[filmscanners] Re: Slightly OT: Hard Drive Speed
1) small (9-18GB) SCSI disks are close to the price of similar size IDE disks - the SCSI disks are a little faster due to the interface. 2) large (36GB+) SCSI disks are progressively more expensive than similar size IDE disks - but they are usually considerably faster. 3) It's quite cheap to use IDE raid striping (especially if it is a feature of your motherboard and hence almost free) and this will often be cheaper and faster than a single fast SCSI drive. 4) SCSI raid striping whilst more expensive (particularly with larger disks) is faster than IDE raid striping 5) raid striping is less reliable than a single disk of similar size. 6) Even the relative price difference of large SCSI drives to large IDE drives is small when you consider the total system ( computer,monitor,scanner,printer,camera,lenses,other accessories) 7) MAXIMUM disk WRITE performance WILL be acheived if you can dedicate sufficient (enough for one image) system RAM to file cache. eg. 35mm at 4000dpi is approx 110MB so a dedicated 128MB of RAM (£10 Nov2001 -sadly £30 now) for file cache will maximise (provided your not too quick selecting our next op) write performance regardless of whether you have striped 15000rpm SCSI disks or single 5400rpm IDE disk. 7) You will invariably read files more than you write them. I think that covers it ... - it's my only words on the subject regardless. ... you pay your money and make your choice. Steve PS For the record I currently have IDE drives with lots of file cache. I have yet to see acceptably priced SCSI disks of the size I required. - Original Message - From: Moreno Polloni [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 7:06 PM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Slightly OT: Hard Drive Speed Moreno, on my desk right now I have 4 x 18.2 SEALED NEW IBM U-SCSI-3 bought from PCPARTSINC www.pcpartsinc.com who is a legitimate dealer and more over is a Company so Police and FBI can go and inspect whenever they want. Eache of the drives costed 100$ and they NEW + SEALED + UNDER 3 Years warranty worldwide (I am in Italy and I have already used the warranty on an EXPENSIVE 36GB U-SCSI-160 with free substitution) Sometimes the world is dynamically changing and paradigms are not fitting to everything for every situation. I'm not doubting that you can get good deals on surplus drives. IBM makes excellent drives, and if you can get them at a good price, more power to you. The price you paid is not what the typical selling price would be be from your local computer dealer. Here in Canada, a new IBM 18gb 10k U160 drive sells for $350 to $375. For the same amount of money, you can also buy a WD Caviar 100gb 7200 rpm drive. That's more than five times the amount of storage for the same amount of money. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: VueScan 7.5 beta 8 Available
the automatic alignment of the infrared and rgb passes will be released in beta 9 in the next day or so. Hi Ed, I believe similar techniques could be used to improve/enable multi-scanning on units with less than accurate alignment. This would certainly benefit many scanners. Is it practical - do you have the time ? regards, Steve PS Keep up the good work - good product - outstanding customer support. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: JPEG2000
You can try it for yourself here (30 days - $79 to buy) : http://www.luratech.com/products/download/index_e.html#jp2pspi I have some vague recollections of trying it some time ago. Much, much better the JPEG but not anywhere near as good as claimed. Much slower than jpeg during compression. At the time I figured it was notr really that useful until many others were using it - by which time it would be standard in PS,PSP etc. Steve - Original Message - From: Preben S. Kristensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 8:57 PM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: JPEG2000 Has anybody on the list tried the JPEG2000 file compression. Preben Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Video card for imaging
A cheap way to buy a good large monitor is second-hand - nobody wants the 20+ models (at least not in the UK as we mostly have rediculously small houses). I recently had the oppotunity to buy an Eizo Flexscan F78 (21) for £142 (about a 1/10th of retail). Sadly I have nowhere to put one. Steve PS. I like Iiyama montors. - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 18, 2002 4:29 AM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Video card for imaging On Tue, 15 Jan 2002 12:52:13 -0500 Paul Chefurka ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I'm not sure why one would use older cards instead of newer ones, given the probability of support issues as they age further. In addition, the idea of using two PCI slots instead of one AGP slot with a dual-head card just doesn't make intuitive sense to me. I agree! I'm not dissing the G400/450 at all, rather saying that the G200 I use (AGP incidentally) is excellent and extremely sharp at 1600x1200 on a Sony G420 19. They are also dirt cheap *because* they have been replaced by newer cards, so for po' people like me they are a good option because it allows you to spend more on the monitor itself. Which seems to me *the* most crucial part of a dig.imaging system. Trying to work with a poor monitor undermines everything. I had to do this autumn 2000 when my 2 least-worst monitors blew up, and it was alarmingly difficult to get decent results using the piece of junk I borrowed until I could afford a new one. When I look now at scans I did during that period, I often find slight but obviously wayward colour and unspotted crud I just missed because the display was so poor. The G200 was in the system all the time. Everything was calibrated, but still crap. I'd say this to everyone who has reservations about their screen : never mind about fast disks, graphics cards, memory and CPU. All that stuff will just help you make mistakes faster ;) if you don't have a really good quality monitor. Get that first. Being able to see clearly is more of a productivity benefit than umpteen MHz, and it's an accuracy sine qua non. Which also makes one very good monitor much better than two mediocre ones. Less user-friendly, but better for the scan quality. A crummy one would be fine for the tools stuff tho'. If you can afford that, the obvious thing to do is get a G450 or whatever. I will someday, as I have an ancient but OK Amstrad 10 Trinitron. However I just don't have the space. A bigger desk will be the next upgrade :) Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio exhibit; + film scanner info comparisons Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] OT: European CD-R prices may be about to rise
Anyone who is getting short of CD-R's may wish to buy some more now. Obviously longer term. prices may fall but a short term upward blip would seem quite likely. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/23503.html Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Building PCs ... the RAM.
Memory size has the largest single affect on processing speed. To hit the the real comfort zone you need approx: 3 x scan size (16bit 2900dpi 35mm is 60Mb) for PS (and most other image software) = 180MB 64Mb for PS itself 64Mb for Win 9x/ME 128 for 2000/XP scan size + 20Mb for disk cache = 80MB So that's 180+80+64+64=388MB win9x/me or 452Mb 2000/XP. So 512MB would be adequate. The numbers are frightning for 4000dpi 6x9 scans. More will help particularly upto 2x make small improvements. Less will start to impact on performance 256MB would only be usable with 30MB scans. XP would be the preferred operating system but you will need to confirm that everything you buy is XP compatible. If you get Win9x/Me (98SE is the best of these) and more than 512MB then you will need to set a value lower than 512000 for MAXFILECACHE in the vcache section of WIN.INI. Obviously faster memory is better hence rambus/ddr preferred, PC133 is ok but not with PIV. Price/performance wise DDR with Athlon is probably best. In memory bandwidth tests DDR is much faster than PC133 but in most tests with real programs most of the advantage is lost (due to PC133 benefitting more from caching) and only around 5% is generally seen. For memory type and processor choice see: http://www.xbitlabs.com/cpu/photoshop-platform/ Clearly faster CPU's are better but only proportional to 70% of clock speed. So a 2Ghz PIV is not 33% faster than 1.5GHz but around 20-25% faster. Remember you have to pay a hell of a lot for the fastest - particularly PIV - for not much extra gain over 5-10% slower CPU. It's better to spend the money elsewhere. I would say disk speed is next important to memory size. SCSI best but very expensive, followed by IDE RAID, but with a large cache a decent sized 7200rpm disk would be adequate - particularly for files 60Mb or less. No matter how big your hard drive you will need somewhere to archive scans CD-Writers are cheapest and most universally compatible. DVD's hold more. The bigger the monitor the more of a scan you will be able to see. If you have the space but can't afford a 25/21 monitor you can often pick these up very cheap second hand as no one wants them (obviously buy with care). For smaller sizes only consider new as you get a 3-year warranty and there isn't much of a saving second hand. You need a graphics card appropriate for your monitor (resolution and refresh). Matrox are generally well liked for this sort of work, I prefer the Nvidia Geforce range as they are great for games and not much worse for 2d work. You may wish to consider a dual monitor graphics card allowing you to display the picture full screen on the large monitor and use a smaller monitor for the tool pallettes and perhaps another background process. This is possible with some matrox cards and I believe also with some Geforce 2MX cards. Steve - Original Message - From: Dave King [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 6:00 AM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Building PCs ... the RAM. Please keep this topic on list! It's of very high relevance IMHO, and those who say not can just skip this thread. Fair enough? Thanks, Dave King - Original Message - From: Ezio c/o TIN [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 11:35 PM Subject: [filmscanners] Building PCs ... the RAM. Please, some good soul can explain to me ... why I should buy expensive DDR RAM in huge quantity (mass RAM is going to be 512MB or 1GB ... on my system very soon) ... when the bandwidth of MEMORY BUS is always the same e.g. on Asus A7V266 = 2.1GB/s ??? This bandwidth is not saturated by any type of currently available memory and I strongly doubt the system is going to use all of it ... so why to pay the difference ? Just a matter of having a learning attitude :o) ... P.S.: please send answers OFF LIST ... not to bother the colleagues / friends. Sincerely. Ezio www.lucenti.com e-photography site ICQ: 139507382 Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Video card for imaging
I have yet to be convinced that a LCD can match a decent CRT for image processing work (or fast moving games). The imaging expert at Tom's Hardware agrees: Graphic artists shouldn't even consider picking up one of these gadgets Full review: http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/02q1/020114/index.html Conclusion CRT v LCD here for those who can't be bothered to read the rest: http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/02q1/020114/lcd-26.html Steve PS As the 2nd output in a dual head system it would be OK if you could arrange a suitable viewing angle. - Original Message - From: Dan Honemann [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 7:09 PM Subject: [filmscanners] RE: Video card for imaging Paul, How nice to see a familiar face here in the filmscanners list. It's been awhile for me, but I'm at the wrong end of a rather steep and ominous learning curve with my brand-spanking new SS 4000 (the slide holder for which I am now considering storing in a safe-deposit box), VueScan version ___ [updated hourly, or so it seems--thank you, Ed], and Photoshop. Trying to make this trek on an old Dell Inspiron 3500 maxed out at 256 MB of RAM and using a pretty shabby 15 LCD is hardly helping. I need some new hardware, pronto. I'll check out the Matrox cards, for sure--especially if I build my own box. Gateway has a pretty good deal going with its X700, and the new 18.1 flat panel is supposedly quite usable for imaging--but they bundle it with an ATI card; if there's any interest, you can read some user comments here: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019message=2034766 Dan Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
filmscanners: Filmscanners: OT: E-mail virus
I've noticed several e-mails about viruses on this e-mail list non of which I seem to have received. On further investigation I have discovered that my service provider Freeserve (cheap almost cheerful) will not allow dodgy attachments such as *.exe or *.vbs they just bounce. Harmless files such as jpg can be attached as normal. They do not advertise this point probably for fear of a breach of security but the policy clearly exists. eg. This is what happens if you attach something.vbs : A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. The following address(es) failed: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: This message has been rejected because it has an apparently executable attachment SM1.VBS This is a virus prevention measure. If you meant to send this file then please package it up as a zip file and resend it. This strikes me as rather sensible all round. It's not in the interests of the users or service providers to have viruses generating large volumes of traffic, using zip tends to make users think twice about opening the file and will at least prevent automatic propagation. Much as I am against the idea of a net nanny this seems to be a very sensible idea - forcing the use of a zip file will usually reduce the bandwidth requirement too. Perhaps we should all suggest to our service providers that they should impliment a similar scheme. Steve
Re: filmscanners: Re: LS8000 Banding Question
It's probably the usual problem of someone (or several people) quite influential in the organisation either not understanding the full implications of the issue or not wanting to admit they screwed up. Therefore they are not prepared to find the resource (ultimately money) to fix it. They will often pretend it doesn't exist. The argument usually goes We sell lots of units with few returns, so what's the problem. Typical short term profit view. Steve - Original Message - From: Lawrence Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: filmscanners halftone.co.uk [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2001 5:52 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Re: LS8000 Banding Question I hate to say it this way, but that is just SO pathetic! From what I understand, fixing it would require a firmware modification to both calibrate three lines instead of one, and then to use three calibration lines instead of one. Having written a LOT of embedded firmware, and designed a few scanners, I just can't imagine what their problem is. My only guess is there is something else that prohibits them from fixing it...what, I don't know... Did they happen to mention WHY they won't fix it? Austin, I was never able to get a straight answer from them. Big surprise ;-0 Seemed pretty lame to me too... Lawrence -- Lawrence W. Smith Photography http://www.lwsphoto.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] --
Re: filmscanners: Best solution for HD and images
MTBF of a RAID-0 system (or dual cpu/memory where one unit CAN NOT continue without the other) will always be lower than a single drive unless the standard deviation (they never quote SD) of the MTBF is zero. i.e they all fail simultaneously at MTBF and none before - pretty unlikely I think. Neither will the MTBF be halfed unless 1/2 the devices fail immediately and the other half last exactly 2x MTBF. The reality for MTBF of a RAID-0 will lie in between. MTBF is not really of great use for our puposes. Disk drive MTBF these days are quoted at about 250,000+ hours (28 years continouous use)! I certainly have my doubts about these accelerated testing methods. But whatever happens to MTBF for multiple inter-dependant drives will be pretty irrelevant for the lifetime of our usage of the device. Cummalative failure rate is a much more useful figure for us and for a small number of fairly reliable inter-dependant devices this is nearly an additive figure - but not quite. Seagate reckon about 3.41% (flat-line model) will fail during the first 5 years of use (assuming you only use it for 2400 hours a year [6 1/2 hours a day]) : http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/newsinfo/disc/drive_reliability.pdf To calculate the failure rate for multiple inter-dependant devices you need to find the product of the survival rate and subtract it from 1. eg. Survival rate for 5 years is 100%-3.41% = 96.59% = 0.9659 So : 2 drives in raid-0 configuration running for 5 years 1-(0.9659*0.9659) = 0.06006975 = 6.0% - note this is not quite double. 3 drives in raid-0 configuration running for 5 years 1-(0.9659*0.965*0.9659) = 0.088737622625 = 8.9% - even further from triple Long before 5 years (AA excluded of course - has he got bored and gone to irritate other mailing lists?) you will probably want bigger and better storage . You can calculate figures for different expected usage yourself. Other manufacturers and probably other seagate product ranges will vary. Steve PS. Call me picky, but I notice that Seagate's actual warranty failure rate exceeds or equals their so-called conservative flat-line model. The author should seriously consider becoming a politician :-) - Original Message - From: Austin Franklin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 11:05 PM Subject: RE: filmscanners: Best solution for HD and images Seems like you have done everything and also know everything. Not everything, but having been an engineer for 25 years, I have done many projects including digital imaging systems, and SCSI systems... What I do know, I know, and what I don't know, I know I don't know. I don't just make things up. I don't know how your company (or you) determined MTBF of a RAID0 system but most companies as Compaq, IBM, Sun, Adaptec, etc. say that MTBF will decrease. There is only one article I have seen that says this, and I have had discussions with the authors about this. Do you have any reference to articles/spec sheets that make this claim? Interestingly enough, MTBF does not derate for adding a second CPU or for adding more memory to the system... Exactly because of the reduced MTBF of a system with multiple HDs Berkeley has suggested the RAID system. Is this study published anywhere? If so, I'd like to see it. The RAID system is supposed to relax the impact of the reduced MTBF. That doesn't mean the MTBF becomes higher when a RAID system is deployed but it just makes it more likely that the failure can be repaired. Failure recovery is entirely different from MTBF. I see though where your (company's) calculation might come from. The company was Digital, BTW. We had an entire department devoted to MTBF testing...and specifically to storage MTBF assessment. You can determine MTBF for a certain device by testing for example 1 drives for 1000 hours and then divide the total of 1*1000 hours by the number of failures. That's not really how you determine MTBF. MTBF is an average. You are right, you need a large sample to test though. Nevertheless, this calculation doesn't apply to RAID as a RAID system has to be considered as a single identity. Exactly, and that is why you don't get any decrease in MTBF by adding drives. It's really simple. So you cannot claim that because you have 10 HDs your RAID system is working 10*1=10 hours in each single hour. Your RAID system is ONE identity and therefore is working only 1 hours each hour it is up. Therefore the MTBF decreases. Why does the MTBF decrease? You have a magical therefore that doesn't follow. If you tested 1000 drives by themselves, and you got an MTBF of 1,000,000 hours, let's say...take those 1000 drives, and make 500 RAID 0 systems, and your MTBF will NOT decrease notably, if at all, from drive failure. It may from other factors like power supply or thermal, but not from drive failure.
