filmscanners: OT:X-ray fogging
Some weeks ago there was a thread about fogged negs from airport X-rays. This is to put everyone on notice that if you travel in the US, fogging is a strong possibility, because it just happened to me on a trip from Cleveland to Seattle--neither of which are particularly effective smuggling ports. I am not from Jamaica, I am not Black (well, not very much, anyway--not noticeably), and my family has been out of the smuggling business for at least 300 years. Yet my film got nuked, either at Cleveland Hopkins or at SeaTac (I'd weigh it as 70% likely SeaTac, on the conservative side--there's little need to take Ohio pot to Seattle!) This definitely pisses me off, and I wrote and sent corroberating pic to the (US) FCC in charge--for whatever good that will do. I'm hoping that the people who control air traffic in the US can at least read! But judging from the people I've seen at the check-in gates, I wouldn't count on it. :-( Anyone wishing to dialogue with me on this subject, please contact me off-list, because I frankly don't have time to survey the List at this point in time. I'm just coming on--then dropping off again--to warn you all to use the lead bags when you travel (as if that would help), or buy film at point of destination and mail it back home. What a complete PITA. Best regards--LRA PS--I really miss you guys, but it can't be helped. :-) _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
filmscanners: Acer Scanwit slide holder--modifying
Hi, Johnny-- The Scanwit slide holder as delivered is hard to load quickly, and it also beats up square-cornered cardboard slide mounts. But the fix is simple. You just need to be careful--for your own sake, not the slide-holder's. The first problem is the curved keeper at the top-right corner of each slide window. Cut the radius curve back to where it's about square with the top and right side, using a sturdy utility knife, a very sharp pocket knife, or small wood-chisel (an X-acto #45 short-beveled blade will work OK--but the long, tapered blade is hard to control). This will keep your cardboard mounts from being bent or damaged. The second problem is the dual plastic springs at the lower-left corner. Some people remove *both* springs, but that leaves too much play when the slide is inserted, AFAIC. I remove only the bottom spring, leaving the spring on the left side in place. The springs can either be cut or broken off, but the stump should be shaved down so the slide moves over it smoothly. When the slide is pushed against the remaining spring from the right and pressed down, there's a satisfying little click when it seats properly. If a person is left-handed, they might prefer to remove the side spring and leave the bottom spring--I doubt if it makes much difference--the idea is to make slides easier to load, yet still fit securely in the holder. A word of caution: *be careful*. Blood on your slides makes them harder to color-correct! ;-) I've made this post a couple times in the past--this time I'm giving it a subject-heading that's hopefully more definitive. :-) Best regards--LRA PS--Thanks again to Ed Hamrick for the original suggestion. Johnny wrote: Hi Lynn, Do you have problems loading slides into your ScanWit or is it just me? I'd been using mine just for negatives for a few weeks and was thinking that it was the best thing since sliced bread. Well, maybe not really that good but I was pretty well satisfied after I tried some 100 ASA film instead of Portra 400VC. Well, yesterday I got back some mounted Velvia slides and I really like the quality of the scans but loading the holder is driving me crazy. I've tried turning the thing in forty eleven different directions but I haven't found a method that works well. Are there any secrets that might help with slides other than getting them cut and sleeved instead of mounted? Thanks, Johnny __ Johnny Johnson Lilburn, GA mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: Acer ScanWit Slides Was: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Mark wrote: I'm not Lynn, but hopefully he won't mind me rudely jumping in.. Don't mind at all, Myte. ;-) Best regards, LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Dale wrote: I want to scan maybe ten slides a month. My main purpose will be to publish the digitized photographs as attachments to e-mails or simply file them one place or another in cyberspace. Acer Scanwit (either with or without IR) is definitely worth looking at. Some flatbeds have dedicated transparency attachments, but I couldn't recommend one--if you're using M6's, you might be disappointed with the quality of flatbed-scanned slides (and maybe with the Scanwit, too, but it does a pretty decent job on sharp slides). Best regards--LRA From: Dale R. Reed [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans? Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 20:15:48 -0700 Got question. I use a couple Leica M6 manual 35mm rangefinder cameras to take color and black and white slides. I use ISO/200 Kodachome and SCALA films that I buy along with mailers from BH in New York. My computer is 1.5 year old, Windows 98, 450Mz PIII, 256M RAM, and lots of free hard drive space. I want to scan maybe ten slides a month. My main purpose will be to publish the digitized photographs as attachments to e-mails or simply file them one place or another in cyberspace. What do you folks think of this scanner and price for my purposes. Should I add a USB port to my computer? Thanks for the advice.Dale http://www.bhphotovideo.com Home Digital Photography Scanners Scanners Accessories Scanners Film Scanners Canon Canoscan FS-2710 2720 dpi 35mm/APS Film Scanner Mfg Catalog # C572011 BH Catalog # CA2710 Our Price: $399.95 Availability: In Stock --- $ [EMAIL PROTECTED]Seattle, Washington USA $ _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ?
Anthony wrote: I'm not sure ... what do you mean by reference color? OK, I'm probably not using the proper terminology here. I mean that if I select color R=0/G=181/B=145 (which may or may not approximate the general hue and brightness of Rob's turquoise slide--I'm working from color-memory of a limestone-sand lagoon in the Bahamas), can I not then suggest to Photoshop in one of the color-correction adjustments that *this* is the color that I want at this certain point, and to key the entire picture or selection to that color point? Does that make sense? I thought I'd seen this capability in a PS manual or here on the list, but I might be mistaken. I've only used the full version of PS, so I'm not sure what Adobe removes in the LE version. Not enough to cripple its usability, but enough to frustrate a user into the middle of next week, sometimes. I don't know that their newer Essentials version is any better. At least one version, which came bundled with one of my periphs, is a toy program that's also incompatible with several other real programs, and no longer on my HD. Best regards--LRA Original message: From: Anthony Atkielski [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 05:35:52 +0200 Lynn writes: Isn't there also a way to select a color in Photoshop, either from the screen or from the palette, and tell it This is the reference color for *that* area? I'm not sure ... what do you mean by reference color? I've only used the full version of PS, so I'm not sure what Adobe removes in the LE version. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ?
Colin wrote: In Levels, double click the highlight eyedropper, which brings up the colour picker. Select the colour you want, and then click on the part of the picture you want to be that colour. Why so it does! Thanks, Colin. :-) OTOH, that isn't *quite* the effect I was looking for, since it also crabs the white point. I used the Bear in the PS tutorials, and tried to turn the blue shadows into a more blue-green...it turned the whole picture blue-green. Possibly I did it wrong, or I misunderstood the premise. It seems you need to do a color mask to make this work (it does work in PS-LE, BTW). Best regards--LRA From: Colin Maddock [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 17:50:10 +1200 Lynn allen asked: Isn't there also a way to select a color in Photoshop, either from the screen or from the palette, and tell it This is the reference color for *that* area? I mean, of course, without painting it all in one flat color? In Levels, double click the highlight eyedropper, which brings up the colour picker. Select the colour you want, and then click on the part of the picture you want to be that colour. Colin Maddock _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Art wrote: Gates also owns several other collections from Europe, which unfortunately are also disintegrating. Which proves conclusively that even Money doesn't solve problems--unless, of course, you *use* it!!! ]:( Best regards--LRA From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans? Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 01:26:22 -0700 Karl Schulmeisters wrote: So for a 20 year archive, I would print to 2 CDRs and keep the original negs in a cool-dry place (in essence that is what Corbis is doing with the Betteman archive). From what I've read, Corbis actually throwing up their hands and accepting defeat. The vast majority of their Betteman Archive is degrading so rapidly that they said they would be unable to save it before it disintegrated. Rather than increase the number of people doing scanning, they decided to move the majority of the collection underground in an abandoned limestone mine, and hope this slows the process (or they simply want the collection out of the mind of the public in general).. Knowing Gates, it is all a money decision and they likely already scanned the best (most sellable) images , and now don't care a great deal about that's left, in spite of it being an international treasure. Gates also owns several other collections from Europe, which unfortunately are also disintegrating. Art _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ?
Robert wrote: I don't think PS LE allows access to individual channels in the curves dialog. It does--sort of--in Adjust/Curves. It does *not* allow individual separations into (BW) RGB channels. The lower-priced CorelDraw will, however. In the full version you can select the color channel in the curves dialog and control click(PC) on a point in the image, then change the output level to the desired amount. Do this to each of the color channels before clicking OK and you will have adjusted the image as you are suggesting. That *does* work. However, it still blows the white-point--i.e. you can't seem turn the shadows to turquoise (a minor adjustment toward yellow-blue) and retain the snow color (in the tutorial Bear), without getting it back to blue. Not that there's going to be a lot of snow in a tropical lagoon, of course. ;-) If the adjustment is really great, I suspect you might get some wild results, but this is the method commonly used to adjust flesh tones. For sure! Good psychedelic stuff, though. ;-) In most cases you probably would use a color sampler and input the sampler's tones and output the desired tones in each channel. OK, the Color Sampler part is probably what I'm not getting, and the thing I'm doing wrong. I was sampling a color from the palettes menu, and this was not working well...good, perhaps, but not well. ;-) What I was *trying* to do was tell PS that This chosen coordinate is supposed to be this color. It *does* that, but crabs the white point toward Yellow by adding yellow globally in the same percentage, not in relative percentages. Possibly I'm doing this correction wrong, or expecting the software to be smarter than it is. :-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ?
Whoa! Ten minutes after I answered Robert's msg, it struck me that adjusting Green in *Levels* would move the blue in Bear more toward turquoise and yet leave the white snow relatively white. And it does. However, these settings can't be saved in PS-LE, AFAICT. Which makes me think that getting the turquoise colors closer in ViewScan, and saving *those* settings, is probably the best way for Rob to go on this problem. *Note: This offer may not be valid in your area. Mileage shown may not be what your vehicle will achieve. We are not responsible for damage incurred in our parking lot. You may notice various side-effects from this medication. Have a nice day. ;-) Best regards--LRA From: Robert E. Wright [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 13:07:07 -0700 I don't think PS LE allows access to individual channels in the curves dialog. In the full version you can select the color channel in the curves dialog and control click(PC) on a point in the image, then change the output level to the desired amount. Do this to each of the color channels before clicking OK and you will have adjusted the image as you are suggesting. If the adjustment is really great, I suspect you might get some wild results, but this is the method commonly used to adjust flesh tones. In most cases you probably would use a color sampler and input the sampler's tones and output the desired tones in each channel. Bob Wright - Original Message - From: Lynn Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2001 12:29 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? Anthony wrote: I'm not sure ... what do you mean by reference color? OK, I'm probably not using the proper terminology here. I mean that if I select color R=0/G=181/B=145 (which may or may not approximate the general hue and brightness of Rob's turquoise slide--I'm working from color-memory of a limestone-sand lagoon in the Bahamas), can I not then suggest to Photoshop in one of the color-correction adjustments that *this* is the color that I want at this certain point, and to key the entire picture or selection to that color point? Does that make sense? I thought I'd seen this capability in a PS manual or here on the list, but I might be mistaken. I've only used the full version of PS, so I'm not sure what Adobe removes in the LE version. Not enough to cripple its usability, but enough to frustrate a user into the middle of next week, sometimes. I don't know that their newer Essentials version is any better. At least one version, which came bundled with one of my periphs, is a toy program that's also incompatible with several other real programs, and no longer on my HD. Best regards--LRA Original message: From: Anthony Atkielski [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 05:35:52 +0200 Lynn writes: Isn't there also a way to select a color in Photoshop, either from the screen or from the palette, and tell it This is the reference color for *that* area? I'm not sure ... what do you mean by reference color? I've only used the full version of PS, so I'm not sure what Adobe removes in the LE version. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ?
Rob wrote: what you say about RGB and turquoise would presumably apply to the scanner itself. From the limited number of Nikon scans I've seen on the Net and in publications, I'd guess that's true. They seem to have a strong Blue component (it shows also in skin tones and warm ochre-ish values, as you'd expect). The PS tweak is pretty simple--you can fiddle with Color Balance and Saturation to get the turquoise colors pretty close. But if you have lots of those pictures (and you probably do, since there are lots of limestone reefs and lagoons in your part of the world), you'll save much time by tweaking the scan properties and getting the scan colors closer at the start. I *think* there's also a way to save global tweak-settings in Photoshop, based on the eyedropper and a sampled (or created) color, but I'm not sure how to do it. Maybe someone better with PS does. As you probably know, Lake Erie is not particularly turquoise--we're very happy when it isn't *brown*! ;-) Best regards--LRA Original message-- From: Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 19:14:23 +1000 Lynn Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Turquoise has a lot of yellow, cyan, and almost no red (other than shadows, ripples, etc), in terms of CMYK. It can be a bugger on a monitor, where RGB are your working colors. I tried printing it, but the print looks like the screen - not like the slide. So I'm not convinced that it's the monitor which is losing the colour. Having said that, what you say about RGB and turquoise would presumably apply to the scanner itself. :( Rob _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Silverfast vs Nikon Software?
Cary wrote: This technique can help many balky applications to run correctly on Win2K. This (below) sounds like a good answer to a bad problem. Before I try it on my next install, though, has anyone here tried this type of custom installation on Win98? Best regardds--LRA Original Message-- From: Enoch's Vision, Inc. (Cary Enoch R...) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Silverfast vs Nikon Software? Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 08:32:06 -0400 At 07:10 13-08-01 +, you wrote: Cary wrote (re: Silverfast demo): Been there. Did that. On my Win2K system the SIlverfast demo made NikonScan inoperative. I had to uninstall Silverfast and reinstall NikonScan before it would work again. I don't have SF or NS (or even a Nikon), but I've experienced that phenomenon *more* than enough with other software that shares files. I don't know if it's sloppy programming or just downright meanness, but I *do* wish that code-writers would get their collective acts together. It makes me really hate to add anything new. Win2K has an undocumented or at least well hidden workaround that can often solve the shared files problem. It didn't do so in the case of Silverfast but I'll post it for general reference because it's good to know: In the previous tip, we mentioned how to disable the Windows File Protection feature of Win2000, using the registry. However, this can be dangerous, as it leaves your system exposed to the possibility that an application could overwrite system files (DLLs) when installed (particularly older applications). Some older applications simply insist on placing their DLLs in the System folder. However, a work around to this problem is to put the DLL in question (the one that the newly installed application wants to place in the System folder, overwriting the current DLL in that folder) in the application's own folder. Then create a zero byte file that is named the same as the application, plus an extension of .local. For instance, if the application was called crankyapp.exe, you would create a file called crankyapp.exe.local in the same file as crankyapp.exe and crankyapp.dll. Windows 2000 will then automatically load that applications DLL for use only with that application. http://windows2000.about.com/compute/windows2000/library/tips/bltip228.htm This technique can help many balky applications to run correctly on Win2K. Cary Enoch Reinstein aka Enoch's Vision, Inc., Peach County, Georgia http://www.enochsvision.com/, http://www.bahaivision.com/ -- Behind all these manifestations is the one radiance, which shines through all things. The function of art is to reveal this radiance through the created object. ~Joseph Campbell _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Mr. Impatient - Me! G
Neil wrote: What do I do? I've been waiting over 2 months now for my LS4000 only to be told each week, it will be here next week. *sigh* clip I am looking to go medium format shortly so maybe this is a good chance to consider another alternative, unfortunately price might prevent me there. Opinions please! :) David Hemmingway is on holiday this week, or I'm sure he'd be happy to advise you to take a good look at the Sprintscan 120. And Nikon would have no one to blame but themselves. ;-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ?
