[filmscanners] Re: Digital Darkroom Computer Builders?
Laurie writes: You may be right that it is a common practice; but that does not mean that it cannot come back to bite Microsoft. The likelihood that it will come back to bite Microsoft is no greater than the likelihood that it will come back to bite any other company that has been doing it, and in the many decades of IT, I don't know of any cases in which a company has suffered significantly from behaving in this way. Enron engaged in practices that apparently many Fortune 500 companies had been engaging in and it came back and bite them and a certain percentage of the other companies. Some of their practices were illegal; the practice being discussed here is not. Epson has exhibited similar attitudes and practices and has faced serveral consumer revolts by some of their heavy users as well as a lose in credibility with respect to their claims and literature. I suspect the additional money they made as a result of such attitudes and practices far outweighed any consumer backlash. If this were not the case, there wouldn't be so many companies doing these things. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Digital Darkroom Computer Builders?
Andras writes: Yes, but it's only Microsoft whose products I'm forced to use almost every day ... You are actually required to use a lot of products with similar practices every day, you just aren't aware of it. Have you checked the margins on Motorola and Intel microprocessors lately? Do you think the telephone company is charging for calls at cost? _Everybody_ does this. Sure, but the jump from 32 to 64 bits address space gives us a hell lot more time than the jump from 16 to 32 or 8 to 16. It doesn't matter; it will be used up just as quickly. The mistake engineers make is in believing that address spaces will be allocated sequentially starting with byte zero and ending with byte 2^N-1. But that's not how it actually works. Engineers tend to assume that a given address space has more space than anyone will ever need and allocate the space in extremely wasteful but easy-to-code ways that cause it to be exhausted with alarming speed. This is why the 32-bit IP address space is in such dire straits, even though there are nowhere near 4 billion computers on the Net yet. It is also why IPv6 and IPv8 will suffer the same fate. It is also why 32-bit computers are reaching their limits even for mundane, everyday use. Years ago I was already seeing systems exhaust 36-bit addressing spaces; that's 64 billion bytes, easily a thousand times more than the physical memory capacities available at the time. Having 36 bits didn't do any good; incompetent design and coding managed to exhaust address spaces of any size in short order, no matter how large they were initially. Also, 64 bits take us to the physical limits of semiconductors ... How? ... so you may be right that we will eventually need 128 bits, but that is a long long time away (decades, and many generations of computers). Maybe, maybe not. There are ways in which 64 bits could be exhausted in just a few years. I've seen things like that happen before. Sure, but this is merely a software question really. Once the software is in place, it behaves like hardware. Contrary to common myth, even though software is not hardwired into a machine, it is extraordinarily difficult to change, especially when loaded into hundreds of millions of machines around the world. If this were not the case, we would have all moved to IPv6 overnight when IPv4 near exhaustion. Since modern operating systems have elaborate and flexible memory handling capabilities, and programs make no assumptions as to where in memory they are mapped, it's a matter of making modifications to the OS and BIOS to solve this problem. Not really. Individual applications must allocate virtual space in an intelligent and economical way as well, and usually they do not. The fact that more expensive versions of Windows can address 3GB per process shows this. Not relevant--these expensive versions of Windows still operate within the 32-bit restriction. The fact that special versions were required even before the 32-bit limit was reached, however, illustrates the magnitude of the problem. In the case of Windows NT and its successors, the problem is that the original engineers very wastefully declared that 2 GB of the 32-bit address space would be reserved for the OS, and 2 GB would be reserved for applications. Well, as time passed, the application space rapidly approache exhaustion, while the OS space remained largely empty. And so a lot of code had to be rewritten to reduce the OS space and expand the application space. If the original designers had demonstrated a bit more foresight, this would never have been necessary. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Digital Darkroom Computer Builders?
Robert writes: But these people don't want any color anyway, and maybe not even greyscale ... Look around you, and count the percentage of printed material that contains nothing other than black and white. Color is being used more than ever before. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: CMYK rant (was Digital DarkroomComputer Builders?)
Roger writes: If I understood correctly the CMYK issue, it has little to do with photographers but is crucial on the printer's side. Yes. CMYK is irrelevant if you never intend to print anything on paper; it is unavoidable if you want hardcopy. There seems to be an agreement on the gamut limitation relative to RGB and that any file translation must use the specific printer profile. One reason why it is so hard to get a perfect match from inkjet printers is that they are actually printing in CMYK, even though you are trying to supply them with an RGB image. Digital photographers are now being requested to perform most pre-press work (sometimes even including blind CMYK conversion) before sending their images to the publisher. Blind CMYK is a really bad idea, since CMYK conversions must always be done with a specific output device in mind. If the real output device isn't the same, image quality is always lost, and it cannot be recovered. Some are wondering if it couldn't be more rewarding to get back to film photography, sending slides as previously and not caring about pre-press and colour management. Just provide files as RGB. Tweak them to look good on a monitor, not on paper. It's up to the end user to convert the image for printing, since every end user will have different requirements for CMYK conversion. It's illogical to expect a photographer to do this, and any customer wanting it must be pretty clueless about how CMYK works. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: CMYK rant (was Digital Darkroom Computer Builders?)
Andras writes: OK, what I actually meant is how many people use CMYK colour space when manipulating images in PhotoShop or so. The entire publishing world. It is a key feature of Photoshop, and a heavily used one, and one of the most important features of Photoshop to professionals (which is why it is absent in cheapo versions of PS such as Photoshop Elements). Yes, printers often have CMYK components, but that should be hidden from the user by the printer driver. Most of what is printed on paper in the world doesn't pass through a printer driver on a PC or Mac. Most of it passes through large or even huge offset or other types of printing presses, and these presses understand only CMYK. They use plates created from films that are exposed by raster-image processors that understand only CMYK as well. Outside the tiny world of the PC or Mac itself, all of the printed material in the on the planet exists in a CMYK universe. For manipulating and storing images, the fourth channel black is totally redundant. No, it is not. CMYK requires black because most inks on press are not pure enough to produce a true black from CMY alone. And the balance between black ink and CMY must be controlled for each set of circumstances, with parameters like GCR and UCR. Therefore images must be manipulated in CMYK in preparation for printing. Also, if CMYK is based on the printer's colour space, why CMYK and not CMYKcm or whatever extra colours there are? Uh ... because printers use only four colors in standard process color: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. There aren't any other colors. (There are six-color processes, but that is exceptional.) There is no such thing as a standard CMYK space ... Yes, there are standard spaces: SWOP is one such space in the U.S. ... each output device has different characteristics. True, and the only way to tweak for the output device with complete accuracy is to convert to the CMYK space that it uses. RGB doesn't cut it. A CMYK image file has to be converted to the printer's CMYK space using ICC or similar transforms anyway ... No, it does not. You prepare the CMYK file in Photoshop so that it already conforms to the space used by the press, then you create your films and plates from that and you go to press. Nothing is transformed after you prepare the CMYK file in PS; that file IS the final image file. ... just like any RGB or other image. CMYK isn't like RGB at all. On a computer, the native colour space of the monitor is RGB, which also resembles the spectral response of the three colour receptors in the eye. Yes. But on paper, the color space is always CMYK. No printing process uses RGB, since RGB requires a light source, and doesn't work by reflection. ... it is often sufficient to work on an image in the monitor's colour space, which makes life much easier. Not for serious printing. You have to convert to CMYK if you plan to print on paper and you want good results. Any RGB format can be directly displayed on any monitor (with small deviations maybe), unlike CMYK. Fine, as long as you intend only to see it on a screen. But that won't due for printing. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: CMYK rant (was Digital Darkroom Computer Builders?)
Austin writes: MOST of what is printed on paper in the world DOES pass through a printer driver on a PC or a Mac, simply because there are MILLIONS and MILLIONS of homeowners and corporate PCs with PS on it and an inkjet or laser printer attached. A single offset web press for a newspaper prints more in one day than several million computer users in homes and offices will print in their entire lifetimes. Er, yeah, just like the ones I, and everyone else, have in their home office/basement... You are not printing five million copies at a time. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: CMYK rant (was Digital Darkroom Computer Builders?)
Andras writes: If, as Anthony said, CMYK is useful for printing work, then it only makes sense to use CMYK if you do it in the colour space of the printer AND convert to RGB using ICC colour profiles for display on screen. If you plan to print the photographs, CMYK is useful. It can even be useful for printers driven in RGB, because the RGB gamut is larger than what any printer can put on paper, and a conversion to CMYK can show you the limits of the printed result on the screen (assuming that your CMYK conversion parameters are _exactly right_, of course). The reason you may not be getting the vivid blue or rich green that you see on the screen when you print on paper may simply be that it is outside the gamut of your printer. This is great, but it implies that the CMYK file is made for one and only one printer ... Correct. You always convert to CMYK with a specific printer and/or press and/or inks in mind. This is why you do most things in RGB (apart from the fact that RGB has greater gamut and headroom), and convert to CMYK only when you are producing an output file to go to the printer. ... so whenever a company buys a new printer that is different from the old ones in colour rendition, they have to discard (or adapt) their old CMYK files. You don't keep CMYK files, anyway. You recreate them from RGB for each use, unless you are printing under exactly the same conditions each time. Also, more and more high-quality magazines etc. use more than 4 colours, in which case the entire method becomes useless. Where did you hear that? The vast majority of magazines and all other continuous-tone printed matter is printed in four-color offset. Six-color is for special purposes and costs a lot more without necessarily adding a lot more in quality. The best four-color printing will look a lot better than average six-color printing. In any case, even if six-color printing were common, the process would still be the same. (I don't actually know if Photoshop handles six-color conversions, though, as I've never had a need to prepare them.) My suggestion here is the obvious one -- why don't we all work in CIELab or XYZ and convert to RGB for on-screen display and CMYK for printing? Mostly because of convenience. Lab is fine for representing the gamut of the real world, but no display or printing device can correctly render Lab color, so there isn't much point in working in it extensively (although Photoshop does use it internally). The same is true for spaces like Wide Gamut RGB. Until and unless someone produces monitors, printers, or some output device that can actually render the full gamut of Lab color, working in Lab color will be of limited usefulness. Thus, I think CMYK is historical dead weight which has been obsolete at least since the ICC standard was created. You're in for some unpleasant surprises the first time you become involved in actually getting a photograph from camera to press sheet. CMYK is actually more important than it has ever been in the past, since so much more is in color these days. Even the cheapest newspapers are four-color jobs today. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Digital Darkroom Computer Builders?