Re: filmscanners: RE: filmscanners: Best solution for HD and images
- Original Message - From: Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2001 10:53 PM Subject: filmscanners: RE: filmscanners: Best solution for HD and images IMO the higher RAID types are fine for servers, but not worth the hassle for home use. I think for home/SOHO use with film scanning, go for striping to get the speed and if you're worried about security, get a tape drive for backup. I would agree this would seem to be the best solution for PS temporary files and image scans that have the original film as backup. Also consider that striping doubles your chances of losing your data (EITHER drive failing will lose ALL your data). Data access times are roughly the same as a single drive it is only the transfer rate that doubles (the most important bit for large data transfers like film scans). With some mirrored controllers only writing is slower. Read operations can be striped if the hardware/software implementation is clever enough. On average you read files more often than you write so with a smart controller you get very slightly slower writes, but almost double the transfer rates during reads. Steve
Re: filmscanners: creating correction curves from scanned calibration chart?
- Original Message - From: Ned Nurk [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2001 11:36 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: creating correction curves from scanned calibration chart? From: John Brownlow [EMAIL PROTECTED] this is nuts. loads of people, me included, edit by the numbers. The whole point of an ICM profile is so that the same RGB values display the same on different profiled devices. Sorry to tell you, but you are *so* wrong. RGB values mean diddly squat. They are just a measurement of the amount of current in a scanner ccd or the output voltage of a video card. The ICM profile provides a description of the transfers that are required to turn the RGB values into proper colimetric tristimulus values (i.e. XYZ). That then enables transfers between colour spaces to happen. (extreme example) You could have a scanner that mapped mid grey at 20,20,20 and a monitor that mapped it at 230,230,230. The ICM Profile describes this and allows colour management systems to convert from one colour space to another, and the RGB (device-dependant) values change accordingly, depending on which space you are in, but the device-independant colour space values (XYZ, LAB, X'Y'Z' etc) would not change. Incidentally, 18% grey means that the card REFLECTS 18% of the light. So it is a relative grey (relative to 100% reflectance of the incident light). Not to 'pure' white, whatever that may be. It all gets majorly complex when talking about scanning film, as the CCDs are only registering a value that they see between their black and white points. The first problem with doing all of this is 'has the film been processed exactly the same way as the one the profile was generated from' and 'is the exposure totally spot on? The answer to both of them is generally no :-) _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp Surely for each colour space there is a particular value for each representable colour of that colour space. When you look at the values in PS they have a precise translation to a particular colour. Quite what their equivalent values would be for your monitor, printer or scanner is irrelevant as that is the whole point of using an ICM profile for each device - you don't need to know. You get your data from the scanner and the profile is used to convert to your working space. The data in you working space is converted by the monitor profile so that you see the correct colour for the correct RGB values of the working space. Similarly the printer profile is used to covert from the working space so that the correct colour is produced on your printer. Sadly in practice profile conversions can never be entirely accurate as each device can only represent a particular set of colours. Hence you should use a colour space with a wide gamut for editting. This gives you the best chance of least inaccurate colour reproduction on each device. Steve
filmscanners: Filmscanners: OT: Pricing
Appologies for the off-topic post, but I have no idea who else to ask. On seeing one of my stitched panoramic images, the marketting manager at a local (expensive) Hotel has asked for a quote for a shot to show a panoramic shot of their conference centre and lake to use in postcards. Being a computer professional by trade I have no idea what I should charge for photography. I'm in the SE of the UK. regards Steve
Re: filmscanners: Where to buy a scanner
I bought my AS4000 from digital first as they included Silverfast Ai which at the time was only rumoured to be bundled with the scanner at some point in the future. For an extra 10% I also got an extra 2-year warranty. I also see that they are now including a version of Silverfast (don't know which) with the Nikon - although I personally prefer Vuerscan. Unfortunately they are also asking for £590. When I bought my AS4000 they were cheapest and included Silverfast :-) Steve - Original Message - From: Håkon T Sønderland [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 1:28 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Where to buy a scanner Mark Otway wrote: Right, having decided that price and performance-wise, the Nikon Coolscan IV is the scanner for me, here's another good question. Bearing in mind I'm in the UK, where's the cheapest place to buy it from? So far I've found Dabs Direct (www.dabs.com) who are doing the Nikon for £499 + VAT, and Jessops (www.jessops.com) who are surprisingly competitve (£599 including VAT). Given that Jessops have a price-match policy, are only a tenner more expensive anyway, and have the Nikon in stock in the shop that's 500 yards from the office I'm in right now, I'm very tempted to go with them - if only because if I have any problems, I can take the scanner straight back there and get support or a replacement. I've got a handful of cash and am looking forward to going to the shop and spending it on a new toy. The question is, are there any other web-based shops which are doing the coolscan any cheaper? A quick google revealed these, there may be more if you care to search further down the list: http://www.google.com/search?q=Nikon+coolscan+IV++site:co.ukhl=enas_qdr=al lstart=0sa=N http://www.ishop.co.uk/ishop/751/shopscr753.html http://www.digitalfirst.co.uk/WS/scanners.html Haakon
Re: filmscanners: Lossless JPEG's? was Hello
You have to close and re-open the JPEG (quality 12) otherwise you won't see the effect of the JPEG compression as PS maintains the pre-save data. If you do try to save/close/re-open JPEG12 and do a difference with the original PSD/BMP/TIF you will find there is a difference. Individual primary colour channels can easily be affected by 10% in darker areas. I tried several images and then the coloured squares section in the middle of a Q60 and found that the Green channel was always least affected by a significant amount and the Blue channel was always affected the most by a significant amount. No idea if this is a deliberate design feature. Steve - Original Message - From: Bill Fernandez [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2001 5:08 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Lossless JPEG's? was Hello G'day Mark-- Phil Lippincot recently posted about the existence of lossless JPEG and is the one who first mentioned that quality level 12 in Photoshop 6 invokes JPEG's lossless mode. He produces drum scanner software and says his software supports lossless JPEG as a way of making those huge scans a bit more manageable with no image degradation. Phil suggests that you can prove it to yourself my saving an image in both uncompressed TIFF and JPEG quality 12 (in Photoshop), then re-opening both files, then merging them into one file with two layers, then setting the blend mode to difference. JPEG LS is part of the next-generation JPEG standard and it's not clear whether it's been finalized or not. --Bill At 10:55 PM +0930 21-10-01, Mark T. wrote: At 04:06 AM 21/10/01 -0600, Bill wrote: ... o The JPEG standard includes a lossless setting. Photoshop 6 supports it: set the quality level to 12. it will compress to, say, 1/3 of the original size. JPEG only supports 24-bit images. G'day Bill. I had never heard of a lossless JPG, so I checked the JPEG FAQ, which basically says that there *was* an early version of a lossless JPEG, but it never took off. They also referred to a new standard called JPEG-LS - is this what you meant? I couldn't see anything about it in the PS Help file, but I only took a quick look. I would be most interested if PS6 really does supprt a lossless JPG.. As far as I knew, the main players were/are: TIFF - 48-bit, lossless, large files TIFF with LZ compression - As above but files can be much smaller (esp if image is not grainy or detailed), eg typically 1/2 to 1/5 original size JPEG - 24-bit, lossy but adjustable. File sizes often less than 1/5 of the uncompressed TIFF (depending on quality setting and image content) PNG - 24-bit, lossless. File sizes usually a bit smaller than compressed TIFF, but not as small as JPEG. (PNG's are also readable by most browsers, which makes them useful for 'critical' web-display.) FWIW, I always use TIFF without compression if in any doubt (I have had quite a few problems with lack of portability of LZ'd TIFs), and I am now moving over to PNG's for my own file storage in order to save CD space. The lack of 48-bit quality hasn't yet been an issue for me.. mt -- == Bill Fernandez * User Interface Architect * Bill Fernandez Design (505) 346-3080 * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * http://billfernandez.com ==
Re: filmscanners: OT: Monitor Purchase
Personally I like Iiyama (pronounced eee-yama) monitors. Yet to see a bad one (or even merely average) and they have a 3 -year (usually 24 hour) swapout policy in the UK. At any particular price point IMHO there's rarely anything significantly better. I don't see what the big problem with the lines with AG - they are not always visible depending on what you are viewing. Steve - Original Message - From: Lloyd O'Daniel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 11:20 AM Subject: filmscanners: OT: Monitor Purchase I'm thinking of buying a 19 monitor to go along with an aging 17 Panasonic in a 2 monitor setup. The Panasonic would be demoted to the #2 pallette display for Pshop. I've read recently on West Coast Imaging's website that Aperture Grille displays have been the preferred choice for imaging. I understand that Shadow Mask monitors are better for text. WCI mentions problems with cloning on SM monitors. What sort of problems? My Panaflat is a shadow mask monitor, but has developed an intermittent glitch. I don't particularly like AG wire lines on the screen (had that on an old NEC 4FG). Also, because of the chance of getting a lemon, I would like to buy locally (means CompUSA). The choice of AG monitors there is limited. I think the only one is the Viewsonic PF790. They have an Envisions SM monitor with really good specs for $250 through tommorrow. (Of course, I want to see it first.) My experience with monitors in general (and I've bought in the $600-800 range previously) is that they die in 3-4 years anyway, which discourages me from paying a premium. How much of a difference is there between AG and SM monitors for Photoshop work? This new one will be specifically for Photoshop. I don't want to cut corners that I'll miss, but I don't want to blow money either. Any comments on the Viewsonic PF790? If I have to mail-order, I'm leaning toward getting the Lacie Electron Blue III 19. I understand Lacie is offering free shipping for $399. My thinking is that, since their market is imaging professionals, they will have better QC and a friendlier exchange policy should I get a clunker. Any advice will be greatly appreciated... Lloyd O'Daniel
Re: filmscanners: Laptop configuration
Presumably you mean USB is 12Mbits per second. Whilst this is much slower than firewire or ultra wide SCSI (I think scanners only use slower versions) the impact is not that great in the grand scheme where focussing, positioning and actual scanning are not too fast. Yes, there is a difference, but is nowhere near the difference of the interface capability. Steve - Original Message - From: Tom A. Trottier [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 1:31 AM Subject: RE: filmscanners: Laptop configuration USB is limited to 11 Mb. You'd be better with 1394/firewire or ultra wide SCSI. Tom On Wednesday, October 17, 2001 at 17:54, Hemingway, David J [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on RE: filmscanners: Laptop configuration, saying.. You can purchase a Eiger PCMCIA SCSI card on Ebay for less than $40 David -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 7:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: Laptop configuration The LS40 isn't 4000dpi though. Resolution matters! [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mark Otway) wrote: All the alternatives to the SS4000 are so much more expensive that you would save quite a bit by buying that PCMCIA SCSI card and an SS4000. Out of interest, how does the Nikon LS40 compare to the SS4000? There's a company in the UK from which I can get the Nikon for £499 (ex vat), and I wouldn't have to worry about SCSI, as it supports USB. And, of course, I'd get a full UK warranty. Mark --- Abacurial Information Management Consultants --- Tom A. Trottier, President http://abacurial.com 758 Albert St, Ottawa ON Canada K1R 7V8 N45.412 W75.714 +1 613 860-6633 fax:231-6115 ICQ:57647974 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin
Re: filmscanners: Computer System Recommendations
Memory has the largest affect on processing speed. To hit the the real comfort zone you need approx: 3 x scan size (16bit 4000dpi 35mm is 110Mb) for PS (and most other image software) = 330MB 64Mb for PS itself 64Mb for Win 9x/ME 128 for 2000/XP scan size + 20Mb for disk cache = 130MB So that's 330+130+64+64=588MB win9x/me or 642Mb 2000/XP. Upto 50% more will make small improvements. A little less isn't too bad (I use 512MB on 98SE and it's not much of a bottleneck). 50% less will start to be irritatingly slow. Currently memory is cheap so I would personally get 768MB to allow for bigger file cache. With 768Mb you will need to set a value lower than 512000 for MAXFILECACHE in the vcache section of WIN.INI if you are using Win 9x/ME. Personally, on win 9x/ME with 768MB, I'd set MINFILECACHE and MAXFILECACHE to the same value and try 13 (1 16bit image + a bit cached) and 23 (2 images cached) and see which worked best. Obviously faster memory is better hence rambus/ddr preferred, PC133 is ok but not with PIV. Pricewise DDR with Athlon is probably best. I would say disk speed is next important. SCSI best but very expensive, followed by IDE RAID, but with a large cache a decent sized 7200rpm disk would be adequate. Clearly faster CPU's are better but only proportional to 70% of clock speed. So a 2Ghz PIV is not 33% faster than 1.5GHz but around 20-25% faster - costs hell of a lot more though. Also remember that 1.4GHz Athlon is generally significantly faster than 1.4GHz PIV. No matter how big your hard drive you will need somewhere to archive scans CD-Writers are cheapest and most universally compatible. DVD's hold more. The bigger the monitor the more of a scan you will be able to see. You need a graphics card appropriate for your monitor (resolution and refresh). Matrox are generally well liked for this sort of work, I prefer the Nvidia Geforce as they are great for games. You may wish to consider a dual monitor graphics card allowing you to display the picture full screen on the large monitor and use a smaller monitor for the tool pallettes and perhaps another background process. This is possible with the matrox not sure if the Geforce 2MX driver is quite so clever, any body know? Steve - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2001 12:14 PM Subject: filmscanners: Computer System Recommendations Looking to upgrade our current system and would appreciate specifications from the list. Need typical PC based business machine (Microsoft Products) and the strongest possible system to support our scanning and photography habit. Would greatly appreciate input on specifications. Will use Polaroid Sprintscan 4000, Epson 1280, Photoshop, and Silverfast for photo based work. Thanks in advance. Glenn
filmscanners: Gold CD-R's
I know from past comments some of you have a strong preference for Gold CD-R's. Well I just happened across this: http://www.tssphoto.com/sp/dg/cd/kodak_audio.html Expensive for CD-R's but still pretty cheap archive storage. Steve
Re: filmscanners: NIKON LS 4000 AND D1X
- Original Message - From: Robert Meier [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 5:47 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: NIKON LS 4000 AND D1X Or another way to look at it is that you just crop the inner part of a 35mm frame. In other words, you are using just parts of what your 35mm lens covers. That means you have lots of glass (the area increases with the square of the radius) that you waste. But you do have the advantage that the centre is invariably sharper, often much sharper, than the edge. Steve
Re: filmscanners: NIKON LS 4000 AND D1X
- Original Message - From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 6:26 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: NIKON LS 4000 AND D1X - Original Message - From: Robert Meier [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 5:47 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: NIKON LS 4000 AND D1X Or another way to look at it is that you just crop the inner part of a 35mm frame. In other words, you are using just parts of what your 35mm lens covers. That means you have lots of glass (the area increases with the square of the radius) that you waste. But you do have the advantage that the centre is invariably sharper, often much sharper, than the edge. Steve I forgot any nasty lens distortion is usually concentrated at the edges. Steve
Re: filmscanners: Scanner Noise (from Dust in Sprintscan 4000?)