Anthony wrote: You can save a given set of curves, saturation values, levels, etc., and then just reload them for subsequent images. Thanks, and yes, I found that in Edit (at the bottom) in a friend's PS6. It doesn't seem to be available in PS-LE, however, which may be what Rob is using. As I am. Isn't there also a way to select a color in Photoshop, either from the screen or from the palette, and tell it This is the reference color for *that* area? I mean, of course, without painting it all in one flat color? It seems I found that in a manual once, but it got away from me and I can't find it again. :-( Best regards--LRA From: Anthony Atkielski [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 22:06:36 +0200 Lynn writes: I *think* there's also a way to save global tweak-settings in Photoshop ... You can save a given set of curves, saturation values, levels, etc., and then just reload them for subsequent images. Also, NikonScan lets you load curves from Photoshop into the scanner, if you want to incorporate the adjustment right into the scan. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
filmscanners: BH vs. all (was: Nikon 8000
Isaac wrote: . I can assure you, they do not lose a dollar, at the very worst, they will break even. This has been going on for some time. Have you ever wondered why so many local camera stores are going out of business all over the country? Gee, was it B H caused that? ;-) I always suspected a combination of proliferation of pointshoots, price-pressure from mega-chain stores, high rents, inventory taxes, and *maybe* a certain amount of laziness. Sorta makes me wish I hadn't bought any of their stuff (not like I had a choice, given the selection of stuff locally--and have you noticed their Shipping Handling charges? Yipe!). OTOH, I don't think you can blame even that for the near-disappearance of camera-repair facilities--except maybe pointshoot and other throw-away cameras (and it's arguable, which situation came first). When someone has to ship their camera 500 miles or more to get it fixed (if it ever does get fixed, which may be unlikely), something is seriously wrong besides the camera, IMHO. Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Silverfast vs Nikon Software?
Cary wrote (re: Silverfast demo): Been there. Did that. On my Win2K system the SIlverfast demo made NikonScan inoperative. I had to uninstall Silverfast and reinstall NikonScan before it would work again. I don't have SF or NS (or even a Nikon), but I've experienced that phenomenon *more* than enough with other software that shares files. I don't know if it's sloppy programming or just downright meanness, but I *do* wish that code-writers would get their collective acts together. It makes me really hate to add anything new. Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ?
Steve wrote (accurately): It all seems to be a bit of a mess. We have one set of colours for each of the following: 1) scanner 2) monitor 3) printer 4) human eye - which is uncalibrated and has wild variations from one too another. None of them match up - each has some colours that are not seen by other devices/people. We then have an artificial mediator in the middle (the processing colour space eg Adobe RGB) which also has colours that are not seen by any of the other 4 and the 4) also have colours that can not be represented by the processing colour space. We then do 8 bit conversions (theres bound to be some inaccuracy here) from one colour space to another where neither can represent the other in it's entirety. When I mentioned that a year ago, I got a nice collection of fruit, vegetables, and other brickbats thrown at me. ;-) AISI, unless one has a dedicated system nicely formatted for one (and only one) type of workflow, as do many shops that specialize in Mac- or PC-generated printing, working between one type of presentation to several others--as might be common in non-specialized applications--presents more profiling problems than the apps might be worth! I unashamedly use sRGB, even though I *know* other CM systems have a wider color gamut. It gives me more time for fishing and other life pursuits, and keeps my computer-chair from permanently attatching itself to my butt. ;-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ?
Rob wrote: Incidentally speaking of gamut, my LS30 doesn't seem to have turquoise in its colour space. I have some Provia 100F slides with gorgeous turquoise ocean in the background, but in scans it just comes up blue and dull. :( I'll have to try one of the slides on the SS4000 at work and see if there's a difference (other than ppi). Turquoise has a lot of yellow, cyan, and almost no red (other than shadows, ripples, etc), in terms of CMYK. It can be a bugger on a monitor, where RGB are your working colors. Play around with your individual RGB white-point/black-point values in VS after you run through the various generic profile types (can't advise you on the how without being there, sorry, but Green will be key, Red and Blue *very* touchy). Go for something very butt simple (a slide of mostly bright turquoise would be best, with a few added reference colors--you can crop to get it). When you get close, save the settings. They may not be of much use for other than water scenes. It sounds like fun--or if not, at least Character Building. :-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Hersch wrote: I believe that Etruscan writings in Tuscany, approximately 2-3000 years old have still not been deciphered. So then, we seem to have the additional problem of also keeping Etruscan scribes alive for 2-3000 years (or perhaps their counterparts). Formidable! ;-) --LRA Lynn Allen wrote: Best backup medium is probably binary printed on acid-free paper as barcodes. This is well capable of true Dead Sea Scrolls archival longevity, if suitably stored. That is probably the most unique solution I've heard all day, and probably all year. :-) If one could transcribe the bar-code to granite (and it's possible), you could have something that would last close to 30,000 years before gradually turning into clay. Who'd read it then, or how, I couldn't rightly say. ;-) Of course this assumes that anyone will still remember what the barcodes actually mean! Brian Rumary, England http://freespace.virgin.net/brian.rumary/homepage.htm _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: reply regarding Sony 420 G monitor
It is hard to imagine this Sony monitor not having the ability to tweak the individual guns (... is this some type of consumer model? ...). Is this stuff necessary? I discovered that under Win98SE just about any fully supported video card can do the required gamma adjustments. The monitor doesn't have to do anything AFAIK. :-7 The profile just tweaks the RGB levels. I'm running Win98 with an NVidia TNT2 card, and don't see anything in the monitor controls that resembles a tweak or gamma adjustment. It has even been known to loose the monitor driver altogether due to rogue software. My Trinatron's accessible controls are brightness and contrast. As I said, I may be looking in the wrong places. Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Shadows and Scanwit 2720s
Ed (Bigboy9955) wrote: The only thing I noticed so far is a print with a deep blue sky and no clouds had a faint wavy look to it (I don't even know the terminology!!). From what I've read on this list blues are tough so I'm hoping this *may* be expected for a blue sky. No, it shouldn't be expected, but it happens. Although I can only visualize your print, this waviness sounds suspiciously like Posterization, which is usually caused by insufficient bit-depth (a mere 16-bit depth can cause it), and sometimes by over-compression. If you printed from a TIFF file, the latter reason should be ruled out; if you printed from a JPEG file it's a possibility, but not a big one. OTOH, I haven't seen much posterization in prints lately, so I'm a little at a loss. How about giving some more details on the picture, printer, scanner, and software? Somebody on the List can probably help. Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: OT: Spam
Colin wrote: Is anyone else receiving much more spam than they used to? Oh, yeah! But I'm on what Tony accurately describes as dreck--MSN Hotmail, which produces as much spam as the Wison packing house ever did (it *was* Wilson, wasn't it? or was it Hormel? Whatever!). ;-) ISTM that the spammers are getting cleverer, and setting up new addressing engines as fast or faster than decent ISPs can erect blocks. MSN is not a decent ISP, BTW--I just use it because I'm running out of options. ;-\ Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: filmscanners: (anti)compression?
Dean wrote: The small file size will only occur for a subset of all possible images. Hopefully this subset includes the majority of photographic images. The best possible compression for an image that consists of nothing but random data is a one bit flag to indicate that the rest of the file is untouched. Luckily, most images are more interesting than random noise and compress with the appropriate compressor. That's not bad, Dean, but a little hard to understand for the non-programmer. May I take a shot at it? Some photos are naturally more random than others. A medium head shot with a background of tree-foliage will produce a *much* larger compressed file than a full nude on a paper-roll background, for example. Architecture will almost always compress better than a cornfield. Where compression is most effective is where the colors in large portions are relatively flat, and texture is at a minimum. Compression starts breaking down when: 1)there is too much texture, or 2)colors are flat but not quite the same. In the first case, there isn't very much compression. In the second case, artifacts creep in very quickly. I'm sure some will disagree with me here, but I've seen it enough times to say it with some confidence. Best regards--LRA From: Shough, Dean [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: (anti)compression? Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2001 04:57:53 -0700 It turns out that it is impossible to create lossless compression scheme that does not cause some files to expand in size. A set of random files always expands. There is no way to encode the random information that does not take up at least as much space as the original file. Because of this, any image that contains lots of random noise tends to compress much less than a high quality image with little noise. What about Genuine Fractals compression which claims non lossy compression and small file size. The small file size will only occur for a subset of all possible images. Hopefully this subset includes the majority of photographic images. The best possible compression for an image that consists of nothing but random data is a one bit flag to indicate that the rest of the file is untouched. Luckily, most images are more interesting than random noise and compress with the appropriate compressor. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Andrew wrote: What CDRs would be the good quality ones? Kodak and Sony seem to be leading the pack. I've heard mixed reviews about Verbatim, and while I use them for CD-RW, I'm hesitant to commit archive stuff to them. I've had zero trouble with Kodak, but then the discs are only a year old ATPT--not an iron-clad test. :-| Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Hersch wrote: He [Mark] wants 20 years. My 20-year-old slides and negatives have degraded enough that they need Ed's roc, and are generally not as 'good as new.' I think the digital resource is more reliable, if proper care and storage, and regular renewal are carried out. It needs to be mentioned that not all 20-year-old film is equal (we all know the principles, but we don't often encounter the examples head-to-head). :-) If film is stored in a cool, dark, humidity-controled environment, its lifetime is very good over a period of 100-years or so--providing that the film base and chemicals were archiveable in the first place (and not all were). Some of my mother's slides are 52 years old--only a few of them are degraded: some by obvious light exposure, some by dust, a very few just faded (poor dyes or development). But both Hersch and Maris are right. Film is stable, and so are digital numbers; the problem being that *nothing* is really permanent, so continuous and redundant archiving, at this point in time, is the safest way to approach this problem. Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Excellent post, Bob. I think you covered the bases completely. :-) Best regards--Lynn Allen From: Bob Kehl - Kvernstoen, Kehl Assoc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans? Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2001 19:39:51 -0500 My long and detailed comments are below. BK - Original Message - From: Mark Edmonds [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 1:01 PM Subject: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans? Basically, I am looking for a long term (20 years+) storage medium to archive my scans on. I don't have faith in CDR and tapes are also prone to long term problems so the only solution I can see is a magneto optical disk. I'm curious, why do you trust MOD more than CDR? MOD will probably never become standard nor inexpensive. Another problem is that it is all well and good to have a bomb proof medium but it is no good if no one makes the hardware to read it in a few years time. It really doesn't matter if anyone else has the hardware, as long as you do. As an example, although perhaps a poor one. I have some programs and data on 5.25 floppy disks from 17 years ago. During one of many computer upgrades about 8 years ago 5.25 disks were no longer a standard. I kept an old machine with a 5.25 drive (although I could have installed a 5.25 drive in a new machine) . The point is: if I want the data I can transfer it to 3.5 floppy disks or transfer it through my home office network to a new machine and put it on whatever medium is currently popular. The only inportant issue is that I must keep these disks refreshed because they are magnetic and I must transfer them to some other medium prior to disposing of, or failure of, the 5.25 drives. So is there a clear cut winner out there? The two affordable options I am looking at are either the Iomega Optical drive or the Panasonic DVD-RAM. The Iomega seems to support a format which has some penetration in the market but the DVD-RAM looks like it might not have got very far. I am running NT4.0 by the way. CD-ROM has been around for a very long time. It took along time to catch on. CD-R and CD-RW caught on quickly only because CR-ROM had been with us for so long. DVD-Video and DVD-Ram are both new in comparison to CD formats. As the cost of drives and media continue to drop DVD-RAM in some format or the other will no doubt be the standard to replace CD-ROM and CD-R. Iomege will probably gain a foothold in specialized markets as they have with their Zip and Jaz formats, but because their formats are proprietary they will probably never replace DVD formats. I've done a bit of research on storage media. Here are my thoughts: CD-R is currently the cheapest format for long term storage. If your storage needs can be met with CD-R it is probably your best low maintenance choice, as long as you can afford the time involved with burning CD's. And you be sure to keep a CD drive or two available when their popularity ceases, if ever. DVD-RAM, although currenty more expensive, provides more storage per disk. If you need vast quantities of storage (for 4000dpi 8/16 bit TIF files perhaps) this is a very viable low maintenance choice. This is also somewhat time consuming, as writing DVD-RAM is painfully slow. You will also want to be sure to keep your particular format drives available should they ever be discontinued in the future. Removable IDE hard drive storage is a higher speed solution for high volume storage. It is much less time consuming but requires more maintenance and attention. It is about as expensive as DVD, but much faster. 60GB IDE hard drives are now selling for about $150. That's about $2.50 per MB. Removable hard drive frames are about $15 each and the cartridges that holds the hard drives are about $10 each. Hard drive storage is, at least, as reliable as any other magnetic medium as long as it is removed from the host machine and stored properly. One solution would be to archive to a removable IDE hard drive and copy to a second removable hard drive for redundancy. Remove both and keep them properly stored. Refresh them every couple of years to ensure data integrity by running scandisk (PC) or some similar utility. Another solution would be to set up an inexpensive mirror raid array to automatically keep a redundant copy of your data on line. This is the most hassle free but involves a slight risk, should lighting strike or some other catastrophy take out your entire machine. As hard drive costs are dropping as quickly, or more quickly, than other media, I feel this is the best solution for those who want hassle free, high speed, high volume storage. Like DVD it is getting less and less expensive but is not for the faint of wallet. : ) For me paying $150 for 60 GB of storage is pretty painless since I remember not that long ago (for some of us) paying
Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Richard wrote: I archive all my critical stuff (scans and work) onto external 30GIG HD's. At around £90 a unit I don¹t think you can beat them for reliability and speed. An excellent idea, but it needs mentioning that you have to keep magnetic media far away from other magnets--a radio speaker (a most common degausing source) can wreak havok with tape or magnetic disc alike, for example. We won't go into the effects of an atomic airburst, since that wouldn't leave many people who actually care. :-o Best regards--LRA From: Richard [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans? Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2001 12:29:10 +0100 Not to be a smart @ss, but how about film? I don't know that any of the current storage media will either be around or will survive 20 plus years from now. I'm unfamiliar with Iomega's optical drives. I know they make mainly magnetic drives and rebadge some CD-R drives. DVD RAM and it's kin are all so tentative in terms of which will become standardized, that it is probably a lot safer to use CD-R. I archive all my critical stuff (scans and work) onto external 30GIG HD's. At around £90 a unit I don¹t think you can beat them for reliability and speed. -- Regards Richard // | @ @ --- Richard [EMAIL PROTECTED] C _) ) --- ' __ / _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: reply regarding Sony 420 G monitor
shAF wrote: It is hard to imagine this Sony monitor not having the ability to tweak the individual guns (... is this some type of consumer model? ...). AFAICT, my Dell Trinatron monitor does not--it's not upfront, at any rate. Possibly there's a software tweak that I'm not aware of. Best regards--LRA From: shAf [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: reply regarding Sony 420 G monitor Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 09:35:31 -0230 Pat writes ... ... Someone had asked about the Sony 420 monitor's ability to adjust color channels from the front panel. I answered that my 420GS doesn't but I just noticed that with my new PC, my new video card allows that capability. ... It is hard to imagine this Sony monitor not having the ability to tweak the individual guns (... is this some type of consumer model? ...). The adjustment is usually in the context of manually adjusting the temperature or whitepoint (... e.g., 5500, 6500, etc ...). It is claimed (... probably not noticeably ...), that adjusting the hardware is better than letting software adjust the color look-up-table (ref: Real World PS6) shAf :o) _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: (anti)compression?