Austin writes: I don't know who wrote what program you believe supports your claim ... Any program that exhausts the direct address space, and unfortunately those programs become more and more common as an architecture grows older. As you aren't a hardware engineer, it makes sense that you don't understand how this works, and the real issues involved. I've known exactly how it works for several decades now. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: CMYK rant
Roger writes: Enclosed are typical instructions from a digital art web site, instructions which are required by a number of scientific journals. Write to them and INSIST that they give you the exact parameters for CMYK conversions. If they don't know, get the names of their printers or prepress bureaus and call them for the details. Rest assured, someone, somewhere in the chain has to know. It's possible to modify CMYK after conversion to match a specific printer even if the CMYK wasn't originally intended for that printer, but the results are often quite inferior to a single, correct conversion to CMYK in the first place. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Digital Darkroom Computer Builders?
Andras writes: No. Applications get memory from the operating system kernel. No, they do not. In many systems, applications have free run of an entire virtual address space, or nearly so, and can waste it to their heart's content. I've seen mainframe systems crash after a few weeks when application systems (and the OS) exhausted 64-gigabyte virtual address spaces. I have written linux kernel code myself ... On the mainframes I've worked on, the Linux kernel would count as a small subroutine. ... I know how easy it is to change things like this. Indeed? So what's your magic method for rolling out this change to, say, ten million individual workstations located around the world? And how do you do this on, say, a large mainframe that cannot be taken down for any reason, period? The comparison with IPv4 doesn't make sense because a kernel is private to a single computer only and can be changed at any time without affecting other computers ... It's not a matter of affecting other computers, it's a matter of changing millions of computers at once. Even if they don't talk to each other, you can't just throw out a new OS version one afternoon and have it installed and running everywhere by dinner. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Digital Darkroom Computer Builders?
Petru writes: Clearly, these guys (myself included) must be idiots. One need not be an idiot to make mistakes. And we have been like that for years, it seems. The problem has existed since time immemorial. Apparently engineers, as a class, have difficulty in visualizing future evolution; they see only the present. And there is no hope for us. I don't see any indications of a change. On behalf of the millions of stupid engineers of the world please accept our apologies for all the grief we have caused you. We promise not do it again. The grief is their own, especially if they must fix their mistakes. Unlike other people, who can (like you, perhaps :). Yes. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Avoiding Newton rings
Paul writes: Really? Have you scanned the same slide in an anti-Newton glass mount and in conventional mount and compared them? I've never scanned slides in glass mounts at all. For 35mm, either I scan them mounted without glass (usually plastic mounts), or I scan them in strips without glass. For 6x6, either I scan them in strips unmounted and without glass (rare, because it's hard to keep the film flat), or I scan them in Nikon's anti-newton glass holder (as opposed to glass mounts). I've seen no drop in resolution or sharpness with the anti-newton glass holder. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Avoiding Newton rings
Paul writes: Even anti-Newton glass degrades the image. It's quite obvious with an anti-Newton glass slide mount. It should not make a difference if it is only on the side of the film opposite the scan head. If it comes between the film and scan head, that might be a problem (doesn't seem to be the case on the LS-8000ED). I certainly am not at all keen on using any kind of powder. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Avoiding Newton rings
I think I see part of the problem: Provia is shiny on both sides--no visible emulsion on either side. Apparently the emulsion side is coated. Maybe that's why the rings turn up. I wonder why Fuji does that. Maybe I can try always facing the convex side of the film towards the anti-newton glass, if it isn't already quite flat, even though this means scanning some strips backwards. I know that some strips look fine, but others have a definite problem with rings. I assume that curvature of the film or something is getting in the way. - Original Message - From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2002 03:10 Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Avoiding Newton rings The cause of Newton Rings is when a space is created between two finely polished or glossy surfaces that is a very small space equal to or a small multiple of white light wavelengths, which then cause interference colors via the reflection between the surfaces. The best way to avoid them completely is to have the space between the two surfaces be wide enough that this phenomenon doesn't occur. One way that this has been dealt with is by using a glass which has a very fine etched surface which creates very small contact points between the two surfaces. Another method is to use a very fine powder (talc is sometimes used) to again create this airpace with minimal contact points. The more often the film gets very close to the glass surface, the more series of Newton rings will develop. Some people use a one-sided glass carrier to allow the film to be supported by gravity by that bottom surface, usually having the emulsion side contact that glass surface which has more texture and is less likely to cause Newton Rings. If one can figure another way to create a large enough airspace, Newton Rings can be avoided. Art Anthony Atkielski wrote: I use the glass 120 film holder on my LS-8000ED because I need to be able to hold the film flat, however, I have a lot of trouble with Newton rings. The weird thing, though, is that some images have multiple instances of the rings, and others have none. This implies that the rings are not inevitable when scanning, only common ... so there must be a way to avoid them. What causes the rings on some images but not on others, and what can I do to avoid them when preparing and loading the film? Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Scanning with too much resolution? (was: PS sharpening...)
Austin writes: But, if you have a, say, 4x6 image at 100 DPI, that won't get re-sampled by the browser, providing the window is large enough to handle 400 x 600 pixels, right??? As far as I know, most browsers never resample an image to accommodate a window that is too small; they just put scroll bars on the window instead. MSIE is one of the few (the only?) that will attempt to resample images to make them fit, unless you tell it to do otherwise (it resamples by default). All browser will resample an image if you specify HEIGHT and WIDTH parameters in the IMG tag that are different from the actual dimensions of the image. This sort of thing is strongly discouraged, however, as it can waste bandwidth (if you are downsampling) and because most browsers do a poor job of resampling images. Oh! Where can I turn that off? Tools | Internet Options | Advanced, under Multimedia. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Scanning with too much resolution? (was: PS sharpening...)
Austin writes: I know you say you leave them at the scanned resolutions, but doesn't that put you at the mercy of what ever the browser does, and may degrade your image? I suppose so, but I'm pretty much at the mercy of the browser and the visitor's computer, anyway. I gave up trying to get things just right long ago, when it became apparent that not everyone calibrates his monitor or worries about color depths or monitor resolutions or what-not. I try to put up photos that look good on my monitors and probably don't look too bad on average computers, whatever that means, but there's still a lot a room for my images to look bad on some systems. I try not to stress about it. The one consolation is that people with misconfigured systems that largely hash my images are often quite clueless about their own computer systems and about imaging in general, so the pictures still look good to them, as they don't know what they are missing. When I have a large image in the browser, a lot of times it re-sizes the image, after it's done loading it... MSIE certainly does this--it was a while before I realized it was doing so, and then I turned it off. But obviously I can't depend on others turning it off, so I more or less have to live with the fact that my pictures may be getting squished on some systems. Then again, for my largest gallery I offer two image sizes, with the smaller being the default, and I presume that people with systems set up less than optimally are probably just looking at the small versions, anyway (which are less likely to be squished). Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Prints from scans ... are there reallydifferences any more?
Laurie writes: Pro labs (and particularly custom pro labs) are capable of working with more than just 35mm film formats, which most amateur one-hour mini labs cannot or do not accept and often are incapable of dealing with. Yes. This pro lab will develop 120-size film for $9 in two hours, seven days a week; the cost for 135 is the same. The one-hour place charges only very slightly less, but it won't accept 120 at all (their machines will handle it, but they told me that the training and extra maintenance isn't justified by the very tiny 120 volume they'd probably do if they accepted it). Also, the pro lab will do contact sheets (for $26, alas!), and the one-hour place will not. Of course, a pro lab can also push or pull, or cross-process, or whatever you want, if you pay the price, as you have already observed. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Prints from scans ... are there reallydifferences any more?
Julian writes: Maybe nothing. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, there are many pro labs whose work is mediocre or worse. And some one-hour mini labs can turn out very good prints. Well, the one-hour print actually seems to have more pop than the pro-lab print, but it finally dawned on me that this was a difference in paper: the one-hour place is using Fuji Crystal Archive, which is apparently a high-contrast, high-saturation paper, and the pro lab is using something else (I'm not sure what--it's not marked on the back). The 50x60 print is very nice, though. But for 20x30 prints or below, I'm not convinced that I'm getting anything better from the pro lab, so I might just go with the one-hour prints from the Frontier for that (the difference in price is 5-to-1). The deciding factor is usually the meatware - the people running the machines, and the managers who supervise them. One thing I hope to accomplish by getting scans printed directly on Frontiers or Lambdas or whatever is to minimize human intervention. If my files are clean and if the settings on the printers are consistent, I can just hand the files to the lab and tell them to print exactly what is on the files, without touching anything. That's what I did for the one-hour lab and the results were great. The pro lab fiddled with the curves a bit on the scan (a minor improvement, but nothing I could not have done myself), but otherwise printed it as-is, also with excellent results. If I had really bad scans that had to be manhandled into proper condition, the results might have been much more variable and/or worse. Apparently these labs get a lot of rotten digital files and scans (based on what they told me). How much training have they had? How well do they calibrate and maintain their processes? Do they set the right filtration for your film? Do they use an appropriate paper? How much time do they take on each order? Will they reprint if you do not like the first run? Will the second run look better? The pro lab seems to be doing things right, since I watched part of it and it looked okay. The one-hour lab is certainly more casual, but the place I prefer is staffed mostly by photo enthusiasts (like actors, photographers hardly ever manage to live off their passion), and they take reasonable care, even if they are not necessarily experts. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Halo Effect
How old is the scanner? Dust in scanners will create this effect. I went through a hundred relatively bad scans until I realized that what seemed like slow deterioration in the scan was actually accumulating dust. It can happen so slowly that you don't realize it's getting worse, because you forget how clean the scans originally were. - Original Message - From: Robert DeCandido, PhD [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2002 12:46 Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Halo Effect Hello All, I have a Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 (not the Plus version) and am using Vuescan. When I scan a slide (either Kodachrome or Provia/35mm), the white areas (such as a building illuminated by the sun; or pages of an open book) in the scan will exhibit a halo effect. This appears as a kind of a whitish or even greenish glow surrounding the white object in the scan. My questions are: Is anyone else seeing this or getting this effect on their scans? Is this something gone wrong with the scanner? Is it something that different scan settings in Vuescan can correct? Using Knockout 2.0 I can correct most if not all of the halo or after glow. However, if someone can set me straight regarding how to solve the problem before the scan, I would be most appreciative. Thanks Robert DeCandido NYC Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Prints from scans ... are there reallydifferences any more?
Brian writes: Are the prices you quote the going rates in Paris? They appear to be. Even an ordinary consumer lab with overnight service wants $3 for a roll of 135 in C-41. Even the most expensive labs in NYC will develop and contact a 120 C41 roll for far less. There is less competition in Paris, and Europeans enjoy paying too much for everything. I do quite a few stock photo sales in France and notice that prices aren't that high. How does anybody stay in business? Well ... come to think of it, how many stock photographers _are_ there in France? Just the legislation in France alone is enough to kill off stock photography (draconian jurisprudence on image rights, over-regulation of small businesses), and there are many other obstacles besides just the price of film processing. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: OT: Film processing costs (WAS: Re: Prints from scans ...are there reallydifferences any more?)