The Mac World review on the web: http://www.macworld.com/2001/10/reviews/filmscanners.html gives a rather confusing answer in that at first it says the Nikon lives up to it's claimed higher dMax only when 16x multiscan is enabled. This certainly gives the impression that at 16x multiscan it performs to higher specification and hence pulls more detail from the shadow. It then goes onto say the Polaroid does better which is either a contradiction of the first statement or refers to when all the scanners are used in single pass mode. I do admit that I don't really know the answer and should have used maybe instead of probably. I do know that unless the SS4000 is totally noise free (it's good but not that good) that multiscanning (with accurate alignment) will definitely produce less noise. I fail to see why accurate alignment should be a problem if the multiscanning is done during a single pass. I am also surprised that the SS4000 firmware (or more importantly from my point of view Artixscan 4000) cannot be updated to allow it. Surely it is not too difficult to issue multiple CCD reads before advancing the film and hence avoid any possibility of misalignment? On the software front it would be possible to post scan align the images - panorama stitching programs manage this most of the time. Some even when the images being stitched have been taken without a tripod never mind an accurately set-up panoramic head. A further point on the software is that fewer multiscans could be used if the processing was a bit smarter. Rather than using a simple averaging algorithm the use of a median algorithm would produce better results with fewer scans. Whilst medians are slow and memory hogs it may be quicker than extra scans. One particularly interesting thing about the MacWorld review was that the Artixscan had most detail but lots of noise and the Polaroid was relatively noise free with less detail. As these two machines are effectively the same it is the scanning software (and possibly the firmware) that produces difference between them. I am not surprised that Artixscan produced great detail but lots of noise with Scan Wizard Pro. See: http://www.greenbank.themutual.net/artixscan4000_noise.htm These are samples of a Velvia slide. It projects great but is a complete pig to scan due to the density in some areas of the image. In the samples on the web a small section from the bottom right of the slide are shown. The scans were all done with the software's default automatic settings. Scan Wizard Pro produces great detail but the scan is useless due to noise. Silverfast produces slightly less detail but significantly less noise. Unfortunately still too much noise for anything but a very small print. Vuescan sacrifices some detail but produces a much more usable image due to the lack of noise - print size not limited by noise. In later tests I found that I could get more detail from Vuescan without too much difficulty and without too much noise. I never managed to eliminate sufficient noise from either Silverfast or Scan Wizard Pro to make a usable scan. Possibly operator error, but if it is then the software is too difficult to use! Steve - Original Message - From: Hemingway, David J [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 8:31 PM Subject: RE: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? Steve, I need to strongly disagree with the below statement. I would refer you to the review by Bruce Fraser in MacWorld of about a year and half ago as well as the recent review. Both reviews say the maximum OD from the SS4000 available with a single pass are at least as good as the other scanners with 16X multiscan. Additionally as Ed Hamrick developed the SS4000 driver, he has said that there is very little if any improvement with multiscanning on the SS4000. This is because of superior components and design. If there is little or no noise you don't have to multi-scan to get rid of it. One of my personal disappointments has been the increased perception that multi-scanning is good. Multiscannng is used to remove noise. If the design does not produce noise you don't need to multiscan. You will eventually see multiscanning in Polaroid scanners, not necessarily to produce better scans but to satisfy this misconceived impression. Many people purchase equipment of all types by comparing published specifications. Particularly when dealing with scanners you can be very mis-informed. Regards David -Original Message- From: Steve Greenbank [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 11:05 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? It is possible to multi-scan with the Polaroid if you use Vuescan. But the scans invariably mis-align so the feature isn't much use. This will probably give the Nikon a slight edge for shadow noise. Steve - Original Message - From: Barbara Martin Greene [EMAIL PROTECTED
Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000?
Rick Samco compared these two scanners here: http://www.samcos.com/rick/equip/scannertest/ssvsed.htm Up until I saw this I was quite keen to trade my Artixscan 4000T (SS4000 clone) for a Nikon largely for ICE. After all de-spotting is a nightmare except on very clean images. I have yet to find any thing other than a clone tool that removes the dust spots from my A4000T scans. I have discovered however that by not looking at your images at all before scanning (I use slides) you can minimise the de-spotting to about 5 minutes max. Obviously this isn't much good for old slides. I have some family slides ([not] cared for by my Dad) which it would take many hours to clean up. I only have a 17 monitor and have to look at about 40 screen fulls to check one image for dust spots, but if you have a huge monitor this is probably much easier. On examining Rick's samples I decided that the Nikon seemed to have very slightly better sharpness and detail but turning on the ICE made it very slightly worse. This was reasonably acceptable, but the Nikon seems to also produce very grainy scans and the only cure is GEM which softens images quite badly. I have quite enough trouble with grain so I decided to stick with the A4000T. Steve - Original Message - From: Barbara Martin Greene [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 1:41 PM Subject: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? I've been told that the Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 does not exaggerate dust and crud to the same extent that the Nikon LS 4000 does. I've examined Photo CD scans and found that, while there is much less, nevertheless a good deal of spots show up. Perhaps, dust is a problem in every scanner. I'd appreciate if users of the Sprintscan would tell me just how much stuff shows up in their slide scans. With a reasonably clean slide, just how much work has to be done using the rubber stamp in Photoshop to get a really clean 13 x 19 print? Also, if you use a dust removal software program, such as Polacolor, Silverfast, or vuescan, how helpful is that? If such a program is used, to what extent does it soften the image and can that be restored using unsharp mask. Martin
Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000?
There does seem to be a problem with the original page I posted (it used to have some buttons at the top I think). Anyway look at this direct reference (it's several MB). http://www.samcos.com/rick/equip/scannertest/sky_shadow_grain.htm You can also see the more distinct dust on the Nikon. Steve - Original Message - From: Barbara Martin Greene [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 11:18 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? Rick From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 16:40:03 +0100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? Rick Samco compared these two scanners here: http://www.samcos.com/rick/equip/scannertest/ssvsed.htm Up until I saw this I was quite keen to trade my Artixscan 4000T (SS4000 clone) for a Nikon largely for ICE. After all de-spotting is a nightmare except on very clean images. I have yet to find any thing other than a clone tool that removes the dust spots from my A4000T scans. I have discovered however that by not looking at your images at all before scanning (I use slides) you can minimise the de-spotting to about 5 minutes max. Obviously this isn't much good for old slides. I have some family slides ([not] cared for by my Dad) which it would take many hours to clean up. I only have a 17 monitor and have to look at about 40 screen fulls to check one image for dust spots, but if you have a huge monitor this is probably much easier. I use a nineteen inch monitor and in Photoshop I use the 'Print' and 'Actual Pixels' views which lead to every spot showing up looking like a pebble. While it makes it easier to find the junk, it leads to my seeing lots more of it. On examining Rick's samples I decided that the Nikon seemed to have very slightly better sharpness and detail but turning on the ICE made it very slightly worse. This was reasonably acceptable, but the Nikon seems to also produce very grainy scans and the only cure is GEM which softens images quite badly. I have quite enough trouble with grain so I decided to stick with the A4000T. I think it is possible to compensate for the softening by through careful adjustment of Unsharp Mask Filter. I'd really appreciate information on how you arrived at the conclusion that the, The Nikon seems to also produce very grainy scans. Grainy in comparison to what? Thanks, Martin Steve - Original Message - From: Barbara Martin Greene [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 1:41 PM Subject: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? I've been told that the Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 does not exaggerate dust and crud to the same extent that the Nikon LS 4000 does. I've examined Photo CD scans and found that, while there is much less, nevertheless a good deal of spots show up. Perhaps, dust is a problem in every scanner. I'd appreciate if users of the Sprintscan would tell me just how much stuff shows up in their slide scans. With a reasonably clean slide, just how much work has to be done using the rubber stamp in Photoshop to get a really clean 13 x 19 print? Also, if you use a dust removal software program, such as Polacolor, Silverfast, or vuescan, how helpful is that? If such a program is used, to what extent does it soften the image and can that be restored using unsharp mask. Martin
Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000?
I find that if I resist looking at my slides until I have found time to scan them then there is very little dust on them. Obviously doesn't help with your current slide collection. Also keep the scanner covered when not in use and as Roger Miller suggested if you only use one slide in the holder at a time there are non waiting outside the scanner collecting dust. It's a bit of a pain to work like this - but is better than lengthy de-spotting. Steve - Original Message - From: Barbara Martin Greene [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 3:00 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? Steve Thanks for sending the link. As the old saying goes, A picture is worth a thousand words. I can see very clearly what you meant. Looking at these images, dust on the Nikon is more extensive and intensive. Also, the grain does seem more exaggerated and there is a lot more 'noise' or some kind of breakdown of the pixels. The shadow detail is much better on the Polaroid. This has been most helpful, and, like you, I'm feeling that the Polaroid does a better job, making it the scanner of choice even without the marvels of ICE. By the way, exactly what do you mean by, I have discovered however that by not looking at your images at all before scanning (I use slides) you can minimise the de-spotting to about 5 minutes max.? Martin From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 02:23:40 +0100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? There does seem to be a problem with the original page I posted (it used to have some buttons at the top I think). Anyway look at this direct reference (it's several MB). http://www.samcos.com/rick/equip/scannertest/sky_shadow_grain.htm You can also see the more distinct dust on the Nikon. Steve - Original Message - From: Barbara Martin Greene [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 11:18 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? Rick From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 16:40:03 +0100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? Rick Samco compared these two scanners here: http://www.samcos.com/rick/equip/scannertest/ssvsed.htm Up until I saw this I was quite keen to trade my Artixscan 4000T (SS4000 clone) for a Nikon largely for ICE. After all de-spotting is a nightmare except on very clean images. I have yet to find any thing other than a clone tool that removes the dust spots from my A4000T scans. I have discovered however that by not looking at your images at all before scanning (I use slides) you can minimise the de-spotting to about 5 minutes max. Obviously this isn't much good for old slides. I have some family slides ([not] cared for by my Dad) which it would take many hours to clean up. I only have a 17 monitor and have to look at about 40 screen fulls to check one image for dust spots, but if you have a huge monitor this is probably much easier. I use a nineteen inch monitor and in Photoshop I use the 'Print' and 'Actual Pixels' views which lead to every spot showing up looking like a pebble. While it makes it easier to find the junk, it leads to my seeing lots more of it. On examining Rick's samples I decided that the Nikon seemed to have very slightly better sharpness and detail but turning on the ICE made it very slightly worse. This was reasonably acceptable, but the Nikon seems to also produce very grainy scans and the only cure is GEM which softens images quite badly. I have quite enough trouble with grain so I decided to stick with the A4000T. I think it is possible to compensate for the softening by through careful adjustment of Unsharp Mask Filter. I'd really appreciate information on how you arrived at the conclusion that the, The Nikon seems to also produce very grainy scans. Grainy in comparison to what? Thanks, Martin Steve - Original Message - From: Barbara Martin Greene [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 1:41 PM Subject: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? I've been told that the Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 does not exaggerate dust and crud to the same extent that the Nikon LS 4000 does. I've examined Photo CD scans and found that, while there is much less, nevertheless a good deal of spots show up. Perhaps, dust is a problem in every scanner. I'd appreciate if users of the Sprintscan would tell me just how much stuff shows up in their slide scans. With a reasonably clean slide, just how much work has to be done using the rubber stamp in Photoshop to get a really clean 13 x 19 print? Also, if you use a dust removal software program
Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000?
