Re: filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon 4000
Anyone who ever used a camera or an enlarger, or basically any other device of that nature, knows that the depth of field is dependent upon the aperture size. In the case of the enlarger (or film scanner) the depth of field of the focus range depends upon the length of the light path and the aperture of the lens projecting onto the CCD. The HP Photosmart does this through using a bright enough light source to allow for a stopped down lens, and folded light path, using mirrors to allow for a fixed focus lens to be used. Of course, that device is not the creme of the crop, by any means. Most scanners use an auto or manual focus system to pinpoint focus. They have enough depth of filed built in to cover typical film curvature. Yes, enlargers can be bought with glass neg carriers, but guess what, they actually degrade the image result. I've tested this with my own enlarging system. (Besseler, Nikkor lenses) You are adding 4 new surfaces, none of which are perfect in surface or color, even if they are optical glass, and all of which are very close to the focal point at the film plane. Add to that internal reflections within each sheet of glass, potential dust scratches and dirt, if they are not perfectly clean, and potential damage to the film. Glass sandwiching is done sometimes with a viscose wet gate, to help reduce the internal reflections of two of the surfaces, and having the outer surfaces far enough away from the film plane to me out of the focal range. But using a glass carrier with a 35mm film scanner doesn't make it, as far as I'm concerned. Further, it requires removing the film from slide mounts (more potential damage). All this just to make up for Nikon's not using a light source with enough intensity to allow for stopping down the lens, or coming up with a better method to control film curvature. For a company that knows optics, I'm surprised. This isn't about being professional equipment, its about a compromise between certain advantages of the LED lighting system against certain disadvantages. Only each user can determine the value of each. Art PAUL GRAHAM wrote: Don't see why anyone is surprised to learn that there is film curvature with 35mm negs in the Nikon scanner. Every pro lab knows that you have to use glass holders for film when working to critical sharpness, 35mm or 5x4". and 4000 dpi needs critical sharpness... Nikon makes and sells a glass holder for the scanner (and the 8000 too) so what's the problem? critical work - with traditional enlargers or with high end scanners, demands some care and attention, and it's actually slightly reassuring that the focus is so precise IMO. It seem this is not really a fair criticism of the scanner. It is intended for semi-professional work after all. Use the glass holder, (with anti newton glass if you have that problem) and you will see astounding differences in your image sharpness. pg
Re: filmscanners: Two yellow bands ...
Ezio wrote: Dearests , I didn't know you cared ;-) I have these 2 yellow bands on the HP-6200c flatbed. Ah, I see you want something from us ;-) These bands can be caused by several things. In order of ease to fix: 1) The glass could have dirt on it (not likely to be that linear) Fix: Clean glass, both inside and out 2) The calibration strip might have been damage Most flatbeds have a calibration process they go through to set each CCD threshold for each scan. This strip is usually glued under the top surface of the scanner under the plastic casing, above the glass platen at the top of the scanner, which the sensor bar reads to adjust the voltages of the sensors. If this has become scratched of damaged in the black areas, it will cut back on the sensitivity of the CCD sensors in that area. So, you might need a new calibration area, or it might require a cleaning (since you have yellow bands, it is more likely the black is rubbed off than the white parts are dirty.) Fix: Open up scanner to observe calibration strip, clean or repair/replace, as needed. 3) The scan head/CCD of mirrors might have some dirt on them. They will need very careful cleaning. Keep in mind scanners and photocopiers use FRONT surfaced mirror which are easily scratched. Fix: Open scanner, carefully clean all optical components. Art What should I do ? ... should I bring the scanner to HP Repair Center ( months without the unit and huge amount of money) or in your opinion it is possible to try some trick to repair it at home.
Re: filmscanners: Best value sure thing scanner...
The answers you provided make the job of someone recommending a scanner to you much easier. Further, your $2000 (I assume US) maximum price point opens the market up to the higher end in the consumer scanners. One thing I read loud and clean is you want clean scans that don't require a lot of dust and scratch and dirt clean up. Also, it seems some of the images you print come from older images which might not have been stored under the best of conditions. These issues automatically lean to using a scanner which has and makes us of an IR channel for cleaning. Also, since you print in BW now, dynamic range is more important than color accuracy. Choices in scanners with either digital ICE (dust and scratch removing software/hardware) or equivalent are: Nikon scanners, LS30, LS 2000, ED 4000, ED 8000, Minolta Elite, Acer 2740, Canon's soon to be released 4000 dpi scanner. Be aware that because of Nikon's light source (LEDs) dust and scratches are much more of an issue, so digital ICE is a must for your application. Digital ICE is NOT available on the Polaroid SS4000, any of the other Minoltas, the HP, or the other Canon, or the other Acer model. Good deep shadow detail requires good dynamic range and density sensitivity. In general newer CCD chips are going to be better at this. The Elite's chip, which appears to be the same one used in the new Dual II, has been given good reports for shadow. I'd suspect the new Nikons and Canon will have good dynamic range. Your other issue seems to be cropping 35mm frames and still having enough resolution for covers. The Minolta Elite uses their newer 2820 dpi sensor, which is about 20% better than in the HP. I'm guessing it is better than that, simply because independent testing of the HP show it's real output resolution is under 1000 dpi. I'd be surprised the Minolta Elite is anywhere near that low. My concern about the Nikons I've expressed before. They have problems with their software and/or stepper motors. Ed Hamrick claims the problem is SCSI timing, and fixed in Vuescan. Now, a "new" problem is making the rounds. Apparently the depth of field at the film plane is so limited (probably due to the low illumination level of the LEDS forcing Nikon to use a larger open lens) that normal film curvature/slide mount distortion is enough to knock the image out of focus around the edges. This is a major problem, IMHO. Glass carriers create a whole other mess of problems, and this problem doesn't exist with any other scanner I know of, I suppose because cold cathode light is much brighter. The Acer 2740 with digital ICE is the cheapest option. It is an improvement over the HP both in shadow detail and resolution (CCD chip is 2700 dpi). But it has fixed exposure settings, which seem to not allow for the optimum scan result for images that aren't perfectly exposed. Faded images and those on older grainier filmstock will benefit from ROC and GEM, which is being offered in some newer scanners as a package with digital ICE (made by the same company as digital ICE (Applied Science Fiction). An ROC-like module is built into Vuescan now, meaning any of these scanners can have this option (I'm not sure the Acer 2740 is supported, and of course, the new Canon isn't yet.) If you can, waiting to see the new Canon with 4000 dpi might be worthwhile, since it will have both a type of dust removal with IR channel, and the highest res CCD chip offered in a current 35mm scanner. Ditto on the new Nikons. If not, the Minolta Elite is a good deal for you (prices are down on it now), the current Nikons, if you can remedy the software or stepper motor issue, and finally, if the money issue is a big one, the Acer 2740. Hope this gives you something to go on, and other on the list please chime in with your own recommendations and experiences. Art Kurt Simpson (Dual Sport News) wrote: There are a number of important factors you need to provide for anyone to give you a reasonable analysis of what will be good value for you. 1) What platform are you using PC... 2) Does your system support SCSI or USB or Firewire? (Firewire isn't an issue yet with film scanners, but will be soon) I have both SCSI and USB...haven't used Firewire yet but I imagine it involves a card 3) What type of films are you using? Color or BW, transparency or neg, mixture of above? What speed films (grain aliasing might be an issue). I can choose as all of the images are used in printing a magazine for motorcycle enthusiasts. Currently we use Fuji Provia or Sensei at ASA 100 even though we print the magazine in BW. We use 35mm but suffer on cover shots as we don't have enough room for cropping...I have 21/4 x 21/4 but haven't used it yet... 4) Do you care more about speed of scan or quality, or must you have both? Quality only... 5) COST! How much do you want to spend... a major factor when speaking about value. Less than
Re: filmscanners: Vuescan 7.0.8 hang!