Roger writes: I did not know that, in spite of being an european myself... Many Europeans do not know that they are making far too little money for the work they do and are paying far too much for goods and services. That in itself is not surprising. The weird thing is that, of those who _do_ know, most think it is just fine; they seem to equate a decent standard of living with evil, or something. In any case, their (voluntary) loss is the United States' gain. ... here in Spain I am paying 3.00 Euro per E-6 (or C-41) 120 processing (2 hours). Is this a pro lab, or a so-called consumer lab? I haven't found any non-pro labs that develop 120 here in Paris, although there might be some, somewhere. I certainly wouldn't mind getting it developed for ยค3 a pop. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: OT: Film processing costs (WAS: Re:Prints from scans ...are there reallydifferences any more?)
Roger writes: Ya, I understood later, moreover seeing that he was talking about Paris -probably the most expensive city in the known universe :-)) Actually, Paris is not that high on the list. Major American cities, Tokyo, and London (as well as possibly Zurich) are more expensive. This is true even with respect to average income, although French incomes are distributed in a very non-American way, with highly-paid management making far more than regular employees as compared with the same ratios in the U.S. (i.e., the lowest people on the French totem pole are paid dirt, and the highest people are paid like royals). But getting back to photography ... I really didn't know about that, not being involved yet in stock agency photography ... I've heard that some agencies won't even sell certain stock photos to customers in France, simply because the jurisprudence in France is so unfavorable to photographers, agencies, and publishers. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: OT: Film processing costs (WAS: Re: Prints from scans ...are there reallydifferences any more?)
Brian writes: ... how much do we have to pay for medium format film, processing, and scanning before those high-end digital systems become practical? I'm not sure what you mean by practical. High-end digital is practical right now, for certain applications. However, I'm addicted to image quality, and so unless and until digital meets and surpasses film for MF images, I see no reason to look to digital. Additionally, at least right now, I'd have to go through quite a bit of 120 film to amortize the cost of a $26,000 digital back (that provides only one fourth the image quality). Speed is not an issue for me in either 35mm or MF, and I never burn through film in MF and only occasionally in 35mm, so the advantages of digital are of little significance to me, whereas the disadvantages (staggering initial cost, immediate obsolescence, the need for an expensive infrastructure, and lower image quality) are overwhelming. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening
Shunith writes: Saved by Save for Web option the file is now a 100 x 100 pixel @ 72dpi/ppi for a print size of 3.53 x 3.53cm. How d'you retain your high resolutions? By not using Save for Web or PS 7. I still use PS 5; I've never seen any reason to upgrade beyond that. An ordinary Save As does not change the DPI. D'you save directly as a JPG without going thru the Save for Web? See above. Save for Web sounds like just another gadget to me--another bloated feature that Adobe added in order to try to persuade people to pay a few hundred dollars for their umpteenth upgrade of a product that already does more than they need. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Prints from scans ... are there really differences any more?
By the way, the photo I used to make the prints is at http://www.atkielski.com/Wallpapers/images/NotreDameNight2Paper1600x1200.jpg I worked from the original high-resolution scan, though, not from this reduced version on the site. The scan was Provia 100F from a medium-format camera scanned with a Nikon LS-8000ED. - Original Message - From: Anthony Atkielski [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 12:13 Subject: [filmscanners] Prints from scans ... are there really differences any more? (snipped) Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening
Shunith writes: Mm well it does have it's advantages Certainly if an upgrade provides something you need or want, no reason not to buy it. But remember that software companies produce upgrades because their business model requires you to buy their products over and over again in order to keep them in business--and not because they are trying to help you by introducing new features. The alternatives for software companies are building new software products instead of bloating the old ones and charging subscription fees to use software instead of just allowing customers to pay for it one time; the former is very expensive and risky compared to rehashing existing products, and the latter is strongly resisted by most customers (except corporate customers who have already become used to this sort of thing on mainframe systems). Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: dpi - formerly PS sharpening
Ed writes: By leaving the dpi at 2700 or 4000, is the file size larger than it would be at 72dpi? No. DPI is just a number recorded in the file; it has no influence at all on the file size. Also, by leaving the dpi at 2700 or 4000 are you creating a higher quality graphic file? No. See above. The DPI setting of the file is just an information field, like your name or the name of the application or whatever else gets thrown into the file besides the image data itself (depending on the program you are using and the settings you've selected). This being so, you can set it to anything you want. Most programs that read the file ignore the DPI setting. A few programs look at the DPI setting when you select options like display at actual print size or when you try to print a file. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: dpi - formerly PS sharpening
Paul writes: Just changing the dpi number doesn't change the size of the file; it changes the size (in inches) of the image. Sort of. An image file doesn't actually have a size in inches. However, if you record a DPI setting in the file, and if a program reading the file chooses to calculate the image size by dividing the pixel dimensions of the image by the DPI setting, then yes, within the context of that program the image has a physical size. Not all programs do this, however, so it's quite an unpredictable way of sizing an image, which is why it is usually best to ignore DPI unless you actually intend to print the file. Web browsers ignore it. They appear to. However, most browsers allow you to print pages, and they might look at it then (I don't know for sure, because I never print pages with my browser). Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: dpi - formerly PS sharpening
Nick writes: One of the reasons for the confusion is that Photoshop (stupidly, in my opinion) insists on changing the pixel dimensions when you change the dpi. That, of course, will change your image. Photoshop is designed to prepare images for print use as well as online use. When you are preparing to print images, DPI may be important. For example, page-layout software like Quark XPress and PageMaker will pay attention to DPI settings and will use them to determine how large an image will appear on a page. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: dpi - formerly PS sharpening
Austin writes: Where do you set the DPI of the scan? The DPI of the scan in the image file is set by the scanning software that creates it. The Nikon scanners I use routinely set the DPI to the actual DPI used to create the scan (usually 2700 or 4000, the two resolutions I most often use). If I want a different DPI set in the file, I change it in Photoshop with the Image Size dialog, taking care to uncheck the Resample box so that Photoshop does not try to resample the file to match my new DPI choice. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening
Stan writes: What if the image is being prepared for a website? The procedure is the same, but the final size for the image is of course quite small compared to the original scan. I do set the JPEG compression a lot higher for Web use than for print use, as download time is important for Web images, and quality is much less of an issue. Of the three steps--resampling to get the right size and 72 dpi, converting to JPEG format and sharpening--what is the ideal order? Saving as JPEG should always be the last step. (However, my images are archived primarily as low-compression JPEGS; this isn't a problem as the vast majority of my final uses involve downsampling the image, anyway.) Conversion to 72 dpi doesn't do anything, so you can skip that. Normally I open an archived image and downsample/unsharp in steps until I reach my final size, then save that. For the Web, I crank up the compression to make the file smaller (usually no more than 6 of 10 in Photoshop 5.x for large images, where quality is presumably more important than download volume, and often 3 for small images, where the inverse is often true). Should sharpening still be the very last step? Always. Sharpening degrades the image, so you don't want to do it until you're done with everything else. And I never sharpen scanned images for archiving; if they need sharpening, I'll do that each time I open them back up for other uses. You never know when a specific use might require the image without sharpening (an image without sharpening is cleaner). Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening
Alex writes: what would be preferred policy of image offering for the public ? I mean small GIFs as thumbnails linked to JPEGs of certain resolution of JPEG only approach ? It depends on your intended audience and the type of connections and machines you anticipate that they will have. Designing for unsophisticated Web surfers with slow connections and small monitors is different from designing for seasoned surfers with broadband connections and huge monitors. As a general rule, keep in mind that most people have 800x600 screens in 24-bit color, with dial-up connections of 40 Kbps or so. Thumbnails are fine, if they are very small (read: highly compressed) and not too numerous on a single page. I used to use them, but as the number of images increased, it started taking a long time just to download the thumbnails, so I dropped them--but much depends on your site design. As for full-sized images, something under 800x600 is probably best. You need not design for 640x480 monitors--hardly anyone still uses those. And Web-safe colors or GIFs are a waste of time today--full-color 24-bit JPEGs are fine (and preferable for photos in any case), and they download faster. Also, what would be suitable JPEG resolution to be allowed for image download from web site achieving two goals: good on-screen image quality, optimal size and resolution for fast download and not suitable value usage ... Probably between 640x480 and 780x580 or so. Most monitors are set to 800x600 today; quite a few are set to 1024x768 as well. 700x500 is a nice size that still doesn't allow much in the way of printing on paper (although it can be stolen for other Web use). Using a lot of compression degrades images enough to make them difficult to print, too, although it also influences display quality--high compression speeds downloads, too. I thought about something like VGA size (640x480) or probably SVGA (800x600), what about resolution ? Yes, those work. If by resolution you mean DPI, you can forget about that--DPI is meaningless for Web display. If you really do wish to set a DPI, though, set it to 2700 or 4000; if anyone downloads the image as-is and tries to print it in a word-processing program (a common way of using stolen images), the high DPI will cause it to reproduce at a very tiny size, and many people stealing images in this way will not be able to figure out how to fix that, thereby preventing them from using the stolen image. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening
Al writes: Maybe I have missed it in an earlier post but, if you are using your normal technique of halving the image size, what are the unsharp mask settings you use as a default? Strength of 98, radius of 0.7, threshold of 2. Of course, this is a highly subjective setting. I do note that very small images usually require less unsharp masking than very large images to get visually similar results, but since the distinctions are small, I usually use this one setting for everything. If a small image looks too pixellated after the last downsample and unsharp masking, I undo the unsharp masking. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening
I find that the first sharpening, that applied to the image from the scanner, needs much larger strength and radius values than the second and later sharpenings. Do you turn on sharpening in the scanner? No, I don't. You never know when you'll need an image _without_ sharpening (remember, sharpening degrades image quality). I don't see much change in the initial sharpening, either, unless it's a really good scan (read: a scan of an image shot on a tripod, on slow film, that really does show detail in individual pixels). Subsequent 2x downsamples always show visible improvement when sharpened, though. I haven't tried that yet, since my experience with in-camera sharpening (consumer dcams) is that it has too low threshold setting and aggravates noise something fierce, but maybe scanner sharpening isn't so obnoxious...) I don't like to sharpen images even before I get them into Photoshop. I prefer that the raw image be free of sharpening, so that I get as much quality as possible in that raw image. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening
Maris writes: Brian said the file size was reduced, so there was apparently resampliing (downsampling). Or the amount of information in the file did not increase. In any case, if one proceeds as he describes (changing the dimension of the image to 11 inches in Photoshop), the results are as I describe--I tested it to be sure; perhaps he left something out in his description. Your hypothetical of entering 11 inches in the new dimension, with the resampling box checked or unchecked, would not result in PS computing 11 inches x 4000 ppi. PS would reduce the ppi proportionately in either case. Try it. If you simply enter a new dimension in inches, the size in pixels will increase or decrease as required to produce that dimension ... at 4000 ppi. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening
Brian writes: If I scan a 35 mm slide or negative at 4000 dpi in a Nikon Coolscan 4000 and I want to make a print in Photoshop, I alter the long dimension to 11 inches (the short dimension ends up at whatever to retain the proper dimensions). Since this usually ends up in a file size that is smaller than what it was originally, does this mean the image will be downsampled? No. By default, when you enter a dimension in the Image Size dialog box, Photoshop will resample the image to match the dimensions you've given. In the case of pixels, PS simply resamples up or down to match the new pixel dimensions. In the case of a physical dimension like 11 inches (entered in the Print Size portion of the dialog), however, PS resamples up or down to match the new physical dimension _after_ calculating the number of pixels required by multiplying the physical dimension by the number of pixels per inch. When you open a scan from the Coolscan, the ppi is set to 4000 (the scanner's resolution); and the number of pixels in the image corresponds to the number of pixels in a 35mm frame scanned at 4000 ppi, or about 5669x3779 pixels. If you now enter just 11 inches as the new dimension in the resizing dialog, Photoshop will compute 11 inches x 4000 ppi = 44000 pixels, and will upsample the image to this size. In general, this is not what you want. You should _first_ uncheck the Resample box in the dialog, then enter the new ppi you want for your print size, then recheck the box and enter the print size you want. For example, you could first change the ppi to 300 (if that's what you want on the final print), then enter the desired print size. With a ppi of 300 and a print size of 11 inches, PS will _downsample_ from the size of the 4000 ppi scan (because fewer pixels are required). If the answer is yes then how do I downsample in powers of 2? Change pixels to percent in the upper portion of the Image Size dialog box and enter 50 (percent). ... do I go 4000 to 2000 to 1000 to 500 to 360, sharpening at each step as you suggest? That's what I do (except I'd skip it on the last downsample, because the step from 500 to 360 is too small and sharpening at that point might look too messy--sometimes I try it both ways on the last step and pick what looks best). In theory you can also downsample in one step and unsharp mask once, but then you must calculate the proper radius based on the number of pixels lost and unsharp mask up front. For example, if you downsample in one step of 500%, you'd use a radius of 4.9 pixels or so. I don't do it this way so I'm not sure how it turns out (it's easier to unsharp mask in steps afterwards, and look at the partial results after each step), but you can always try it. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: [filmscanners_Digest] filmscanners Digest for Fri 9 Aug,2002-Firnware
TH writes: What is firmware? Software that rarely changes. Usually it is recorded in non-volatile but erasable memory within a device at the factory, and since it is relatively fixed, it usually appears as hardware to the user (that is, the influence of the firmware is seen as hardware behavior). If the firmware must later be changed, usually a special program is used to do it, and this program issues commands to the hardware to erase and replace the firmware with something new. To the user, this appears to change the behavior of the hardware; but it's actually a software change (in software that is rarely changed). Thus, part of the behavior of a scanner's hardware when it is addressed by a scanning program such as VueScan or NikonView is actually determined by firmware in the scanner itself. If you change the firmware, the hardware behavior appears to change. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening
Robert writes: Excuse my ignorance but what is the logic doing it this way instead of resample it directly to the resolution you want? It seems to give a better final result, as opposed to one single large downsampling step, although I have not been able to rigorously verify this. If you downsample from 1000 pixels to 10, for example, you get a blur, even after sharpening. If you downsample in multiple steps of no more than 1/2 at a time, the result at the end seems a lot more recognizable. I think this is because steps larger than 1/2 tend to lose information from intermediate pixels. If you downsample in steps and unsharp mask each time, details tend to leave traces in adjacent pixels that survive the next downsampling step. The result is a final image that contains more pixels that resemble important details of the original. It's actually probably less accurate than a single-step downsampling, but to the eye, it looks more like the original, because key details are more likely to survive (in exaggerated form, but that's what you need to make them obvious). Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening
David writes: Just to clarify here: the sharpening with radius of 4.9 pixels or so is applied _before_ downsampling by 500%, obviously. Right? Yes, it would have to be, otherwise the information it needs would be gone. However, I haven't actually done this, so I'm not sure of the details. It seems that, from a mathematical standpoint, there should be a one-step equivalent of the multiple-step process that I use, but I've always been too lazy to try to figure it out. Additionally, I suspect that any one-step process would require some degree of calculation for each image and each downsample ratio, and I'm not really in the mood to do that each time I downsample. The multiple-step process is easier and seems to give the same results. As I understand it, there should be N + 1 sharpening operations for N downsampling opertions. The other way around: N-1 unsharp masks for N downsamples, unless the last downsample is very close to 2x itself (try it both ways and pick whichever looks better for the last step). In some sense, the first N sharpening operations have a different purpose than the last: they're to make sure the downsampling retains the detail (and contrast) you want. Yes. By unsharp masking after each downsample, you exaggerate detail. The traces of this exaggeration survive into the next step. The net result after several steps is that details that normally would have gone away in the downsampling still have left tiny traces in the final image. Technically, the image is flawed because of this, because the details are exaggerated far more than would be mathematically appropriate--but since the image is being seen by human eyes, this exaggerated detail is exactly what is needed to give an impression of greater detail and sharpness. The last sharpening is to make the final image look good. Exactly. The intermediate unsharp masks just help to carry important detail through the process; only the last unsharp mask is purely aesthetic. Or at least that is my opinion; like I said, I've not tried to come up with a mathematical proof. Try downsampling through a 100:1 ratio in steps, and then in one pass, and you'll see that doing it in steps gives you a final result that looks like a tiny, sharp version of the original, whereas a single step just produces a blur. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening
Sharpening will not recover lost detail. It only creates an illusion of sharpness, and it is very easy to overdo, so beware. - Original Message - From: Alex Zabrovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2002 23:53 Subject: [filmscanners] RE: PS sharpening Thanks, will look at it. The sharpening I meant originally is intended to be implied on GEMed images with high setting such as 3 and 4, since there is obvious sharpness impact at this GEM settings. Otherwise, I don't sharpen either. Regards, Alex Z -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Maris V. Lidaka Sr. Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 6:20 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening Most people don't sharpen immediately after the scan (though some have suggested an immediate MINOR sharpening to remove artifacts introduced by the scanning process), so at 2900 dpi and 1000 dpi don't sharpen. When you are done with the image and it's ready for print or the web, then you sharpen, and at that point it depends on the resolution of the image and it's content. I know of no set rules or guidelines. Bruce Fraser has some excellent articles on sharpening at http://www.creativepro.com/author/home/0,1819,40,00.html Maris - Original Message - From: Alex Zabrovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 11:55 AM Subject: [filmscanners] PS sharpening Hi. I would be interested to know how people use Unsharp Mask in PS to make the images sharper, especially following high settings of GEM (produced by Nikon IV ED) I'm still trying to establish the range of best Unsharp Mask settings for different cases (scenic, portraiture and other kinds). Let's assume the scanning resolution is 2900 dpi and 1000 dpi. Regards, Alex Z Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Disabling right-click, etc. (was: Web homepage writing software)
David writes: You've never ceased to amaze and dazzle me with your limitless wisdom and knowledge of this planet - and humanity in general. Thanks. I presume that you must be at least an octogenarian to have amassed such a bottomless pool of enigmatic-yet-pragmatic information/advice. I don't normally discuss my age, so I'll leave you to your speculations on that point. I would like to take this moment in time space... to salute you for being *the* undisputed cyberspace hydrant-of-esoteric-knowledge that you are! Thanks! P.S.-- What do you do with Ansel Adams? Ansel Adams is dead, so nobody does anything with him. A fine photographer during his lifetime, though. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Disabling right-click, etc. (was: Web homepage writing software)
David writes: Please allow me to describe a certain rascal that I've stumbled onto. He seems to have an exaggerated opinion of his *own* opinion. Things are not always what they seem. Does this rascal have elaborate protection mechanisms on his site to protect the inestimable value of his brilliant photographs? Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Disabling right-click, etc. (was: Web homepage writing software)
Gregg writes: I have many images and I can't decide which ones are worthy to be shown to the public. Could you please take a look at them and with all your wisdom let me know which ones are good enough to be stolen. I'm no more qualified to determine that than anyone else. Besides, from an economic standpoint, the best people to ask are your potential buyers. Additionally, you didn't provide a URL, so I assume your request was rhetorical. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: film departing soon
Arthur writes: Perhaps eventually a standard will be made and one will buy rights to use a seal or logo that is registered and authorized for people using materials tested to meet that standard. I can't go along with that. I've never seen a case of restricting trade in this way that was beneficial to the consumer, in any domain. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Disabling right-click,etc. (was: Web home page writing software)
Arthur writes: The ONLY absolutes I see here are that an artist's work is his own to do as he pleases, and that there is no moral authority to take or copy other people's creations even if it is easy to do so, unless the artist has agreed to it. Quite true, but the practical reality is that there is no way to prevent people from stealing images off a Web site. Either you do not post what you do not want stolen, or you post images and accept that they will be stolen. Posting images for everyone to see, and then trying to prevent them from seeing them with elaborate protection mechanisms (and make no mistake, there is no way to protect images without simultaneously preventing them from being seen), doesn't make much sense. Publishing images on a Web site is like publishing them in a magazine: Some people will cut pictures out of magazines and tape them to their walls, rather than buy expensive prints. But you usually tolerate the magazine publication in exchange for the exposure, knowing that many people will not be satisfied with just a cut-out magazine clip and/or will be too honest to cheat that way, and will buy real prints. I know that people may steal images off my site. Heck, for personal use, I explicitly authorize the downloading of images (indeed, the wallpapers section is _designed_ for that). I suppose I'm losing revenue in some vague theoretical way by doing so. However, I also know that big-money buyers will still ask me for permission and pay me money for that permission when they want to use an image for something more serious. It's a trade-off. Nobody would ever buy my pictures at all if they could not _see_ them. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Disabling right-click, etc. (was: Webhomepage writing software)
David writes: I don't know where y'all come from...but I'm in a post-industrial community that would cheerfully settle for 2nd best...when push-comes-to-shove. The ramifications of this are endless. They would be *thrilled* to settle for whatever they can print off the web. Then either you must not post anything at all on your Web site, or you must accept the lost revenue when the images you post to the site are stolen. There are no other options. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Disabling right-click, etc. (was: Web home page writing software)
Shunith writes: Disabling right click will not stop any of the ones you mention from using your pix if they so choose. I know. I don't disable anything. Furthermore, it seems a bit egotistical to me when photographers go to extreme lengths (downloadable ActiveX controls and plug-ins, etc.) to prevent people from stealing their work. Has it occurred to them that their might not be worth stealing in the first place? There are plenty of cats, dogs, sunsets, breaking waves, distant mountains, nudes, and touristy photos in the world; most are not worth protecting, since they are a dime a dozen anyway. So, what's your point? That it's not something to worry about. Don't put anything on your site that you absolutely do not want stolen under any circumstances, and accept that there will always be someone stealing the images that you do put on the site. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Disabling right-click, etc. (was: Web homepage writing software)
David writes: But it's not quite that easy nor as cut-and= dried as the above. There aren't any other options. Anything you put on the site is likely to be stolen. Anything you do not want stolen should not be put on the site. For example, you've just thumbed-your-nose at the state-of-the-art in professional event photography. On-line proofing is currently all the rage in that area...especially for out-of-town customers. In that realm, you can't sell what you don't present. True, although I've been in exactly that situation and very recently had some of my images stolen just from the online proofs (which are good enough for small reproduction sizes, even if they are tiny and fuzzy). One technique that seems necessary is to present lower rez watermarked images. I've considered it; I haven't gone that far yet. Given that some of my images have been swiped recently, perhaps I'll have to resort to that. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Disabling right-click, etc. (was: Web home page writing software)