It is possible to multi-scan with the Polaroid if you use Vuescan. But the scans invariably mis-align so the feature isn't much use. This will probably give the Nikon a slight edge for shadow noise. Steve - Original Message - From: Barbara Martin Greene [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 3:22 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? Steve There is one factor that I hadn't considered. The Nikon scanner gives the best shadow detail when 16x Multi-sampling. While this greatly lengthens scanning time, there is no question that it gives better results than 1x, which is what was used in the comparison test. Also, it is mentioned that, ED4000 4X multi-sampled images have much less shadow noise than images from the SS400. That makes me wonder what the comparison results would have been had 16X multi-sampling been used? I'm not sure, but it's my impression that the Polaroid does not do mullti-sampling. Is that so? Thus on the basis of this comparison, one can't say that the Polaroid has better shadow detail than the Nikon. Martin From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 02:23:40 +0100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? There does seem to be a problem with the original page I posted (it used to have some buttons at the top I think). Anyway look at this direct reference (it's several MB). http://www.samcos.com/rick/equip/scannertest/sky_shadow_grain.htm You can also see the more distinct dust on the Nikon. Steve - Original Message - From: Barbara Martin Greene [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 11:18 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? Rick From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 16:40:03 +0100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? Rick Samco compared these two scanners here: http://www.samcos.com/rick/equip/scannertest/ssvsed.htm Up until I saw this I was quite keen to trade my Artixscan 4000T (SS4000 clone) for a Nikon largely for ICE. After all de-spotting is a nightmare except on very clean images. I have yet to find any thing other than a clone tool that removes the dust spots from my A4000T scans. I have discovered however that by not looking at your images at all before scanning (I use slides) you can minimise the de-spotting to about 5 minutes max. Obviously this isn't much good for old slides. I have some family slides ([not] cared for by my Dad) which it would take many hours to clean up. I only have a 17 monitor and have to look at about 40 screen fulls to check one image for dust spots, but if you have a huge monitor this is probably much easier. I use a nineteen inch monitor and in Photoshop I use the 'Print' and 'Actual Pixels' views which lead to every spot showing up looking like a pebble. While it makes it easier to find the junk, it leads to my seeing lots more of it. On examining Rick's samples I decided that the Nikon seemed to have very slightly better sharpness and detail but turning on the ICE made it very slightly worse. This was reasonably acceptable, but the Nikon seems to also produce very grainy scans and the only cure is GEM which softens images quite badly. I have quite enough trouble with grain so I decided to stick with the A4000T. I think it is possible to compensate for the softening by through careful adjustment of Unsharp Mask Filter. I'd really appreciate information on how you arrived at the conclusion that the, The Nikon seems to also produce very grainy scans. Grainy in comparison to what? Thanks, Martin Steve - Original Message - From: Barbara Martin Greene [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 1:41 PM Subject: filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000? I've been told that the Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 does not exaggerate dust and crud to the same extent that the Nikon LS 4000 does. I've examined Photo CD scans and found that, while there is much less, nevertheless a good deal of spots show up. Perhaps, dust is a problem in every scanner. I'd appreciate if users of the Sprintscan would tell me just how much stuff shows up in their slide scans. With a reasonably clean slide, just how much work has to be done using the rubber stamp in Photoshop to get a really clean 13 x 19 print? Also, if you use a dust removal software program, such as Polacolor, Silverfast, or vuescan, how helpful is that? If such a program is used, to what extent does it soften the image and can that be restored using unsharp mask. Martin
Re: filmscanners: Stealing images
Unusable (to others) filenames would seem quite a reasonable step to prevent search engines finding your images - but you will not be able to use useful descriptive text. I would also point out that search engines only generally index pages of registered domains or those that you volunteer to tell them about. Although working this way will prevent memorable domain names (eg. wordweb), restricts web space and bandwidth and so is of limited use to most. The thumbnail size is reasonably sensible as I am sick of looking at web pages where they are too small. It's infuriating when you have to open the thumbnail to see what it is meant to represent. I think you could go a little smaller but for detailed images you soon get to a situation where you cannot see anything. It's a tricky balance between quick loading and useable. Most importantly you have to remember that unlike you the surfer doesn't know what's in the picture and their brain won't be able distinguish the images as easily as yourself. At the risk of supporting either AA or AF (both AH, yes that's personal, but we've all had more than enough arguing for arguings sake - shut up or push off). I would say that you want the large image to be full page but not overspill. So I would use something a little smaller to display full-screen at 1024x768 (the most common in my experience - even on poor quality 15 monitors that can bearly do it). The people with poor monitors tend to push them to the limit - the people with decent monitors tend to appreciate the quality so stick to the lower resolutions. My decent quality ageing 17 monitor can just about do 1600*1200 but I have very rarely used it even for a few minutes I much prefer the quality of the lower resolutions. The point (other than an on-topic dig) is that a 1024*768 image will have scroll bars round it at 1024*768 - you need to allow a little for the edges of the window and the title bar. With copyright (and bandwidth) worries smaller is also better as you can make a surprisingly decent print out of a high quality 1024*768. I think something like a 600*400 (or even smaller) image will look good on most screens, whilst at least limiting print use if not web use. Steve - Original Message - From: Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 11:22 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Stealing images I save it as an LZW TIFF raw file and crop file. The I make a 1024x768 jpeg with copyright notice and watermark, and a 300x200 jpeg for a thumbnail. I write the raw files and crop files to different CDRs with the jpegs if possible for easy identification. The CDR is named the same way as the film. Hopefully a naming convention which is logical to me but doesn't give away the content is less of an invitation for theft than mona_lisa.jpg - especially via search engines. :) Rob
Re: filmscanners: Importance of Copyright on Images
Not if royalties are abolished entirely. Everyone would be paid just once for the work he does, at the time he does the work. The car mechanic charges the same for each car he fixes because he has the same work to do on each car. The lawyer is much the same as each contract is just like one of the previous contracts. He no doubt buys in the initial wording from elsewhere and inserts the appropriate names as applicable. The artist would need to charge prohibitively large sums of money to the first customer as nearly all the work is performed for the first customer. Subsequent customers only need a very small amount of work. The only way this system can work is if large companies are sold the control of the product. They would have too much power and would exploit both the artist and the end customer. The royalty system works because each party can limit their risk and is ultimately financially better off. The artist can sell a product much cheaper and hence find customers much easier. If the product is particularly good the artist will make a lot of money if it is not he will make very little. The publisher does not need to find a large sum of money to purchase the rights of a product that might flop and hence avoids expensive mistakes. He can make a small profit for a small run and a much larger profit on a very successful product. The end customer will get more choice at more reasonable prices as the flops are weeded out at little cost. If the customer ARM Holdings have made a very successful business out of licensing chip designs and collecting the royalties. ARM have no expensive manufacturing facilities so have low overheads. The chip manufacturers get new chip designs faster, more reliably and cheaper. The general public get new products that are better and cheaper. I hardly think that Intel/TI/Motorola go to ARM for chip designs because it costs them more money! Steve P.S. I have used ARM as an illustration as it is an obvious example of how the royalty system does work as the chip manufacturing industry has been transformed in a matter of a few short years by ARM. I would like to declare a small interest as I do have a few ARM shares, but I am in no way wishing to recommend/ramp the shares. In fact they are an unfashionable tech stock with an unusually high PE ratio (not good). Whatever happens to the share price the business model undoubtably works to the benefit of everybody.
Re: filmscanners: ReSize, ReSample or ReScan ?
I expect 254dpi is quite common (100dpcm as used by Durst Epsilon) Steve - Original Message - From: Shough, Dean [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 10, 2001 3:44 PM Subject: RE: filmscanners: ReSize, ReSample or ReScan ? Here is the pdf file that I created that will test your print driver and see what it does at various resolutions. Make sure that you do not allow Acrobat to shrink oversize pages or to expand small pages. Printer ResizeTest.pdf This file prints out the same image at various resolutions ranging from 239 dpi up to 2400 dpi. The image contains slanted, one pixel wide lines, both black on white and white on black. Sorry, I do not remember who first posted the basic image with the suggestion to print it at various resolutions - all I did was to combined the various resolutions into one pdf file. When I print the file on either an Alps MD5000 or a couple of different HP laser printers, only the 300 dpi image prints correctly. All other images have been resampled. I would be interested in the results with other printers, especially the Epsons.
Re: filmscanners: OT:X-ray fogging
If you look at my e-mail address you will notice that I probably live in the UK. I do not regularly fly but I have hand carried film through Gatwick on quite a few occaisions. Aberdeen removed my lenses from my cameras and checked that it stopped down as usual. But merely glanced at the film. Do you look Iraqi / have an Irish accent ? Steve - Original Message - From: David Gordon [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Filmscanners [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 9:07 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: OT:X-ray fogging Steve Greenbank [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote on Thu, 6 Sep 2001 23:55:42 +0100 I have never had a roll go through an x-ray machine. Planning on coming to the UK? If you do your film will be x-rayed. Or you won't leave. -- David Gordon [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: filmscanners: OT:X-ray fogging
Sorry to hear you have had this problem. I always avoid the x-ray machines by wearing something with big pockets (walkers trousers coats are particularly good). I have never had a roll go through an x-ray machine. Obviously there is a limit to how many you can carry and you get some funny looks when you empty 20 rolls of film out of your pocket. But I have had no fogged film (not due to x-ray at least). regards Steve - Original Message - From: Lynn Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 9:59 PM Subject: 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
Re: filmscanners: SilverFast Causes Crashes
There are a few dual pentium solutions with 2GB SDRAM capability. Asus who are generally very stable have one with 4GB support. MSI also have one. Steve
Re: filmscanners: SilverFast Causes Crashes
Sorry all, This is a stray message that was meant to be sent offlist and appears to have little relevance without the offlist message I sent earlier. Steve - Original Message - From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 2:54 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: SilverFast Causes Crashes There are a few dual pentium solutions with 2GB SDRAM capability. Asus who are generally very stable have one with 4GB support. MSI also have one. Steve
Re: filmscanners: New auto adjust software on it's way
I never claimed their examples had any aesthetic quality, but I do think the software appears to be pretty impressive. Save image 25 or 26 and see if you can get anywhere near the processed example they show you. Steve - Original Message - From: Winsor Crosby [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 8:23 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: New auto adjust software on it's way From: http://www.steves-digicams.com/diginews.html The software automatically enhances digital images. Samples of what it can do here: http://dragon.larc.nasa.gov/retinex/pao/news/ 8,10,25,26 are little short of amazing. Some of the others are less impressive (22 in particular looks wrong) hopefully there are still some user controls. This is presumably the software they used to spy on us from sattelites and hence is a pure digital system so it probably does nothing for dust, scratches and grain :-( Steve P.S. It's probably a bit slow on Pentium Pro 200's That is one bunch of ugly photos, before and after. -- Winsor Crosby Long Beach, California
Re: filmscanners: New auto adjust software on it's way
No I would not have taken picture 25/26. But many press photographers might like to have the chance to capture a picture such as 25 in the case of a fire at say an oil refinery. Obviously they would want more smoke to remain in the picture but it would be very helpful if you can recognise where it is. There are other situations were high contrast is a particular problem such as a sunset - perhaps you can not only get the full glory of the sunset but also get some detail in the foreground. Normally best exposure for the sky gives a black foreground. If you have your tripod you could do multiple exposures and combine the results but this is near impossible if you have lots of gaps in the foreground.eg. trees in winter. Obviously again if it's too overdone the results will look wrong. If you only ever take studio shots then you shouldn't ever need something like this, but I am sure most other people could find images that could be improved/rescued by a toned down version of this software. Steve Original Message - From: Winsor Crosby [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 7:50 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: New auto adjust software on it's way I never claimed their examples had any aesthetic quality, but I do think the software appears to be pretty impressive. Save image 25 or 26 and see if you can get anywhere near the processed example they show you. Steve I admit it is amazing what it does, especially in the saving of images of subjects outside the dynamic range of the picture taking system. 25 and 26 are amazing for creating a picture out of nothing. My reaction was that some of the befores were much more pleasing than the afters. Spy cam clarity at any cost is not always the best way to go. My other reaction was the question, Who is this for? If by some momentary lapse, mini-stroke, or fainting spell someone should produce one of the before pictures, most, on this list, would probably just toss it as they went through the pictures in their hospital bed. Would you have really pushed the shutter button with 25 or 26 in your viewfinder? Winsor -- Winsor Crosby Long Beach, California
filmscanners: New auto adjust software on it's way
From: http://www.steves-digicams.com/diginews.html The software automatically enhances digital images. Samples of what it can do here: http://dragon.larc.nasa.gov/retinex/pao/news/ 8,10,25,26 are little short of amazing. Some of the others are less impressive (22 in particular looks wrong) hopefully there are still some user controls. This is presumably the software they used to spy on us from sattelites and hence is a pure digital system so it probably does nothing for dust, scratches and grain :-( Steve P.S. It's probably a bit slow on Pentium Pro 200's
Re: filmscanners: New auto adjust software on it's way
I have just noticed my lad has been on UT and you have to turn up the brightness a lot. I have rest the brightness to it's usual point and 22 doesn't look too bad after all. Steve - Original Message - From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 7:35 PM Subject: filmscanners: New auto adjust software on it's way From: http://www.steves-digicams.com/diginews.html The software automatically enhances digital images. Samples of what it can do here: http://dragon.larc.nasa.gov/retinex/pao/news/ 8,10,25,26 are little short of amazing. Some of the others are less impressive (22 in particular looks wrong) hopefully there are still some user controls. This is presumably the software they used to spy on us from sattelites and hence is a pure digital system so it probably does nothing for dust, scratches and grain :-( Steve P.S. It's probably a bit slow on Pentium Pro 200's
Re: Getting around the firewire problem was Re: filmscanners: Best film scanner, period!!!
Just like to add - get a pair of 100Mbit LAN cards with twisted pair cross-over - it will take ages to transfer TIF files by any other means. I would move the PS to the new machine as this is generally slow to process large TIF files even on my 900Mhz Athlon. Pack the new machine with ram (1GB) - it's cheap at the moment. Most video cards are pretty good today even the cheap ones. If you fancy saving some money and space use only 1 monitor (your current one) by using a switch to swap between machines. Some switch boxes allow you to connect 2 computers to one monitor,a keyboard and a mouse - although they need high quality switching as the mouse and keyboard should not normally be (dis)/connected whilst the machine is running. I am currently using 2 machines with one monitor one via BNC and via the d-sub cable (2 keyboards and mice). One machine is stitching panoramas whilst I do other tasks on the other machine. Steve - Original Message - From: Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2001 12:43 PM Subject: Getting around the firewire problem was Re: filmscanners: Best film scanner, period!!! Anthony Atkielski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've considered it--but how would I get the pictures back and forth between the two machines? I'd need to buy a router, at the very least, so add a few hundred more dollars. Huh? Where did you get that idea? Worst case scenario you could use direct cable networking with a laplink cable for about $20. If you have LAN cards with twisted pair connectors you can use a crossover ethernet cable. If you have coax cards then it's two T-pieces, two terminators and a piece of cable. If you have USB you could do it with a USB cable. All the networking is built into Windows *depending* on which version you're running. If it's NT 4.0 then you're out of luck with USB. If you have NT 4.0 and want to use a laplink cable, check out KB article Q142065. I don't think you can use a parallel port laplink cable with NT 4.0, but it may be possible to buy a parallel port to ethernet adapter with NT drivers. And the machine would need at least 512 MB of memory in order to hold the scans, so add a few hundred more. And I'd need a second copy of Photoshop, and a second top-quality monitor and video board, so add another $2000 or so. We are already into thousands of dollars just for this one chance, and I'm not even counting the scanner! RAM is about US$40 for 256MB in Australia so I can't imagine it would be so expensive in France. Actually you don't need all that RAM to do scans, only to edit them. Why do you need Photoshop and a top quality monitor? AFAIK Vuescan supports the LS4000 so you could dump raw scans from it and port them across to the NT box. If you must use Nikonscan, then you have a problem but you might be able to get a switch for your existing monitor. As I mentioned earlier, if you put a CDRW drive in the new computer you could write the raw scans to CDR and use sneakernet to put them on the NT machine to crop them and edit them. A CDRW drive with burnproof can be had here for about US$110. Or you could buy a Polaroid SS4000 which uses SCSI and you wouldn't have a problem - just no ICE... Rob
Re: filmscanners: film vs. digital cameras - wedding/commercial photography
I have similarly printed Casio QV3000 pics so called super A3 (13x19) on an Epson 1270 and don't see many normal prints to match. In general if you are close to your subject the best digital images can be very close to the best 35mm can produce. Lack of film grain gives it an advantage and many people overlook most digital artefacts. But digital can be prone to fall over ungracefully, in particular watch out for smallish details at around 30m against a bright background. See my review of the QV3000 http://www.greenbank.themutual.net/casio/casioqv3000.htm Enjoy the camera I certainly use mine far more than my film cameras which are restricted to serious work. Steve - Original Message - From: Ian Boag [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 1:08 AM Subject: RE: filmscanners: film vs. digital cameras - wedding/commercial photography Always gives you guys something to laugh about when a ignoramus dives in. I have an engineering PhD as well but it's in Chem Eng from the 70's which I guess makes my opinion worth as much that of the average taxi driver. I had an Agfa 1680 for a while. 1.3 MP CCD and some fancy interpolation that supposedly took it to equiv 1.9 MP. Dunno if I believed that. The point was it did A4 prints that I considered fairly acceptable, although my scanned neg stuff was a bit better. I have Kodak FD300 and HP S20 film scanners. I know there are scanners that do APS and 35 but that's not the way it happened for me. Both are 2400 dpi. Have just upgraded to a Casio 3000 (3.3 MP). Also had the misfortune to be followed home by a used Epson Stylus 3000 A2 printer. Printed some A2 stuff off the digicam and it just blew me away. Orright orright it's not the same as one would get off an MF neg and Sprintscan 4000 (I assume). Was pretty damn good though - some pixelation visible when viewed from 10 cm (who views this size print at from 10 cm anyway). I know the dot arithmetic doesn't work. The digi pic is about the equiv of a 1200 dpi 35mm neg scan. Blowing that out to A2 is a res on the paper of about 100-odd dpi. Obviously totally unsatisfactory. I just have to tell my eyes that :) Have now been amusing self by copying slides on a light box using 5 diopters of closeup lens on the front of the zoom in macro mode. Purists should feel free to faint. More pretty damn good results. I would not be bothered in the least if someone sold me a pic of this quality suitably printed on a matt paper perhaps under glass and framed up nice. Cheers Ian