Unless Windows is utterly lame (a possibility, granted), it should be possible to flush each line of the logfile to disk as it is written. Files should not disappear just because the machine gets hung/rebooted, so the log should be retrievable. problem is with all advanced operating systems is that they employ a write cache - i.e. sector will only be written after a certain amount of time, to allow for a lot of writes to same sector (i.e. directory/fat) to not slow the system, this is why you will be seeing files 'disappear'. this is probably not your problem though.. but, there are functions inside windows to fully flush the file buffers. In Unix at least, the programmer can open the file for synchronous disk access, i.e. the write does not complete (the program waits) until the block is flushed, and this happens immediately. I expect that Windows allows this too. Bill Ross
Re: filmscanners: new Minolta Scan Dual II not working after oneday.
"Acer V" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: isn't the whole point of usb to be plug-n-play and also hot swappable? USB, yes. But it depends on the OS and the drivers for the peripheral. Rob
Re: filmscanners: Two yellow bands ...
- Original Message - From: "Arthur Entlich" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 6:16 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Two yellow bands ... Art answered: Ezio wrote: Dearests , I didn't know you cared ;-) I have these 2 yellow bands on the HP-6200c flatbed. Ah, I see you want something from us ;-) Does it happens outside Italy too ? ;-) These bands can be caused by several things. In order of ease to fix: 1) The glass could have dirt on it (not likely to be that linear) Fix: Clean glass, both inside and out DONE ... no improvements 2) The calibration strip might have been damage Most flatbeds have a calibration process they go through to set each CCD threshold for each scan. This strip is usually glued under the top surface of the scanner under the plastic casing, above the glass platen at the top of the scanner, which the sensor bar reads to adjust the voltages of the sensors. If this has become scratched of damaged in the black areas, it will cut back on the sensitivity of the CCD sensors in that area. So, you might need a new calibration area, or it might require a cleaning (since you have yellow bands, it is more likely the black is rubbed off than the white parts are dirty.) Fix: Open up scanner to observe calibration strip, clean or repair/replace, as needed. I'll open today 3) The scan head/CCD of mirrors might have some dirt on them. They will need very careful cleaning. Keep in mind scanners and photocopiers use FRONT surfaced mirror which are easily scratched. Fix: Open scanner, carefully clean all optical components. As above _ Sincerely. Ezio
Re: filmscanners: Still Having Trouble with Win2K
Larry, At the risk of stating the obvious, your display problem sure looks like the graphics card is not set up properly in W2k. I can get a very similar effect by setting the card here to 16 bit High Colour, although even then it is not as bad as your example. Could be a cumulative effect taking place with the screen capture though. Your surround is still on the Windows default colour in W2k. I always find that one difficult to sort out when setting up the display, but I have nailed it now. Display Properties - Appearance - Item box, select 3D Objects, and alter the colour to your desire. Colin Maddock
RE: filmscanners:Focusing film flatness
And so it should! If the new (and I gather old) 4000 dpi Nikons can't handle a curved slide, there is no way I would consider them. I can just imagine ripping all of my (and my client's) Kodachromes out of their mounts before I scanned them. Oh what fun.. When I bought an expensive slide-projector about 10 years ago, I took it straight back when it gave out of focus edges on curved slides. After some argument, they ended up relenting and giving me a much better lens with sufficient depth of field. It copes easily with flat and curved slides, and so does my current scanner, a low end 2720 model. This is not rocket science.. I think it is a VERY fair criticism of the Nikon scanner. If Nikon has chosen a scanning method that doesn't work well for curved slides, I reckon they have just lost a significant portion of the market. Or can someone give me a really easy, quick and painless way of transferring a piece of film from a glued cardboard mount into a glass slide And, for that matter, a recommendation for glass slides that REALLY don't suffer from Newton's rings. My experience is that even those that are supposedly Newton-proof generally are not. Mark T At 07:01 PM 31/03/01 -0500, you wrote: Because of the light source the lens has significant depth of field. You need not be concerned. David -Original Message- From: Stan Schwartz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] As many of my cardboard mounted transparencies are bowed to various degrees, I have been curious whether this focusing scheme tracks the curvature of the film--or does it just focus on a single plane. snip == Mark Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.adelaide.net.au/~markthom
Re: filmscanners: Best value sure thing scanner...