Preben writes: I would be interested in knowing which photos ARE worth protecting.? The ones that are worth money. As far as I know, in the finest museums of the world (for what it is worth), you may stumble across (quote) sunsets, breaking waves, distant mountains, nudes (unquote) . I've hardly ever seen such things in museums, except for nudes, and that's only because nudes are a euphemism for soft-core pornography. For every such photo in a museum, there's are thousands and thousands of similar photos for sale at bargain prices, or simply free for the asking. Should we perhaps leave it to the *eyes of the beholder*, instead of stooping to sweeping generalisations. Since you cannot read the beholder's mind, how will you know which images he will steal, and which images he will not steal? All copyrighted material deserves protection against commercial pirating if the originator so wishes... Of course. But originators with an exaggerated opinion of their work and draconian methods of protecting it won't have too many people viewing their masterpieces. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Disabling right-click, etc. (was: Web home page writing software)
Julie writes: Is it egotistical to try to prevent someone stealing images that a photographer has spent time and money creating? Not at all, but it is often egotistical to actually believe that anyone wants to steal them. I've seen photos on many photo sites that the photographer couldn't pay me to display in my home; I certainly would never have any urge to buy or steal them. It's just interesting to see how much many photographers overestimate their own talent. For photographers making a living solely from photography stealing images can be and is a problem. Really? How much are they losing from online theft? Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Web home page writing software
SD writes: ... notepad is the best... but is it worth th hassle and the learning curve? Doubt it ... There is no hassle. It takes a few hours to get used to writing HTML. You can learn it in an afternoon. Learning Dreamweaver might take days or weeks. And the cost of a full copy of Dreamweaver would pay for the hosting of your Web site for nearly four years. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Web home page writing software
Paul writes: But look at most professional web sites. They're full of nested tables, not to mention frames, plus little fragments of javascript for special effects, hit counters, etc. No, they are not. Professional sites contain only the HTML required to do the job; amateur sites and wannabe sites contain a ton of code that usually only partially works and requires a great deal of time to download. In particular, sites created by amateurs and wannabes using web-design software contain an order of magnitude more code than necessary and almost never work as they should; they are a bloated, unsightly mess that can scare away at least as many visitors as it attracts. As for very high-traffic commercial sites, they usually have full-time staff to write their HTML. But they still write all or most of it by hand. You can write that stuff if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it to most people. I don't have to, and neither does anyone else. You don't need little fragments of Javascript, or special effects, or hit counters in order to make a site useful and interesting. All you need is content. The largest Web sites on the Internet are written mostly by hand in HTML. It's not difficult at all. My own site is entirely hand-written. Where did you get that idea? By looking at the code. It's also the only way to get pages to work right across a wide variety of environments and browsers. Additionally, I used to work for a company that was very well placed to know what was running on these large sites. When I do a View Source on any major web site (Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon), it's obviously not hand-coded. Those are exactly the sites I'm talking about. Hand-written, for the most part, for the reasons stated above. It also reduces download time to write only the code necessary, not whatever junk a web-design program puts into the page. The front page of Yahoo is very carefully handwritten in order to make sure that it downloads as quickly as possible--you'll note that the site is amazingly free of special effects, animations, and the like as well. Google is the same way. But even complex sites like Microsoft's site are largely hand-written. It's easier than trying to find a web-design program that will do the same thing, and do it well, and make it small. Many of the pages are dynamically generated based on queries, cookies, etc. Using scripts that are handwritten. There are telltale signs that something was written with web-design software. Such pages are usually bloated with code and take a long time to download. They include too many special effects for their own code, with every link and graphic flashing and blinking and moving. They tend not to work on many browsers. The code itself is usually a mass of incomprehensible junk when you examine the source. It may not be done with something cheap like FrontPage, but when you see endless reams of nested tables with no indenting, you know you're dealing with HTML that was generated by software, not by hand. No, you don't. I've written stuff like that by hand. It's not hard. It may or may not be indented, depending on how it was edited. HTML generated by scripts often does not have pretty indentations; but the scripts are handwritten, too. Not erroneous links. Bad links are human error. And if you are doing something like a photo album by hand, you have to make sure that you create all the thumbnail images by hand, given them names related to the image names, and make sure that none of your HREFs are misspelled. So? It's not difficult. If you use an automatic tool, you wind up with HTML that's guaranteed to be correct. For someone with more money than time or competence, then yes, a web-design package might be a good choice, as long as the site is not too complex. For large and complex sites, or high-traffic sites, or for persons on a budget, handwritten HTML is better. Well, I don't want to get into a flame war with you. No flames intended. I just don't like to see misinformation spread around. It's easier to write your own HTML with a text editor than it is to use an expensive web-design program. HTML is easy to learn. It takes very little to build a Web site by hand, and it saves you time and money. You can learn enough to build your first Web page in about fifteen minutes. And if you ever build a really big or busy site, you'll probably end up writing it by hand, anyway, so knowing HTML always comes in handy. I do know HTML, and have created simple web sites with text editors. Then I'm surprised you'd recommend web-design junk, or compare HTML to a programming language, since it is nothing of the kind. And I think your recommendations are lousy advice for someone else who wants to create anything beyond a very basic web site with very few links, the simplest page layout, and no dynamic content. But that's EXACTLY the kind of site that will attract the most visitors. People look
[filmscanners] Re: Web home page writing software
Paul writes: As long as it produces the correct results in a web browser, who cares? True, but it won't. The junk generated by web-design software contains mountains of code, often lots of scripting as well, and if you don't change it carefully, it will break; the results will _not_ display correctly. It's far easier to write the HTML from scratch, and skip the web-design software. This is how most seasoned webmasters do it, anyway. It's faster and less hassle that way. I've seen C++ compilers generate hundred-kilobyte programs that I could write in a hundred bytes using assembly language. HTML is not a programming language. Given that 100K of RAM costs two cents, and 100K of disk space costs a hundredth of a cent, I'll write in C++. And given that a 50KB page can load in 8 seconds via dialup and a fraction of a second via broadband, I'll save the much longer programming time and use Dreamweaver. A lot of visitors won't wait eight seconds for the page to download; they'll just go elsewhere. And as I've said, HTML is _not_ programming. The two are not comparable. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: LS-2000 and HC film
Use the supplied film strip adapter instead of the automatic strip loader. - Original Message - From: Francoise Frigola [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 14, 2002 20:43 Subject: [filmscanners] LS-2000 and HC film I am attempting to scan film strips on High Contrast films. The film itself is transparent. Many images have very little black in them. In many cases the scanner does not recognize that there are several images on the strip. It goes to the second one and sees only one image. What area should I make black on the film, besides a separation between each image? Thanks, Francoise Frigola Inkjet Prints in Multiples ~ Sculpture www.pe.net/~franou/ Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Is anybody there????
That would be dishonest and unkind. - Original Message - From: Laurie Solomon [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 07, 2002 16:28 Subject: [filmscanners] RE: Is anybody there Come on Anthony, you can do better than that. The very least you could do is cause Thomas to think by giving him the paradoxical response of No. :-) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Anthony Atkielski Sent: Sunday, July 07, 2002 2:35 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Is anybody there Yes. - Original Message - From: Thomas B. Maugham [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 07, 2002 02:27 Subject: [filmscanners] Is anybody there Is anybody there? Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Is anybody there????
Yes. - Original Message - From: Thomas B. Maugham [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 07, 2002 02:27 Subject: [filmscanners] Is anybody there Is anybody there? Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Black and white scans onLS4000EDandotherissues
I have not had any focus issues with any Nikon scanner (I have three). - Original Message - From: Bruce M. Burnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 30, 2002 05:18 Subject: [filmscanners] RE: Black and white scans onLS4000EDandotherissues Austin, You assume that everyone with a Nikon scanner has depth of focus issues. But not me nor the three others that I personally know who use them. No depth of focus problems. I am not saying that there isn't an issue with depth of focus, but that some units(or maybe we just have flat film)do not exhibit the problem. Bruce Burnett Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: OT: WARNING: Epson 7600/9600 ink use
So did you actually buy the printer? - Original Message - From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2002 04:27 Subject: [filmscanners] OT: WARNING: Epson 7600/9600 ink use I just posted this to comp.periphs.printers, and I know it is off topic, BUT, since many filmscanner users might be considering the new lower priced Epson wide carriage printers, I thought I'd provide this heads up. Boy, was I excited to see the price on Epson's 24 wide printer drop by thousands of dollars with the introduction of the 7600 (list $2995 US) versus the older 7000 dye based model (list $3995) or the 7500 pigmented model (list $4995 US). Not only that, but the 7600 has a new set of even better pigmented inks available, a higher resolution inkhead, etc. and they OFFER SWITCHABLE BLACK INKS for both matte and glossy (photo) paper use with these pigmented inks! WOW, what a deal. That was until I started looking into the ink situation. The 7600 uses 110 ml ink carts (up to seven of them), and each has a lovely intelledge smart chip in it, which keeps track of all sorts of interesting stuff. Each cartridge costs $70 US or $106 CAN plus tax. The new 9600 which is a wider carriage version (44 inches wide) can use either 110 ml or 220 ml carts). Since these printers use the Intellege chip, they are not refillable, and besides, Epson owns the rights to their new ink technology. The only problem with these new inks is that the formula of the black ink makes it either work well with matte papers or glossy/photo papers, so you need two different types to provide a full range of printing abilities. BUT, no problem... you can switch between the two carts easily (it takes about 10 minutes according to Epson), One of the features of the Intellege chip technology carts is that they have a valve that shuts down the cart to keep it sealed when not in use, AND, the cartridge keeps track of exactly how much ink is in it via the chip. So, at least there are some advantages to this chip system, right? So, I take the black (glossy) cart out, buy a matte black cart (about $70 US for the 110ml version) and install it... simple, right? Well, unlike the consumer models which have the ink reservoir sitting right on top of the heads, the larger carriage printers (starting with the Epson 3000) use a series of plastic tubes to feed the ink from the ink reservoirs to the heads. Obviously, if you switch types of inks, you need to flush out the ink in the head and those tubes so the new type of ink is ready to be used. OK, so the black head is flushed so the new ink is used. It turns out that the heads also carry some ink, plus the tube, so it takes about 25-32 ml of ink to be pushed through the system to clear the old ink out and start the new ink. Well, that's a LOT of ink from a 110 ml cart, about one quarter, so you would lose about $18 US or $27 CAN (plus tax) ink for a switch one direction. Switching back to the original black would double these costs. So, you say, OK, I can swallow that, or make my client pay or whatever... not so horrible. BUT BUT, Epson didn't design the printer to work this way. OH no! Epson likes selling ink a lot, they make a lot of money selling ink, and they want to keep printer prices down, so more people buy them, so they can .. sell MORE INK! Apparently, Epson has designed their 7600 and 9600 printers to use a system similar to when the printer first is loaded with cartridges when you buy it (which uses up about 39 ml of ink per color, or about 273 ml of ink) when changing between black cartridges. Inotherwords, it not only purges the black line and head, it also purges ALL THE OTHER COLOR CARTRIDGES TOO to a total of between 180ml to 215ml of ink (according to Epson's numbers), or $114-$137 US or $173-$207 CAN (plus tax!) per switch. Or, for a full circle switch over (black to matte black to regular black again) of $228-274 US or $346-$414 CAN (plus that tax, again) just to run one print in the matte mode if you have the regular black in the printer and want to return it afterward. I do not know many clients that I can add that type of fee onto their set up costs [;-)] Now, I know that companies like Epson have shifted from larger profit margins from the printer sales, to higher profits on ink, by making 3rd party inks difficult or impossible to use with the Intellege technology, but doesn't it seem a bit self-serving to advertise these printers as providing switchable black inks as an answer to the problem of their new inks not being able to handle all substrates well, when the only way to use that feature is to waste HUNDREDS of dollars worth of ink just to switch between the black inks. I'm not an engineer, but I can't believe the cost of making the black cartridge and head assembly having its own unique purging sequence would be so great as to have made it not worthwhile to incorporate under the circumstances. Heck, all the
[filmscanners] Re: Windows Memory Mgt.