Bert wrote: Ive attached a small HTML doc with some specs. Not exact, but a guide - if anyone wants to add formats then do so. Very good post, Bert, and thank you. IMO, some of the confusion, vis a vis archiving, is based on lossy vs. lossless compression. STM the difference is in how it's to be used. If the files are going to be uses for public viewing (as mine are, and consistently have been), then the lossy JPEG format is perfectly acceptable, as long as you keep the JPEG artifacts out of your pictures (you can recognize them by their shimmery off-color pixels, and adjust back if you have a proper JPEGing program). If you're going to later do either retouching or large blow-ups, then the much-higher-sized lossless file compressions are what you should use. In fact, you should probably save in the uncompressed Photoshop (or whatever) format, shine the compression, and just take your lumps with file size. :-) Bert's attachment is an excellent guide, and thanks again for the input. Best regards--LRA From: Robert Logan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: (anti)compression? Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2001 14:31:15 +0100 Jim Snyder wrote: [chop] you can stand a little bit of image quality loss, use ZIP [chop] H - this email list needs an FAQ - or some pointers to certain image FAQs on the web now and again. Image compression is a rather complex mathematical process that usually requires some 'dumping' of image data to gain good compression ratios - thus these compression schemes are 'lossy'. Non-lossy compression schemes use LZW type compressors which are good when there is a lot of replicated data in a file - but not so good for images that have a large variation of data components. The problem with most people is the mixup of file formats with compression schemes. For example, TIF can be compressed or uncompressed - it uses LZW to compress - but two TIF files are still called XXX.TIF and YYY.TIF even though one is raw data and one is compressed data. There is no such thing as an 'LZW' extension - only file formats that use it. Ive attached a small HTML doc with some specs. Not exact, but a guide - if anyone wants to add formats then do so. bert Filmscanners archive at: http://phi.res.cse.dmu.ac.uk/Filmscan/ _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp Title: Compression File Extension Developed for? Compression Scheme Effect of compression % Saving for images Useable for? TIF image storage LZW or none lossless 15% archive copy ZIP general file store fancy LZW lossless 18% archive copy JPG (Joint Pictures expert Group) image storage JPEG lossy 80% non-archive (web!) GIF (good! interchange format) image storage LZW lossless 15% nasty 256 colour only PNG (portable network grahpics) image storage fancy LZW lossless 22% archive copy WIF (wavelet image format) image storage waveform mathematics lossy 95% proprietary FIF (fractal image format) image storage fractal mathematics lossy 90% proprietary PCD (Kodak PhotoCD) image storage fancy JPEG lossy 70% archive (but not perfect copy) FPX (Kodak Flashpix) image storage sortof JPEG / PCD mix lossy 80% non-archive web apps
Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Flo wrote: On a MOD the data is stored by changing the magnetic orientation of a ferro magnetic meterial. This will not fade. To change it very high temperatures and high magnetic fields are needed. Cautionary note: I have a (ferro)magnetic tape cast-recording of Chicago that somehow got too close to a degausing agent (probably a radio speaker). All the tape that was exposed (that part between one roller and the next, not covered by plastic) is missing any resemblence to music. Fortunately, I can sing, hum, or whistle my way through Chicago to cover the lost music--but I somehow doubt that I could do the same with lost photo-data. Any questions? Best regards--LRA From: Florian Rist [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans? Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 17:20:06 +0200 Hi Bob! I'm curious, why do you trust MOD more than CDR? MOD will probably never become standard nor inexpensive. There are various MOD standards and some of them a older than CDR. All over the world MOD jukeboxes have been used and are still used to store and archive digital data. MODs are definitely more reliably than CDRs because the data is stored in a complete different way. On a CDR the data is stored by changing the optical characteristics of an organic dye. This dye will grow old an fade out some how just like film. On a MOD the data is stored by changing the magnetic orientation of a ferro magnetic meterial. This will not fade. To change it very high temperatures and high magnetic fields are needed. cu Flo _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
filmscanners: OT: Color perception (was: IT8 Calibration (was: etc
Art wrote: I am very intrigued by the number of people on this list how have color deficiency. I thought the same thing. I've looked at the photos of several of these color deprived photographers, and it's astoundingly good!! Apparently, this disability can be an asset. :-) I also find it interesting that a very color demanding field (Photography with interest in digital scanning) would attract so many people who have to deal with color perception disabilities. The last time I went to an art museum (2-3 weeks ago) I probably should have wondered the same thing. I've long suspected that Critics have perception disabilities, not to mention a certain amount of brain damage and extensive external edema of the ego. ;-) Maybe if enough people with this condition demand more objective color control we'll all benefit from easier to use color management. From evidence I've seen, this isn't an unreasonable suggestion. Impractical, perhaps. :-) Bottom line is: Color Perception is slightly different in every living being. Painters (somewhat more than photographers) hope that there are others with similar perceptions; photographers at least work with recognizable subjects, in most cases. But Color *is* Subjective...it's only Objective when you work with computers--and as yet we're not terribly sure how objective that is! If you say something's blue, I'm bound to take your word for it--if you'll take my word for red. Better to put it out there, IMHO, and let the audience decide. :-) Just another $.02's worth. ;-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Rob wrote: Presumably you meant 14GB. :) Funny I was just reading about DVD-RAM and DVD-RW last night and they were only talking a max of 4.7GB per side. Yes, you're right as usual, Rob. It was a case of Numbers Overload for me. Too many numbers in the same PC World article, none of which I could relate to. :-) One thing in the article I didn't mention--which is significant, at this stage of the DVD game--is that there's questionable compatibility beween various DVD burners; stuff written on one can't necessarily be read by another. This would indicate that DVD archiving isn't yet ready for Prime Time. Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: (anti)compression?
Although I haven't used it (some members have/do), PNG probably offers the best compression in a lossless format--according to the chart that Bert posted. Photoshop *does* offer that. Whether the format will be around in 20 years is another matter. :-) Best regards--LRA From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: (anti)compression? Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 16:45:24 EDT This is probably a stupid question, but how do you do an LZW compression on a TIFF file? Photoshop doesn't offer TIFF compression as an option, as far as I know. Is there freeware available? Since a lot of my work involves models against a solid colored background, it seems like lossless compression would save me a lot of storage space. I assume you have to run a stand alone decompression program to get the original file back. In a message dated 8/6/2001 7:03:48 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: That is because LZW works by substituting colors with variables. If you have an image with very few colors and shades, LZW will compact it to a tiny fraction of its original self. On the other hand, a very diverse image with lots of colors and shades will require tons of substitutions, and the size becomes larger. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Shadows and Scanwit 2720s
Tony wrote: Basically, if a sensible black point doesn't allow a decent scan you are stuffed. There he goes, beating up on us Scanwitters again! ;-) Unfortunately, Tony's mostly right. But it *is* possible to suck a little more light out of a Scanwit by covering the calibration slot with neutral density filter (I've done it, and it gains you about 1/2 a stop), but it messes up your scanner for regular pics for a little while (until you get it sighted-in properly again). I wouldn't do it as a habit, because you're also shortening the life of the lamp by a logrithmic factor or two. Probably be OK if you're an Able-Bodied Mechanic with a good supply of Acer lamps, OTOH--just watch out for fires. ;-) Best regards--LRA From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tony Sleep) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Shadows and Scanwit 2720s Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 17:35 +0100 (BST) On Tue, 07 Aug 2001 12:37:58 +0700 GeoffreyJakarta ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I'm doing some trani scans which are underexposed [how dare I!] and having a hell of a time digging out the detail in the shadows. This detail is also somewhat brown. I have tried doing multiple passes -8 infact at 2700 dpi. I also have a tramline problem in these deep shadow areas. Are the censors damaged? No, not damaged. These sorts of horribleness are revealed when you try and use a scanner beyond its capabilities. You are exposing behaviour which would normally be hidden 'below' the black point, and then amplifying the defects by boosting contrast. Basically, if a sensible black point doesn't allow a decent scan you are stuffed. Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio exhibit; + film scanner info comparisons _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Tony wrote: Best backup medium is probably binary printed on acid-free paper as barcodes. This is well capable of true Dead Sea Scrolls archival longevity, if suitably stored. That is probably the most unique solution I've heard all day, and probably all year. :-) If one could transcribe the bar-code to granite (and it's possible), you could have something that would last close to 30,000 years before gradually turning into clay. Who'd read it then, or how, I couldn't rightly say. ;-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Winsor Crosby wrote: It is not wide spread, but photographers have archived color images as black and white color separations for years. The longevity of black and white film is pretty well established. That's a redundancy that I vaguely knew about, but didn't consider. Haven't even heard much about it since I was a kid. It certainly *is* a true archiving method...is it still being done? Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: flatbed for contact-sheets
Bob Kehl wrote: Do you have any experience with the Umax PowerlookIII? It has a specified dmax of 3.4 and a full 8x10 transparency hood is available. If that's the same scanner as a Umax 34X0, my experience is that it's a bit cranky, with toy software. I recently returned 2 of them, and traded the second for a Microtec. If it's not, nevermind. :-) --LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Bypassing the scanner software filters and getting the raw data?
Hi, Mark-- Don't know about Minolta's native driver (and my Acer's Raw scans aren't very sophisticated), but Vuescan does a very good job of outputing Raw scans. I tend to agree with you--if you're going to correct in the image program, what's the point of correcting in the driver program? Or vice-versa? OTOH, not all programs are equal. Best regards--LRA From: Mark Edmonds [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2001 19:01:12 +0100 Hi all, Is this possible and is my logic correct? I am reasoning that the output from the actual scanner hardware is always going to be in the same range of digital values irrespective of what adjustments are made in the scanner software (apart from resolution of course). Therefore, is it possible to get the actual raw data out of the scanner and bypass any processing? What I am aiming to do is to have all my scans coming out at exactly the same setting (ie: no processing) so that they all have a common base and then I can adjust with whatever software I am using over the following years. My scanner is a Minolta Scan Speed and I am running NT4 with the standard Minolta scanning software. Thanks for any comments! Mark _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
Hi, Mark-- I tend to disagree--storage *is* a scanning issue in the Real World. You have to put them somewhere, and Hard Drives are fallible, too. PC World (I got my copy just 2 hours ago) has some comments on DVD-RW and DVD-RAM. Not enough info, IMO, but a start. DVD holds a lot of data (up to 14 MB). Down side: if it goes bad, you *lose* a lot of data! AFAICT, there's no clear-cut winner for storage--maybe the answer is to buy 2 or 3 recording machines--one to use, one for backup, and one for parts. Not too practical, is it? More likely than media obsolescence is *format* obsolescence. My only answer is to store on more than one disc and if you can, store on more than one medium and more than one format. And keep your original film in a safe place, because there's some chance that you or someone will have to do this again in 10 or 20 years. The scrolls in the Library of Alexandria, I'm told, were burned to heat the baths of the conquering generals. OTOH, my record as a new Nostrodamus is not perfect, either. Looking in either direction, the permanence of anything we know is still a crapshoot. :-) Best regards--LRA From: Mark Edmonds [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans? Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2001 19:01:11 +0100 Hello folks, Although this isn't strictly a scanning issue, I suspect other list members have thought about this as well and adopted solutions. Basically, I am looking for a long term (20 years+) storage medium to archive my scans on. I don't have faith in CDR and tapes are also prone to long term problems so the only solution I can see is a magneto optical disk. Another problem is that it is all well and good to have a bomb proof medium but it is no good if no one makes the hardware to read it in a few years time. So is there a clear cut winner out there? The two affordable options I am looking at are either the Iomega Optical drive or the Panasonic DVD-RAM. The Iomega seems to support a format which has some penetration in the market but the DVD-RAM looks like it might not have got very far. I am running NT4.0 by the way. Any advice on this matter gratfully received! Mark _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Anyone having problems with Scan@leben?