Well done, Art - an excellent summary, from what I've read/learnt! My small addition - I have heard from at least 2 sources (so it might be true!) that use of the dust-removal function on the Acer 2740S increases the normal 40 second full-res scan to a couple of minutes! I gather it uses a separate, slow IR pass. I would suggest this should probably rule it out for that user. I would also re-iterate that 2720 dpi is fine for slides, but grain aliasing can be a big issue with neg's, so I think 4000 dpi would be the way to go. PS - I actually own the Acer 2720S and really like it, but I don't have a major dust problem. (And I actually like 'cloning'. It's sort of like meditation...:) Regards, Mark T. At 10:19 PM 31/03/01 -0800, you wrote: The Acer 2740 with digital ICE is the cheapest option. It is an improvement over the HP both in shadow detail and resolution (CCD chip is 2700 dpi). But it has fixed exposure settings, which seem to not allow for the optimum scan result for images that aren't perfectly exposed. Hope this gives you something to go on, and other on the list please chime in with your own recommendations and experiences. Art == Mark Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.adelaide.net.au/~markthom
Re: filmscanners: scanning/photoshop workstation (long)
I feel multiple processors are worthwhile in a power system so my last system was built with two PIIIs rather than one Athlon. Dual Athlons will be possible when the appropriate motherboard chipset comes out but it's still Real Soon Now! I used an Abit VP6 motherboard which seems to be quite a bargain as far as dual CPU boards go. It has four DIMM slots allowing 2G of RAM (ECC if desired). I'm just using a gig myself :-) It also has an integrated UDMA/100 RAID controller on the motherboard allowing up to 4 drives either as two pairs striped or mirrored, or as a four drive striped/mirrored set which is the way I'm using it. [EMAIL PROTECTED] (PAUL GRAHAM) wrote: Hi all, I've been researching for months about getting a medium format workstation for my scanning work, and thought I'd just run it by the forum for opinions, oversights, have my assumptions corrected, and perhaps even be some help to others too. Basically the new 4000 dpi m/f scanners will output such large files that handling them demands a new ball game in desktop systems: files of 500 to 700 Mb will be common at 4000 dpi, (in 16bit), and no doubt 6000 dpi will come along soon for 35mm. If you do 5x4" - god help you. Processing power is not the problem, a high end Mac, P4 or AMD Athlon, will all do the job well. All of these have enough power/ MHz. The issue seems to be the memory handling of these large files: Now, the rule of thumb is that you need 3 to 5 times the RAM as your file size for efficient PS handling, so... this means maximum RAM on the machine: Max RAM for any programme in a Mac OS is 1Gb (out of 1.5 Gb on the board) Max RAM in W 2K is 2Gb per programme (out of up to 4Gb) so this means... a Windows machine, until Mac get their motherboards upgraded. ok: from what I understand the max RAM controllable on a windows board is set by the chipset, and of course, the physical number of memory slots present. Older chipsets/boards are pretty much the same as Mac's (3 memory slots (dimms), 1.5Gb controllable) But there are now motherboards out there now that have new chipsets (3 or 4 Gb controllable) and 4 memory slots, so 2 Gb is can easily be dedicated to Photoshop alone. Newer DDR memory boards (latest Athlon systems) are also out there with 3 or 4 slots, as are P4 boards, with Rambus memory RIMMS, but... this memory is very expensive, with a 512Mb stick being about $800 in DDR compared to only $170 currently in the older SDRAM. so.. if you are buying four of these (to make 2Gb) then you can save literally thousands of $ by not buying the latest memory types, losing maybe a few % performance. Or put another way, you can have 2Gb of SDRAM for the price of 500 Mb or DDR RAM. It seems a new style Athlon SDRAM board with 4 slots is the way to go for best bang per buck at present. (Incidentally, 1 Gb sticks are much more reasonable than they were - but this means they are now $1400 rather than $6000 so forget about them. They are also only available in the older SDRAM format anyway) Whatever happens obviously you are going to run out of RAM eventually, and be writing to the hard drive... so fast hard drives are essential, and RAID seems to be coming in as the new standard for all workstations. That is, in its simplest performance mode, writing/reading your data across two or more drives (stripping, or RAID 0), which gives dramatic speed improvements and memory handling, apparently. This used to be SCSI territory, but now ATA RAID (for regular drives) is common, and RAID controllers are included on many windows motherboards, so it is just the cost of the extra drive. (cheap). so, you could get two good IBM 75 Gb drives, which makes 150 Gb of stripped UDMA memory for about $600 ($300 x2). SCSI RAID would be faster still, but this, for 150 Gb, would be $1800 ($900 x2) plus a controller $250, (though sometimes even SCSI RAID is included on high end boards) - pricey, but possible for a very quick system, or as a substitute for lower RAM. (Incidentally, you can get an ATA RAID card for Mac's too, but they don't push it as Mac would rather sell you SCSI for high $. This could make the MAC system workable with only 1 Gb photoshop memory, for not too many $ extra) So that is where I am at, and about to spend my hard earned dosh. Sorry if this is geek-speek to some, but others will (hopefully) point out some mistakes or oversights in my thinking, and advise another way... please. I know this sounds crazy high-end stuff, but I really think its coming in thick and fast... there will be plenty more pro-photographers out there doing this same m/f scanning, and all coming up against these issues. regards to all, paul
Re: filmscanners: negative and skin tones
Maris and Mikael These CMYK values for facial skin tones are very useful. I have been struggling with some of my first scans trying to get the skin tones to look right. Of course, in these photographs there aren't even any good areas of black or white to help set those points. By adjusting the color to give me roughly the values you have both mentioned, then further adjusting from there, my scans look *substantially* better. Not surprisingly, all the colors look much more normal. I know this is in a way a backward approach to color adjustment, but with these scans the skin tones are what matter to me. Thanks for the shortcut to at least get me to some baseline. -- Jim "Maris V. Lidaka, Sr." wrote: VueScan is very interesting and useful to the subscribers on this group, and the program is somewhat opaque resulting in the many discussions of what appear to be insignificant details and changes in the different versions. I would venture to say that Vuescan is the primary scanning program used though I have no statistics on which to base that. Concerning the CMYK values for skintones, your guidelines appear to be more or less correct. I have found Dan Margulis's guidelines to be a bit better and empirically more accurate. He maintains that, for Caucasians, cyan should be about 1/5 to 1/3 of magenta (Professional Photoshop 5) rather than 1/2 as you suggest. Another problem that comes to mind is that scanners export the image in RGB and desktop printers (without exceptions that I am aware of) require RGB input, performing the RGB-CMYK conversion internally. As there is loss in color in the RGB-CMYK conversion and the subsequent CMYK-RGB re-conversion many try to avoid having to color-correct in CMYK despite the benefits of the black channel. Maris - Original Message - From: "Mikael Risedal" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2001 11:24 AM Subject: filmscanners: negative and skin tones | To the scanner group. | | As a photographer Im "little bit tired "of reading about ( VueScan nr | ) and i hoped to learn something from other people in the group, who | can be more interesting and useful. | | Therefor i begin with a small tip: | To some of you who all ready know it- come with a another tip ! | | Scanning negative film and skin tones are sometimes a tuff job. You have | nothing to compare against, (as with a slide.) | Faces and skin tones become often to red in printing, A good rule is to | measure the face skin tone in a CMYK profile known for printing purpose. | (do it in Photoshop 5.0 6.0) | If you make corrections and have | C about half of magenta | M less then Yellow | Y more then magenta + 5-10 % | K - | This figures give you a more natural skin tone in printing , and the red and | ugly are goon. | | Another good rule to know is that | Grey in CMYK are about C= 32 M=20 Y0=20 | You can often estimate something in the picture who are grey. | | Mikael Risedal | Photographer | Lund | Sweden
Re: filmscanners: Printdpi
Berry, Sorry for the delay - my browser wasn't functioning right. It's at page http://www.scantips.com/basics3b.html and the previous page. His online article only discusses printers with resolution up to 600dpi, though, so the article is just the basics. Maris - Original Message - From: "Berry Ives" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 7:56 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Printdpi | on 3/29/01 7:58 AM, Maris V. Lidaka, Sr. at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | | The general consensus is printing in the range of 240-360dpi, and it will | depend on the paper - for a good explanation of why see | http://www.scantips.com/ | | The best thing to do is to experiment on *your* printer and find the optimal | dpi for each type of paper you generally use. I did that for my HP | PhotoSmart just the other day on HP glossy, and found that 240dpi appeared | the best. | | Maris | | - Original Message - | From: "Richard Starr" [EMAIL PROTECTED] | To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 7:27 AM | Subject: filmscanners: Printdpi | | | | The dpi thread leads me to ask what the best dpi for printing on an Epson | | printer (Stylus 600 for example) would be. | | | | My habit is to correct an image at the scanned resolution then move it to | a | | default blank page for printing, using PhotoShop's free transformation for | | sizing. I save the 'print' version as well as the full resolution file. | The | | prints look good. | | | | I normally use a blank page set for 8.5 x11 inches and 110 dpi. I'm | wondering | | if I'd see better results at a higher dpi or faster results at a lower | dpi. | | Lower dpi would result in a smaller file for storage too. There must be | an | | ideal maximum resolution beyond which the image doesn't print better and a | | minimum resolution below which it is noticeably degraded. | | | | Comments? | | Rich | | So where are the scantips on that page? | | ~Berry | |
RE: filmscanners: scanning cross-processed film
On Saturday, March 31, Jules wrote: i'm trying to scan some kodak supra 100 developed in e6. the slides have the pinkish look that i want, but i'm having a lot of trouble getting it scanned (LS-2000, VueScan). for some reason the scanner/software tries to make the background white. i've all the color presets in vuescan, even "neutral" came out white in the preview and "none" came out slighly blueish. anyone have experience scanning xp? I've got a test strip of Velvia crossed the other way in a sleeve, but haven't gotten around to scanning it yet... You didn't say what media settings you're using in Vuescan. I'd be trying Device/Media type = "Slide film", and Color/Slide vendor = "GENERIC" for starters. I'd also start with Color/Color balance = "Auto levels" but uncheck "Auto black point" and set all the black point values to 0's. Then I'd try one scan, and uncheck "Auto white point" to see where Vuescan set it, and then adjust those values manually if I wasn't getting what I wanted. You might also need to uncheck Color/Auto mask and adjust those values manually. A lot of the pink color that you like might be coming from the film base, which Vuescan will try to correct away for you. Just some thoughts... Hope this helps, Tim Victor [EMAIL PROTECTED]
filmscanners: Re: new Minolta Scan Dual II not working after one day.