Re: filmscanners: film vs. digital cameras - wedding/commercial photography
Most wedding photos are relatively small and 6Mp will be ample. They also tend not to have any shots at infinity which is something my 3Mp camera is less happy about - the closer you get to the subject the nearer the quality gets to 35mm. This effect I think is due to digital quality degrading nastily at the edges of it's performance whereas film tends to lose definition gracefully. In the case of the 24x20 print you have made a mistake with the digital size. It should be 6MBx3 (RGB) hence 18MB and about 6 interpolated pixels for every real one. I have found that any noise in digital images is less intrusive than film grain and the cleaner image can be enlarged by a greater factor - particularly if you use a specialist program like Geniune Fractals to perform the enlargement. The Nikon D1x is by all accounts almost noiseless so I wouldn't expect any problem going to 20x24. Also most of the general public like the look of good quality digital images and are usually unaware of most digital artefacts. I printed an A3 on my 1270 using PGPP and I have yet to put it in front of anyone who isn't impressed. The more well informed are even more amazed to find out it is of digital origin and has been produced on an inkjet.There are a few digital artefacts but I would think 6Mp will print A3 without any real problem. The larger 24*20 will probably suffer a few minor problems nothing too noticeable. Don't take my word for it, download an image from the sample pages pages of this review (or find another) : http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001_reviews/nikond1x.html and try a 24*20 print. If you have a decent inkjet you can get a good idea by enlarging to 24*20 and then printing each section on 6 A4 sheets or just print a single A4 section. Do remeber though that the inkjets dithering help hide some artefacts you may prefer to send the A4 section to a digital lab with a Fuji Frontier or something similar. I did write a few scribbles about the pros and cons of a prosumer 3Mp digital canera here http://www.greenbank.themutual.net/casio/casioqv3000.htm I wouldn't use it for commercial wedding photography but 6Mp I probably would. Any minor image quality problems (that I think almost no-one will notice) are more than made up for with the ability to see the bride closed her eyes or the page boy stuck his tongue out. I suspect there may be some extra orders as well if you can show a complete set of samples to the guests at the reception. Steve - Original Message - From: Robert Meier [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 5:51 AM Subject: filmscanners: film vs. digital cameras - wedding/commercial photography I have been talking with a few wedding and commercial photographers who expressed their intention to go digital. Cameras mentioned were Fuji S1 and Nikon D1x both with 6 Mpixel. Now these same photographers, as all others, say MF is absolutely necessary for the big enlargments. This seems to be a contradiction as the digital cameras mentioned only produce approx. a 6M*12bit=9Mbyte file compared to about (2*4000)^2*36bit=274Mbytes for a 4000dpi scan or approx 1000Mbytes assuming film has an 'equivalent' of about 8000dpi. Assuming you want a 24x20 print @300dpi you need 24*20*300*300*8bit/channel*3channels=124Mbytes of data. The digital camera gives you only 6M*8bit/channel=6Mbytes. This is about 124/6=20, i.e. 19 out of 20 pixels have to be interpolated. That sounds quite unresonable to me. Does anybody have any experience with that and throughs their MF scannera away to go digital? Also do you have any idea what the going hourly rate for wedding photographer and commercial photographers is? Robert __ Do You Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
Re: filmscanners: SilverFast Upgrade Disaster
Lloyd That sounds a bit like dodgy ASPI drivers. Have you tried any other SCSI scanning software. You could try ASPICHK from : http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/suppdetail.html?prodkey=EZ-SCSI_5.0 I notice that EZ-SCSI is having problems with 2000 so I don't know if this will work. It does rather suggest there can be problems with 2000 if Adaptec can't get it working - they are usually considered the SCSI experts. Steve - Original Message - From: Lloyd O'Daniel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, August 13, 2001 8:48 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: SilverFast Upgrade Disaster Roger, Let us know how the TWAIN version works. I'm having a similar problem with v5.5 and my SS4000. At least, after reading your posts, I'm thinking it might be Silverfast. I've also built a new computer and switched scanning OS's back to Win2000. The SS4000 locks up Photoshop upon selecting Scan in SF. In Insight, I get an unknown ASPI error suggesting that I check termination. I've done that. Also, my Epson 1200S on the same chain (behind the SS) works fine using their TWAIN driver. I haven't contacted Lasersoft on this latest headache yet. Lloyd - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 9:23 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: SilverFast Upgrade Disaster In a message dated 8/12/2001 4:56:31 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Not wishing to sound to gloomy, but the advice sounds like a we have no idea - but it might work if we re-install everything. The good news is that it often does - the bad news is IME it more often doesn't. When I had a problem they gave me all sorts of advice and blamed other software suppliers when I knew it was their problem from the tests I had done. I had also found a way round the problem which was an inconvenience rather than a showstopper. 3-6 months later an update fixed the problem but they didn't e-mail me to tell me. If I had paid the normal asking price (it was bundled) and my livlihood depended on it I would have been bloody livid. Depressingly Lasersoft support is actually better than many others. Steve Your comment about workarounds gave me an idea. After the reinstall of Photoshop, if SilverFast causes Photoshop to freeze again with a 500 MB file from my SS120, I'll try to install SilverFast as TWAIN rather than a Photoshop plug-in. I remember having a similar problem where my Microtek ScanMaker 5 flatbed scanner with ScanWizard software would cause Photoshop to freeze about every third scan. ScanWizard could be used either as a Photoshop plug-in or as a stand alone program, so I run it by itself now. You're right, it's not convenient, but right now I need to get some work done and the sooner the better, even if it's not convenient.
Re: filmscanners: SilverFast Upgrade Disaster
Hi Roger A few things have occurred to me - please ignore the first 2 if you have a Mac: == 1) Are you using Win 9x/Me with more than 512MB ? If you are you may need to add a line to the file c:\windows\system.ini On the line immediately following [vcache] add the following MaxFileCache=131072 That will set the max file cache to 128Mb and prevent a known windows bug. You may like to try a larger value. === 2) Have you set the swap file to too small a fixed size. (People tend to set up a fixed size as this works best- as long as it's big enough). I don't quite remember where this is for NT/2000 but it's somewhere similar. Under start-control panel-system (you can press windows key and break key together as a short cut). Find the virtual memory setting under performance. Ensure this either set to something big (double your memory size is often recommended) but you also need to consider your scan size. Either setting Let windows manage my virtual memory or bearing in mind the size of your disk I'd set it to 4096 (too big) to see if this is your problem. === 3) Out of available disk space (I think this applies to a Mac too). PS uses scratch disk too as does printing if you are simultaneously doing some. A quick way to test this other than delete loads of files is to set your history states to 1 in PS. Edit-Preferences-General === 4) PS memory management. This is accessed under Edit-Preferences-MemoryImageCache . Here you can set memory usage by PS I think 50-75% is generally recommended but if you have a lot of memory you can go higher. I use 80%. You have to leave a little for the operating system and memory resident programs. Ensuring the minimum spec for OS is left for non PS should be sufficient. === You will need to restart Windows for the first 2 and PS for the last 2. Good luck Steve - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, August 13, 2001 3:23 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: SilverFast Upgrade Disaster In a message dated 8/12/2001 4:56:31 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Not wishing to sound to gloomy, but the advice sounds like a we have no idea - but it might work if we re-install everything. The good news is that it often does - the bad news is IME it more often doesn't. When I had a problem they gave me all sorts of advice and blamed other software suppliers when I knew it was their problem from the tests I had done. I had also found a way round the problem which was an inconvenience rather than a showstopper. 3-6 months later an update fixed the problem but they didn't e-mail me to tell me. If I had paid the normal asking price (it was bundled) and my livlihood depended on it I would have been bloody livid. Depressingly Lasersoft support is actually better than many others. Your comment about workarounds gave me an idea. After the reinstall of Photoshop, if SilverFast causes Photoshop to freeze again with a 500 MB file from my SS120, I'll try to install SilverFast as TWAIN rather than a Photoshop plug-in. I remember having a similar problem where my Microtek ScanMaker 5 flatbed scanner with ScanWizard software would cause Photoshop to freeze about every third scan. ScanWizard could be used either as a Photoshop plug-in or as a stand alone program, so I run it by itself now. You're right, it's not convenient, but right now I need to get some work done and the sooner the better, even if it's not convenient.
Re: filmscanners: Silverfast vs Nikon Software?
You've forgotten the dodgy help files that do little more than explain the bare minimum and invariably miss the one vital thing you have to do to get it to work. There is no doubt that the possible image manipulations are very powerful and learning how the Silverfast curves worked actually taught me a lot about curves in PS. The colour balancing options are even more vast but I try not to mess too much here as I can get in a right mess due to my vision problems. Ultimately the learning curve is enormous and whilst I think I have a reasonable understanding of Silverfast I still invariably find I get results I prefer from the much cheaper (and IME friendlier) Vuescan. Maybe I'm just incompetent with Silverfast but I have tried real hard - perhaps there's one more thing I'm supposed to do that they don't tell you. But I have largely given up using it at all. I am told that 5.5 may be much better than 5.2. I don't think I will get my wallet out. For the record Vuescan software support is also quite possibly the best of all (except when Ed is on holiday). It's certainly worth trying before you spend what I expect will be $400+. Steve - Original Message - From: Enoch's Vision, Inc. (Cary Enoch R...) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 9:20 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Silverfast vs Nikon Software? At 19:11 12-08-01 +0100, David Gordon wrote: rlb [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote on Sun, 12 Aug 2001 07:31:43 -0400 I would appreciate some thoughts from those that use Silverfast. It has a very steep learning curve. It is hard to use. It is unintuitive. It has a very poor user interface. It make fantastic scans in two minutes. Get the IT-8 calibration, try the demo first! 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. Not sure about the fantastic scans part but you nailed it in other areas. 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
Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ?
So what's the colour gamut of the average human eye and how much variance is there between people's perception ? I bizarrely found during the colour blind discussion that I could change the hue of some of the colour charts such that I (CB) could very clearly see the correct number on the chart and so called normal people could see nothing but dots. It rather makes me wonder if we are metaphorically chasing the Holy Grail. I use AdobeRGB and feel I get quite a good match on the 1270 with Epson papers when printing from PS. I can also get prerceptually decent results from my digicam with slightly different driver settings without the colour matching. I have however sometimes seen posturisation on digicam pictures from the Epson that have been converted to AdobeRGB before editting and subsequent printing. 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. Perhaps we should be amazed that we ever get a good match. Steve - Original Message - From: Maris V. Lidaka, Sr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 10:34 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? Laurie, Are you sure about that? I don't know, but I suspect that the 4-color general/business application inkjets also print colors outside of the sRGB color space, primarily because, in general, some ink colors are outside of the colors visible on the monitor just as some colors visible on the monitor are not printable using normal printing processes, i.e. inkjets. Maris - Original Message - From: LAURIE SOLOMON [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 12:49 PM Subject: RE: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? | shAf, | What the original poster fails to take into account and you failed to point | out is that not all Epson inkjet printer are the same just as not all HP | inkjets are the same. Some are 4 color general/business application | printers while others are photo application printers (4 or 6 color). They | do not all have the same color gamut. The lower end general /business color | printers probably do not need a larger gamut than sRBG; whereas the higher | end photo printers may produce much higher quality outputs with the larger | color gamut. Obviously one can print on any color inkjet with the narrower | sRBG gamut; and in that sense it is suitable for all inkjets; however that | does not make it optimum for all inkjets. :-) | | -Original Message- | From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of shAf | Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 7:27 AM | To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Subject: RE: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? | | | Steve writes ... | | Many people on this list use Epson printers that supposedly | work with sRGB. | If you don't use external printing services or if the | external service you use have their printing set-up to | sRGB then why not use sRGB. | Everytime you convert to or from one colour profile to | another you have the potential to mess up your print | If your end target is sRGB (which includes web work) why | not just work in sRGB? | | If you have absolutely no need for a color space with a larger gamut | than sRGB, then you may as well be using it ... archive to target. But I | believe you're wrong about sRGB being the suitable color space for Epson | printers, and sRGB certainly does not contain some colors available to print | with Epsons ... even AdobeRGB doesn't. | | You are correct in saying there is a potential for messing up your | print with color space conversions, but it isn't necessarily the case ... | you simply need to know what you are doing within a chosen workflow. (... | granted, it sometimes isn't so simple ...) | | shAf :o) | |
Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ?
Obviously the wider the working colour space the more chance that most of the colours of each real world colour space are represented and hence why not sRGB, but I can' t help thinking that we will only ever achieve a reasonable match unless printers, scanners, monitors and eyes improve their colour gamut too. Steve - Original Message - From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, August 13, 2001 2:02 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? So what's the colour gamut of the average human eye and how much variance is there between people's perception ? I bizarrely found during the colour blind discussion that I could change the hue of some of the colour charts such that I (CB) could very clearly see the correct number on the chart and so called normal people could see nothing but dots. It rather makes me wonder if we are metaphorically chasing the Holy Grail. I use AdobeRGB and feel I get quite a good match on the 1270 with Epson papers when printing from PS. I can also get prerceptually decent results from my digicam with slightly different driver settings without the colour matching. I have however sometimes seen posturisation on digicam pictures from the Epson that have been converted to AdobeRGB before editting and subsequent printing. 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. Perhaps we should be amazed that we ever get a good match. Steve - Original Message - From: Maris V. Lidaka, Sr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 10:34 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? Laurie, Are you sure about that? I don't know, but I suspect that the 4-color general/business application inkjets also print colors outside of the sRGB color space, primarily because, in general, some ink colors are outside of the colors visible on the monitor just as some colors visible on the monitor are not printable using normal printing processes, i.e. inkjets. Maris - Original Message - From: LAURIE SOLOMON [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 12:49 PM Subject: RE: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? | shAf, | What the original poster fails to take into account and you failed to point | out is that not all Epson inkjet printer are the same just as not all HP | inkjets are the same. Some are 4 color general/business application | printers while others are photo application printers (4 or 6 color). They | do not all have the same color gamut. The lower end general /business color | printers probably do not need a larger gamut than sRBG; whereas the higher | end photo printers may produce much higher quality outputs with the larger | color gamut. Obviously one can print on any color inkjet with the narrower | sRBG gamut; and in that sense it is suitable for all inkjets; however that | does not make it optimum for all inkjets. :-) | | -Original Message- | From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of shAf | Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 7:27 AM | To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Subject: RE: filmscanners: Why not sRGB ? | | | Steve writes ... | | Many people on this list use Epson printers that supposedly | work with sRGB. | If you don't use external printing services or if the | external service you use have their printing set-up to | sRGB then why not use sRGB. | Everytime you convert to or from one colour profile to | another you have the potential to mess up your print | If your end target is sRGB (which includes web work) why | not just work in sRGB? | | If you have absolutely no need for a color space with a larger gamut | than sRGB, then you may as well be using it ... archive to target. But I | believe you're wrong about sRGB being the suitable color space for Epson | printers, and sRGB certainly does not contain some colors available to print | with Epsons ... even AdobeRGB doesn't. | | You are correct in saying there is a potential for messing up your | print with color space conversions, but it isn't necessarily the case ... | you simply need to know what you are doing within a chosen workflow. (... | granted, it sometimes isn't so
Re: filmscanners: IT8 Calibration was Re: filmscanners: I love/hate SilverFast
This should probably go off list so please direct replies to me personally. I am quite interested in how others are affected. I am very intrigued by the number of people on this list how have color deficiency. Does anyone know how common this is in the general population (or even just the male population)? About 8% of men and 0.5% of women (they usually carry the gene and give it to the men). I don't know if it's normal but I seem to suffer more from low colour resolution - the bigger the object the more likely I am to see the colour correctly. I don't know if this is normal, but it renders the dot tests impossible. I do however seem to have extremely good night vision. Is this normal for colour blind people ? This sort of suggests to me that I have many more BW receptors than normal (and hence fewer colour) as these work better in low light situations. The effects can seem a bit bizarre. As a child I was taken Strawberry picking. I could only see unripe strawberries unless the ripe one's were actually pointed out to me. Raspberries proved to be no problem. So bright red against green was a dead loss, but the darker raspberries and even green strawberries were no problem against the green leaves. You can have a quick test on the net - although I wouldn't like to say how your set-up may affect the accuracy of the test. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/8833/coloreye.html For the record and for those afflicted, you can compare the extent of your affliction to me. Top left OK Top right can't see a thing even when I know what number I am looking for. Mid left can't see a thing even when I know what number I am looking for. Mid Right I am prepared to believe the answer (although it looks more like another number to me) but couldn't see a thing until I knew the answer. Bottom left can't see a thing even when I know what number I am looking for. Bottom Right looks like a different number to me. Steve 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. Maybe if enough people with this condition demand more objective color control we'll all benefit from easier to use color management. Art Steve Greenbank wrote: Rob, I want IT-8 calibration because I'm color blind and I want to reduce the number of variables I have to deal with. In theory, any of my calibrated scanners can be used to scan the same slide and the final files will all be nearly identical. I'm similarly afflicted and I went through a similar process, but in the end
Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?