Simon writes: Where did you get this information? From Microsoft. Besides, you can see it for yourself if you look closely at XP; much of the OS still carries the names of used by its direct ancestors. MS has hidden quite a bit and has crippled a few functions so that you have to pay for more functionality, but the basic OS is the same. That's why XP is far more stable than any other home operating system from MS (it easily whips all the Windows 9x flavors and their relatives). Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Windows Memory Mgt.
David writes: All very true, but NT/2k/XP give the user a single, flat 2GB address space, which is getting a bit cramped in this day and age of 4000dpi MF scanners. The 32-bit hardware severely limits addressing beyond a 4 GB boundary. If you want to handle more than 4 GB cleanly, you'll have to go to a 64-bit architecture (which is coming, but isn't quite here yet). Hmm. I wonder if that can be gotten around by having a thread object with it's own address space for each image. The big problem is having a convenient way to address RAM directly. 32 bits = 4 GB. Very much like the problem with MS-DOS and 16-bit addressing, which required that everything be chopped up into 64K chunks. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Scene brightness and CCDs
Todd writes: Seems to me a good S curve algorithm could juice the midtones and still keep the highlights and shadows from from blowing and blocking, no? Absolutely, and an S curve is what I had in mind (although I don't actually know for sure what sort of adjustment the cameras are performing). In order to give images more pop, the processing would logically increase the change in luminosity in the midtones, where most of the information in a properly-exposed image would be, and sacrifice detail in the highlights and shadows. A plain straight-line change would work okay, but then highlights and shadows would be abruptly cut off, and they would contain more detail than necessary for most images up to the cutoff points, to the detriment of midtones. In other words, I'd expect image-processing software to emulate the same type of curve that is built into film emulsions, with a steep midsection and a toe and shoulder at the extremes. Of course, same curve = same drawbacks, so highlights and shadows will suffer. But unless you have a magic display device that can actually display a very wide gamut and a very broad dynamic range, you have to compress something. Some digicams may be overdoing it, by forcing images into the lowest-common-denominator gamut, which would be something like sRGB. I guess this is understandable for the consumer cameras, but I should hope that the pro cameras are using something wider, or even allowing the user to select a space for rendering of an image (including raw data from the CCD, preferably, which would mean no manipulation at all). Even better would be to do this all in the analog realm, with the raw output signals from the CCD, rather than trying to adjust after conversion to digital data, because some resolution will be lost in the conversion, unless it is extremely precise internally (18-20 bits, for example). But that would be expensive, inflexible, and prone to misadjustment and environmental influences, so I doubt that it is being done. Will the RAW captures from these cameras hold detail at the extremes under conditions of large brightness ranges? How many stops of brightness for the RAW captures? I don't know. It depends what RAW means for a given model of camera. Also, even the pro cameras today are using CCDs that are too small to provide the full benefits of CCD capture. The smaller the pixel, the less charge you can hold on a given photosite, and the smaller the dynamic range of the CCD. You need big pixels to provide lots of range, and to maintain resolution, then, you also need a big CCD. This is an argument in favor of full-frame 24x36 CCDs, but nobody has them yet (practically). Another problem is thermal noise, but you'd have to actively refrigerate a CCD to really drive it down and realize the full benefits of CCD range at the shadow end. That's probably not practical in a portable camera. Fortunately, it shouldn't be much of an issue except for really long exposures or really warm environments. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Scene brightness and CCDs
Austin writes: How's that that ...result in a photograph containing virtually no contrast...? Using a wide gamut, the midtones are very compressed with respect to the overall range of the image. When you display this on a device that doesn't have much range compared to the gamut, the midtones will lack contrast. This is easy to see just by playing around with different color spaces in Photoshop. P.S. I would comment more on this discussion... but simply don't have the time, and the other discussion I'm entertained with is rather time consuming...and more important, at least to me. Good. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Archiving and when to sharpen(was:Color spaces for differentpurposes)
Laurie writes: Don't you have this reversed? My understanding is that JPEG is lossy while TIFF with LZW is lossless. Yes, I do, sorry. Fortunately, you understood what I meant, not what I wrote. I was in a rush, as usual. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Scene brightness and CCDs
Austin writes: Isn't that a curve issue if you say it's only in the mid tones? It might be, if that were what I had actually said. But I only mentioned the midtones; I did not say that only they were affected. If you divide a 100:1 ratio of luminosity into 256 equal parts, the middle five stops (the midtones) will be divided into only 64 discrete levels, and will represent only 25% of the total dynamic range. If you divide a 1000:1 ratio of luminosity into 256 equal parts, these same midtones will be divided into 128 levels, or half of all available levels, and half of the total dynamic range. If the bulk of your image is recorded in midtones, as would be typical for most images, properly exposed, the former gamut will give you only half the tonal resolution and contrast of the latter. And if you attempt to improve contrast by boosting the increments between the midtones with an S curve, you risk posterization in the first case, but much less so in the second. This is why wide gamut shows poor contrast in midtones if displayed as-is, and why it may produce unacceptable results if you simply try to play with the curves. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Dickbo
Guy writes: I vote for his expulsion. Consider following my example instead. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Color spaces for different purposes
Tony writes: This is only a minor sharpening to restore the sharpness of the original ... Sharpness cannot be restored, it can only be simulated. Sharpening causes deterioration in image quality, so it should be avoided until the image is about to be prepared for a specific use. I archive all my images without sharpening. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Color spaces for different purposes
Laurie writes: Theoretically maybe ... All images are bitmaps at the time of sharpening. The format in which they were or will be stored is irrelevant. Additionally, all sharpening degrades an image, so it should not be carried out for images that are being archived, as you may need the highest possible image quality later on. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Color spaces for different purposes
Ken writes: But when printing it's best to go direct from the TIFF isn't it? It doesn't matter. When producing for the web, yes, I go to jpeg and then sharpen. You can't. All images are bitmaps while you are manipulating them. JPEG and TIFF are just file formats. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Color spaces for different purposes
Preston writes: One pre-press expert in my area recommends ColorMatchRGB instead of Adobe98 for pre-press work. Is this a Mac vs. PC thing? No, it is more of a printed-on-paper vs. electronic-display thing. ColorMatchRGB is designed for print, whereas Adobe98 is for more general use and has a gamut somewhat larger than what will usually fit on offset printing. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Color spaces for different purposes
Ken writes: ... but could someone offer a technical explanation of why sharpening has so much more visible effect on jpegs as opposed to TIFFs? It doesn't. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Color spaces for different purposes
Laurie writes: ... how does one sharpen between the conversion stage and the compression stage? One does not. There seems to be a widespread misconception here. While you are editing an image, it _does not have_ a format; it isn't JPEG, or TIFF, or anything else. The image is stored on a file in JPEG or TIFF or whatever format you choose, but it has no format during editing, and so whether you edit a file opened from TIFF or JPEG makes absolutely no difference while you are editing. An image in an editing program is just a mass of pixels. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Color spaces for different purposes
Maris writes: Sharpening at that point was what I was suggesting, before saving as a more-compressed JPG. Sharpening permanently diminishes the quality of an image, and it also makes the resulting JPEG file somewhat larger. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: JPG sharpening [was: Color spaces for different purposes]
Maris writes: True enough, but if the image requires sharpening? You cannot know if an image will require sharpening or not until you know how the image will actually be used. I would think it better to convert to JPG and then sharpen rather than sharpen in TIFF and then convert. Neither of these operations is possible. You cannot sharpen anything while it is stored in a TIFF or JPEG file; you must open the file, read the image data inside, and load it into an image-editing program such as Photoshop in order to sharpen it. While the image is in Photoshop, it _does not have_ a format; it is not TIFF or JPEG or anything else. When you store the image, it is recorded in a file in TIFF or JPEG format. But you cannot sharpen an image in TIFF or sharpen an image after conversion to JPEG; neither of these makes any real sense. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: JPG sharpening [was: Color spaces for different purposes]
Laurie writes: For other than web work, some have suggested that saving an image for archival purposes as a LWZ compressed TIFF file is the best way to go for compression without artifacts. True--TIFF is lossless, and so it does not create artifacts. However, if you save an image as JPEG using the lowest (least) possible compression, the saved version will be essentially identical to the original scan. Scans do not contain more detail than a low-compression JPEG can hold. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: JPG sharpening [was: Color spaces for different purposes]
Laurie writes: I agree with this; but in many if not most cases, the compression level used or required is greater then the lowest possible amount, ranging from level 6 to level 3 in order to get the file small enough to be an email attachment or a web site download. I was thinking only of archived photos. For Web and e-mail use, in most cases you can crank the compression all the way up in Photoshop (that is, set it down to 1, the highest compression setting) and the image will still look fine. Unlike some editing programs, Photoshop won't let you compress the image so much that it really looks bad on the screen; even the worst setting is still pretty good. This statement I do not understand; please elaborate. Most scans, at full resolution, do not actually hold enough detail to make full use of that resolution, so compressing them into JPEGs really doesn't sacrifice anything. Additionally, with the lowest compression settings of Photoshop (level 10), I have yet to be able to distinguish between the original and the JPEG in terms of image detail, even when greatly magnifying the image. Photoshop is very conservative. Surely, this cannot be the case if we are talking about raw data as opposed to encoded compressed data even at the lowest setting in which there still is some compression of the raw data. There is always some loss in a mathematical sense and a strict sense, but in practice you won't be able to see the loss when storing full-resolution scans as JPEGs with the quality setting set as high as it will go. I've never had any problem losing detail in archived JPEGs as long as I use the highest quality setting. I sure would like to see a 16-bit version of the JPEG standard, though. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Color spaces for different purposes
Laurie writes: In practice, I do not think they are seperable so as to allow some other action to be carried out between the two processes, although it may be theoretically possible. JPEG encoding requires the rough equivalent of a Fourier transformation on the data; once that is undertaking, bitmapped operations on the image are no longer possible. So one cannot really separate them. Not all encoding formats impose this constraint, but I haven't heard of any software that separates the two processes, just the same. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Archiving and when to sharpen (was:Color spaces for differentpurposes)