Acer V wrote: Next day I... ...plugged the Minolta in again to do some more scanning with ColorSync now in operation - But now the little green light on the front won't come on, and when I fire up the Minolta driver utility on its own, or from within Photoshop, or use the Easyscan utility, all I get is an error message saying: "Could not confirm scanner connection" One possibility could be that you plugged it in while the Mac was on and the Minolta was on and fried the I/O chip. A 'friend' did this for me once with a Tectronics printer. Do you remember if both were turned off? isn't the whole point of usb to be plug-n-play and also hot swappable? /Acer V The Mac was certainly on, because, yes, I too believe in the hot swappability of USB. Though normally, just to be safe, out of habit, having grown up in the 1960s and being rather old-fashioned and safety conscious that way, pedantically so in fact, I would have ensured that the scanner was off before I plugged it into the computer. Unfortunately, this is virtually impossible to confirm with the Dimage II, as the on-off switch is the 'returning-flush-button' type, and worse, there is no noticeable difference in push-resistance to be felt between the on and off positions. So when it's off, you can't tell what position the switch is in, unless you switched it off before you unplugged it, and know for sure that no-one touched it in the meantime. Not very practical and not very failsafe. Other than that, I did it just like it says in the user-manual, which says: "CONNECTING THE HARDWARE Connecting the AC power adapter and the USB Cable: This scanner has been packaged with the USB cable and AC power adapter. 1. Plug the AC power adapter cord into the scanners AC socket, then plug it into a grounded outlet. 2. Connect one end of the USB cable to either USB port (sic - there's only one!) on the back of the scanner. 3. Connect the other end of the USB cable to the USB port on the computer or the USB Hub terminal. NOTE: When connecting the Dual2 with the USB hub terminal, be sure to connect to the closest terminal to the computer." That's all it says. There's no warnings against hot swapping. In fact, the opposite is the case, for in the user-manual's glossary definition of USB, Minolta say: "It does not matter whether the USB equipment or computer is turned on or off first. In the USB connection, the USB equipment or computer can be connected or disconnected even while the equipment is turned on." Doesn't sound much like a warning against hot swapping to me, does it to you? So there you have it. I'm not taking the rap for how I plugged this thing in. Since last night I've also tested it by trying to install it on a P4 Win 98 machine as well, but no show. Whatever's fried is fried, and it wasn't me holding the skillet. If nobody has any other ideas about software bugs it could be, I'm taking it back to the store tomorrow for a replacement. Cheers, Adam.
Re: filmscanners: Still Having Trouble with Win2K
Larry: At the risk of asking you a question you may have already answered, since I know you know very well which end of a computer is up, nevertheless, the one thing that occurs to me is the color temp that you have the monitors set for... could your new Dells somehow be overriding the color temp you have them set for when you do your color calibration? Are they perhaps going into a monitor profile different from the one you are creating? Just a thought from a pre-espresso brain on Sunday morning after the "wonderful" time change... Mike M. Larry Berman wrote: Hi Colin, Thanks for the suggestions. But both displays are set at Windows default. Here's a kicker. I've switch 21 inch monitors and the 21 from my Win98SE (Dell D1620HT) system looks fine on the new Win2k system. I've spoken to Dell tech support, although they couldn't look at the web page, and they told me that I should call my sales person and tell them I need a different monitor. I've also switched graphics cards back to the original nVidia card that came with the Win2K system and the P series monitors still looked bad What I'm seeing is that the Dell P series Trinitron monitors are not showing full 32 bit color. I'm now seeing the same bad color gradations on my Win98SE system with my new 19 inch P991 Dell Trinitron also. So maybe both new Dell monitors are going back this week. The 21 inch that showed the bad gradations is a P1110. Summery: Dell's D1620HT Trinitron looks good on either computer. Dell's P1110 Trinitron looks bad on either computer, showing a colder looking gray and what appears to be a not full 32 bit color. Dell's P991 Trinitron looks bad on either computer, showing a colder looking gray and what appears to be a not full 32 bit color. Larry At the risk of stating the obvious, your display problem sure looks like the graphics card is not set up properly in W2k. I can get a very similar effect by setting the card here to 16 bit High Colour, although even then it is not as bad as your example. Could be a cumulative effect taking place with the screen capture though. Your surround is still on the Windows default colour in W2k. I always find that one difficult to sort out when setting up the display, but I have nailed it now. Display Properties - Appearance - Item box, select 3D Objects, and alter the colour to your desire. *** Larry Berman http://BermanGraphics.com http://IRDreams.com http://ImageCompress.com ***
Re: filmscanners: negative and skin tones
I may have recommended it before, but these numbers came from Margulis's Photoshop book, Chapter 2 being available online at http://www.ledet.com/margulis/PP6_Chapter2.pdf Maris - Original Message - From: "Jim Sharp" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 8:38 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: negative and skin tones | Maris and Mikael | | These CMYK values for facial skin tones are very useful. | | I have been struggling with some of my first scans trying to get the | skin tones to look right. Of course, in these photographs there aren't | even any good areas of black or white to help set those points. | | By adjusting the color to give me roughly the values you have both | mentioned, then further adjusting from there, my scans look | *substantially* better. Not surprisingly, all the colors look much more | normal. I know this is in a way a backward approach to color adjustment, | but with these scans the skin tones are what matter to me. | | Thanks for the shortcut to at least get me to some baseline. | | -- | Jim | | | "Maris V. Lidaka, Sr." wrote: | | VueScan is very interesting and useful to the subscribers on this group, and | the program is somewhat opaque resulting in the many discussions of what | appear to be insignificant details and changes in the different versions. I | would venture to say that Vuescan is the primary scanning program used | though I have no statistics on which to base that. | | Concerning the CMYK values for skintones, your guidelines appear to be more | or less correct. I have found Dan Margulis's guidelines to be a bit better | and empirically more accurate. He maintains that, for Caucasians, cyan | should be about 1/5 to 1/3 of magenta (Professional Photoshop 5) rather than | 1/2 as you suggest. | | Another problem that comes to mind is that scanners export the image in RGB | and desktop printers (without exceptions that I am aware of) require RGB | input, performing the RGB-CMYK conversion internally. As there is loss in | color in the RGB-CMYK conversion and the subsequent CMYK-RGB re-conversion | many try to avoid having to color-correct in CMYK despite the benefits of | the black channel. | | Maris | | - Original Message - | From: "Mikael Risedal" [EMAIL PROTECTED] | To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2001 11:24 AM | Subject: filmscanners: negative and skin tones | | | To the scanner group. | | | | As a photographer Im "little bit tired "of reading about ( VueScan nr | | ) and i hoped to learn something from other people in the group, | who | | can be more interesting and useful. | | | | Therefor i begin with a small tip: | | To some of you who all ready know it- come with a another tip ! | | | | Scanning negative film and skin tones are sometimes a tuff job. You have | | nothing to compare against, (as with a slide.) | | Faces and skin tones become often to red in printing, A good rule is to | | measure the face skin tone in a CMYK profile known for printing purpose. | | (do it in Photoshop 5.0 6.0) | | If you make corrections and have | | C about half of magenta | | M less then Yellow | | Y more then magenta + 5-10 % | | K - | | This figures give you a more natural skin tone in printing , and the red | and | | ugly are goon. | | | | Another good rule to know is that | | Grey in CMYK are about C= 32 M=20 Y0=20 | | You can often estimate something in the picture who are grey. | | | | Mikael Risedal | | Photographer | | Lund | | Sweden |