FWIW, McAfee shuts me down using graphics on a small RAM base. For some unknown reason, it makes backups of each scan as I do them, and crashes the program (sometimes the system) after one or two scans. That might not be a problem if I bought more RAM, but I bought Norton, instead. Best regards--LRA From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Anyone having problems with Scan@leben? Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 17:42:41 EDT In a message dated 8/3/2001 3:20:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I use McAfee on my home machine. It's the same deal, $40 a year and daily updates. I haven't noticed any impact on my system's performance and it's saved my bacon a number of times. I think I had the works with Norton, 3 or 4 different programs that came in a package deal (can't remember the other names offhand). Maybe I should try McAfee or Computer Associates (if they're still in business). Ed _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
filmscanners: Auto Levels Revisited
I've spent the last 4 days experimenting with the good inputs that members have put forth re Photoshop Auto Levels. I can see how Tony, being somewhat a perfectionist, would reject 9 out of 10 Auto Level interpretations. I tend to reject 40-50%, myself. The various comments on the White Point were particularly valid--Auto Levels tends to select a White Point in the blue-white sector, and the results become overly blue as a result. I also noticed that it clips the color points (individual R,G,B) short of the histogram by several values. Whether this would amount to the complete destruction of a picture may be subjective--I don't see how it could ruin a picture that may be easily Color Corrected, but then, clipping parts of the histogram might possibly be construed as such, where there is finesse detail. In non-critical correction, I still find Auto Levels very useful and very fast. It's especially useful, IMHO, for neutralizing bad color casts, which can be a real pain in the tuchas to correct with Levels, Curves, etc. As I said before, it gives you a good start point. Again as in the past, when I tried to use the eyedroppers on a particularly poorly-exposed pic, the thing went bizarrely nuts. Very Modern Art. Very unacceptable. For my way of working, I prefer the gradualism of sliders, thank you very much. I guess that's why shoes come in so many sizes, styles and colors, eh? :-) For Newbies (and I still consider myself one of these), experimentation is still the best way to learn. There ain't no One Size Fits All in color correction, AFAICT. There's just what works best for you. Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows
Rob wrote: If all I was doing was scanning and editing pictures, I would already be running Win2K. From what I've read here and in various computer mags, maybe you should wait for the next New and Improved Windows version, if only for saving the cost of one upgrade. Some reporters are already giving Windows X glowing reviews...but then, some give glowing reviews to everything just to keep the free stuff flowing. Maybe I'm a repressed Ludite, but I think I'll stick to Win98 until it's really, *really* obsolete. ;-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
re: filmscanners: Vuescan blue anomaly
Rafe wrote: Auto Levels is a bit of a sledgehammer approach to color correction. Not very subtle, and quite often wrong. Yes, but it's quick. When you're working on images that differ greatly in subject, film, time of day, and exposure (and I always am), it saves a lot of time to get color casts, levels, etc. out of the way right away so you can do the *real* corrections. :-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Vuescan:two small requests
Bob Kehl wrote: ON a more serious note, maybe this is an item to incorporate into Vuescan Pro, the $400 version. Some of us would pay for this version. Unfortunately, doing that version would force Ed into becoming another Adobe-type corporation, with employees, payrolls, IP issues, lawyers, and so forth ad nauseum. This is what some of us have been trying to say since we met Vuescan and Ed--Keep it simple. Please. Ed may eventually get tired of our carping and sell out to AOL or somebody for big bucks, to go enjoy the Good Life. Before he does, I hope he'll notify his faithful old customers, so we can get one last full copy of the Unmitigated Vuescan. :-) Best regards--LRA From: Bob Kehl - Kvernstoen, Kehl Assoc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Vuescan:two small requests Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:16:40 -0500 - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 8:50 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Vuescan:two small requests In a message dated 7/23/2001 0:03:25 AM EST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There's just two small items that really seem lacking to me and really slow me down and frustrate me every time I use it. 1.) A browse for folder button to locate the folder to save files in. You can already do this with the commands in the Folder menu. I checked it out. Yes I missed that earlier. I now stand corrected. Still it would be nice to see this on the files tab. then there'd be one less place to go to adjust settings for a scan. But I'm glad for the function no matter where it is. Thank you. 2.)A multi-image preview screen for thumbnails. Yes, this would be nice. It's not simple to add this, given that VueScan has to work with a wide range of scanners, many of which can't even move the film holder under VueScan's control. There are other complications too - the special mode that the Nikon scanners use to quickly acquire thumbnails has many subtle problems that are hard to work around. Hard? or impossible. If it was easy anyone could do it. : ) Do you feel the challenge? ON a more serious note, maybe this is an item to incorporate into Vuescan Pro, the $400 version. Some of us would pay for this versiion. It's either that or buy Silverfast, which is really expensive since you have to pay for each scanner you want to use, or else we just do without (that is, use NikonScan). To some of us our time is worth a lot of money. If we can get the gorgeous output we get from Vuescan and all the features and stuff we've come accustomed to in other Windows software, we'd pay the price. I realize others can't afford or justify the cost of $400 software (although many of them managed to aquire Adobe Photshop somehow) but a basic version of Vuescan could still be available to those who just want the basic functionality. Best Regards, Bob Kehl _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Archiving Photos (a little off-topic)
Maris wrote (in answer to Tomasz' question): | Do I need the same for bw prints? I would suggest scanning and saving them in color, especially since you mention below that the old paper is not showing a color cast. You may well find that one or more of the channels have better detail, contrast, luminosity etc. than others. That's an interesting thought, Maris, and one I hadn't considered a lot until you mentioned it. One would *hope* that a BW scan would incorporate *all* the values of an old print, but that might not actually be the case, in old sepia prints. I've frequently scanned soft or thin BW negs as color (with Acer's many film-type choices, you can pick them for contrast) and then discarded the color information. It works well, especially for the way I used to shoot Tri-X. I do, however, think that BWs should be stored as BW files. You can always add a tone of your choice later, if you want to, and the contrast is better in straight BW. But that may just be a vestige of my Commercial Art upbringing, and I could be soaking wet, here! ;-) Best regards--LRA From: Maris V. Lidaka, Sr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Archiving Photos (a little off-topic) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:03:27 -0500 Some answers inserted below: - Original Message - From: Tomasz Zakrzewski [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 7:02 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Archiving Photos (a little off-topic) | Lynn Allen wrote: | but I had 5000 pictures to do in 10 month's time | | That's exactly my task at the moment. | I've just bought a rather good flatbed (Agfa Arcus 1200, 14bit color) to | scan my whole archive of family pictures from the last 100 years. | Since this is a very time consuming project I must do everything right the | first time. And since I'm not that skilled yet I wonder what the most proper | routine for scanning archival prints is. I'm planning to save all the | pictures as tiffs at resolutions from 300dpi (5x7prints) up to 1200dpi (very | small prints) and make additional jpegs for quick reference. | Should I scan and save files with 16bit color? If you have the storage space on CD or otherwise, yes. If not, it is not necessary - scan in 16 bit, do perhaps basic corrections, convert to 8-bit and save. I would save them at 1200dpi if possible, though. | Do I need the same for bw prints? I would suggest scanning and saving them in color, especially since you mention below that the old paper is not showing a color cast. You may well find that one or more of the channels have better detail, contrast, luminosity etc. than others. See Chapter 13 of Dan Margulis's Professional Photoshop 5 or 6. See http://ep.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=ArchivesSubsect ion=DisplayARTICLE_ID=70917KEYWORD=dan%20margulis | What about color prints that need strong color correction? In Poland during | the 70's and 80's only East German photographic paper was available. Those | prints have a very strong reddish color cast now. Auto Adjust helps a lot | but then some additional manual corrections are necessary. Should I stretch | the histogram values from 0 to 255 or leave the ends somewhat closer | together? Stretch them from 0 to 255 for purposes of saving to disk. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Archiving Photos
Hi, Larry-- This was three years ago (seems like a lifetime) when I didn't know anything about scanning or had never even installed Photoshop. You've crammed a lot of scanning and learning into that 3 years, Larry. :-) If I had it to do all over again I would save an uncompressed file of each image for myself. But that was then and this is now. We can't go back because time isn't a luxury. Yes, I might, too (although I had over 5000 files). That was the cautionary point I was making--I've always been a little nervous about the smaller files. But the CD photo albums were quite well recieved, and as you said, I'm the only one who knows there's a little something wrong with a few pictures (or why). :-) JPEG compressions *are* retouchable, it's just that you don't get the results you would if you retouched from a higher-res, less compressed file (nor as quickly). Best regards--LRA From: Larry Berman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Archiving Photos Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:10:37 -0400 Hi Lynn, My first imaging project was to scan 400 of my parents old photos and create a zip disk that they could get pictures from for greeting cards. This was three years ago (seems like a lifetime) when I didn't know anything about scanning or had never even installed Photoshop. I did all my scanning through PhotoImpact and saved all the images as jpegs with almost no manipulation. Bottom line is that they loved each and every picture. Looking at them on the computer was no worse than the old faded prints that I had scanned. I think that you're anticipating your audience to expect more from the images. I'm sure that in their minds, those cherished images are no worse than they remember them and they are no doubt thrilled with the CD. If I had it to do all over again I would save an uncompressed file of each image for myself. But that was then and this is now. We can't go back because time isn't a luxury. Besides, printing those images on common $3 per 500 sheet paper wouldn't look much better than if you had put in three times the effort on the project. Hope this makes you feel better. Larry *** Larry Berman http://BermanGraphics.com http://IRDreams.com http://ImageCompress.com *** _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Umax banding
Todd won't find this particularly useful, but he wrote: Could giving it a new SCSI ID help? A whack in the head, or a toss out the window? If their Customer Service isn't any better than HP's, any and all of the above are worth trying. Or, I could buy it from you for $3.50 and add it to the stack of used merchandise in my soon-to-open Classic Doorstops Boutique, Inc. ;-) Good luck and best regards--LRA From: tflash [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: Umax banding Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:04:31 -0400 My Umax 1200s flatbed has developed a nasty banding problem (in spite of plugging it into an isolated circuit breaker). I'm calling it banding, but this might be scans lines. In transmissive mode it is apparent throughout. I'm talking about regularly spaced red lines, horizontal to the CCD = perpendicular to the direction of the scan. At magnifications above 100% one sees they are prismatic, but they look red to me at normal viewing magnifications. Four fit inside a 35mm sprocket hole, with their accompanying empty spaces. Interestingly, I've just scanned a typed page in reflective mode (RGB), and I don't see the lines in the white of the page, but I do see it along the edges of type. The optical illusion is that the hollow spaces of the type are filled with the lines, but at higher magnification one sees that is just some spread off the edges, that do not connect at the center. In BW mode there are no lines, but the edges of the type looks like they were streaked by the lines. Finally, if I raise the resolution of the scan it increases the line frequency, and increases their spread. Does this mean it's transport mechanism is beat? It didn't use to do this, but I haven't used it for a while, and I guess it got moved around, otherwise I don't know what might have changed. Could giving it a new SCSI ID help? A whack in the head, or a toss out the window? Todd _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: Scanning multiple times (was Re: filmscanners: Vuescan gripes)
Quietly, Frank, q-u-i-e-t-l-y. If it ain't broke, don't fix it; and the way the Vuescan driver works with my Acer is *more* than very acceptable. :-) Best regards--LRA From: Frank Nichols [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Scanning multiple times (was Re: filmscanners: Vuescan gripes) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:29:57 -0600 Ed, If you are not doing anything to intentionally increase/modify the exposure, and several of us feel sure the exposure is different when using VS as opposed to Mirofoto - do you have any ideas what may be causing this effect? I was thinking the auto exposure system based it's calculations on info gained while focusing and if you do the focusing differently that could explain it? Frank Nichols -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 1:50 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Scanning multiple times (was Re: filmscanners: Vuescan gripes) In a message dated 7/23/2001 2:19:32 PM EST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sometime back Ed mentioned there was a SCSI command that causes an extra 20% exposure on the scanwit and he enables it always. I vaguely remember someone telling me that Acer claimed there was a command that caused an extra 20% exposure on the ScanWit. I haven't seen any evidence of this command though, and I don't know where or how it's used. Regards, Ed Hamrick _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: filmscanners: Re: Vuescan gripes
My daughter is a digital graphic artist, and designs GUIs. I mean, that's what she *does*--full time. And she's always working (60-hour weeks aren't uncommon). A lot of people forget that Ed's a One-Man Band (orchestra?). It might be *nice* if Vuescan had bells and whistles, GUIs, extensive how to manuals and the like, but even a genius has to eat and sleep once in awhile. I'm just very happy that there *is* a Vuescan, and that Ed's customer support is the best I've ever encountered, anywhere. I'm also totally content to let Ed be Ed. :-) Best regards--LRA From: Frank Nichols [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: Re: Vuescan gripes Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:26:56 -0600 I respect Ed's programming abilities and his decisions on what to put into Vuescan. As a programmer for over 20 yrs I also instantly bristle whenever I hear someone claim to be able to put together a UI in just a couple weeks. (note you did say prototype - the rule is the last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time applied to your estimate means at least an additional 9 weeks to get something working. My guess, and I make my living guessing how long a software project will take, is that to finish a GUI that is acceptable to a multi-national crowd of users would take at least 6 to 12 man months.) 1. Do you realize that VS is multi-platform - Mac, Linux, Windows. 2. Have you ever seen Ed's code base and have any idea what the interface to the GUI would look like. 3. Most UI suggestions include features like Histograms, Levels adjustments, batch control with individual frame adjustments, job and/or work flow management, etc. Are those included in your estimate. 4. If you can do this as a wrapper which drives VS external to the code base, then do it and sell it. 5. Does your estimate include multi-lingual/multi-national support? 6. Apparently you have little respect for Ed's abilities since he has already stated that there are complications with some of the GUI parts based on idiosyncrasies of individual models/makes of scanners. To Ed: Keep up the good work. What most programmers/engineers miss is that the question is not can you but should you. The clean data and vast scanner support is obviously more important to most of your registered users (me included) and we thank you every time we use your program. Frank Nichols -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Johnny Deadman Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 1:52 PM To: Filmscanners Subject: Re: filmscanners: Re: Vuescan gripes on 7/23/01 11:25 AM, Shough, Dean at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't think we miss the point, but rather we have different priorities. I would love it if VueScan had a better (and more Mac like) interface, but given the choice between improving the guts of VueScan or the interface, I will take the guts anytime. Especially since I can work around the portions of the interface I don't like. If the raw scan is bad there is no work around. Ed could hire 5 programmers to assist him, spend 6 months getting them up to speed before getting anything useful out of them, and raise the price of VueScan from $40 to $400, but I think it would kill VueScan. no honestly this is nuts. If I had a week to spare I could prototype a GUI in RealBasic. There's nothing hard about it. -- John Brownlow http://www.pinkheadedbug.com ICQ: 109343205 _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: artificial light
Thomaz: Tungsten light is always warmer by several Kelvins than natural light, as you know. If you can't buy film rated for tungsten light (and I'm not sure you can), you can use a light blue filter, which unfortunately reduces the incident light you're working with (I don't know the filter numbers--photographers and photo shops will be better help here). Otherwise, if you can set the color curves in your scan-driver, that may be your best way of proceding (I'm taking it that your scanner is seeing yellow in the prints that you're not seeing when you look at them ? ). Reducing the yellow intensity (or the yellow saturation, as it sounds like might be the problem) in Photoshop is another option. Best regards--LRA From: Tomasz Zakrzewski [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: artificial light Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 02:28:03 +0200 How filmscanners get away with negatives exposed in tungsten halogen light? I do a lot of stage photography and during the printing process I get quite neutral prints but is this the case with filmscanners? Having made recently contact sheets from my negs on ,y new flatbed I noticed that a frame exposed in tungsten lighting is totally lemon yellow on the scan. Is it coorrectable as in standard photographic process? Regards Tomasz Zakrzewski online portfolio www.zakrzewski.art.pl _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Archiving Photos (a little off-topic)
Hi, Tomasz: I *thought* there might be others out there with the same type of project. :-) AFAICT, the programme you propose is the most truly archival way to procede (although the most bit- and storage-space intensive). It has the added benefit of forward-flexibility; that is to say, when DVD recording becomes widely available, or a new storage medium comes on the scene, the pictures can be transfered to the new media easily. I might, under those circumstances, be tempted to *up* the dpi on 5x7s to 5-600dpi. One never knows, and apparently you're not working with storage/size constraints. I *would* suggest that you use triple-redundancy--that is, record at least 3 of every CD and store them in different locations, none of them hot, and not all of them in the same building. As for 16-bit vs. 8-bit recording for B/W prints, there's little to gain *except* in the few that have very close values in some areas (and you *will* find a few, unexpectedly). Those areas may, on rare occassions, bite you on the arse, so to speak. :-) Otherwise, 16-bit takes up twice the space of 8-bit B/W pictures, and 8-bit are pretty good. It's your call. The red cast in old color photos is not limited to Poland. It's more likely from the fugitive yellow and blue analine dyes used to make the print than the paper (although acid paper will often do the same thing). It's a b*tch to correct, because there's so little yellow and cyan left to record. Vuescan's Faded Image often helps, but I don't know if VS works with the Agfa Arcus 1200. My advice is to pick the absolute *worst* example you can find and spend several hours retouching it. You may not be able to bring it all the way back, but you'll learn a lot. I've found the color correction tools in Photoshop to be the most helpful, but Corel's are good, too. I generally leave the histogram where it is, in that I think anything beyond that is interpolated (i.e. added by the computer to where it doesn't exist), but I could be wrong. Anyway, good luck, and if you run into trouble feel free to contact me--not that I can help every time, but I can try. Best regards--LRA From: Tomasz Zakrzewski [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Archiving Photos (a little off-topic) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 02:02:21 +0200 Lynn Allen wrote: but I had 5000 pictures to do in 10 month's time That's exactly my task at the moment. I've just bought a rather good flatbed (Agfa Arcus 1200, 14bit color) to scan my whole archive of family pictures from the last 100 years. Since this is a very time consuming project I must do everything right the first time. And since I'm not that skilled yet I wonder what the most proper routine for scanning archival prints is. I'm planning to save all the pictures as tiffs at resolutions from 300dpi (5x7prints) up to 1200dpi (very small prints) and make additional jpegs for quick reference. Should I scan and save files with 16bit color? Do I need the same for bw prints? What about color prints that need strong color correction? In Poland during the 70's and 80's only East German photographic paper was available. Those prints have a very strong reddish color cast now. Auto Adjust helps a lot but then some additional manual corrections are necessary. Should I stretch the histogram values from 0 to 255 or leave the ends somewhat closer together? I simply don't want to discover that after having recorder 200 CD-Rs I made a mistake which makes my effort worthless or the results not optimal. Maybe you some place on the Web delaing with this matter? Regards Tomasz Zakrzewski online portfolio www.zakrzewski.art.pl _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: OT: Copyright on Photo's