yes; if there are many pixels of same color, image will compress more. And that is almost never true for real-world photographs, although it is certainly true quite often for computer-generated images such as diagrams and the like. Wow, are you sure? The LZW TIFF was *larger*? It can be if there is a _lot_ of detail. In a lossless compression scheme, the chances of a compressed image being _larger_ than the original are always equal to the chances of it being smaller, if the image is completely random. In practice, totally random images are scarce, but the more detail an image contains, the more closely it approaches randomness, and the greater the probability that the compressed file may actually be larger than the uncompressed file. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Copyright of photos
Unfortunately, there is no way to prevent visitors to your Web site from stealing the images you display upon it. Jim's method is easily defeated (you can take a screen shot by pressing Print Screen and capture the image for later use, with or without a transparent GIF). The reality is that you cannot simultaneously allow visitors to view an image and yet prevent them from saving a copy of the image. The only option you have, then, is to not put anything on your site that you cannot afford to have stolen. In my case, I don't worry a lot, since, even if someone likes my image enough to steal it, the resolution of the image is generally too low to permit decent printing. An 800x600 image looks large on a screen, but only measures about 2x3 inches when printed at a decent resolution on a good printer. So anyone who wants a really high-resolution copy of one of my images will still have to license it from me. I can't do much about people who steal and use the low-resolution versions on my site, short of suing them, which I usually cannot afford to do, even if I find out about them. - Original Message - From: Colin Maddock [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2002 05:10 Subject: [filmscanners] Copyright of photos The copyright of photos on the internet had quite a thrashing on this list a few months ago, but did any solution to the problem of people stealing copyrighted images come up? On the nyip.com website this month, http://www.nyip.com/tips/digital_dialog0402.php Jim Barthman has come up with what could be an answer, involving placing a transparent GIF over the image you want to protect from downloading. Colin Maddock Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: 35mm holders in Nikon scanners
If the FH-835 is the standard holder that comes with the 8000ED (I don't have it in front of me now), I've used it, and it seems to work just fine. - Original Message - From: Tomek Zakrzewski [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 20, 2002 20:44 Subject: [filmscanners] 35mm holders in Nikon scanners Did anybody had a chance to use both FH-3 film holder of the Nikon 4000ED and FH-835 of the Nikon 8000ED? From what I know the FH-3 is very good in providing flat film, but since I haven't seen the FH-835 at work, I'm not sure I get the same film flatness with this MF scanner. To put it simply: do I compromise film flatness from 35mm film when I scan with 8000ED instead of 4000ED? Regards Tomek Zakrzewski Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: 35mm holders in Nikon scanners
If the FH-835 is the standard holder that comes with the 8000ED (I don't have it in front of me now), I've used it, and it seems to work just fine. - Original Message - From: Tomek Zakrzewski [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 20, 2002 20:44 Subject: [filmscanners] 35mm holders in Nikon scanners Did anybody had a chance to use both FH-3 film holder of the Nikon 4000ED and FH-835 of the Nikon 8000ED? From what I know the FH-3 is very good in providing flat film, but since I haven't seen the FH-835 at work, I'm not sure I get the same film flatness with this MF scanner. To put it simply: do I compromise film flatness from 35mm film when I scan with 8000ED instead of 4000ED? Regards Tomek Zakrzewski Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Flatbeds for 6x6 negs.
The Epson 2450 is widely regarded as a good scanner for such purposes. No SCSI, though, as far as I know. - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 16:29 Subject: [filmscanners] Flatbeds for 6x6 negs. Hi, Apologies if this has been asked 1000 times before. I am looking for a flatbed scanner capable of scanning 6x6 negatives. It has already been explained to me that quality will not be as good as from a dedicated film scanner but I can only go for a flatbed (I can justify scanning images but not film). I have found an Epson Expression 1680 Pro and a Umax Powerlook III (does not seem as good). The budget is circa 1000 UKP (it can stretch but not to the price of a Umax Powerlook 3000). Other bits of info are that films are in strips of 3 negatives, the scanner would be connected to PC, and SCSI interface is preferred. The output - if used at all - will be put on the web so although the final quality may not be too high I would like to get as good an image as possible. Any advice or suggestions as to what other flatbeds may be available is welcome. Will the scanned images be any better than scanning 5x5 prints? Regards and TIA Charles == Charles Christacopoulos, Management Information Officer, Planning Information Group, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, Scotland, United Kingdom. Tel: 44(0)1382-344891. Fax: 44(0)1382-201604. http://www.somis.dundee.ac.uk/ http://somis2.ais.dundee.ac.uk/ Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Film resolution - was: Re: 3 year wait
Austin writes: It's to what degree it sees it. Samples do not have degrees; either they exist, or they don't. Who said there were? It's to what degree it sees it. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: 3 year wait
Austin writes: 10 stops is not hard at all to get in a single scene. Examples? I routinely scan slides in which there is at least some detail at every point in the image, light and shadow (excluding specular highlights and light sources)--often more than I realized was there. Clearly, the scene brightness did not span ten stops if I'm able to get anything other than solid black in the shadows and solid white in the highlights. My own metering of the original scene supports this, with 6-7 stops being about the largest spans I usually see. Most shadows are lit at least a little bit indirectly; most highlights are not as featurelessly bright as they might appear at first glance. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Re:Computer size(New Topic)
Rob writes: What size computer do I need so that I may work happily with Photoshop and 200M scan file size. The largest and fastest you can afford. Seriously. RAM is the most important. You should have at least a couple of times as much RAM as your image size to work at a reasonable speed ... and the more you have, the better. If you can afford and configure 10 GB of RAM, so much the better. You cannot have too much. Next, the faster the disks you have, the better. Having lots of RAM makes the disks far less important, but they should still be fast, otherwise Photoshop will nearly grind to a halt each time it needs to touch the disks. Finally, the importance of processor speed varies with the type of manipulations you perform, but here again, faster is better. A single processor at 1 GHz is preferable to two processors at 500 MHz each, since most Photoshop operations cannot be spread over multiple processors. But if you are held back by RAM or disk, a faster processor won't make much of a dent in your working speed. I now have a P3 800 / 780M ram + scratch disk. This is using sometimes 3G PShop memory and is taking heaps of time to process. Triple the amount of RAM, if your machine allows it, or simply buy and configure as much RAM as you can afford, up to the maximum on the machine. That will make a _huge_ difference. If you still see disk activity after adding as much RAM as you can, try to get faster disks. If you finally have added enough RAM to eliminate disk I/O and/or you've got the fastest disks and the most RAM you can get, and you still want more speed, consider a faster processor. Usually, though, RAM will provide the biggest jump in speed, and may well be enough alone to fix your problem. Disk will provide another, somewhat smaller jump. Processor will provide a significant jump only if RAM and disk are already adequate, as Photoshop tends to spend a lot more time I/O-bound in most configurations than it does processor-bound. You can get a feel for the influence of processor power by comparing the time required for a Gaussian blur to that required for a motion blur or radial blur (the latter requires a lot more processor time than the former, but not really any more memory or disk); the bigger the difference, the more processor-bound your machine currently is (if you see no difference, you need more RAM, or failing that, faster disks). Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Scan Elite XP?
I doubt that XP will Win 2K. There is no server version of XP, and Win 2K Pro is a more compatible desktop for Win 2K server than is XP. XP and 2K share the same post NT4 code base, from what I understand. - Original Message - From: Lloyd O'Daniel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2002 08:25 Subject: [filmscanners] RE: Scan Elite XP? Well, that's true for XP Home. But, as I understand it, XP Pro is to replace Win 2k and is in fact NT6. Usually, MS discontinues OS's they've replaced. But the various W2k Servers are still current, and they still might sell W2k Pro to placate the inertia of corporations. Lloyd -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Op's Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2002 12:49 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Scan Elite XP? I don't think that XP supersedes W2000.XP replaces 98,ME. Rob Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Firewire Card
Arthur asks: Scanning reference: has he yet incorporated a decent color management system into his OS? Windows XP does indeed include system-level color-management capability, although it isn't very elaborate. It is apparently not automatic; applications must explicitly choose to avail themselves of it. In turning it on and off, I didn't see any obvious difference in color, so there must not be too many programs that reference it. I haven't been able to find any details on exactly what this new feature does in XP. You can find it by looking at the desktop properties (under Advanced stuff). Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: 3 year wait
Arthur writes: I believe what Anthony is saying is that it is rare that a 10 stop difference would occur in adjacent areas of an image, not that a full image wouldn't contain a 10 stop range of contrast. Actually both. I can't recall offhand seeing a 10-stop range in a single image, excluding light sources and specular highlights (which often zoom right off the scale--but you'd never realistically try to record detail in those anyway). Even between deep shadows and sunlit highlights, the differences shown by my spot meters do not exceed half a dozen stops or so in most cases, and I don't remember any specific cases of ten-stop differences, although I'm sure there have been a few almost artificially extreme cases in which they appeared. Even right here in front of my PCs, in a darkened room with a few light sources, I can get only about a 8-9 stop difference between the brilliantly lit white ceiling above a halogen lamp and the dark shadow under a desk. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Real-World Scene Brightness Range
Austin writes: BW film can easily handle 10 stops, with very little effort. It can _just barely_ handle ten stops, from zero to maximum density. Since some margin is necessary in order to hold detail, ten stops is potentially difficult to achieve. Fortunately, it's not generally necessary. For many films, the tonal resolution at the high and (especially) low ends of film density is rather poor as well. Try reading up on the Zone system and compensation development. I don't need to; I have the film data sheets right in front of me, and I'm simply reading off those. In any case, however, real-world scenes aren't likely to ever tax film over a ten-stop range. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Re:Computer size(New Topic)
Denis writes: To carry disk performance to the max, go with a striped SCSI array of 15000 RPM drives! Very expensive, though. Also, one thing tends to lead to another: If you use 15000 RPM drives, you soon have to start worrying about keeping the whole machine from melting down in its own heat. This (striped array) works fine for video work where we routinely handle files of 8GB and larger on a puny system of 766MhZ and 256MB RAM. Wouldn't it be cheaper to just add a raft of RAM instead of an SCSI disk array? Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Re:Computer size(New Topic)
Laurie writes: I know of no PC motherboard that will support that much RAM even if one could aford to buy it. That's why I said if you can afford AND CONFIGURE. My own motherboard is limited to 1.5 GB (and that's what I installed). Windows XP Home Edition is limited to 2 GB (a marketing-imposed crippling of the OS, not a technical constraint). Windows XP Pro is limited to 4 GB (partially a technical constraint, inherited from NT and also partially related to Intel hardware). Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Firewire Card
Howard writes: Is putting in a Firewire card as simple as opening the computer case, shoving the card into an empty slot (just kidding... lets say gently inserting) and turning on the computer and having Windows XP find new hardware and plug 'n playing the driver to the card automatically...then plugging the peripheral into the card? Yes. That's how I installed my Nikon scanner on my Windows XP machine. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: LS2000 Coolscan shadow noise issues getting worse?