RE: filmscanners: SS4000 loaders
Tom, Actually after some fits and starts progress is being made on the slide feeder. I canot at tis time give you a delivery date but is more than a gleam in Polaroid's eye. David -Original Message- From: Tom Scales [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2001 9:18 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: SS4000 loaders David, I think it was you that mentioned a bulk slide loader and bulk neg loader that were under development for the SS4000. I'd guess that was six months or so ago. Any word on their development? It's about the only reason I'm considering switching to a 4000 ED. Thanks, Tom From: "Hemingway, David J" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Because of the light source the lens has significant depth of field. You need not be concerned. David
Re: filmscanners: Still Having Trouble with Win2K
Hi Mike, It's actually happening either with OptiCal on or off. You can definitely see that OptiCal is loading because the monitor changes color as the splash screen flashes. But then again, it isn't the color temperature which worries me, it's the fact that the monitors seem to be running at less than 16 bit color. When I change it to16 bit color on my Win98SE system, the color picker looks better than 32 bit color on my Win2K system. I posted earlier about the physical differences in the Dell Trinitron monitors. I think my next step is to get Dell to send me the same 21 inch monitor that my Win98SE system has. It looks much better than the P series Trinitrons, which look colder and don't seem to be capable of 32 bit color. Maybe they're optimized for Word and Excel, since they come from the small business division. If the different monitors don't solve the problem I'll reformat and install Win98SE on my new machine and try that before returning the system. I've never encountered a problem that I couldn't solve (or live with) in Win98SE. Thanks for your reply, Larry the one thing that occurs to me is the color temp that you have the monitors set for... could your new Dells somehow be overriding the color temp you have them set for when you do your color calibration? Are they perhaps going into a monitor profile different from the one you are creating? *** Larry Berman http://BermanGraphics.com http://IRDreams.com http://ImageCompress.com ***
Re: filmscanners: SS4000 loaders
That's good news, although I noticed you didn't mention the neg feeder, which is what I truly want.oh well. Tom - Tom, Actually after some fits and starts progress is being made on the slide feeder. I canot at tis time give you a delivery date but is more than a gleam in Polaroid's eye. David
Re: filmscanners: negative and skin tones
Maris Yes, you posted it I downloaded it, I just haven't had a chance to look though it yet. The fact that I could take those basic numbers and make an immediate and notable improvement to my scans is satisfying. -- Jim "Maris V. Lidaka, Sr." wrote: I may have recommended it before, but these numbers came from Margulis's Photoshop book, Chapter 2 being available online at http://www.ledet.com/margulis/PP6_Chapter2.pdf Maris
Re: filmscanners:Focusing film flatness
Or can someone give me a really easy, quick and painless way of transferring a piece of film from a glued cardboard mount into a glass slide Mark T. For getting out of the cardboard pick up a Wess paper mount opener. Should be available in any good camera store. Aside from being quicker it protects against slips of knife. John M.
filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon's
Mikael: don't see what any of that text you quote from Nikon: "Coolscan Film Scanners: The Coolscan IV ED, Super Coolscan 4000 ED and Super Coolscan 8000 ED, take film scanning to a new level by..." (etc) has to do with the choice of carriers... I'm not critical of your findings - they are probably true, I just don't feel it is a total failure on the scanners part, when they give you a choice of carriers: If you are just making quick scans for proofs - use the glassless carrier, but if you are making critical scans for the ultimate 4000dpi results, then use the glass carrier - that was my point. It is precisely what all pro darkroom people have done for years, and its what I do, even with 1000 watts of halogen bulbs shining through a negative... maybe other scanners use a brighter lightsource and so gain depth of focus etc, but this one doesn't. I expect there is some trade made by Nikon against using tubes for LED spectrum, long life, heat, consistency or ?... I notice that the recent ZBE Chromira printer, which (like a Lightjet/Lambda) writes digital files direct to photo paper, is an LED machine too.. Film flatness is a problem with all scanners/enlargers. Flatbeds don't suffer so much from it because the film is pressed against the glass - in other words - it's glass mounted! Even with high end drum scanners and laser light sources you have to ensure negative flatness with oil mounting and pressure rollers etc, so, why should it be any different here as we approach drum scanner resolutions in desktop boxes? Nobody in decades of making enlarger negative holders has come up with a glassless way of holding a negative perfectly flat, the only solution has been glass carriers, or stopping down the depth of focus to the detriment of image resolution (and I don't want to get into circles of confusion here!) paul
filmscanners: nikon glass carrier ref #
Rob: For the 8000 its FH-869G for the 4000 its ? sorry I don't have that sheet. look it up on the site - it will end in xxxG though another interesting item is the FH869GR holder (for the 8000, 120 film) which is an oversize m/f glass holder, and goes beyond the edges of the frame, like a filed out neg carrier. Hope David will do both of these for the Polaroid Sprintscan 120? David? -pg Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 11:07:50 +1000 From: "Rob Geraghty" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon 4000 "PAUL GRAHAM" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nikon makes and sells a glass holder for the scanner (and the 8000 too) so what's the problem? Anyone know the part number for this? I'm wondering if it may help with edge-to-edge sharpness on an LS30 as well. Admittedly I'm quite happy with the focus on the LS30 but it would be interesting to try. :) Rob
Re: filmscanners:Focusing film flatness