Terry, this is off-topic to the point of the ridiculous, but *what* is the Baltimore Ravens v. Bouchat case-law you quote? As a Cleveland-area native, I'm no big fan of Art (Take the Browns and Run) Modell, and I'm curious as to what the case was, and why it was denied. BTW, I'm not a lawyer (but I play one on television, har-har :-) ), and my take on web thumbnails of photos or artwork for sale is fair use, as a brochure would be. Imprinting a watermark is, however, a very good (and doable) solution, allowing the web presentation to be larger, without much implication of copyright infringement. Best regards--LRA From: Terry Carroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Filmscanners@Halftone. Co. Uk [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: OT: Copyright on Photo's Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:30:47 -0700 (PDT) On Fri, 20 Jul 2001, Frank Nichols wrote: My question is: Can I scan them, and display a small picture of them on eBay for advertising without violating the copyright of the original photographer? A definitive answer is not clear. To be on the safe side, I would say no. There's a provision of the copyright act (I'm talking US, here, other jurisdictions may be different) that says: In the case of a work lawfully reproduced in useful articles that have been offered for sale or other distribution to the public, copyright does not include any right to prevent the making, distribution, or display of pictures or photographs of such articles in connection with advertisements or commentaries related to the distribution or display of such articles... But this is talking about useful articles. An example of a useful article would be a can opener with an ornamental handle subject to copyright; under this exception, it would not be an infringement to show the can opener, including the handle, in the ad. But it is limited to works in useful articles, and by implication, that means that copies that are not useful articles (as in your query) would not be covered. My sense is that you have to rely on the copyright owner not raising an objection. One way of doing that may be to deliberately deface the scan with a watermark or something, so that it clearly can't serve as a substitute for an authorized copy. That doesn't technically make it non-infringing, but makes it less likely that the copyright owner would object. -- Terry Carroll | Denied. Santa Clara, CA | Baltimore Ravens v. Bouchat, no. 00-1494, [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (U.S. Supreme Court, May 21, 2001) Modell delendus est | _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: OT: Copyright Registration
Terry Carroll wrote: it's unusual to have an opportunity to provide some signal that I believed would be found useful, even if a little off-topic. I, for one, am happy you chimed in, Terry. It sounds good, anyway.:-) I'd like to mention, from both a producer's and user's point of view, that the current US copyright laws, written in 1989 (and extensively changed from what used to be), are yet to be tested extensively in court. What Laurie said, vis a vis Who's enforcing what? is totally valid. Other copyright issues, that allow companies to buy and *hog* copyrighted material that rightfully belongs in the Public Domain (at least as far as being made available for public purposes) still has a long way to go, and may become a very sticky issue (at least I hope so). Best regards--LRA From: Terry Carroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: OT: Copyright Registration Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:19:34 -0700 (PDT) There were a number of messages on this lately, and I apologize if posting a response is beating the proverbial dead horse, but I will try to bunch up what would have been multiple replies into this single message. (Up front: I am a lawyer, and copyright is an important part of my practice. I work in-house for a company, not in a law firm and not as a solo practitioner, so I don't represent any clients other than my employer. For credibility's sake, I should add that, in addition to my Real Job, I teach Copyright Law at Santa Clara University School of Law on the side.) In the US, as in most countries, you get a copyright in the work as soon as you create the work; technically the test is that it has to be fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Exposing the film is probably enough, even if it's not yet developed, although I don't know any cases on this in the real world, since you can't copy a photo from undeveloped film. Registration is not a requirement. However, if you have a reasonable belief that you might be infringed, it's not a bad idea. Here's why. Ordinarily, when a copyright is infringed, the copyright owner can either get his economic loss due to the infringement (e.g., lost sales); the infringer's profits due to the infringement; or both, to the extent that they don't overlap (that is, you can't point to a particular sale made by the infringer and count it both as a profit to the infringer and a lost sale for you). But, if you register your work on time, you can elect to get statutory damages instead of (not in addition to) the above measure of damages. Statutory damages are set in the copyright statute, ordinarily in a range of $750 to $30,000, as the court deems just. The ceiling goes up to $150,000 if the infringement is done willfully. It can also go down to $200 for innocent infringement. This is a per-work limit, by the way; so if the infringer is taking, say, four of your photos, the range is $3000 - $120,000, up to $600,000 if willful (or down to $800 if innocent). In addition, and perhaps as importantly as statutory damages, is attorney's fees. You can't get them unless you register on time. You don't necessarily get them if you do register on time, but at least you're eligible. This is in contrast to statutory damages, which you can elect as a matter of right at any time if you're registered on time. So when is on time? Well, for infringement of an unpublished work, your registration will entitle you to statutory damages and make you eligible for attorneys fees if you register prior to when the infringement starts; no fair waiting until you see that you're being infringed, and then filing your registration. For published works, it's timely if you register prior to the start of infringement or any time in the three months following publication. The other thing is that you are ordinarily required to register your copyright prior to bringing suit. That's right; while it is true that you get a copyright automatically by creating a work, you're not able to enforce it until you register. The exception is for non-US works (which essentially means either works that authored entirely by non-US nationals and, if published, are first published outside of the US). Copyright owners of those works can sue without getting a registration (although the limits on statutory damages and attorneys fees still apply to them). It's still worthwhile getting that registration, though, because a registration will ordinarily serve as evidence of the facts stated on the certificate: authorship, ownership, etc. The copyright owner would ordinarily carry the burden of showing this, but if he has a certificate, the burden shifts to the infringer to introduce evidence that rebuts the facts on the certificate. Now, will the Copyright Office accept registration deposits on CD-ROM? Yes, it will. The Office just announced this last week. The new rule goes into effect August 16. You can read the long and boring Federal
re: filmscanners: Vuescan blue anomaly
Alan wrote: I find with my scanwit all my scans with people in them, or actually all my scans lately have way too much blue in the[m] period. Alan, do you find this true after you aply Auto Levels in PS? That's the first thing I do after a scan is loaded, whether from Vuescan or MiraPhoto (Mira *really* needs it), before proceding with corrections. I find this action often puts whatever color(s) might dominate back into proper ralationship. If Auto Levels doesn't help, or makes it worse, I undo the action, then procede. Best regards--LRA From: Alan Womack [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Majordomo leben.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: re: filmscanners: Vuescan blue anomaly Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 15:40:45 -0700 I noticed this with blue in shadows on 400 superia many versions ago, I will have to dig out the negs and see if the later versions have fixed it. I find with my scanwit all my scans with people in them, or actually all my scans lately have way too much blue in the period. I'm compensating with manually adjusting the white point blue setting to an additional .05 above what's there. Makes my scans way closer to what I adjust them too in PS. alan I too have had a problem that looks just like this. I have seen the 'blue highlights' phenomenon occur using Kodak Supra 400 100 negatives Epson Inkjet Printer FAQ: http://welcome.to/epson-inkjet _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: My replacement 8000 is banding like the first one :-(
Ed wrote: One prediction: a major scanner manufacturer is going to release several features like this in the next year that will drive several of their competitors out of the scanner business. The low-end scanner business is quite competitive - witness AGFA's recent abandonment of the low-end scanner market (the Acer scanners they've been reselling). Does this mean that I'm going to be stuck with *yet another* orphan? Geez, maybe I should go into the Classic Doorstop business! Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: filmscanners: Digital Copyright
Laurie wrote: Like locks, copyright notices and the like are basically only for the honest and should not in and of themselves be regarded as practical protection against deliberate infringements - actual or potential. I don't think anybody who's in or near the business can disagree with *that* statement (or the rest of Laurie's post, FTM, which I'm not including here). It seems to me that the latest US Copyright Law (and other IP decisions) as convoluted and in places compex as they are, favor the pickpocket and locksmith (to extend Laurie's metaphor) more than the person who created the property in the first place. Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: Scanning multiple times (was Re: filmscanners: Vuescan gripes)
S. Matthew Prastein wrote: No, I do not scan 16 times, only 3, but at highest resolution. That would be the high 32 in Mira, or 48-bit in Vuescan. I'm not sure this buys you much with thin negs, but OTOH every little bit helps (pun not intended). :-) I _think_ I see improvement in noise levels then, but I can't convince myself that doing more than 3 scans buys me anything. But Ed Hamrick _seemed_ to be saying in his last communication that even three scans is overkill, which seems to contradict earlier statements that multiple scans were good stuff at highest resolution, but inferior, if only lower resolution was needed/desired, to single scans at high resolution combined with compaction to lower resolution. Hmmm. I'd say it depends on the level of noise. I've done up to 10 in desperate measures, but it's pretty hard to quantify how much good multiples beyond 4 scans do--see above. :-) Variable exposure would be much handier, but Acer doesn't have it. One area you can play around with, in either Mira or Vuescan, is the film types. AFAIK, this is a software filter of the raw scan in both programs, but it can give you a better start-point for IP correcting. As you know (or will soon find out), when Mira outputs a raw negative scan, it's exactly that--in the negative with no film-mask. Reversing it in Photoshop and applying Auto Levels works pretty well, though. Vuescan outputs the raw scan in positive. On the ScanWit 2740S, using ICE and specifying 3 scans actually results in 6 scans, presumably 3 IR + 3 visual. Also, ICE or not, I must set focus to Preview Only; if set to focus on both Preview and Scan, I loose registration and the scan data is useless. That's somthing I haven't run into, but it could happen. Anyway, good luck and enjoy. Scanning and correcting underexposed negs can be a PITA, but it *does* build character. ;-) Best regards--LRA On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 22:31:01 +, you wrote: I seem to be missing something. I have an Acer Scanwit 2740S, which requires multiple passes to do a multiple scan. I thought that this was the right thing to do to get lower noise when scanning at 16x. so as to be able to average the input from successive reads. And, I thought this would help in extracting info from seriously underexposed negatives. Am I all wet on this? IMHO, yes (no offense intended--you said it first). :-) I have an Acer, but without the IR (it's a 2720S). First of all (I haven't been following this thread), are you saying you're making 16 passes on underexposed negs? 2-4 should be more than adequate. I'd start with 1. I also don't know what you mean by seriously underexposed. 1 stop? two? three? These are going to be thin, but I've gotten credible results from very thin negs (pushed TriX, and 4 stops under) with the Acer (I used some tricks). Multiple passes are more likely to help noise problems in dense negs and slides (I could be wrong on this, of course--but dense is where most of my problems come from) If the film detail isn't there, it isn't there. You know that, of course. To suck the most out of it, I think you need to play with the Levels and the Curves in Photoshop (or your favorite IP). Noise may in fact be a serious problem--reduce it as much as you can in Mira or Vuescan, then try to correct in your IP. You may need to scan at several different settings. If you haven't checked out Pete's website (Photoscientia whatever), do so. It's an excellent guide to the Scanwit (Pete didn't like the beta 2740s, be advised--that doesn't make it 'bad,' it's just drawn that way :-) ). I don't know that I've helped, but feel free to contact me if you have questions. Best regards--LRA On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:42:23 EDT, you wrote: You should _never_ need to do the 16x scan pass more than once. The preview is done in one pass (at low resolution), and will be used to compute the optimal CCD exposure and cropping. All other things can be re-done by pressing the Scan mem. button, making it unnecessary to _ever_ scan the same piece of film twice. If you're a belt-and-suspenders person, make sure the raw scan file is written to disk as well by using the Files|Output raw file option. Regards, Ed Hamrick -- Matt Prastein http://www.geocities.com/smprastein _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp -- Matt Prastein http://www.geocities.com/smprastein _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: OT: Copyright on Photo's
Frank wrote: I purchased a set of 4 Landscape Prints at an auction a couple days ago. It is my intention to sell them on eBay, however, they are un-signed so I am not to optimistic. My question is: Can I scan them, and display a small picture of them on eBay for advertising without violating the copyright of the original photographer? Here we go again on the slippery slopes of Intellectual Property! I would say yes, because you own them and you're trying to sell them. Art, Laurie, Bill Gates and Michael Getty would probably say No! As long as you're not selling multiple prints you've done yourself (which would be a definite no-no), it would be impractical for the photographer or his/her heirs to sue you. You might even learn their identity. :-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: 1640 SU Question: Cancel That
Thanks, Rafe. I could have used that bit of insight about a week ago, when the same thing happened to me (it all worked out happily--or mostly, except that I crashed my video card and had to reinstall *that*, too). Now I have your msg in a safe place--providing I don't crash my HD. Best regards--LRA From: rafeb [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: 1640 SU Question: Cancel That Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 23:15:45 -0400 Solution was found seconds after asking the question. Seems you have to unnstall the scanner itself (from Device Manager) so that PnP can rediscover it and then install TWAIN along with the scanner. Apparently, TWAIN can't be installed after the scanner, but only with the scanner. PITA. rafe b. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Nikon Service - in Australia
Julian wrote: He actually said if you send it back, we'll just send it back to you the same. He also said I don't know the details of how it was checked, and you can't talk to the service people directly, you have to talk to me and I am only a support person as well as It is within manufacturer's specifications - at least 10 times. This is somewhat akin to the vaudeville saying, My plumber doesn't make house calls! A little like driving 55 miles to take your machine to a sevice depot, paying for the service in advance, and driving 55 miles home, then 3 weeks later driving the exact same 110 miles to retrieve it, and (when it doesn't work) opening it up to find the original dust still in the machine! Make your blood boil? Well I guess so! It's a Jungle out there!---LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts
Rafe wrote-- JPG doesn't produce topo maps Ah, but it does! I'd refer you to the Aniversary picture on Larry Berman's Compression page. I found (as Larry did) that getting the original image below 120mb without posterizing was impossible. :-) Topo maps are a result of extreme posterization (loss of intermediate tones.) Indexed color is, by definition, a severely posterized working space. Using that conventional wisdom, I was completely baffled when a picture I was working on in Photoshop suddenly posterized in a skin-tone area. I do not use a limited palette (except in Amiga graphics). The causes in that incident are still unknown--it was a program glitch of some sort that I corrected by using a different program to get the results I wanted. :-) [Indexed color is] *Entirely* unsuitable for any graphic arts work. That's also a bit too broad to be true. Indexed color *does* have its uses in output applications. I'd refer you to the book Real Life Photoshop. Limited color has limited applications, OTOH. The typical signature of JPG is little blocks (8x8 pixels) that are clearly discernable in the image. That's true enough. However, the little buggers are more recognizable by their shimmerey off-color than as patterns. The rule of thumb is to push the compression just that far, then back off a few clicks. You can only do this with a few programs, Picture Publisher 8 being one of them. Best regards--LRA From: rafeb [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:41:23 -0400 At 10:08 PM 7/19/01 +, Lynn Allen wrote: Hi, Dan-- That looks like Posterization to me (at least, tha's whut ah calls it! :-) --cf definitions (-:|:-) ). I'd say it's probably a result (in this case, anyway) of pushing the sizing and JPEG compression too far. A good reference is Larry Berman's Compression Comparisons (BermanGraphics--You can look it up--I can't access the URL without losing my link on this service). I'm willing to bet that Dan Honemann has his video set to 256 colors (indexed color.) JPG doesn't produce topo maps Topo maps are a result of extreme posterization (loss of intermediate tones.) Indexed color is, by definition, a severely posterized working space. *Entirely* unsuitable for any graphic arts work. To see posterization in Photoshop, go to Image-Adjust-Posterize, and select a small integer, say 10 or so. Some of the effects are quite nice, in fact, but hardly photographic. Amazingly, if the integer is over 50-100 on a well- adjusted image, you won't see the posterization at all. Which is one reason that I think all this talk about needing 48-bit color is... well, missing the point somehow. 16 million colors seems to do the trick for me. 256-color (indexed color) associates 256 triplets of RGB values, with the integers 0..255. Those 256 triplets are called a pallette. The video card can switch between pallettes quickly, and may be able to store several pallettes in its memory. But it can only *use* one pallette at a time. This is how color video was done, typically, about 10 years ago, before True Color became the norm. JPG doesn't cause topo map or posterization effects. The typical signature of JPG is little blocks (8x8 pixels) that are clearly discernable in the image. rafe b. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts
Rafe wrote: The sky in the Prarie photo looks smooth as silk on my PC, with 24 bit video. With the screen set to 256 colors I get topo maps in the sky. and Bob wrote: Thanks Rafe. Mine looked smooth as silk too. I couldn't figure out what I was suppose to be seeing and wasn't. Now I get it. OK, I'm not exactly sure what's going on here, that one display set to factory specs (mine) shows posterization in an Internet JPEG, and two others (Rafe's and Bob's) do not. Should Internet picture postings come with the caveat, Warning, This Picture Must Be Viewed At 48-Bits!? That doesn't sound altogether realistic, to me. :-) Best regards--LRA From: Bob Kehl - Kvernstoen, Kehl Assoc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:09:24 -0500 - Original Message - From: rafeb [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 7:00 PM Subject: RE: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts Hold everything! Do you mean, Prairie, Northern Tibet? If you're seeing topo map effects in the sky, it's almost certainly because you have your video set to 256 colors. There's no way you want to attempt ANY image editing or capture with your screen set that way. The sky in the Prarie photo looks smooth as silk on my PC, with 24 bit video. With the screen set to 256 colors I get topo maps in the sky. Thanks Rafe. Mine looked smooth as silk too. I couldn't figure out what I was suppose to be seeing and wasn't. Now I get it. Actually, no-one COULD edit photos at 256 colors but they might try at 16 bit. At 16 bit the topo map effect is clearly visible too. I think you found the problem. BK _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: RE: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts
Well, this may be what Dan Honemann is up against on his notebook computer. I told him to ditch it. That's a little extreme, Rafe. :-) Granted that an LCD is not suited to *working* on graphics, it's viable for *viewing* them. Still, if Dan throws out his Dell Inspiron, I hope he throws it in my direction--I could use a portable backup, and could keep up with the List while I'm fishing or on vacation. g Best regards--LRA From: rafeb [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: RE: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 23:23:43 -0400 At 11:33 AM 7/20/01 +1000, Rob wrote: Rafe wrote: I'm willing to bet that Dan Honemann has his video set to 256 colors (indexed color.) Some video drivers in Windows (particularly the generic Windows ones as opposed to OEM) only display 256 colours despite being set to 16bit or 24bit. It was one reason I had to throw out a video card when I went from Win 3.11 to Win95. Well, this may be what Dan Honemann is up against on his notebook computer. I told him to ditch it. rafe b. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Repro issues
Dave wrote (re bad repro houses): It'll get better as more jobs are shot digitally. Then the repro folks won't have as much incentive to sabotage jobs not scanned in house since there's no film anyway. Even with photographer supplied scans this behavior will eventually backfire on honery and stubborn printers because clients will just take jobs where they get printed well. I have clients who trust me and see good results with my files from some printers and not others. Guess which ones will get repeat business. H. With all sincere respect, I think Dave under-estimates the stubbornness of some print houses/pressmen. :-) However, many of the establishments I had the most trouble with are now out of business (not a good thing, really--they did have limited merits), or under new management (new devils to contend with). One wonders what it is that modern businesses don't understand about the value of repeat sales. Without having a well-guarded monopoly, is there any other way to continue? It's a little like the kid who was selling pencils to pay for his college education. OK, says his neigbor, how much are they? Fifty-thousand dollars, says the kid. Isn't that an awful lot for a pencil? asks the neighbor. Yeah, says the kid, but I only need to sell ONE! It's the same principle--prices may vary in your area. :-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts
Tony wrote (re grain aliasing): No, I have scans of the same neg showing the effect very strikingly. You'll have to wait a while longer though. I will wait, but since *you're* the one who sent us off in search of this Holy Grail, it's only appropriate that we see your examples, one day. :-) Best regards--LRA From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tony Sleep) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:36 +0100 (BST) On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 01:41:02 +1000 Rob Geraghty ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I can't think of a meaningful picture of grain aliasing. It could be described with a drawing, not with an real life scan because by nature it is random. No, I have scans of the same neg showing the effect very strikingly. You'll have to wait a while longer though. Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio exhibit; + film scanner info comparisons _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Repro issues (was Which Buggy Software?)