Les writes: Is there a good safe procedure for opening the scanner and accessing these parts? Not necessary on the LS-2000. Remove all adapters from the scanner. Turn the scanner on, and wait until it starts to advance the scan head towards the front of the scanner. Turn the scanner off a second or two before it reaches the forward limit of its travel. This makes the mirror and lens readily accessible through the opening in the front of the scanner. Then just blow away the dust, and _carefully_ clean the mirror if necessary (the lens is usually clean, since its axis is horizontal and it doesn't collect much dust, but you can clean it if you want). I use some lens tissue around a Q-tip, or just the Q-tip, occasionally slightly moistened with Kodak lens cleaning fluid or distilled water. Works fine. I've done this lots of times and I haven't noticed any degradation to the scanner. Keeping the adapters out and the scanner door closed when not in use helps retard the buildup of dust. As for the 4000, I don't know how much it resembles the 2000 in this aspect. And if anyone knows how to clean the 8000ED, I'd very much like to know how to do it. I worry a lot about what will happen if it gets dusty, although I keep it wrapped in plastic with the door closed when I'm not using it. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: LS2000 Coolscan shadow noise issues gettingworse?
The LS-2000 mirror is indeed silvered in front. Nevertheless, I've managed to clean it without damaging it, as far as I can tell. Besides, what choice do I have? If the mirror gets dirty, what else can you do? - Original Message - From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, May 04, 2002 12:17 Subject: [filmscanners] Re: LS2000 Coolscan shadow noise issues gettingworse? I would assume all mirrors used in scanners are front surfaced. Front surfaced mirrors are VERY delicate and easily scratched and should be handled with the greatest respect. Art Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Archiving to CD - is there a file sizelimit ?
Dual boot is transparent to a scanner, so it shouldn't matter. Be sure that you install the software in two completely different places on the machine, however (you should not install it into the same directory on the same drive in the same partition, for example). - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 02:55 Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Archiving to CD - is there a file sizelimit ? i have a duel book on my laptop and an LS-4000. it's installed one operating system and i was unable to install the software on the other system (windows 98 full addition). nikon said they don't support duel boots. has anyone any experience with this? joanna Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: OT: which wintel OS for digital imaging?
Dave writes: I do Norton Win and Disk Doctor, then defrag. Things like that were useful in Windows 3.1, but they haven't been necessary in ages; they probably hurt more than help in NTFS-based systems like Windows NT, 2000, and XP. Read about utilities including System Mechanic here: Hmm ... sounds like an invitation to trouble. No wonder you are having difficulties, if you use things like that. System Mechanic isn't the problem, I only got it a day or two ago, and I've been having problems with XP for awhile now. Then stop using the Norton stuff. That will probably help. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Advice Please
David writes: I shoot medium format (t-max 100) film and the end use is for high qualiy glossy magazines and corporate publications, usually A4, very occasionally A3. Any decent scanner will be more than sufficient for this type of work, as offset printing can't come close to the quality produced by a good film scanner. So from this standpoint, both the Nikon and the Flextight (and probably any other MF scanner) would be fine. If you want to be able to extract as much information as possible from the film for archival purposes, then you may need to look at the scanner with the best quality (i.e., highest price, roughly). Calumet, for example, tell me that the Nikon 8000ED would be more than adequate for the purpose, whereas Digital Workshop say that the Nikon would not be up to the job and I would need a Flextight III, at considerably more expense. Both would be more than enough for publication. So, first question; would the Nikon give me pin-sharp scans from b/w negs, suitable for high quality publication, at least to A4? Easily. Secondly, when the Nikon was demonstrated, the film was clearly not at all flat in the holder. They told me that the scanner had enough depth of focus to compensate for this. Is this true? Depends on what you mean by not at all flat. The Nikon is sensitive to warping of the film and I've had scans with the standard 120 strip holder that were visibly soft in areas that warped out of the focus plane. The solution is to use the MF glass holder that is available as an option for the scanner (about $350). They also said that, if it was a problem, a glass carrier was available, but I can forsee all kinds of problems with that, such as dust on the extra 4 surfaces, and newtons rings. True. I seem to get better scans with the glass carrier than with the standard carrier, though. I've only recently started using the LS-8000ED and I haven't scanned any black and white yet, but the results with transparencies are great. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] LS-8000ED examples
I've uploaded some more scan examples for any interested parties, scanned with the Nikon LS-8000ED. This is a scan of a Provia 100F transparency, in medium format, 6x6. The picture was taken with a 150mm lens (equivalent to 90mm on a 35mm camera), roughly 1/250 at f/5.6 or so, as I recall. The photo was shot handheld. The location was the Disney Studios Park in Paris. The scan was performed with the Nikon glass MF strip holder, 14-bit mode, 4x sampling, dICE turned on, GEM and ROC off, superfine scan (1 CCD) off, auto focus and exposure, no other adjustments from defaults. The files are as follows: http://www.smallevents.com/mousebefore.tif ... A reduced-size copy of the raw scan from the scanner. This is a 16-bit TIFF of about 2 MB; it is identical to the original, apart from being downsampled to 1/223 of its original size (from 8964 pixels on a side to 600 pixels). You can see that the entire frame is covered. The blurred stuff just to the left of the frame itself is just a reflection of the transparency on the side of the film holder. Since this is a TIFF, you won't be able to see it in your browser, but you can download it and open it in Photoshop. http://www.smallevents.com/mouseclose.tif ... An original-size excerpt from the original scan, showing detail resolution. No unsharp masking or anythign done. This part of the photo was also the original focus point in the photograph itself. http://www.smallevents.com/mouseafter.jpg The scan after adjustment in Photoshop. Adjustment consisted of changing the curves to brighten up the scan a bit and to make the color balance match the original transparency on a light table. The original transparency has better contrast, but this is the best that can be done for a CRT display. I also cloned out a tiny spot of Newton's rings in the sky in the original. If you want to see how well the scanner holds the shadows, load the TIFF and crank up the curves in Photoshop; you can see that there is more detail in the shadows than are normally visible on a CRT. Overall it seems to do a pretty good job. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: LS-8000ED examples
David writes: How long did that take for the scan? Hmm ... I didn't time it. Maybe 6-7 minutes, I guess. Presumably 1x sampling, not superfine (i.e. using all 3 CCDs) would be faster? How much faster, and how much worse? 1x sampling would probably be nearly four times faster, logically, but I haven't timed that, either. I don't think it would look much worse. In fact, I haven't really tried to see the difference between 1x and 4x; I only use 4x because the scan is still pretty fast, and I used to use it on the LS-2000. From French culture to American kitsch. How far the great have falleng. Well, it was a good test subject. Too bad the DOF was so deep, as the background adds a lot of clutter. Getting the original close to your result requires a major change to the blue channel. Yes, but all the Nikon scanners I've had tend to produce bluish or bluish-green scans. I don't know why. The correct usually consists of boosting red and green and reducing blue. The exact exposure of the film makes a difference, though, as I'm pretty sure there is a slight color shift in Provia in underexposed vs. overexposed areas. One thing I notice is that the red is not blinding, as it has been in most of my scans in the past. This means that (1) maybe the exposure I used made a difference (as far as I can tell, this particular shot just happens to be perfectly exposed); or (2) Provia 100F has been modified to reduce its propensity to yield very vivid reds (or the 120 emulsion is actually not the same as the 135 emulsion); or (3) the LS-8000ED does not emphasize reds, and previous Nikon scanners did (?). Historically, I've noticed that red is always almost totally saturated in Veliva and Provia scans--so much so that when I boost saturation, I usually do it only for the blue and green channels, otherwise the red will burn holes in the retina. Moving from consumer digital to scanned film, I've been quite surprised at the radical color adjustments that are required. They aren't as radical as they seem. A surprising small shift in the respective gammas for the three channels corrects the color. Also, the film itself tends to shift with exposure. My impression is that as exposure goes up (at least for Provia), the red goes up and the blue goes down. However, on the light table, the slide looks exactly like the _corrected_ version of the scan, so it can't be just the film. Maybe the scanner itself shifts colors based on exposure. I suppose that's unavoidable? I've never obtained a scan that didn't require color correction. Note, however, that I never try to correct anything in the scanner; I always make all corrections in Photoshop, and I leave the original scan relatively raw as it leaves the scanner. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Scanner calibration
Arthur writes: Are you sure altering color balance isn't cheating? ;-) That depends on the direction of the alteration. If you alter colors to match real life, it's not cheating at all; if you alter them to create some sort of departure from real life, it is cheating (with respect to representing the image as an image from real life). I correct colors to make sure the image looks like real life. The typical example is correcting light from streetlights on Provia so that they have the proper pinkish-orange color that HPS lamps appear to have in real life, instead of the yellowish-green rendered by Provia. The film is probably recording a more accurate color temperature than our eye does. True for blackbody light sources, not true for discontinuous sources such as discharge lamps, which don't have a real color temperature to begin with. Film will often react much differently to discontinuous sources than will our eyes, so the film rendering has to be corrected. Additionally, even if film records blackbodies correctly, to make things look real we must simulate the automatic white balance of the human eye to some extent. It's true that real-world images in shadow are very blue indeed, but we don't notice that much in real life; and if the objective of the photo is to create the same perception that we had in real life, some adjustments are necessary. As you know, we color adjust chemically and reduce the blue component we see in shadows. No chemical adjustment is required. The brain handles white balance adjustments. Direct fatigue of retinal cells is much less of a factor, and much shorter in duration. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: SS4000 Plus not to Europe!
It should say on the power supply what it will accept. If it came with several power cords, it will probably accept anything. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