Most darkroom workers interested in quality wouldn't use a mounted slide for projection in an enlarger. If you've ever had a large custom print made by a good lab you'll see it's been taken out of the mount and replaced. Not too hard, cut the cardboard half way through with a single edge razor along the center of any of the 4 wide sides of the mount, bend one of the near corners down a bit and it'll come apart. (Don't remove the layer completely and you can re-use the mount. Replace the film and tape along the cut. Practice on outtake slides.) Then place the film in a glassless carrier, possibly using tape along the sprocketed sides to fix in place and flatten a bit if needed. I've scanned a few mounted slides in my LS-30 and don't recall any particular problem with focus at the edges. Some mounted slides are more curved than others however, it depends on type of film, processing conditions, how old the film was before processing, how it's mounted, and how it's stored. I did see a problem using the auto film strip feeder and neg strips, but the fix was easy, use the film strip holder. We've only seen one complaint about this so far? Perhaps we should wait a bit before coming to any hard and fast conclusions. And even if the DOF is on the shallow side with Nikon's new scanners, there will surely be easy fixes for careful workers. These new scanners are pretty compelling, and I doubt this will turn out to be a major problem, if any problem at all. Dave - Original Message - From: Mark T. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 1:17 AM Subject: RE: filmscanners:Focusing film flatness And so it should! If the new (and I gather old) 4000 dpi Nikons can't handle a curved slide, there is no way I would consider them. I can just imagine ripping all of my (and my client's) Kodachromes out of their mounts before I scanned them. Oh what fun.. When I bought an expensive slide-projector about 10 years ago, I took it straight back when it gave out of focus edges on curved slides. After some argument, they ended up relenting and giving me a much better lens with sufficient depth of field. It copes easily with flat and curved slides, and so does my current scanner, a low end 2720 model. This is not rocket science.. I think it is a VERY fair criticism of the Nikon scanner. If Nikon has chosen a scanning method that doesn't work well for curved slides, I reckon they have just lost a significant portion of the market. Or can someone give me a really easy, quick and painless way of transferring a piece of film from a glued cardboard mount into a glass slide And, for that matter, a recommendation for glass slides that REALLY don't suffer from Newton's rings. My experience is that even those that are supposedly Newton-proof generally are not. Mark T At 07:01 PM 31/03/01 -0500, you wrote: Because of the light source the lens has significant depth of field. You need not be concerned. David -Original Message- From: Stan Schwartz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] As many of my cardboard mounted transparencies are bowed to various degrees, I have been curious whether this focusing scheme tracks the curvature of the film--or does it just focus on a single plane. snip == Mark Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.adelaide.net.au/~markthom
Re: filmscanners: OT: copyrights
In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jim Snyder wrote: I do have a problem with Microsoft copying the Macintosh interface and denying that it is a copy. Apple copied the ideas for a mouse, the GUI interface, and more, but there was no denial of where the ideas came from (somehow better). All shades of gray... Actually Apple stole these GUI ideas from Xerox PARC's Smalltalk and then tried to claim they were their own invention, to stop anyone else from using them. They were successful in crippling the GEM GUI in this way, which is why GEM failed to take off. This is why MS claimed their Windows ideas were original - to get round Apple's legal challenges! Brian Rumary, England http://freespace.virgin.net/brian.rumary/homepage.htm
Re: filmscanners: Still Having Trouble with Win2K
Larry said: I'm now seeing the same bad color gradations on my Win98SE system with my new 19 inch P991 Dell Trinitron also. Sure sounds like the monitors. They must be more hi-tech than I realise, I'm probably way out of date. Assuming they take in an analog signal from the computer, it's hard to know how they can give the effect you are getting unless they have some digital processing of the colours internally. Perish the thought. I originally thought the problem must be independent of the monitors, as it showed up on the screen grabs you put up on the Web. Roll on Monday morning? Colin Maddock
filmscanners: Color Technology
FYI... http://www.inforamp.net/~poynton/Poynton-colour.html -- Regards, Joe Daugirdas Personal: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Business: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: filmscanners: OT: copyrights
Gosh - what would have happened if MS had licensed the GUI design from Xerox. Maybe XRX would not in such financial distress today. In any event, this shows how few truly original ideas there are. John -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of B.Rumary Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 5:32 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: OT: copyrights In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jim Snyder wrote: I do have a problem with Microsoft copying the Macintosh interface and denying that it is a copy. Apple copied the ideas for a mouse, the GUI interface, and more, but there was no denial of where the ideas came from (somehow better). All shades of gray... Actually Apple stole these GUI ideas from Xerox PARC's Smalltalk and then tried to claim they were their own invention, to stop anyone else from using them. They were successful in crippling the GEM GUI in this way, which is why GEM failed to take off. This is why MS claimed their Windows ideas were original - to get round Apple's legal challenges! Brian Rumary, England http://freespace.virgin.net/brian.rumary/homepage.htm
Re: filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon's
Paul ! Nikon claims in their text that ED4000 are a professional product. You call it earlier a semi professional product, and we shall not expect more of the scanner. What kind of logic is that? Why shall we not expect that the scanner are 100% sharp over the whole picture and still be easy to use and handle Who many of us who are daily working with pictures are interested to put a film in a carrier made of glass.??? I don't know who many scanners you have tried and tested recently. I have been testing scanners since 1994 Please take a look at: http://www.imacon.dkand the scanner Flextight Photo or Polaroid. This film scanners have not the Nikons problem with film holders and curved film and un sharp pictures. ' Mikael Risedal Lund Sweden From: "PAUL GRAHAM" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Filmscanners@Halftone. Co. Uk" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon's Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 21:34:18 -0700 Mikael: don't see what any of that text you quote from Nikon: "Coolscan® Film Scanners: The Coolscan IV ED, Super Coolscan 4000 ED and Super Coolscan 8000 ED, take film scanning to a new level by..." (etc) has to do with the choice of carriers... I'm not critical of your findings - they are probably true, I just don't feel it is a total failure on the scanners part, when they give you a choice of carriers: If you are just making quick scans for proofs - use the glassless carrier, but if you are making critical scans for the ultimate 4000dpi results, then use the glass carrier - that was my point. It is precisely what all pro darkroom people have done for years, and its what I do, even with 1000 watts of halogen bulbs shining through a negative... maybe other scanners use a brighter lightsource and so gain depth of focus etc, but this one doesn't. I expect there is some trade made by Nikon against using tubes for LED spectrum, long life, heat, consistency or ?... I notice that the recent ZBE Chromira printer, which (like a Lightjet/Lambda) writes digital files direct to photo paper, is an LED machine too.. Film flatness is a problem with all scanners/enlargers. Flatbeds don't suffer so much from it because the film is pressed against the glass - in other words - it's glass mounted! Even with high end drum scanners and laser light sources you have to ensure negative flatness with oil mounting and pressure rollers etc, so, why should it be any different here as we approach drum scanner resolutions in desktop boxes? Nobody in decades of making enlarger negative holders has come up with a glassless way of holding a negative perfectly flat, the only solution has been glass carriers, or stopping down the depth of focus to the detriment of image resolution (and I don't want to get into circles of confusion here!) paul _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon's