Tony wrote: These problems have long since been resolved in newsprint, for that reason. Generally smaller repro houses don't have these problems... In the US, many (if not most) newspapers are using digital, because it's so fast. By the same token, the MajorMajors, like Time Newsweek (I've read, it may not be so in fact), are also dedicated to one form or another of digital. Their response has been to contractually bundle scanning for repro, so magazines pay a fixed fee which includes all scans for an issue. This makes titles most unhappy to pay for scans done by the photographer, as they are paying twice. clip Magazine repro/print buying in UK is, at least sometimes, a corrupt process. I know of one buyer, employed by a major publisher, who awarded contracts on the basis of backhanders from the repro house. He was later rewarded with a directorship of the same repro house. I also know a director of an unrelated print company who regards bribery of clients' buyers as a normal operating expense, along with lavish meals and more sleazy inducements. Their clients are some of the UK's major financial institutions. No kidding, Inspector Sleep! ;-) This goes on a lot in major corp's, and not just in UK. IMHO, it's a case of the CEO's letting the PAs get out of control, as long as they show profitable results (and that *is* how it works). The CEOs don't even realize the the Corp is getting the shaft, as the pomotion you mention demonstrates, regally. There's another where the repro is less of a problem (they have had good results) than the art director who dresses up his fear and ignorance of the issues as aesthetic snobbery, and rejects anything which has been near a digital process on principle. This is not insurmountable, but it's a PITA to have to try and work around/fool him. Woosh! There's a shot over the bow! Missed me completely, I'm glad to add. :-) I've met my share of these aesthetic snobs (*more* than my share, thank you ); over here in the serious-practicioners' community we refer to those people as the Artsy-Fartsy. Incredibly, they seem to be the ones who gain the Publisher's ear most of the time, by devoting all of their creative energy (if any) to playing the game. As the old saying saying goes, If you can't impress them with your competence, Dazzle 'em with your Footwork! On this particular topic, I'm going to defer to the late David Bernbach (of Doyle/Dane/Bernbach and Volkswagen/Polaroid ad fame), to quote (paraphrased): First, find a client that's being ignored. Next, help them out, show them how it should be done. Then, take the client and run, and set up your own Ad Agency...it's the only way you'll ever have the creative control you want and deserve! Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: filmscanners: My replacement 8000 is banding like the first one :-(
Not that I really want to comment on this at all, but I've found that if I don't, maybe nobody will (too often, and not often enough). :-) Given: That the stepper mechanism is accurate, and not just a piece of trash... Then: It would not matter whether the copy is moved or the scanning head is moved. A 35mm neg or slide is, geographically, an entirely different matter from an 8x10 reflective photo. Note, however, how much more expensive filmscanners are than flatbed scanners. The Industrial Age has been in place for numerous years--precision in either case is possible, yet expensive--and expensive in proportion to scale, perhaps. That, probably, is a Law of Physics. At least I'll think so until someone markets a 4000dpi flatbed for $100US. (and then, I'd be suspicious) :-) Best regards--LRA From: rafeb [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: My replacement 8000 is banding like the first one :-( Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:10:57 -0400 At 12:03 PM 7/20/01 +0100, Jawed wrote: Dare I say it, but I suspect a scanner moving the film is less accurate than a scanner that moves the scan head. I disagree, and I'm sure Austin will chime in here too g. All film scanners I've worked with move the film -- except for flatbeds with TPUs. The lamp and CCD stay put. This applies to: * Microtek 35t+ * Polaroid SprintScan Plus * Minolta Scan Speed * Nikon 8000 ED * LeafScan 45 All of the above scanners move the media. CCD and lamp are stationary. In fact, except for flatbeds posing as film scanners, I can't think of any film scanners that *don't* work that way. rafe b. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: OT: David Bernbach?
Ivar, you're absolutely right! That must have been a senior moment on my part. :-) They were both greats in the ad biz. I do think it was Bill Bernbach who made the statement. Thanks for setting me straight :-) --LRA From: Ivar Järnefors [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: OT: David Bernbach? Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 17:20:16 +0200 As far as I know his name was Willam Bernbach. Perhaps you're thinking of another great copywriter David Ogilvy? (who past away not very long ago). Both Bernbach and Ogilvy have written a great deal on advertising, which probably applies to all kinds of creative work for commercial purposes. Photography not the least. It's definitely worth reading if some of you ever get the time. Myself, I always keep a good book besides the computer for the those more time consuming moments of digital scanning and picture editing, just rotating someting in16 bits can be such a bore) Regards, Ivar On this particular topic, I'm going to defer to the late David Bernbach (of Doyle/Dane/Bernbach and Volkswagen/Polaroid ad fame), to quote (paraphrased): First, find a client that's being ignored. Next, help them out, show them how it should be done. Then, take the client and run, and set up your own Ad Agency...it's the only way you'll ever have the creative control you want and deserve! Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: filmscanners: My replacement 8000 is banding like the first one :-(
Rafe wrote: ...our entire job in this listserv sometimes seems to be second-guessing the manufacturers and telling them what they did wrong. g Seems to me they give us ample opportunity! ;-) My personal guess is that the better way is the one that moves the smaller mass -- all else being equal. That's Engineer Thinking and also a Law of Physics, which makes perfect sense. It may or may not hold true in all cases--Physics still holds some surprises, IMHO. :-) Best regards--LRA Original msg Given: That the stepper mechanism is accurate, and not just a piece of trash... Then: It would not matter whether the copy is moved or the scanning head is moved. True enough, Lynn, but our entire job in this listserv sometimes seems to be second-guessing the manufacturers and telling them what they did wrong. g Jawed had expressed an opinion on which of two schemes might work better. I simply wanted to point out that, for better or for worse, most film scanners worked the other way. My personal guess is that the better way is the one that moves the smaller mass -- all else being equal. rafe b. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Nikon Service
I think Art may be pretty much right, here, particularly about the top down management. Recent history (and personal experience) shows that this type of hierarchy tends to frown on any criticism from below, hence constructive comments dry up, and the Top becomes not only insulated but *isolated* form any hints of disent. The ultimate result is like a fire--where a single bucket of water (or good corrective measures, early on) would have extinguished it in the beginning, it can destroy most or all of the building once it's out of control. The Japanese, of all people, should realize this. But they sometimes misplace their egos, just as others of us do. A word to the wise. Does the name Bridgestone mean anything? Best regards--LRA From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Nikon Service Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 01:57:39 -0700 To the best of my knowledge, at least here in Canada, the same division that handles the camera repairs also handles the digital scanner repairs. These days, most cameras (including Nikon's) use more electronic circuitry than mechanical parts, so it wouldn't be a stretch that both camera and scanner repairs would be handled in the same place. My experience has been that a corporate culture is defined from the top down, and that you will usually see more similarities than differences between divisions within a company, even if they are located in different countries. My personal experience has been that companies headquartered in Japan are less attuned to their clients from around the world. I suspect this might also be culturally related. The Japanese culture promotes calm and stoicism, and respect for older corporate institutions and I'd suspect they find the North American consumer awareness movement, for example, rather of an affront. In spite of the companies having North American divisions dealing with their N.A. clients, I suspect that there is a top down approach to management coming from the head offices in Japan. Lastly, N.A. and Europe are pretty far away physically from Japan, and its hard to know how much gets back to head office. I have written a few Japanese company head offices but never received a reply. I suspect there are still many linguistic barriers as well. I would love to see a more hybrid kind of management approach, where a mix of N.A. or European customer service and consumer awareness was mixed with the usually superior manufacturing and quality control of goods produced in places like Japan. Art Austin Franklin wrote: Even with your nice expensive Nikon scanner, I STILL own a lot more Nikon equipment dollar per dollar than you do, and I can speak with years of experience with their equipment as to what has happened to the quality of the stuff and their repair service. What Nikon equipment do you own, Art? Why I ask, is just because it's Nikon, doesn't mean it's the same division. Typically, in a company as large as Nikon, the divisions are very distinct, and one division's performance isn't necessarily going to be the same a others. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: Scanning multiple times (was Re: filmscanners: Vuescan gripes)
I seem to be missing something. I have an Acer Scanwit 2740S, which requires multiple passes to do a multiple scan. I thought that this was the right thing to do to get lower noise when scanning at 16x. so as to be able to average the input from successive reads. And, I thought this would help in extracting info from seriously underexposed negatives. Am I all wet on this? IMHO, yes (no offense intended--you said it first). :-) I have an Acer, but without the IR (it's a 2720S). First of all (I haven't been following this thread), are you saying you're making 16 passes on underexposed negs? 2-4 should be more than adequate. I'd start with 1. I also don't know what you mean by seriously underexposed. 1 stop? two? three? These are going to be thin, but I've gotten credible results from very thin negs (pushed TriX, and 4 stops under) with the Acer (I used some tricks). Multiple passes are more likely to help noise problems in dense negs and slides (I could be wrong on this, of course--but dense is where most of my problems come from) If the film detail isn't there, it isn't there. You know that, of course. To suck the most out of it, I think you need to play with the Levels and the Curves in Photoshop (or your favorite IP). Noise may in fact be a serious problem--reduce it as much as you can in Mira or Vuescan, then try to correct in your IP. You may need to scan at several different settings. If you haven't checked out Pete's website (Photoscientia whatever), do so. It's an excellent guide to the Scanwit (Pete didn't like the beta 2740s, be advised--that doesn't make it 'bad,' it's just drawn that way :-) ). I don't know that I've helped, but feel free to contact me if you have questions. Best regards--LRA On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:42:23 EDT, you wrote: You should _never_ need to do the 16x scan pass more than once. The preview is done in one pass (at low resolution), and will be used to compute the optimal CCD exposure and cropping. All other things can be re-done by pressing the Scan mem. button, making it unnecessary to _ever_ scan the same piece of film twice. If you're a belt-and-suspenders person, make sure the raw scan file is written to disk as well by using the Files|Output raw file option. Regards, Ed Hamrick -- Matt Prastein http://www.geocities.com/smprastein _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: T400CN was filmscanners: Grain, Noise, et al
Norman, Yes, that's exactly what happened. Makes one feel sorta silly, doesn't it? :-) That's one advantage of shooting transparencies--you can bracket to your heart's content (and get some interesting results, as well). Besides, on my Acer, they scan better. Usually. :-) Best regards--LRA From: Norman Unsworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: T400CN was filmscanners: Grain, Noise, et al Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:42:43 -0400 Lynn, Actually we probably both had the same problem - if you don't specify with the lab their machine will automatically print each exposure as close to the 'right' print they can. I've taken to stipulating that they use no compensation on any prints. When I got my most recent camera (Nikon N80) I took it out to test drive all the bells and whistles, including exposure and flash compensation. I hadn't asked them to print all the prints without compensation and when I got the prints back they all looked the same exposure-wise. Not much of a test and not very clever on my part. Norman message3.txt _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Nikon Service
Rafe wrote: I'd be curious to know, among veteran film- scanner users, whether there's any brand loyalty at all. Anybody out there buy the same brand twice? I'm every bit as brand loyal as the brands (and suppliers) are loyal to me and my goals. If it works like it's supposed to work, I'll stick with it. When they stick it *to me*, it's Adios. :-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: On A More Positive Note
Fantastic comparisons, Rafe. And much more Real Life than anything from the mfgrs' publicity departments. Thanks. From: rafeb [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: On A More Positive Note Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 23:11:04 -0400 I've posted a few small scans from my 8000 ED at: http://www.channel1.com/users/rafeb/scanner_test4.htm (Photos of shed, and snow-covered boats.) These might explain why some of us are pretty excited about this machine, in spite of all the negative talk 'round here. This was a totally uncorrected scan, at 1x scanning, no ICE, no nothin'. I let the scanner auto-expose the negative, and did no further image adjustments in Photoshop. As raw a scan as you can get. There are several other scans (from different scanners) on this page, so please be patient while it all loads. There are links to additional sample scans, from several other film scanners, at the bottom of the page. (Eg. Epson 1640 SU, for those considering the super-duper CompUSA sale price this week.) rafe b. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
filmscanners: OT-Brand Loyalty (was: Nikon Service
Rafe wrote: Aw, c'mon Lynn, just answer the question. It's really simple. Ever bought the same brand of film scanner twice? I sure haven't. Gee, Rafe, since I've been scanning for less than 2 years and only done 8,000 or so scans, how many scanners would you expect me to buy!? :-) Have I ever bought the same brand of car twice? Yes. And regretted the choice--won't make it again. Almost did another time, but the dealer screwed up the prep, and I tore up the check and ran like a scalded cat! I keep looking for a good, repeatable deal, though. I'm a curable optomist. ;-) Have I ever used the same supplier twice? Absolutely, and whenever I can. I figure that Loyalty is a two-way street--it's always worked for me! I'll even pay *more* when I know I can trust my supplier to come through in a pinch. This is especially important, I think, in a business environment. I've played the lowest bid game (under duress, I might add), and been royally screwed in the bargain. Even lost a job or two over it. But those kinds of jobs may not be worth keeping anyway, IMHO. Now to one case at hand (and it was probably me and my #@! HP6300C that started this cockamamie discussion to begin with, with or without Nikon's complicity): an indy tech I talked to this morning (who works for a major retailer) says that the HP scanners are basically unserviceable, and when you buy the extended warranty their service stations normally just replace the unit--when you're out of warranty, you're also out of luck. Had I bought the extended warranty (which wasn't offered, that I can remember--not that I ordinarily buy EWs--except that on scanners I now do!) the $300+ 6300C would have cost a lot more than their advertised price. Considering that it only lasted 18 months (due to a missing line of code in their setup software, I'm told), I really don't think the original purchase price was good value. And I won't be buying or advising anyone to buy any product with an HP logo on it--they've simply cheaped out in the wrong places. More's the pity, because their design ideas are damned good. :-( Anyway, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it. If I can fix this damned thing myself, it won't cost me a lot more than I've already lost. But I still won't buy another HP. Best regards from the Service Wars--LRA Rafe wrote: I'd be curious to know, among veteran film- scanner users, whether there's any brand loyalty at all. Anybody out there buy the same brand twice? Lynn wrote: I'm every bit as brand loyal as the brands (and suppliers) are loyal to me and my goals. If it works like it's supposed to work, I'll stick with it. When they stick it *to me*, it's Adios. :-) _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
