What drum scans need is a lot of post-production for cleaning-up the images.
Note: This was sent to the list on the 7th but has not appeared anywhere nor in the archives so here it is.....2nd time lucky! Sorry everyone for the length of my reply, but the points Michael has raised obviously are effecting many in the industry and are valid concerns, so a comprehensive reply seemed necessary.
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Dear Michael
I do hope your experiences of drum scanning are not typical of the industry!!
It's not just dust but any number of problems with air bubbles and the optical clarity of the top sleeve used to hold the whole tranny / neg sandwich together.
The reality here is somewhat different, as Neil Barstow will no doubt be happy to confirm. He came here at the start of our drum scanning to carry out the profiling of both scanners, and he commented very favourably at the clean scans of the target... It's now even better I am delighted to say. Nothing is worse to my mind, than having to spend valuable time doing the mindless job of removing blemishes in scans, which should not be there in the first place.
As regards to optical clarity, I am sure there can be a problem if the most appropriate materials are not used and/or there are poor working methods.... but surely this goes for any technically based work....just like working with cameras perhaps<G>
In fact how many different surfaces are there when using a drum scanner?
I think you will find I said six further down in the email you are responding to.
Bear in mind that each layer has a different optical density - it's a miracle, really.
Why a miracle? The scanner focusses on the actual image, not some general point in the vicinity of the drum's surface, that's one of the reasons why drum scans are tack sharp right across each piece of film provided the scanner is in correct adjustment and used properly.
For a fact, most hi-end drum scanning services spend up to 15 minutes 'retouching' your image before you even see it...
If this is really is widespread in the high end scanning world, then there is obviously plenty of room for improvement! As in most things people have a choice.
The way we work, it takes a couple of minutes or so to remove any blemishes from scans, sometimes less. Included are dust specks likely to be dust on the film prior to exposure. Also anything that could be misconstrued as any of these defects and its all included in the price of the scan. This is done at 100% minimum BTW.
It's also an excellent way of checking there are no problems with the scans. Yes drum scanners if not looked after well can easily produce scans with faults that many will not recognise as such unless it's significant. This is just one of the reasons we have a pair of scanners....we can cross check one to the other and hopefully never be without one working perfectly. Also very necessary to have a second scanner because if you have a drum full of scans going through at high resolution taking many hours...tends to cause a log jam.
Perhaps I have misunderstood what you mean by 'most hi-end drum scanning services spend up to 15 minutes' that you are saying they spend this time in messing around with the contrast, density, colour and saturation in the file after scanning. No, we do almost all our work at the prescan stage. Its simply not possible to critically view the transparency along side the monitor screen whilst its mounted on a drum as you can in a CCD film scanner. Therefore we do have to do very minor tweaks on some images after scanning to achieve as perfect a match as the technology allows. However we are working in 16 bit regardless of if the customer wants 8 or 16 bit scans delivered on their CDs, so this does not cause loss of file integrity.#
Cheers
Richard -- Richard Kenward Digital Imaging...Quality drum scans for professionals. See Labs section at www.prodig.org (and email for our comprehensive pdf) =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
