similar. I just stuck any slide
> into the scanner, and tried for over half an hour with xsane to get
> something approaching useful, but no, it's overall too dark and the
> highlights are always significantly washed out. That's just all rubbish.

IMO Linux is worse-off than Windows for colour management.  With Apple 
its built into the os.  Windows provides a location for ICC profiles and 
assigns them to devices but it leaves the actual implementation up to the 
apps and drivers to figure out.  As far as I know, Linux provides 
nothing.

In the true spirit of open source I'm going to sit here and whinge until 
someone else does something about it :)

> vuescan costs US$40, but produced a very good scan of the same slide with
> one click and zero adjustments. I'm all for open source, but the job needs
> to get done first. Alternatively, it's trying the supplied mickeydrivers
> under win4lin, vmware, wine, etc.

I've tried the Vuescan trial version on Windows but I got pretty bad 
results.  I didn't play with it much though.  Plenty of other people have 
raved about it.  Now that I have my Agfa driver working again I don't 
need to worry.

> Photo & Video (in Merivale mall) and Fuji Image Plaza (church corner) both
> have equipment where you can stick a CD into, push some touchscreen
> buttons, and get a file printed on the usual photographic paper, for the
> price of reprints from negatives.

I may have mentioned recently that I thought P&V's machine might support 
CD-RWs.  This is not the case.  The new drive they installed recently 
enables the "e-box" to write files from memory cards (which it also 
supports) to CD.  They have a workstation out the back that will read CD-
RW but this may require leaving it with them if they can't do it there & 
then.  I have heard that CD-R's can also be a bit hit & miss with the e-
box... ymmv.  I might just stick with emailing the files in if they don't 
get too big.

> Getting your film scanned at various shops is either not cost effective
> (i.e. starting $10 per frame) or of too-low quality to be an interesting
> option.

Agreed.  I had some slides scanned a couple of years ago when the going 
rate was about $5.  The results were pretty good in general but a few 
shans had problems.  Its a lot better when you have control over the 
process.

Not long after that I started to anticipate a lot of scanning so I 
splashed out on a fancy (but low-end) multiformat scanner of my own.  It 
had to be low-end because good scanners capable of medium format are, in 
a word, expensive.  Plus my intention was only to scan to the web, and 
the occasional windows backdrop.

BTW Photo & Video can scan an entire roll in one hit and write to CD for 
not-much-money.  But if your negs have been cut into sleeves there's a 
$20 charge for the extra fiddling.  Check the website (www.photo.co.nz) 
for details.  BTW I'm not affiliated with P&V apart from spending too 
much money there.

Cheers,

- Dave

http://www.digistar.com/~dmann/


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