filmscanners: OT (was: Nikon Service
Hi, Austin-- Your point is well taken, that different divisions of Nikon are probably involved here, and not all run at the same level of competence. The point remains that a manufacturer with a name like Nikon (or any number of other names you'd care to mention) has a vested interest in protecting and supporting that name, which is worth $millions$ to their continuing sales. This is the point I've been trying to make in these QC discussions(albeit perhaps obliquely, and not that we can do much about it but bitch), and I *think* it's the point Art is driving at (not that Art needs me to defend him). Any CEO that lets his (or her, in the case of HP) customer-service departments get away from them can be in for a world of hurt, sales-wise. It's just not smart business, even if it takes years to make itself felt. Best regards--LRA From: Austin Franklin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: Nikon Service Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 11:19:20 -0400 Even with your nice expensive Nikon scanner, I STILL own a lot more Nikon equipment dollar per dollar than you do, and I can speak with years of experience with their equipment as to what has happened to the quality of the stuff and their repair service. What Nikon equipment do you own, Art? Why I ask, is just because it's Nikon, doesn't mean it's the same division. Typically, in a company as large as Nikon, the divisions are very distinct, and one division's performance isn't necessarily going to be the same a others. Interestingly enough, there was no link for support on their web site, so I couldn't find out if the same repair depots are used for the camera gear and for scanners. Does Nikon have any web based support for the scanners? If so, what's the URL? I did find NikonNet (real obvious that this is a link to support ;-/ ) and then NikonTech (very buried, and surrounded by a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with technical support...)...but the link to www.nikontechusa.com gave me a DNS error. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts
Rob wrote (re grain-aliasing)-- The closest analogy is the moire patterns you get when scanning offset printed magazine pictures with a flatbed at certain ppi settings. This makes the exact point of my earlier post--that's not how I'd describe it, at all (and the Acer can grain-alias with the best of them)! :-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts
Dan wrote: Is there an online tutorial/FAQ/glossary somewhere that shows image samples of various digital artifacts (e.g., banding, grain-aliasing, jaggies, etc.)? I'm a newbie to all this, and Tony's glossary at halftone is a help but doesn't show pics. Here, I think, sample images would be worth a thousand words. Hoo, boy, that *would* be useful! Presently, every definition is about a half-click away from the next guy's definition. If I had a website, I'd give it a go (I've got *plenty* of examples!)--maybe some kind-sprited, web-savvy member will do it? Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
filmscanners: Totally OT
Lawrence wrote: I have been instructed that there will be NO 'during delivery' photos. Immediately afterward is ok, just not before You could try sneaking a Minox into the birthing room. As documentary, your heirs might appreciate it. Not that *you'd* live to ;-) Congrats and good luck--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: filmscanners: Link to Nikon 8000 Review
Very good review. Excellent, in fact. Please pass it on to Michael, Ian. The only comment I would make is on Michael's, vis a vis Polaroid's financial troubles. It's somewhat perjoritive (although I'm sure he meant it only as a cautionary), and a tad irrelevant to performance. Be that as it may. In the JPEG screen version, I saw *some* details that the Nikon did better than the Imacon. That's probably mostly artifact, though. It's still one of the better reviews I've read, of anything, lately. Best regards, and thanks for the non-relevant (for me) post. (I can't justify *either* of them--nor the 'Blad to go with it--but it's always fun to dream, and see good pictures in the bargain :-))--LRA From: Ian Lyons [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: Link to Nikon 8000 Review Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 17:42:05 +0100 For those interested, my colleague Michael Reichmann has just published his initial impressions of the Nikon 8000ED. He compares it to the Imacon Photo. http://luminous-landscape.com/nikon-8000.htm Ian Lyons http://www.computer-darkroom.com _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: filmscanners: My replacement 8000 is banding like the first one :-(
For those that don't get Dilbert in their local funny (?) papers, I think that Scott Adams has a web site. He could probably use some of this material in his strip. :-) Actually, I feel your pain--LRA From: Lawrence Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: My replacement 8000 is banding like the first one :-( Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 15:49:02 -0400 Chris claims that Nikon service has not recived a unit for service, yet, for the banding problem. That *may* possibly be true, if Lawrence's 1st 8000 went back to the retailer directly. These guys need to get their story straight. I believe it was Chris I was speaking with this morning and was told that he believed that service HAD been able to fix the banding issue. Can you say bullsh@t? So which is it? I guess we will see after Rafe and I send our units back... Lawrence _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts
Frank wrote: I would be glad to contribute the web space and storage for this - I would love to see examples of the terms used by everyone! Count me in for samples! (even though I'll have to go back through and retrieve the originals--stuff I've fixed doesn't count). :-) I haven't had time to learn much about web presentation--set your parameters (file sizes, etc) and I'll try to comply. Best regards and luck--LRA -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Lynn Allen Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 10:11 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts Dan wrote: Is there an online tutorial/FAQ/glossary somewhere that shows image samples of various digital artifacts (e.g., banding, grain-aliasing, jaggies, etc.)? I'm a newbie to all this, and Tony's glossary at halftone is a help but doesn't show pics. Here, I think, sample images would be worth a thousand words. Hoo, boy, that *would* be useful! Presently, every definition is about a half-click away from the next guy's definition. If I had a website, I'd give it a go (I've got *plenty* of examples!)--maybe some kind-sprited, web-savvy member will do it? Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts
Hi, Dan-- That looks like Posterization to me (at least, tha's whut ah calls it! :-) --cf definitions (-:|:-) ). I'd say it's probably a result (in this case, anyway) of pushing the sizing and JPEG compression too far. A good reference is Larry Berman's Compression Comparisons (BermanGraphics--You can look it up--I can't access the URL without losing my link on this service). No, it's not jaggies. Jaggies are usually those obvious stair-steps you sometimes see on contrasty diagonals in the picture, a result of not enough anti-aliasing or too few colors (posterization is also a result of too few colors). Rob G, OTOH has all sorts of dagger-shaped jaggies produced by his LS30 stepper and/or software. Here again, same term, different visual appearance. Best reagards--LRA From: Dan Honemann [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: image samples of digital artifacts Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 17:44:41 -0400 Lynn, Rafe, Rob and others: One thing I've always been curious about is what causes the topographical map type of lines you see in the blue sky portion of this image: http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~taiji/gallery/t21.htm ??? I see this sort of artifact a lot in jpegs on the web. Is this what is called jaggies? Do they show up in prints? Thanks, Dan _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: T400CN was filmscanners: Grain, Noise, et al
Norman wrote: I played with my exposures to see how the film would react to slight under-exposure in an attempt to heighten the contrast a bit but only went under by 1/2 stop. The film's latitude must be very wide as I couldn't really detect any difference from 'properly' exposed shots. I once shot a roll 4 full stops underexposed, trying to capture the effects of a certain safety light we were marketing. The film came back perfectly exposed, warts and all, which *wasn't* exactly what I was shooting for. :-) Best regards--LRA From: Norman Unsworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: T400CN was filmscanners: Grain, Noise, et al Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 08:25:20 -0400 I played with my exposures to see how the film would react to slight under-exposure in an attempt to heighten the contrast a bit but only went under by 1/2 stop. The film's latitude must be very wide as I couldn't really detect any difference from 'properly' exposed shots. RE: the pink cast on prints, it was my belief as well that the lab simply got lazy or didn't pay attention when they printed the negs. It was a Kodak lab (I used Kodak processing mailers) and I intend to call and bitch at them for making what must have been a mistake simply out of negligence. No doubt they just ran everything through a machine and, since it's c41 processing, just let the machine print on whatever is their stock color paper. So much for trying to save a few pennies on processing... The negs seem perfectly fine - my scans don't have a trace of pink (even using a generic color negative setting for film type). I haven't played with them a great deal but grain seems minimal, as the literature promises. Yup, it is amazing film, and I have had experienced Art Eds query whether shots done on 35mm T400CN were medium format. Vuesmart's BW setting for 400CN works well. Or you can scan at 16bit RGB and convert to grayscale later in PS. Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio exhibit; + film scanner info comparisons _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
RE: filmscanners: Nikon MF LED light source...
Hi, Tony-- Turns out we were both trying to throw water on a grass fire, so to speak. I've made apologies all round, and apologize to you, as well. :-) Best regards--Lynn Allen From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tony Sleep) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: Nikon MF LED light source... Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:19 +0100 (BST) On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:46:27 - Lynn Allen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Pissing contest. Admittedly funny, but it takes up Tony's bandwidth. So did that:) So did this:) Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio exhibit; + film scanner info comparisons _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: filmscanners: Nikon MF LED light source...
Rafe wrote: I was able to get a parts manual quite easily for my Mamiya 645E. $20 and it's a done deal. Only trouble is, when I called up to order specific parts, not one of the critical parts was in stock. Well *that's* reassuring as hell! :-) This is even worse than I thought. Well, thanks for the heads up anyway, Rafe. Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: filmscanners: Which Buggy Software?
Tony wrote: MS newest technology for interchange of data between applications, sort of DDE/OLE Plus. I think. For W95 it was an add-on separate install, with W98 it's part of Windows itself. Doubtless this is a hopelessly wrong or inadequate explanation, but who cares, on a filmscanner list? Doubtless someone will;) Inquiring minds want to know, but whoever can fathom the minds of Microsoft? ;-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: filmscanners: Which Buggy Software?
IMHO, and speaking this time as a one-time Art Director, I'd suggest that anyone dealing with RGB, CMYK, Lab colors, and printers (of the press/magazine/newspaper type), copy this post and save it to HD (and to personal memory, as well). It's gut-written and honest, and therefore will give you a wee bit of insight that you would not have otherwise gotten without several years of frustration. Best regards--LRA From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tony Sleep) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Which Buggy Software? Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 02:49 +0100 (BST) On Sun, 15 Jul 2001 22:33:07 -0400 rafeb ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Nope. Dan's approach is to go by the numbers (RGB values, or L*a*b values, or CMYK values) Oh, that still. I don't see any major contribution to road safety here: RGB is device dependent, whether numbers or colours - if you don't set the numbers for the specific output device, they will be wrong. So R127G127B127 is mid-grey, mathematically at gamma=1, but what's the right gamma? How red is red? And life is too short to start defining skin tones in different lighting... I don't have a clue about what output devices will be used, or what some numbskull may do as a result of what they see, once the file has left my hands - but it's a racing certainty that monitors will be used in DTP systems. LAB? Well, nobody even knows what it is, certainly among Art Eds and Production Eds of my acquaintance - and you can't JPEG a LAB image anyhow AFAIK, so I can't deliver it electronically (50Mb TIFFS are not popular:). And as for CMYK, I can't convert to CMYK as I have no idea of the press/ink/paper characteristics which will be used wherever an image ends up. I've discussed the possibility, never had a useable answer. All/any of these could work just fine if you have anal end-to-end control over the entire process, eg you are self-publishing, but nobody working for magazines or press has a hope in hell of doing it that way. The information simply is not available, you are just one factor in a chain which involves lots of people, each with specialised skills and minimal overlap, and 6yr old Radius monitors with screen burn. It's no use asking the designer what flavour CMYK they want, they won't know - and even if they can ask the repro house, they probably won't understand the answer, and it's all aggravation they don't want on press day anyhow. 'Can't you just shoot it on E6?' is their idea of colour management. It's this chaos that ICM is supposed to provide a thread of sanity through, but the final stage, repro/print, mostly hasn't caught up and it remains an area of profound drain bramage IME. In the 6 years I have been doing this stuff, there has been infinitesimal progress there, and supplying dig images remains a game of Russian Roulette. Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio exhibit; + film scanner info comparisons _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: OT: was Unsharp mask was Re: filmscanners: Getting started question
Tony wrote: You misheard. They said 'hostility'. That's what they 'said,' of course, but not what they said. Point remains. :-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: filmscanners: Polaroid 120 carrier doesn't line up
Excellent insight, Rafe. This isn't one of those I Agree posts, it's one of those Take another look at this posts. So don't just *sit* there--Take Another Look! :-) Best regards--LRA From: rafeb [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Polaroid 120 carrier doesn't line up Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 22:03:52 -0400 At 07:14 PM 7/16/01 +0100, Ian Lyons wrote: New carriers won't cure this problem, but a firmware update will fix it real easy. So don't let Polaroid go bust. Ironically, the best solution to this problem that I have seen is in the Epson 1640 TWAIN 5 driver. Since the TPU (transparency unit) really has no idea what sort of media you're presenting, it simply scans the entire 4x5 area of the TPU in the preview window. Then all you do is select the frame you want with the crop window. What could be simpler? And there's absolutely no reason that the Nikon 8000 and/or Polaroid LS-120 couldn't offer the same approach. I don't see why they tried to take it upon themselves to guess the image locations, and then fail miserably at their horrid guesses. It's one of those situations that leaves you wondering, What were they thinking?? I would rank this among the major annoyances with the Nikon Scan software on the 8000. rafe b. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: filmscanners: Repro issues (was Which Buggy Software?)