- Original Message - From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 11:05 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans? 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. Also, not wishing to be a smart @ss, how many people still have record players ? It's 17 years (I think) since CD first arrived and I suspect I would have to go to London to buy new vynyl. They isn't an awful lot available when you get there either. Being a nation of Audio freaks there are still quite a few specialist retailers who will sell you a deck, but the numbers are dwindling. I suspect film use will be minimal in 20 years. You will still be able to get a scanner so do I think film is a good backup for failed CDs. Scanners in 20 years may in fact get more off the film despite some deterioration. What we all need to keep in mind is whatever we use to archive our digital files is that we need to check the data periodically and transfer to new technologies as these come available AND keep separate backup systems. I am using 2 different brands of CDs with a copy on each one in Sussex one in Yorkshire (250 miles away - although separate buildings should generally be sufficient). I also have the slides to fall back on. I haven't as yet checked the CD's since recording but every few years you should check they are OK. Hopefully any problems discovered early can be recovered from the other copy, using a better reader or by a specialist company. Your data should be stored in as controlled an environment as you can reasonably manage. Mine are in the middle of the house under the stairs where there is least change in temperature and indeed air in general. There are no nearby electrical or magnetic equipment of any kind. As technology becomes obsolete you should transfer to new formats and media. This is usually not as painful as it sounds as the new technology is usually much cheaper, faster and has much greater capacity. Steve
Re: filmscanners: OT: Color perception (was: IT8 Calibration (was: etc
- Original Message - From: Lynn Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 2:01 PM Subject: 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. :-) As I said earlier my Art O'Level examiner commented Interesting use of colour!. Several people have commented on the wonderful colours, particularly in my inkjet prints and I say I I like them whilst thinking they look a bit samey to me! Anyway I had a look round the web and found these: Colour tests http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/8833/coloreye.html http://www.umist.ac.uk/UMIST_OVS/UES/COLOUR0.HTM I loaded the charts in the 1st link into PS and played with the saturation and hue. At between 50-70% on the saturation I can clearly see the difference. I then tested a neighbour and my daughter and found that my daughter had a very mild problem in that she had difficulty seeing one chart - although she did see it. I then tried the different saturations and hue and found that I can clearly see colour differences where normal people can see none or very little. Very odd. Other links: This link is to a program that allows you to say what colour any point on your screen is : http://www.hikarun.com/e/ even if it is completely different to you! These give an explanation of the condition - the first is quite technical : http://www.firelily.com/opinions/color.html http://www.multiboard.com/~joneil/colour.html http://www.delamare.unr.edu/cb/ regards Steve
Re: filmscanners: (anti)compression?
If you re-save a file PS will automatically save in the format that was opened. If you use save as and select TIFF you get the choice of compression (none,LZW,JPEG,ZIP). Of these JPEG is lossy. None is the standard TIFF. The other three are legal variations that may not be supported by software that the person reading the file is using. Therefore unless otherwise told use TIFF (no compression) or normal JPEG (not the TIFF variety) if you intend someone else to read it. Steve - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 9:45 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: (anti)compression? 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.
Re: filmscanners: RGB gain/bias controls? help
My Iiyama is a (Diamondtron) trinitron clone too. You can always tell by the faint horizontal lines around a third from the top and bottom of the screen. Steve - Original Message - From: Moreno Polloni [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 10:04 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: RGB gain/bias controls? help Remmember that Sony is the only monitor that supports the Trinitron mask, which gives you better image clarity than any other shadow mask technology. The Mitsubishi Diamondtron is also an aperture grill, essentially the same as the Trinitron. I think at one point Sony made the tubes for Mitsubishi. I believe that the Trinitron patents have expired, and Mits now manufactures their own. The ViewSonic SonicTron is also an aperture grill.
Re: filmscanners: OT: Color perception (was: IT8 Calibration (was: etc
For those of you that are hoping to sell your images all including the colour blind you may like to try the downloads here: http://vischeck.com/showme.shtml I have not tried any of them, but the normal and the red/green color deficit (deuteranopia) examples sure look the same to me. (I checked in PS and they are quite different). Steve
filmscanners: Colour links
have just come across the following that may be of some use to people here. Colour FAQ http://www.inforamp.net/~poynton/ColorFAQ.html Gamma FAQ http://www.inforamp.net/~poynton/GammaFAQ.html Steve
Re: filmscanners: IT8 Calibration was Re: filmscanners: I love/hate SilverFast
Rob, I want IT-8 calibration because I'm color blind and I want to reduce the number of variables I have to deal with. In theory, any of my calibrated scanners can be used to scan the same slide and the final files will all be nearly identical. I'm similarly afflicted and I went through a similar process, but in the end I just preffered the results and simplicity of Vuescan. I also found I had some serious noise problems in some Silverfast scans that didn't seem nearly as bad in Vuescan. I am pretty certain digital cameras are not individually calibrated but many of these manage realistic colour. Once again, my goal is to keep things as consistent as possible so that I can do the final tweaking by the numbers. I tend to use numbers to check the colour balance (and sometimes my daughter is final colour control) Steve P.S. When I did Art 'O' level the examiner commented Interesting use of colour!
Re: filmscanners: I love/hate SilverFast
I deliberately bought an Artixscan 4000 which came bundled with Silverfast as opinion on this list was that Silverfast is best. Ultimately I think this is probably true as the Silverfast interface allows you to carefully tweak your scans to a much greater degree than with anything else provided you have spent months learning how to utilise the program. But Vuescan in my experience produces good results almost immediately with minimum effort. When I have a problem I sometimes try Silverfast but rarely do I get a better result - in part, to be fair, due to my inability to use Silverfast properly. But there in lies a part of the problem after 2 hours playing with Vuescan I get better results than 2 months of Silverfast. I can also appreciate your problems with the level of support. It took me several weeks just to get the password for the download out of them. When it came to fixing a showstopper problem they claimed I was the only person with the problem. I knew of several others from this list. I managed a workaround with an alternative boot without my IDE DVD and IDE CD writer. I gave up trying to get them to fix the problem and eventually discovered they had solved the problem 3-12 months later. Shame they didn't bother to tell me. Yes, you do get IT-8 calibration and it seems to be much more accurate than Microtek's Scan Wizard Pro but Vuescan generally produces good colour anyway. Steve - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2001 11:25 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: I love/hate SilverFast I just paid extra to buy SilverFast with a Polaroid SprintScan 120 medium format film scanner. I received the scanner a week ago Friday and it was inoperable for a week due to poor installation instructions from Polaroid. Then, after I got it running with Polaroid Insight, I tried to load SilverFast, which is what I want to use for scanner software since I'm already familiar with it on my SprinScan 4000. But the new SilverFast wouldn't load, probably due to interference from another copy for the SS4000. But I was able to determine that the software on the new SilverFast CD is the old version and not the current version 5.5. I need version 5.5 because it supposedly corrects SilverFast shortcomings with negative processing, which is what I want to use the SS120 for. So I have a new copy of SilverFast that won't load and the software was obsolete even before I got it. So now I have to pay another $45US for something I've already paid for once and should have received in the first place. You're right, these guys are milking their client base. In fact, they're cheating them by shipping obsolete software in the first place. It wouldn't be so bad if the software they sell would load. And that wouldn't be so bad if SilverFast had an 800 number you could call for help. And the lack of an 800 wouldn't be so bad if their support people would at least answer their e-mail in a timely manner. I've said before that I think some of these people should be drowned in a bucket of warm nose drippings. It's a rip off. It's frustrating enough having a $3000 scanner in its second week of being unusable. But being sold obsolete software simply adds to the grief. Too bad Insight and Vuescan don't support IT-8 calibration. That's the only reason I've tolerating this SilverFast nonsense up to this point. I'm a photographer and I want to be spending my time and money in giving my clients what they want. I don't enjoy fighting these other battles. In a message dated 8/4/2001 10:42:06 AM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 16:55 +0100 4/8/01, David Gordon wrote: But the demo doesn't give an option to put a serial number in... So it's still pants, until someone tells me how! Click the 'i' (info) box top left in the SF interface. Oh, by the way, you can do batch scanning with individual correction for each frame now. Of course they all get watermarked. But you still have to cough up another hundred or two squids to use the software with a bulk slide feeder! Fine software but they really milk their client base. Pay for each scanner, each bolt-on bit then pay again when they stop maintaining the version you bought! Stuff 'em, go for $40 Vuescan (which always did individual - better - exposure control). David Hoffman
Re: filmscanners: Vuescan Image vs Slide setting
Using Vuescan with slides I have found that media type image and white balance produce the best results most of the time. I only consider any other options when I find I am not getting decent results. When I do try various other combinations or scanning software I rarely produce anything better. Steve - Original Message - From: Mark T. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2001 7:25 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Vuescan Image vs Slide setting A small cautionary tale. It appears Vuescan's 'Slide' setting may result in blown out highlights, at least for my Acer (perhaps it is related to the lack of exposure control..?). I would be interested to hear if anyone else has experienced the following. A challenging (!) Ektachrome I scanned this morning was showing burnt out highlights in a small area. I tried adjusting white and black points, image brightness and gamma, and could not improve it. I had just about given up and assumed the area was in fact burned out on the slide, or that maybe the Acer wasn't resolving it. But then I tried Miraphoto, and it did a better job.. So I went back to Vuescan, and puzzled over what the problem was. I changed the Media Type to IMAGE rather than SLIDE, and sure enough, there was my lost data.. Moral - if your highlights are blown, check that setting! If you're interested, I've posted samples here.. http://members.ozemail.com.au/~markthomasz/burnt.htm Mark T.
Re: filmscanners: Microtek Artixscan 4000: how does it measure up?