Who many of us who are daily working with pictures are interested to put a film in a carrier made of glass.??? Well, I prefer the glass especially for prints over 20x24" I haven't had time to read all the posts in the last few weeks, and I gathered from this topic/thread that the Nikon 8000 is already out?? Or not? -Anne Rowland, NYC
RE: filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon's
I'm hoping the new Nikons will help drive the price of these down to a place where I could afford one! Lawrence http://www.lwsphoto.com Please take a look at: http://www.imacon.dkand the scanner Flextight Photo or Polaroid. This film scanners have not the Nikons problem with film holders and curved film and un sharp pictures. ' Mikael Risedal Lund Sweden
filmscanners: film flatness in new Nikon's
well said... last paragraph one report and we're dismissing the entire range of new Nikon scanners. let's get more info, please pg Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 17:11:11 -0400 From: "Dave King" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners:Focusing film flatness Most darkroom workers interested in quality wouldn't use a mounted slide for projection in an enlarger. If you've ever had a large custom print made by a good lab you'll see it's been taken out of the mount and replaced. Not too hard, cut the cardboard half way through with a single edge razor along the center of any of the 4 wide sides of the mount, bend one of the near corners down a bit and it'll come apart. (Don't remove the layer completely and you can re-use the mount. Replace the film and tape along the cut. Practice on outtake slides.) Then place the film in a glassless carrier, possibly using tape along the sprocketed sides to fix in place and flatten a bit if needed. I've scanned a few mounted slides in my LS-30 and don't recall any particular problem with focus at the edges. Some mounted slides are more curved than others however, it depends on type of film, processing conditions, how old the film was before processing, how it's mounted, and how it's stored. I did see a problem using the auto film strip feeder and neg strips, but the fix was easy, use the film strip holder. We've only seen one complaint about this so far? Perhaps we should wait a bit before coming to any hard and fast conclusions. And even if the DOF is on the shallow side with Nikon's new scanners, there will surely be easy fixes for careful workers. These new scanners are pretty compelling, and I doubt this will turn out to be a major problem, if any problem at all. Dave
filmscanners: Re: ed 4000
- Original Message - From: Mikael Risedal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 6:11 PM Subject: ed 4000 We've only seen one complaint about this so far? Perhaps we should wait a bit before coming to any hard and fast conclusions. And even if the DOF is on the shallow side with Nikon's new scanners, there will surely be easy fixes for careful workers. These new scanners are pretty compelling, and I doubt this will turn out to be a major problem, if any problem at all. Dave Hello Dave Please take a look on this 2 pictures then you understand it is not a minor problem And I have 2 ED4000 as test example and they show the same problem. and also LS2000. Mikael Risedal Hello Mikael, Perhaps I spoke too soon, but you haven't indicated (anywhere I've seen at least) if this is a problem on average examples or those only more curved than usual. Fresh E-6 out of the lab I normally use is quite flat. Personally, I would much rather see a "hi-rez" scanner optimized for flat than curved. Increasing DOF may well mean less resolution at the plane of critical focus. In general, one doesn't expect higher resolution devices, analog or digital, to be more kind to film going out of focal plane, it usually works the other way round. As you noted yourself, a less expensive scanner is better in this regard. Regards, Dave King
Re: filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon 4000
I'll corroborate Paul on this one, I've used Apo El-Nikkors at a dye lab I used to work in. The difference between them and anything else is truly amazing. But even more amazing, they have highest resolution wide open. There's not too much DOF there, as you might imagine. So it's quality wasted except when used in the most critical circumstances, such as Paul works in. For most of us, air mounting and normal lenses, used with care, is sufficient most of the time. To draw a parallel and stay on topic: as others have pointed out (to considerable controversy), scanner resolution beyond a certain point (2500 if designed and used correctly) is enough to resolve image detail in most photographs. It makes me wonder if the 2900 dpi Nikon wouldn't be the better choice for most of us. Perhaps in the 4000 Nikon has deliberately traded DOF for resolution never seen in the typical printing and repro work most of us do. The LS-30 and the LS-2000 are essentially the same scanner with the same resolution, but apparently that's not the case with the new scanners. I've spent alot of effort learning how to get the best 24x36" prints possible from an Epson 7000 (it's been fun:), but at no point along the way have I felt the LS-30 was the weakest link in the chain, far from it in fact. I'm sort of amazed it's as good as it is for the money. Dave - Original Message - From: PAUL GRAHAM [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Filmscanners@Halftone. Co. Uk [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 02, 2001 3:06 AM Subject: filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon 4000 Art, well... I've got a liquid gate for my DeVere's, and I've got carriers with no glass, regular glass, anti newton glass, and vacuum coated anti newton glass (best) I use $2500 Apo-El-Nikkor lenses imported from Japan, (unavailable here) (none of the others are really Apo's) and I would *never* make a serious print without glass of some sort holding the film flat. (35mm or 10x8") sorry but all my tests show the opposite of yours, and any tiniest intereference from the glass is vastly more than compensated for by the *dramatic* improvement in sharpness over the whole film plane, but especially the corners/edges. keeping the glass clean is not such a problem, and I replace it once every few months anyway. But then I work very large (40x50" colour prints are average), so things do get hyper-critical. Then again, that's why I'm interested in a 4000 dpi m/f scanner! Before this gets too OT, see my next posting: (follows) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 21:54:29 -0800 From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon 4000 (snip...) Yes, enlargers can be bought with glass neg carriers, but guess what, they actually degrade the image result. I've tested this with my own enlarging system. (Besseler, Nikkor lenses) You are adding 4 new surfaces, none of which are perfect in surface or color, even if they are optical glass, and all of which are very close to the focal point at the film plane. Add to that internal reflections within each sheet of glass, potential dust scratches and dirt, if they are not perfectly clean, and potential damage to the film. Glass sandwiching is done sometimes with a viscose wet gate, to help reduce the internal reflections of two of the surfaces, and having the outer surfaces far enough away from the film plane to me out of the focal range. But using a glass carrier with a 35mm film scanner doesn't make it, as far as I'm concerned. Further, it requires removing the film from slide mounts (more potential damage). (snip)...