This is a horror story that many people in the industry could have written, myself included (although I was usually submitting reflective art, not digital). One answer might be to go in and work the Macs yourself (but I've never seen a repro house that would allow that). Since I mostly worked on the Client side of the street, I had a bit more clout than a 'mere' photographer would--but I always tried to extend that clout to getting the best reproduction of the photographer's work (for which I'd paid a princely sum, I might add ;-) ). I got my ass kicked around a lot, too, but (if I might boast) I gave as good as I got, most of the time. I wasn't ashamed of most of the results (but I sure as hell heard about the others, let me tell you)--lost a job or two in the process; that's the 'down'side. Is there an answer? Yeah, when Profits and Repro Houses get reasonable, and pigs fly, there probably will be. Until that happens, all you can do is the best you can do, and hang tough. Wish I could offer better. Best regards--LRA From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tony Sleep) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Repro issues (was Which Buggy Software?) Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 02:48 +0100 (BST) On Sun, 15 Jul 2001 19:42:49 -0500 Maris V. Lidaka, Sr. ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Dan's response would be that most repro houses don't use embedded color profiles anyway - they do it the old-fashioned way. If he's wrong, please tell him ;) He's largely right, although I just had a magazine repro screw-up this week which seems likely to be explained as the repro house doing manual adjustments to a tagged image on a (gamma=1.0 by the look of it) input workstation which didn't speak ICC, and then sending it to an pagesetter which *did* - with (the now completely inappropriate) Colormatch RGB tag still in place that indicated, among other things, that the gamma was 1.8. The postmortem is continuing... fortunately, on this occasion the repro house concerned is keen to address the problems and open to discussion. I spent half of Saturday trying to figure out what had gone wrong and emailing the Art Ed. Fortunately both she and the editor had seen the scans on their own calibrated screens in PS, before they went to repro, else I would be getting the blame. The trouble is that even though they said they loved the pics, next time they might avoid the problem by giving the work to someone who turns in work on E6 instead. If I'd wanted to shoot it like that I'd have done so, but I use this stuff to get better pics in worse circumstances. It works, they agree - but if the repro buggers it, it's a chocolate teapot. Whatever, it's a nightmare. ICC tags are not a panacea, and can cause extra problems - as they seem to have done on this occasion. OTOH if you don't use them, whatever you intended the image to look like is out of your control entirely. You had better supply a print or tranny instead. Some repro houses never seem to have problems, others have been so disastrous I have lost clients as a result. Faced with a choice between a photographer and a repro house, the repro house wins, if only for contractual reasons. Basically Margulis is right IME. Repro houses don't need to use nor understand ICC, and wherever they do, it's because they have had to find some way of coping with 'externally supplied' scans. In UK this is rare, at least among repro houses working for 50,000+ circulation magazines. Yet this problem is not going to go away, since there are good (creative control) reasons for photographers to scan and supply images in dig format. Right now, it is safer to supply untagged files and trust that others in the chain are capable of sensible judgements about what looks right. Often they aren't, as printers are skilled at matching scans to images, not imagination. Also many repro houses want to keep every bit of scanning business, and have good reasons to portray photographer-supplied scans as inferior, risky and a route to terrible results. It doesn't help that a lot are, of course. But it's distressing to get clients, do a job they are happy with, and then lose them because the repro goes to shit. I don't know what the answer is. I've tried supplying Epson proofs as references, I've tried supplying inkjets as final artwork (I'm never totally happy with either, and this just isn't practical on short deadlines/email delivery, as this job was), I've tried tagged and untagged files. Sod's law rules, and I doubt Margulis has any failsafe answers either. Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio exhibit; + film scanner info comparisons _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Unsharp mask was Re: filmscanners: Getting started question
Rafe wrote: Dan insists that you could use a monochrome monitor to do color corrections. Now, I admit I haven't tried that. But it is quite a provocative claim, and follows logically from Dan's numerical approach. This is absolutely true--if you've been trained in the classic (largely Old World) tradition of the color engraver. Possibly Margulies was, or was trained by one or several. I'm not going to tell one of my tales here (listen to the cheers from the Lurker Galleries!), but I *do* have one that will go untold. :-) My counter-claim to this is that color is *so* subjective that you can't quantify it. Ever. A badly-shot slide or neg might have beauty that you only imagined when you shot the picture! Your twists and tweaks can take a picture with every merit *except* color to heights of artistry. As a painter, I prefer to work from B/W--my color is personal, and I don't want it confused by facts. :-) In point of truth, every photographer can work from the same premise: you can set the light and color, you can tweak the light and color, or you can sit in rising/setting sunlight and wait for it to happen...but the artistry of the film itself is limited. Yours, OTOH, is not. Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
RE: filmscanners: Nikon MF LED light source...
I'll give HP another try, Austin. What I got from my last requests (reading between the lines, that is) wouldn't be fit to send over the Internet. ;-) Best regards--Lynn Allen From: Austin Franklin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: Nikon MF LED light source... Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 00:18:09 -0400 Does anyone on the List know a good source for these? I for one would pay a few dollars (US, and cash ;-) ) for one that detailed the HP 5000-6800 flatbed scanners. I have manuals for most of my equipment, and they are available from the manufacturer parts resource. They typically are quite inexpensive. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
OT, very: was:re: Unsharp mask was Re: filmscanners: Getting started question
Art wrote: We require fuzzy logic, and we incorporate it into our machines because they can think better (as we do) that way. Since we program them, we tend to use our type of logic, which in turn probably slows them down, but by introducing the fuzzy part, we make them more able to function as we do, which makes them, like us, skip over the less important details. In an otherwise brilliant treatise (well, it's Filmscanners, not the Nobel Prize competition, but then... ;-) ), Art mistakes, IMHO. We *don't* (ordinarily) program computers to think like we do, we use Newtonian mathmatics (genius again--sorry). And Fermat. Pascal, Fourier, and so forth. Did they think like you do? They certainly didn't think like *I* do. Better, admittedly, at least about abstract mathatical principles, but did they have to worry about paying their Master Charge bill on time? No, their wives probably did it for them. I'll bet they couldn't tell an RGB from a CMYK! Besides the advanced-and-not-fuzzy math in our programs, there is also a modicum of Bill Gates in our computers (not enough to change the math, just enough to piss us off). Could I program a computer to do what Art asks? Sure--give me enough monkeys and computers, and we'll probably have it done in a million years or so, along with the complete works of Shakespeare and Jack Keruak. :-) Every once in awhile (or twice--who's counting?) you'll see me rant about The Secrets Of The Guild. All this mumbo-jumbo programming that it only takes a math-oriented brain to do (and I didn't mean you, Ed, I meant those geeks who wrote the first version of MS-DOS--yech!). IMHO, the half-way intelligent computer user, given the training and the resource codes, could write or revise better programs--for their uses, at least--than any team at Microsoft (just to name a common enemy). It might take them longer than it would to earn the bucks to buy Uncle Bill's latest offering (and I'm pretty sure it would take a *lot* longer), but you don't know what the satisfaction of hearing that purring machine is, until you've done it. I allus say. :-) Best regards--LRA From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Unsharp mask was Re: filmscanners: Getting started question Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 00:09:23 -0700 I find you comments about analogue feel very interesting , as I just wrote a reply in the other scan list that I think I will post here as a result. I think this is called convergence. ;-) Actually, I just realized, that Dave wrote the comments I am replying to in both lists... Humans do not like rigidly gridded anything. There is a random element in nature, and in us, and we like it. Noise is random, photo grain is random. Digital sampling is rigid, pixel positions are rigid. We are analogue. Neither is accurate, but we are more comfortable with analogue because we prefer randomness, and our eyes and ears are analogue and create all sorts of randomness. We require fuzzy logic, and we incorporate it into our machines because they can think better (as we do) that way. Since we program them, we tend to use our type of logic, which in turn probably slows them down, but by introducing the fuzzy part, we make them more able to function as we do, which makes them, like us, skip over the less important details. Humans tend to become more proficient at tasks by learning or training ourselves to ignore most of the input we receive, to narrow focus on only that which is relevant to complete a task. Left to their own, computers analyze every piece of information they receive without being able to selectively block out the unimportant stuff. Go to a cocktail party, and without moving your position, follow conversations in different parts of the room. Our brain allows us to amplify certain vocal tones, frequencies and spatial placements, while diminishing others. Now, try to design a machine which can do the same without further human intervention, ---call me 50 years from now when you have it worked out. ;-) Ask anyone who wears hearing aids how annoying it is to have all the sounds in the room amplified, and having lost control over this selective hearing. One of the reasons inkjet printers seem to translate images so well (to our liking) is because they use random dithering techniques. We like sub-threshold noise, and now that I've made enough of my own (noise), I'll end this posting ;-) Art Dave King wrote: Or one can use the simple approach of sharpening grain (or whatever it is:) with no regard to individual image detail. I prefer to look at the grain in an area of no detail in fact, at 100% at the final print size. I've been using 75% at .8 radius, 0 threshold for most things with the Agfa T-2500, and sharpening the original scan once and then again if the image has to be interpolated up considerably for large print sizes. This seems to me to be closest to an analogue
Re: filmscanners: Nikon MF LED light source...
Art wrote: HP does make service manuals for many of their products, but they are very costly. Very few companies want non-professional service providers buying these things, so they make them too expensive to be worthwhile owning if you are only repairing one ofs. This I understand, but disagree with. When I worked for an unnamed manufacturer, our chief engineer insisted that we produce short, concise service manuals to go with the product. If the customer did not choose to do this type of mainainance, we had a staff of (fairly) competent people to fix them. When I bought my lawnmower, for about the same price I paid for my HP 6300C, I got an abreviated manual. I've use my lawnmower for about 8 years now, with the replacement of a few parts and a few I'm 'going' to replace when they start bugging me too much. It still cuts grass. After 18 months, the HP still scans pictures, but leaves a wide row of 'uncut grass' in every picture. You can say that I'm not with it vis a vis complicated electronics (in fact, I think that's what everybody IS saying), but I'm not agreeing. Sorry, but I'd like to be able to fix my machine when it needs it. If I can't, and I can't find anybody who can, I'll definitely look for a different name on the next machine I buy. My Mama didn't raise me me to be a landfill filler. :-| At least I hope not. In a Me or Them contest, 'Them' definitely has the upper hand. But things change. I hope this is one of them. Best regards--LRA From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Nikon MF LED light source... Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 01:01:34 -0700 HP does make service manuals for many of their products, but they are very costly. Very few companies want non-professional service providers buying these things, so they make them too expensive to be worthwhile owning if you are only repairing one ofs. I think there are a mixture of issues involved. One is protecting their designs from the average Joe. Another is protecting the service companies from having just anyone doing their own repairs. Third is limiting liability; some of this stuff is dangerous to work on without proper equipment and or training and knowledge. If they provided Joe six-pack with a manual it would be implying Joe sixpack could safely dismantle and repair the unit without electrocuting themselves or having their hand cut off, or placing a toxic waste spill in their living room. These companies also do not want to sell spare parts to individuals, and many times even the repair shops have to replace large modules because the more detailed service of these modules or rebuilding in only done at factory. Sometimes special tools, rigs, or even computer interfaces are needed to diagnose problems or recalibrate after repair or dismantling. Example: Ensoniq (now owned by Creative) used to make sampling synthesizers. In order to protect their designs, the service depots only got very basic manuals which explained how to replace components like motherboards, or amplifier sections, or keyboards units, and included a specially designed interface which plugged into the expansion port to test the units out. If you found a bad board, you ordered a new (or rebuilt) one, and replaced it, and got credit toward the old one when you turned it in. Art Lynn Allen wrote: tflash wrote: I like the leaf, I'm glad I bought it, but mine has some problems, and the cost for shipping and repair is prohibitive. So I live with it in it's compromised condition. OK, I've seen many posts similar to this in the last few months (even made a few, myself). If it's a given that service and repair are such terrible problems (and believe me, they are), why can't/don't mfgrs make service manuals more available? Hell, they have the specs and the drawings--how much more could it cost to make service manuals? (not much, I can tell you--I've done it). Does anyone on the List know a good source for these? I for one would pay a few dollars (US, and cash ;-) ) for one that detailed the HP 5000-6800 flatbed scanners. I may not be an engineer, but (at least so far) my hands and my brain still work. Which is more than I can say for my warranty and my HP scanner. :-) _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
RE: filmscanners: Nikon MF LED light source...
Surely the bottom line is : if a bit of kit works for you, gets you where you want to get to, that's all that needs to be said. It's not an ego issue. Thank you, Tony. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! :-) --LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: filmscanners: flatbed for contact-sheets
Is that Agfa Arcus, Tomasz, or Argus? I'll be damned--what goes around comes around, even if you change the spelling. :-) Best regards--LRA From: Tomasz Zakrzewski [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: flatbed for contact-sheets Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 21:55:40 +0200 I've just bought Agfa Arcus 1200 flatbed scanner (about $ 800). The scanner will be used for archival scanning of photographs, but I also chose this one because it is able to scan slides with a glassless film holder. And you can make contact-sheets with it. It's transparency area is 8x10. I've already made several contact-sheets from my negatives lying the acetat-sleeves on the glass bed and I must say it works fine. You only have to scan two halves of the sleeve and then combine them in Photoshop. Really no problem. It's dmax is 3,2 and it really shows. No comparison with Epson 1200/1240/1640 as far as noise level and sharpness go. Regards Tomasz Zakrzewski _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
RE: filmscanners: Nikon MF LED light source...
Someone wrote: And none are as good as Contax with Zeiss g Pissing contest. Admittedly funny, but it takes up Tony's bandwidth. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
RE: filmscanners: Nikon MF LED light source...
Austin wrote: I believe, and I could be wrong, that companies are required to provide sufficient documentation for a product such that one can maintain it ones self, of course with sufficient technical skills. I believe that they *should* be, but my HP scanner came with a setup card and an On-Line Manual. You can't find anything in one of those...if you can, you should possibly publish a manual (NOT online) to show how to do it. This isn't just my own opinion, I've read complaints from other doc-writers who say the same thing--you can't find it if you can't name it, and you can't name it if the index sucks. Period. Schematics and exploded drawings? Explanations on how to safely remove and replace parts? How very droll! You could actually put good ones onto the disc--but what use is it if they can't be found? I've said it before, and I'll say it once again--the tech manual can be the most important part of your machine, on any unfortunate day. If it's hidden away in somebody's lab, or in your very own cyber-closet, it isn't worth a damn to you. OK, I've about worn myself out on this one. Does anyone want to know about fishing? :-) Best regards--LRA _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: filmscanners: Nikon MF LED light source...
tflash wrote: I like the leaf, I'm glad I bought it, but mine has some problems, and the cost for shipping and repair is prohibitive. So I live with it in it's compromised condition. OK, I've seen many posts similar to this in the last few months (even made a few, myself). If it's a given that service and repair are such terrible problems (and believe me, they are), why can't/don't mfgrs make service manuals more available? Hell, they have the specs and the drawings--how much more could it cost to make service manuals? (not much, I can tell you--I've done it). Does anyone on the List know a good source for these? I for one would pay a few dollars (US, and cash ;-) ) for one that detailed the HP 5000-6800 flatbed scanners. I may not be an engineer, but (at least so far) my hands and my brain still work. Which is more than I can say for my warranty and my HP scanner. :-) _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: filmscanners: Which Buggy Software?
Rafe wrote: Dan's approach is to go by the numbers (RGB values, or L*a*b values, or CMYK values) rather than the appearance of the image on the screen. So in a way, Dan's approach is quite absolute and mathematical, if followed rigorously. My question in all of this is that if you don't go by The appearance of the image on the screen, how do you know what you're correcting, or how to correct it? When you describe CM as a Black Art, you attribute much more User Friendliness to it than it has, IMHO. ;-) (and yes, I read the book) :-) Best regards--LRA From: rafeb [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Which Buggy Software? Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 22:33:07 -0400 At 07:29 PM 7/15/01 +0100, Tony Sleep wrote: On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 07:14:41 -0400 rafeb ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: And as it turns out, I am a big Dan Margulis fan... hence my rotten attitude about ICC color management, etc. I think, once you start working in the Margulis mode, you're probably spoiled forever from using these fancy profiling and monitor-calibration tools. Just as a matter of interest, how does he accomodate interchange of RGB files with other systems, eg reprographic houses? Lend them your monitor? ;) Nope. Dan's approach is to go by the numbers (RGB values, or L*a*b values, or CMYK values) rather than the appearance of the image on the screen. So in a way, Dan's approach is quite absolute and mathematical, if followed rigorously. I've sent PS 4 files for printing on Lightjet and have never been disappointed by the output. No profiles involved, nor did the lab inquire about profiles, or make recommendations. AFAIK, the lab did not modify the images I sent. Call me lucky, maybe. rafe b. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