I have the SCSI (didn't know there was a firewire vesion) Artixscan 4000T. Unsurprisingly it perfroms much the same as the SS4000. The ScanWizard Pro software is very easy to use and has been completely stable from day 1. But the results in my experience are far inferior to Vuescan (US$40 I believe). In part my poor results are probably duwe to lack of experience with the product - I just found Vuescan so much easier that I didn't bother much with Scan Wizard Pro . You can try Vuescan for free here http://www.hamrick.com/vsm.html My Artixscan came with Silverfast Ai 5 which is very sophisticated. In my experience I rarely get a better scan with Silverfast than I do with Vuescan. I did put quite a lot of effort into using Silverfast but found I still got better scans form Vuescan. The automatic settings certainly seem much superior in Vuescan. I do suspect that in very skilled hands Silverfast will produce the best results overall, but it would take me weeks just to get regular good results. With Vuescan the results are invariably good with very little effort. Steve - Original Message - From: Tim Lumsdaine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 5:53 AM Subject: filmscanners: Microtek Artixscan 4000: how does it measure up? In all of the correspondence I've followed on this site, I've hardly encountered anything relating to Microtek's top contender in the dedicated 35mm scanning category. I've had the FireWire version on order for a while: the specs seem good, the ScanWizard Pro software is easy to use, and it compares favourably (from what I've seen) with scanners far above its price range. From info I've received it shares the same engine as the Polaroid SS4000. In Australia it retails for around $2,500AUD. It still hasn't arrived in the country yet, so I'm curious as to whether any players here have had any experience with the beast or its earlier USB sibling. Any info would be much appreciated. Tim Lumsdaine Sydney, Australia
Re: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows
I've noticed PS is slow too. Worse still it doesn't compress well either - try opening a file from Vuescan and then saving it with PS and it comes out significantly larger. Sorry, this doesn't sound right. For a given image, a given file format, and compression method, the file size should be deterministic. If this weren't so, it would not be possible to share files between applications. This is certainly possible for compressed formats where some (eg. mrsid) compress the data much greater whilst still keeping the data. I also see no reason why a lossless format cannot be achieved with different encoding algorithms. It is only important that they can be decoded to the same data - not that they encode to to the same data. You don't really expect all the software to share the same code do you ? I have not checked but I suspect lossless is actually very nearly lossless. i.e. there are some rounding errors from the compression algorithms. Seve
Re: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows
This is probably because you are usually using a process that is grabbing sufficient memory to prevent the file cache getting big enough to block every other process. File servers are the most likely machines to be afflicted with this problem. It may come and bite you anytime so unless your feeling really lucky you may wish to look at my post just above this one. Steve - Original Message - From: LAURIE SOLOMON [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 7:18 AM Subject: RE: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows Funny, I have two systems with more than 512 MB of RAM installed on them and using Win 98 and have not experienced any problems of the sort you describe. I have experienced problems with the motherboard not being able to resolve conflicts in timing between different types of 168 pin DIMMs but no operating system related problems. One of my systems has 758MB of RAM and the other has 640MB of RAM. Maybe I am just lucky. :-) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Rob Geraghty Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 12:12 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows I'm just about to plug another 256MB of RAM into my computer and I thought I'd better check up on a bug I'd heard mentioned in relation to Windows 98. In fact the bug applies to all versions of Windows other than those in the NT class (NT 4.0 and Win2K), not just 98. I think Microsoft's suggested workarounds on MSDN are hilarious. I wish I could move to Win2K, but I am reasonably certain that the combination of hardware and software I have will not work in that environment. So here's the warning in case you plan to have more than 512MB RAM in your Windows 95, 98, 98SE or ME computer: The Windows 32-bit protected-mode cache driver (Vcache) determines the maximum cache size based on the amount of RAM that is present when Windows starts. Vcache then reserves enough memory addresses to permit it to access a cache of the maximum size so that it can increase the cache to that size if needed. These addresses are allocated in a range of virtual addresses from 0xC000 through 0x (3 to 4 gigabytes) known as the system arena. On computers with large amounts of RAM, the maximum cache size can be large enough that Vcache consumes all of the addresses in the system arena, leaving no virtual memory addresses available for other functions such as opening an MS-DOS prompt (creating a new virtual machine). WORKAROUND To work around this problem, use one of the following methods: Use the MaxFileCache setting in the System.ini file to reduce the maximum amount of memory that Vcache uses to 512 megabytes (524,288 KB) or less. For additional information about how to use the MaxFileCache setting, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Q108079 32-Bit File Access Maximum Cache Size Use the System Configuration utility to limit the amount of memory that Windows uses to 512 megabytes (MB) or less. For additional information about how to use the System Configuration utility, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Q181966 System Configuration Utility Advanced Troubleshooting Settings Reduce the amount of memory that is installed in your computer to 512 MB or less. Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wordweb.com
Re: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows
Two of the suggestions amount to not installing your new memory - pretty dumb suggestions. So I'd definitely use: Use the MaxFileCache setting in the System.ini file to reduce the maximum amount of memory that Vcache uses to 512 megabytes (524,288 KB) or less. Further I would suggest the bigger the file cache becomes the less efficient it becomes and in single user workstation environment it is likely to just hog lots of memory for little benefit. In your position I'd set it to about 2x your largest scan size (about 60Mb LS-30) + about 20Mb extra = 140MB. This will leave a minimum 600Mb for your applications. So convert to Kb 140 x 1024 = 143360 and add immediately under the line [vcache] in system.ini MaxFileCache=143360 You may like to try a little smaller or larger cache size to see if it is any better. The thing to consider is how you work. If you regularly re-open multiple files you have just closed then you may do better with a larger setting. Conversely if you never close files and immediately reopen them then smaller may be better but I wouldn't go below one big scan of cache as you always benefit from having enough file cache for the file output. This allows you to continue working in the shortest possible time when you save a file. If you save from Vuescan and then open in PSP then this will also come straight from the memory cache provided you have not done anything else in between and PSP is already open. You may also wish to consider setting MinFileCache to try to ensure that the last big file is always available from cache. After all PSP should be happy with 600Mb. Some people set MinFileCache to the same value they set for MaxFileCache so their machine does not waste it's time memory managing the cache. This is a dangerous policy on a low memory machine but with 600Mb to spare it is unlikely to cause you a problem. Steve - Original Message - From: Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 6:11 AM Subject: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows I'm just about to plug another 256MB of RAM into my computer and I thought I'd better check up on a bug I'd heard mentioned in relation to Windows 98. In fact the bug applies to all versions of Windows other than those in the NT class (NT 4.0 and Win2K), not just 98. I think Microsoft's suggested workarounds on MSDN are hilarious. I wish I could move to Win2K, but I am reasonably certain that the combination of hardware and software I have will not work in that environment. So here's the warning in case you plan to have more than 512MB RAM in your Windows 95, 98, 98SE or ME computer: The Windows 32-bit protected-mode cache driver (Vcache) determines the maximum cache size based on the amount of RAM that is present when Windows starts. Vcache then reserves enough memory addresses to permit it to access a cache of the maximum size so that it can increase the cache to that size if needed. These addresses are allocated in a range of virtual addresses from 0xC000 through 0x (3 to 4 gigabytes) known as the system arena. On computers with large amounts of RAM, the maximum cache size can be large enough that Vcache consumes all of the addresses in the system arena, leaving no virtual memory addresses available for other functions such as opening an MS-DOS prompt (creating a new virtual machine). WORKAROUND To work around this problem, use one of the following methods: Use the MaxFileCache setting in the System.ini file to reduce the maximum amount of memory that Vcache uses to 512 megabytes (524,288 KB) or less. For additional information about how to use the MaxFileCache setting, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Q108079 32-Bit File Access Maximum Cache Size Use the System Configuration utility to limit the amount of memory that Windows uses to 512 megabytes (MB) or less. For additional information about how to use the System Configuration utility, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Q181966 System Configuration Utility Advanced Troubleshooting Settings Reduce the amount of memory that is installed in your computer to 512 MB or less. Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wordweb.com
Re: filmscanners: Archiving Photos (a little off-topic)
I'd save the file after any touching up for dust etc. It's a pain to do once - I'd hate to have to do it again. If you are using IR dust removal this obviously doesn't apply. Steve - Original Message - From: John Matturri [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 12:30 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Archiving Photos (a little off-topic) I always believe I can do a better job for the finished result in a year, or 5 years later if I ever want to do so. Maris Not saying that this isn't a good idea but it may also be the case that scanners will be better in five years, so you may want to rescan at that time. My own method is to save the scan that Vuescan delivers (not exactly a raw scan) and then a final corrected scan. It is also not that much effort and takes up almost no space to save files associated with levels, curves, HSB and other procedures along with selections. With this you can reproduce your previous work step by step, making changes where needed. John M.
Re: filmscanners: SS4000, Win98 and VCache settings
As you are already using 5.0 one source of possible problems can be the old version. Most installs work fine, but the odd one sometimes plays up if you don't uninstall the old version before installing the new one. I don't expect this to be the problem as this is usually hardware drivers and programs that are running (anything automatically started on boot that stays running) when you install the new version. It's usually wise to stop the old version before the install. Perhaps David will let you know if there are any other people having problems with 5.0 and whether uninstall 4.5 then install 5.0 works best. It may be an interaction between Polar Insight 5.0 and something else particular to your system. I very much doubt that Vcache is anything to do with your real problem, it just encourages it to occur. I had a bad interaction with some well known scanning software that for a long time would not work unless I physically disabled my DVD CD-Writer. This was very repeatable so was much easier to track down, but it still took many hours to find. The fact that altering the Vcache settings seems to trigger the problem suggests you have a nasty instability in your system These can be near impossible to track down. I suspect quite a few people have the potential to have these sorts of problems in their systems - particularly PC's where there are endless combinations of devices and drivers. I'd definitely try Prime95 as it is used by overclockers to find whether their systems can cope with extreme timing settings. Any memory/cpu problems soon show up. You can set it running at start up and continue to work with little noticeable slowdown in performance it just mops up any spare resources. You can set it to use upto 90% (enter 100% and it tells you the max) of physical memory under options-cpu and it will still not effect your general performance. If your PC has any cpu/memory (or overheating) problems the program will throw up an error. If there is an error within a minute of starting I suggest your problem has nothing to do with Polar Insight. Sadly for us scanning and manipulating huge image files is quite stressful and is always more likely to expose problems than editting a 3 page Word document. Steve - Original Message - From: Stan Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 2:37 AM Subject: RE: filmscanners: SS4000, Win98 and VCache settings Thanks. Good ideas here. Stan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Steve Greenbank Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 10:24 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: SS4000, Win98 and VCache settings Changing the VCache settings should not alter the result, only the speed at which you receive the result :- )Except where you hit the Win9x/ME bug where you must set a value less than 512MB if you have more physical memory than 512MB. As this does not apply to you it suggests you have a problem elsewhere. The fact that the new Vcache settings leave more physical memory available might mean you have a physical memory problem in an area of memory not used by the new setting. It may also be due to a physical memory problem being moved to a more critical point. eg. dodgy memory used for picture storage may have almost undetectable effect on an image but would crash most programs if it was used for program code. Likely sources are: 1) Polarcolor insight problem (try re-installing - anyone else having problems - try 5.0) 2) Physical memory problem (try a decent memory tester or different memory or if you can, remove half at a time) - or try torture test in Prime95 ( http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm ) - this thrashes cpu memory severely. 3) SCSI device or driver problem (try re-installing or removing other devices) 4) BIOS setup issue (careful with this as you can really screw your machine) 5) Problem with a background process (eg.virus program) (remove all non-essential background processes) 6) Other device or driver problem (disable as many devices as possible - physical removal is better) 7) Software conflict problem (particularly related to other SCSI devices) (temporarily remove other devices) To check properly you will after to find a set of scan settings that will reboot your machine everytime - preferably immediately after just booting. Otherwise your current setting for MaxFileCache is a bit low and will probably slow your machine down. Using a value that is slightly larger than your typical TIFF file can make open save work much quicker provided you don't overly restrict available RAM to the actual programs. This can be seen most clearly during a save operation. (eg 35mm 4000dpi is about 54MB 8bit and 108MB 16bit so try around 55000/11 depending on whether you use a lot of 16bit files). Steve - Original Message - From: Stan Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Filmscanners (E-mail) [EMAIL
filmscanners: Software crashing
I have noted that there are several people that have regular problems with some scanning software whilst others have no problems. Some of these may be due to a general unreliability in your system. If your image processing software can be used without any problems this may indicate otherwise but it's difficult to be sure. Anyone experiencing regular problems may like to try the Prime95 torture test (as I recently suggested to Stan). I believe there are versions for Macs (and others) as well as PC's. It's frequently used by overclockers to test whether their system is stable. If your system can't run it successfully for at least a few minutes you've got serious cpu/memory or heat problems. These will regularly cause your programs to fail unpredictably. You can download Prime95 here: http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm You can set it running at start up and continue to work with little noticeable slowdown in performance it just mops up any spare resources. You can set it to use upto 90% (enter 100% and it tells you the max) of physical memory under options-cpu and it will still not effect your general performance. If your PC has any cpu/memory (or overheating) problems the program will throw up an error. Similar number cruncher that many are familiar is Seti. But I don't know if it as a similar severe test. Steve
Re: filmscanners: SS4000, Win98 and VCache settings
Changing the VCache settings should not alter the result, only the speed at which you receive the result :- )Except where you hit the Win9x/ME bug where you must set a value less than 512MB if you have more physical memory than 512MB. As this does not apply to you it suggests you have a problem elsewhere. The fact that the new Vcache settings leave more physical memory available might mean you have a physical memory problem in an area of memory not used by the new setting. It may also be due to a physical memory problem being moved to a more critical point. eg. dodgy memory used for picture storage may have almost undetectable effect on an image but would crash most programs if it was used for program code. Likely sources are: 1) Polarcolor insight problem (try re-installing - anyone else having problems - try 5.0) 2) Physical memory problem (try a decent memory tester or different memory or if you can, remove half at a time) - or try torture test in Prime95 ( http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm ) - this thrashes cpu memory severely. 3) SCSI device or driver problem (try re-installing or removing other devices) 4) BIOS setup issue (careful with this as you can really screw your machine) 5) Problem with a background process (eg.virus program) (remove all non-essential background processes) 6) Other device or driver problem (disable as many devices as possible - physical removal is better) 7) Software conflict problem (particularly related to other SCSI devices) (temporarily remove other devices) To check properly you will after to find a set of scan settings that will reboot your machine everytime - preferably immediately after just booting. Otherwise your current setting for MaxFileCache is a bit low and will probably slow your machine down. Using a value that is slightly larger than your typical TIFF file can make open save work much quicker provided you don't overly restrict available RAM to the actual programs. This can be seen most clearly during a save operation. (eg 35mm 4000dpi is about 54MB 8bit and 108MB 16bit so try around 55000/11 depending on whether you use a lot of 16bit files). Steve - Original Message - From: Stan Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Filmscanners (E-mail) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 10:06 PM Subject: filmscanners: SS4000, Win98 and VCache settings I use an SS4000 on a SCSI connection with a Win98SE 933 PentiumIII and 512MB RAM. I was having some problems with the system doing a reboot in the middle of scanning a transparency, usually with Polacolor Insight. I posted that here a couple of weeks ago and got some suggestions. I also use my computer for speech recognition software (not at the same time, of course). In the process of tweaking the computer for better speech recognition, I made some changes in the Vcache settings. After making those improvements, I was unable to scan a single slide without the system suddenly rebooting. It seems there is a connection between these Vcache settings and the problems I have had. Does anyone have experience with tweaking the Vcache settings for a SCSI slide scanner? I have used a couple of the shareware type programs that suggest values for power users and multimedia and low memory systems. I just changed the settings in system.ini to: [vcache] MaxFileCache=16384 MinFileCache=3144 The settings I had been using were min=0, max=131,000 (that was approximate--it was a correct multiple) with chunk size specified as 4096. Now I can finish a scan, but I have no clue what the optimum setting should be, or if it should be specified at all. Stan
Re: filmscanners: Re: Vuescan gripes
