I bought a used Nikon LS-40 (Coolscan IV ED) scanner last summer but
hadn't gotten around to evaluating it until this past couple of
weeks. Well, the more I explore it, the more I feel it's time to
switch to it and pull out some of my older film work, rescan it and
edit it into my portfolio properly ... and sell off the older Minolta
Scan Dual II film scanner. But I couldn't do that until I ascertained
whether I could scan my subminiature film from Minox and other
cameras with the Nikon properly.
With the Minolta, I found I was able to just lay the Minox film
across the 35mm film strip carrier, center it in an aperture, and
scan. The optics and illuminator didn't have any flare to speak of,
unlike my previous Polaroid SprintScan 35E/S for which making a mask
to carry the negative was essential. I wondered if the Nikon would
work the same as the Minolta.
The FH-3 strip holder is a lot more sophisticated than the holder for
the Minolta in most ways but it is definitely designed for strips of
up to six 35mm negatives .. the cross pieces are incomplete, which
always make me think my ten frame strip of Minox 8x11mm film might
get caught or damaged as I move the carrier into and out of the
scanner. To solve this lack, I just cut a couple of post-it notes and
made bridges so that the ends of the Minox film strip would be
supported in something.
I then carefully laid the film across the carrier such that the frame
I wanted was properly centered in a scan aperture. The carrier was
inserted into the scanner, Vuescan fired up, and I clicked the
preview button. A rotation, some tweaks to the scan settings for
white point and gamma, turn OFF the infrared cleaning (my, does it
make a mess to traditional silver-grain film!) set 2900 ppi scan
density and output file destination, scan.
Voila! My first Minox 8x11 negative scan in about 6 years!
http://homepage.mac.com/ramarren/photo/PAW7/17a.htm
This was a negative from my 1999 Thanksgiving trip to North Carolina.
The day after T-Day, I rented a car and drove from Raleigh to
Hendersonville to visit with one of my best photo buddies, whom I
hadn't seen for almost 16 years at that point.
I can see that my camera had a nasty hair stuck in the film gate for
this entire roll but, other than that, the quality is really very
nice to my eye! Couple of minor scratches, etc. No edits whatsoever
have been done to this photo other than using my usual scripts to
size and render a web-display photo, same for the larger version ...
that large version when you click on it is just about exactly the
full size as it comes out of Vuescan.
I guess I can retire the Scan Dual II finally.
enjoy,
Godfrey
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