Re: filmscanners: Canon 4000 dpi scanner
Someone on photo.net gave me this URL for info on the new Canon scanner. From the specs and expected price, it sound like this new scanner will give Nikon and Polaroid a run for the money. Chris -Original Message-From: Chris Hargens [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]Date: Saturday, March 31, 2001 12:04 PMSubject: filmscanners: Canon 4000 dpi scanner On the photo.net web site I read a discussion (http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=001JxX) in which a couple of people mentioned a new Canon 4000 dpi scanner that should be coming out soon, priced at about $1,100. I looked on the Canon web site for information and found nothing. Anyone hear about this new scanner? Chris
Re: filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon 4000
I received a Coolscan IV about a week ago. I have had no problem with edge to edge sharpness with any of the methods of inserting film - mounted glassless slides, film strips or negative carrier. Here are some scans: http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=192951 http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=193824 http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=193818 http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=194076 All are made using the Nikon software. I am pleased with the shadow detail. But what do I know, I am new to film scanning - and this list.
filmscanners: Insight Software
I am new to filmscanning and find it terribly frustrating. In spite of many hours of research and experimentation, I still am having trouble with the basics. I'm hoping someone can help me figure out how to use Insight with my Polaroid SprintScan 4000. This is going to be a long post, but I want to give you a background to my problems, describe my process, and then ask some questions. I'm using a PC with Microsoft Me. My Polaroid SS4000 came with both Insight software and SilverFast software. SilverFast seems to offer certain advantages over Insight, though I'm not sure how important any such advantages really are for the type of work I do. I tried to use SilverFast initially, and right off the bat, I had problems getting it installed. Once I got it installed (I used the Braille method, and would never be able to repeat the process in the same way again), I found the documentation for it to be some of the worst ever written. It's unclear, difficult to understand, and doesn't cover a lot of the features of the software. The SilverFast people don't have a toll free phone number and Polaroid doesn't support it, so getting help is difficult. Today I tried to download an update for SilverFast and it wouldn't install. That's when I made the decision that I'd have to live with Insight. But it has problems too. It doesn't even have documentation! First of all, I want to explain what I'm trying to do. I want to scan slides of models that were shot against a white seamless paper background, use Photoshop to do some compositing and other things, and then output the result to an Epson 2000P printer. Often, I'll need to supply the images for Internet web content as well. Part of my problem is that I'm color blind, so I want to rely on good color management to reduce problems with color balance to a minimum. (Recent posts on measuring skin tones have been interesting.) Here's the relevant settings I've tried: In the Preview area of Insight, I specified "Color Slide" for ProfilesInput. I didn't have a lot of other choices, so I'll have to live with the generic scanner profile. For Profiles Display, I told it to use the "Adobe Monitor Profile (22Mar01)" profile. That's a profile I created when I calibrated my monitor with the Adobe Gamma utility. For PreferencesOutput Profile I was given two choices, and I don't know which one to use. One choice was "Process Final Scan with Display Color Profile." When I use that option, Photoshop tells me later that, indeed, the embedded profile is "Adobe Monitor Profile (22Mar01)." The second choice is to select "Process Final Scan with Other Color Profile." If I were to select this choice, then I'd be asked to select a profile from a drop down list. Right now there's only one profile in that list. It's "KODAK Open Interchange RGB." I assume that I can add other profiles to the list. How would I do that? Should I add "Adobe RGB (1998)" and use it since that's what I'm using in Photoshop? Or should I embed the profile for my Epson 2000P printer since that's where the images are destined for? I know these are stupid questions to someone who knows the answers, but I'm really stumped as to what to tell Insight when it asks for PreferencesOutput Profile. Finally, for PreferencesScanningOn Preview I told it to "Reset All Tools." The other choices would have been, "Use Current Tools" or "Perform Autoexposure." I know I don't want to do an autoexposure because the white background I use would cause the image to go too dark. When and how would I use "Use Current Tools?" I assume that "Reset All Tools" uses default values. These settings evidently affect the Preview, and I assume they would carry over into the actual scan if I didn't use any of the tools (color correction, tone, etc.) between the prescan and the scan. When I did the actual scan, I told Insight that I did not want "Scan 12 Bits per channel (No Image Correction)." Should I have check the box for that if I was going to do all image correction in Photoshop anyway? Would it be better correct the prescan image for color, tone, etc., before doing the scan, rather than do all correcting in Photoshop? Also, just before doing the scan, I told Insight to "Embed Color Profile - KODAK Open Interchanges RGB." That particular profile was selected earlier in PreferencesOutput Profile, though I had the choice then to select "Adobe Monitor Profile (22Mar01)." When I opened Photoshop, it asked me if I wanted to use the embedded profile (KODAK Open Interchange RGB) or if I wanted to "Convert document colors to the working space." My Photoshop working space is Adobe RGB (1998). What should I tell Photoshop when it asks that question? That's all of the questions for now. But later, I may want to ask how to use the histogram and some of the other image correcting features of Insight. They aren't documented and some of the buttons for the histogram are grayed out sometimes, but
Re: filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon 4000
Dave King wrote I've spent alot of effort learning how to get the best 24x36" prints possible from an Epson 7000 (it's been fun:), but at no point along the way have I felt the LS-30 was the weakest link in the chain, far from it in fact. I'm sort of amazed it's as good as it is for the money. Dave, I have a LS-30 too. I knew it was working well after I printed an old Ilford Pan F neg at A3 size on my Epson EX -- I thought the output was remarkably crisp. That convinced me to commit to the digital darkroom. (My previous experience with this neg had been making bromide prints. Anybody want to buy an EL-Nikkor and a nice Leitz Valoy enlarger?) What sort of stuff are you scanning to blow up to 24x36? That's really big! Cheers Peter Marquis-Kyle Brisbane Australia
Re: filmscanners: Canon 4000 dpi scanner
Sorry, forgot to include the URL -- http://www.usa.canon.com/press/021201e.html -Original Message-From: Chris Hargens [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]Date: Sunday, April 01, 2001 8:18 PMSubject: Re: filmscanners: Canon 4000 dpi scanner Someone on photo.net gave me this URL for info on the new Canon scanner. From the specs and expected price, it sound like this new scanner will give Nikon and Polaroid a run for the money. Chris -Original Message-From: Chris Hargens [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]Date: Saturday, March 31, 2001 12:04 PMSubject: filmscanners: Canon 4000 dpi scanner On the photo.net web site I read a discussion (http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=001JxX) in which a couple of people mentioned a new Canon 4000 dpi scanner that should be coming out soon, priced at about $1,100. I looked on the Canon web site for information and found nothing. Anyone hear about this new scanner? Chris
Re: filmscanners: negative and skin tones
My understanding is that there is a degradation or change returning from CMYK to RGB but this is from what I have read and I have not experimented myself as you have. I do have two questions, though: 1.Visually did you see a difference between the original RGB and the new RGB made from the duplicated CMYK? 2.Were the numbers the same or different between these two RGBs? Maris - Original Message - From: "Robert E. Wright" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 7:12 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: negative and skin tones | | - Original Message - | From: Maris V. Lidaka, Sr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2001 7:47 AM | Subject: Re: filmscanners: negative and skin tones | | | | Another problem that comes to mind is that scanners export the image in | RGB | and desktop printers (without exceptions that I am aware of) require RGB | input, performing the RGB-CMYK conversion internally. As there is loss in | color in the RGB-CMYK conversion and the subsequent CMYK-RGB re-conversion | many try to avoid having to color-correct in CMYK despite the benefits of | the black channel. | | Maris | | The change in going from RGB to CMYK is quite observable, and expected due | to the implied change in out put media (to print), but is a further loss in | going from CMYK back to RGB demonstratable? | | I just tried an experiement on one image. I first converted from RGB to CMYK | (difference observable). I then duplicated the CMYK image and converted it | to RGB. Finally I copied the RGB into the CMYK image and used difference | blend mode, result complely black. I also copied the CMYK image into the RGB | file. Same result. | | Bob Wright | | |