It must be me, but I find the Vuescan interface quite good. Initially it seemed odd but within a matter of a few hours it all seemed rather slick. Granted it doesn't have some of the normal features found on many manufacturers software or the ultimate flexibility of Silverfast. Pretty windows are not the be all and end all of a good interface. In the good old days (pre-Microsoft) Autoroute(UK) was really slick to use - it's never been nearly as good since they ditched DOS and added a Windows front end and bloody wizards. With Vuescan the best trick is the ability to redo the last preview and scan in memory. It saves me several minutes each time I do it compared to a re-scan with other software. I don't suppose rescanning is much good for the film either. You can effectively rescan (without actually physically scanning) with different settings for nearly everything except resolution, focus, exposure (and multi-pass scan?) - most of which you never change unless you change the image you're scanning. If I want to try several options I turn the file output off and change the options in the colour tab (sometimes filter too) and rescan the memory until I get the desired result. When I'm happy I turn the file output back on. The main things to tweak seem to be gamma and image brightness. I invariably use white balance auto black (0) and white (0.01) point. If all else fails I try restore colours (only works with scans not previews). If I still can't get a result I try Silverfast but I generally find I can't get as good a result with Silverfast. Presumably the operator is deffective! The file numbering scheme I quite like. I just let everything default to CROP.TIF in C:\Vuescan. I do a film at a time - ensure there are no old crop files. Only do one final scan (with output) or delete dodgy output or rename with a a added before doing a second scan mem. If you have some really duff images add in a few blank dummy files. This will make sure the crop numbers match the numbers on the film/slide. Seems perfectly logical to me. Add an text,excel,database index to give the images names works great. Personally I set up an autorun to produce a set of low resolution jpegs for each file and then just scan these to find the required image. Even the cropping seems to work quite well. Originally I used the auto cropping but I found this to be a bit of a pain as you then had to then crop it in Photoshop which I have never found any better. I orientate it and crop it at the same time and that leaves less to do with the enormous 16bit files that are so slow to use. Yes the interface is unusual but once you work with the program, instead of against it, I am sure you will find it all falls into place quite nicely. It seems strange to me that Nikon (to name but one) can produce a digicam that will usually automatically produce a good white balance (and histogram) on a positively retarded processing unit, but can't do it on a 1GHz 512MB PC. After all ultimately a digicam is in most respects a scaled down portable scanner with a low spec in built computer. Steve PS. I don't want some long protracted argument over whether a digicam is like a scanner. My point is they use a lens, a CCD, an A-D converter and a computer to convert a physical image into a digital image. Given the vastly superior processing power available to most film scanners they should be capable of much better AUTOMATIC results. This is what Vuescan does so well. - Original Message - From: Johnny Deadman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Filmscanners [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 4:16 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Re: Vuescan gripes on 7/19/01 9:51 PM, Roger Smith at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm inclined to agree with Dean - I seem to be able to avoid most of VueScan's quirks, and admittedly there are more on the Mac than on the PC. Ed has explained any of them that I have asked him about, and he continues to improve things. yeah but you guys miss the point it's not either/or it should be both/and Vuescan has a wonderful engine but a TERRIBLE, AWFUL interface quite literally the worst of *any* app I have on my HD with the possible exception of the panotools ptstitcher, but it's close (and that's about 10G of them) think how many more Ed would sell if it had a KILLER interface how much nicer life would be and how little effort it would take -- John Brownlow http://www.pinkheadedbug.com ICQ: 109343205
Re: filmscanners: CD from Scanner
- Original Message - From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 12:49 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: CD from Scanner Steve Greenbank wrote: The music CDs were just one part of the examples. Some of the later music CD's are MP3 discs that are standard ISO data discs. I don't think I have ever used a RW for an Audio CD. Also the examples of saving data to transfer from one computer to another is again data. The main point is I have had quite a few problems with CD RW yet even stored in extreme conditions I have found CD-Rs reliable - despite the added problem of time sensitivity. Steve There is another element involved in this issue. Very simply, some CD player lasers are not tuned to CD-RW dyes. I only have one CD player at home which will play CD-RW disks. All the other don't even acknowledge a disk being inside the tray. I have had at least 3 CD-RWs that were apparently blank immediately after writing - even on the writer that was supposed to of written them. My DVD is also supposedly fully CD-RW compatible but failed to read these discs. Re-erasing the CD-RW and re-writing it has cured the problem each time. Which certainly worries me. My CD-ROM drives (I have about 5) vary in how well they will read a CD-RW, depending on their year of production. The older models tend to be difficult with CD-RW disks, even with upgraded software drivers. The newer CD-ROM and CD burners tend to read them well. I do not know if the specific model of CD player you have in your car is designed to read CD-RW disks, as they use a different frequency or dye color, so the lasers have to be designed for that use. The MP3 in-dash CD player is also supposed to be CD-RW compatible, but does appear to suffer the odd glitch with CD-RW but not with CD-R. The Napa portable CD player is also supposed to play CD-RW but was very fussy and would only play reliably from the TDK disc recorded at 4x or less and when the player was set to full anti-shock mode. This rather suggests it was reading lots of errors. I might add this unit was not too great in general and went back. The problems here were more with the reader but I have heard anecdotally of quite a few CD-RW compatible readers being fussy with CD-RW of one type or another. That might explain the situation. Maybe? IMHO probably not. Steve
Re: filmscanners: CD from Scanner
I wrote: My own personal experience is that CD-RW is more temperamental. Since a few people have commented on this I think I should give a little more detail. I have extensively used CD-R even some dodgy cheap brands in my car 10 CD-stack. These discs are exposed to temperatures from just under 0C to around 50C - no doubt wild fluctuations in humidity too. Non of these disks have displayed any problems at any time other than the odd unrepeatable skip on a big bump. Some were frequently swapped but others spent 2-3 years in there. I have since changed cars and wanted to install a CD MP3 player. I couldn't get one at sensible price in the UK so I tried a personal MP3 CD player (Napa Dav 310 largely dictated by UK availability) - it's a load of rubbish and has a firmware bug that makes it skip approx 1.5MB into any file recorded at anything other than 128kbits. With this unit I found my TDK CD-RW would only play reliably in the car if I recorded at 4x or lower and with the anti-shock in full on mode at 8x or 10x it would only work when the unit was sat on a firm platform. This sort of problem was not uncommon with similar units according to several bulletin boards. The Napa went back - it's a load of rubbish and has a firmware bug that makes it skip approx 1.5MB into any file recorded at anything other than 128kbits. I now have a Kenwood in-dash MP3 (MP6090R - 8090 in US I think) this works great but it did suffer the odd problem whilst using the TDK R/W disc, but is apparently flawless with any old CD-R. I have also on several occaisions written to cheap CD R/W and been unable to read it minutes later on the writer or anything else. Yet I can re-write it and it reads fine. Whilst I realise some of these problems are in part due to the quality of the electronics or cheap media. Not all have been and it rather suggests that the technology is running on the edge. Oh and the cheap CD-RW media was acquired by accident. I was sent the wrong CDs mail order. I couldn't be bothered with the hassle of returning them so I negotiated a discount to forget about it (I paid 40p a disc 2 years ago). I only use these discs to transfer big files from one machine to another where I have no network link. For this they are great - except when they suffer temporary amnesia. Oh and the cheap CD-Rs were deliberately bought for the car when there was quite a significant price difference - no point having good one's knicked and I could always remake them from the originals. Steve
Re: filmscanners: CD from Scanner
The music CDs were just one part of the examples. Some of the later music CD's are MP3 discs that are standard ISO data discs. I don't think I have ever used a RW for an Audio CD. Also the examples of saving data to transfer from one computer to another is again data. The main point is I have had quite a few problems with CD RW yet even stored in extreme conditions I have found CD-Rs reliable - despite the added problem of time sensitivity. Steve - Original Message - From: Lynn Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2001 8:52 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: CD from Scanner Hi, Steve-- I get from your post that you're recording a lot of music CDs. This, I think, is a little different from data CDs (even photo CDs), in that music CDs are *extremely* time-sensitive, while data CDs are not. Having the fastest possible CD burner is an advantage with music CDs--it's not such a big deal with data CDs. I could be wrong on this, but I don't think so--if I am, someone will happily come in and correct me (at least I'd hope so). :-) I can see how, in this case, CD-RW would give problems with your applications. CD-RW is slower than CD-R--we may be talking about Data-Clog again. If anybody actually knows the numbers, this would be a good time to enter the discussion--I don't think that Music CDs and Data CDs are comparable. Correct me if I'm wrong, and Steve and others will hopefully be grateful. Best regardw--LRA From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: CD from Scanner Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 20:08:55 +0100 I wrote: My own personal experience is that CD-RW is more temperamental. Since a few people have commented on this I think I should give a little more detail. I have extensively used CD-R even some dodgy cheap brands in my car 10 CD-stack. These discs are exposed to temperatures from just under 0C to around 50C - no doubt wild fluctuations in humidity too. Non of these disks have displayed any problems at any time other than the odd unrepeatable skip on a big bump. Some were frequently swapped but others spent 2-3 years in there. I have since changed cars and wanted to install a CD MP3 player. I couldn't get one at sensible price in the UK so I tried a personal MP3 CD player (Napa Dav 310 largely dictated by UK availability) - it's a load of rubbish and has a firmware bug that makes it skip approx 1.5MB into any file recorded at anything other than 128kbits. With this unit I found my TDK CD-RW would only play reliably in the car if I recorded at 4x or lower and with the anti-shock in full on mode at 8x or 10x it would only work when the unit was sat on a firm platform. This sort of problem was not uncommon with similar units according to several bulletin boards. The Napa went back - it's a load of rubbish and has a firmware bug that makes it skip approx 1.5MB into any file recorded at anything other than 128kbits. I now have a Kenwood in-dash MP3 (MP6090R - 8090 in US I think) this works great but it did suffer the odd problem whilst using the TDK R/W disc, but is apparently flawless with any old CD-R. I have also on several occaisions written to cheap CD R/W and been unable to read it minutes later on the writer or anything else. Yet I can re-write it and it reads fine. Whilst I realise some of these problems are in part due to the quality of the electronics or cheap media. Not all have been and it rather suggests that the technology is running on the edge. Oh and the cheap CD-RW media was acquired by accident. I was sent the wrong CDs mail order. I couldn't be bothered with the hassle of returning them so I negotiated a discount to forget about it (I paid 40p a disc 2 years ago). I only use these discs to transfer big files from one machine to another where I have no network link. For this they are great - except when they suffer temporary amnesia. Oh and the cheap CD-Rs were deliberately bought for the car when there was quite a significant price difference - no point having good one's knicked and I could always remake them from the originals. Steve _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: filmscanners: Primefilm 1800i
So, the very old 'caveat emptor' should always be in force with ebay purchases. The best one I saw was Playstaion 2 Box and Receipt Bidding started at $1 and I think there was no reserve. There were many bids and eventually someone had the winning bid of $425. A little over the top but hey these things are in short supply ... ... except ... http://cgi2.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedbackuserid=tru2dis2k (half way down 3rd comment) ... in fairness tru2disk did not misrepresent the goods.
Re: filmscanners: Film Scanner Question Again
This is what Jack sent to me - except I've used LZW compression. I've never seen it manage compression ratios 20:1 -although its not surprising when you see the image. Steve - Original Message - From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2001 5:05 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Film Scanner Question Again Jack Phipps wrote: . The attached file has several very fine lines at certain angles. Jack Phipps Applied Science Fiction I didn't find the attachment with your post, am I the only one? Art resizetest2b.tif
Re: filmscanners: Primefilm 1800i
In the UK I think this scanner is available under several brand names Jessops 1800U ,Black widow filmscan 2000 and Microtek Filmscanner 35. I would suspect of these Microtek may be the real manufacturer. Anyway there is a review of the Microtek version at : http://www.pcpro.co.uk/sgreenbank/front_flash.php then click reviews then scanners/cameras and its somewhere in the middle of the list. There are some manufacturer samples for the Black widow at http://www.blackwidow.co.uk but they have been downsized and jpegged so they aren't that useful - but at least give a vague idea of the end result. Steve - Original Message - From: rafeb [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 1:08 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Primefilm 1800i For those interested in buying their very first film scanner, or trading up from an existing model, I humbly suggest eBay as a source of very good deals, particularly at the moment -- where new market entries from several major vendors are causing a lot of turnover in equipment. If you're unsure of which model to buy, use the web to get a feel for the various models -- there are many review sites, comments on usenet forums, and so on. Bear in mind that there will be a lot of hype, both pro and con, on almost any model. Take the more extreme opinions with a large grain of salt. To search usenet archives, go to www.deja.com. Usenet groups that discuss scanners include (for example) comp.periphs.scanners, rec.photo.equipment.35mm, and rec.photo.equipment.medium-format. Sites that offer reviews of various film scanners (either by columnists, or by the public) can be found via the usual web-search engines. One of the better ones I've stumbled into recently is www.photographyreview.com I've personally had only good luck buying photo gear on eBay. Standard caveats apply, of course. Choose your sellers carefully, read the fine print, and ask appropriate questions before you bid. rafe b.
Re: filmscanners: Digicams again was Re: filmscanners: MinoltaDiMAGE Scan Dimage 7 camera
Way off topic but I think this is what you are referring to: http://www.ibm.com/news/2001/06/25.phtml Steve - Original Message - From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 8:48 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Digicams again was Re: filmscanners: MinoltaDiMAGE Scan Dimage 7 camera One area where there seems to be major movement is in density of transistors. I just read somewhere that IBM has once again figured out a way to increase density considerably... I think it was ten times the current standard. I only skimmed the article, but I believe they were talking about eleven molecule transistors, or was that traces?? I should be paying more attention... Art rafeb wrote: The improvements in silicon technology are mostly improvements in lithography (smaller features, enabling higher densities) and placement of dopants in the silicon (in all three dimensions) via ion implantation. Also, better ways to clean up after masking steps, using plasma etch instead of wet chemistry.
Re: filmscanners: Printing: Settings, calibration whatever
Blues do tend to come out a bit darker but I generally get an overall good match to screen with vibrant colours. I use Adobe 1998 on a PC. Assuming your using a PC, Ian Lyons has a good guide see: http://www.rgbnet.co.uk/ilyons/media_profiles/media_print_1.htm basically assuming you have photoshop colour management set up correctly download and install the ICC media profile. This is a direct link to the PC profile: http://www.btinternet.com/~ian.lyons/epson1270/1270profiles.zip then I print using Photoshop using source space set to document and Print space set to Epson Stylus 1270 paper type and intent perceptual. I set the printer driver mode to custom and select advanced settings and select no colour adjustment. I also set the media type as appropriate but I don't think it matters when using no colour adjustment. Steve - Original Message - From: Norman Unsworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 2:19 PM Subject: filmscanners: Printing: Settings, calibration whatever I've gotten a lot of very helpful information here that has allowed me to develop the quality of both my scans (mostly using Vuescan on my Minolta Scan Dual II) and the editing / adjusting of those scans in Photoshop 6. The biggest problem I have is getting something to come out of my printer that even vaguely resembles what I see on screen. I've calibrated my monitor using the Adobe utility but get prints that are consistently, sometimes significantly flat, especially in the blue range, but generally overall. Admittedly, I have an older, 1440 dpi Epson and lust for a new 1270 but I know I must be missing something. I've been using the Adobe RGB colorspace both from Vuescan and in Photoshop - I don't pretend to know what is 'best' here' since I'm perfectly satisfied with what I'm producing on screen and for the web. I've printed on both Kodak and Epson high gloss, photo quality paper with the corresponding paper / print quality settings in my printer software. I'd appreciate any suggestions / recommendations for getting print results that more closely resemble what I see on the monitor. Norman Unsworth
Re: filmscanners: Vuescan Settings
I recently having similar problem but the dark scans were printing reasonably OK - it turned out that Adobe Gamma was not loading during start up. Try locating the gamma loader it should be here: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Calibration\Adobe Gamma Loader.exe If your screen lightens up then its not loading during start up. If you need to know how to do this send me an e-mail off list. If this is your problem it would quite probably explain your printer problems too. Steve - Original Message - From: Norman Unsworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 3:11 PM Subject: filmscanners: Vuescan Settings For Tony Sleep - I really appreciated your workflow description, especially the part about trying to use Vuescan settings that will capture all data on the slide / negative. It's easy enough to lower the white point to ensure no clipping at the high end as you suggest, and it works well. How to you do the same at the dark end of the spectrum? I've been raising the gamma considerably (several whole points) and sometimes that still doesn't get the dark end off the end of the histogram. Norm Unsworth
Re: filmscanners: Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dimage 7 camera
A Casio QV3500 + 340 MB microdrive (250 high res jpegs [and you can delete the bad ones to make way for more]) can be had for less than the price of a 35mm camera with 28-70 zoom + half decent film scanner (Acer 2740). On screen or in smaller prints there is little between them except the huge depth of field on the digicam pictures. Yes there are still some quality problems with digicams but there are also some benefits no dust, no scratches, no grain, no fingerprints, no human processing f**k ups, immediate feedback, exposure latitude, slower shutter speeds can be hand held, macro pictures are much easier to take, decent results out of the box unlike the damn scanner. I have little doubt that 35mm film quality will soon be surpassed in MOST respects by prosumer digicams. Like with CD and vinyl some people will maintain that analogue is better for quite some time, but ultimately 99% will convert to digital. The original poster was talking about using one for web pictures - I'd say he'd be completely mad to use film. I'm just off to hide under the kitchen table ( as once advised by the UK government in the event of nuclear attack!!). Steve - Original Message - From: Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 1:49 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dimage 7 camera rafeb [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Oh, indeed. I think digital cameras are closing fast on 35 mm format. In another year or two there really won't be any reason left to shoot 35 mm film. Only if the prices also come down. I can't see the point in buying a 3Mpix digicam when I can buy a good 35mm SLR for half the price. The digicams at 35mm type resolution are going to be expensive for a while yet... Rob
Re: filmscanners: Time to upgrade: Opinions wanted
I have an Microtek Artixscan 4000 ( mechanically identical to the Polaroid SS4000 ). It seemed from early reviews that I might be able to scan my slides a lot faster and in particular avoid the incredibly tedious task of removing dust if I traded up to the Nikon. Rick then posted this link (thanks Rick) : http://www.samcos.com/rick/equip/scannertest/ssvsed.htm The Nikon unfiltered scans look sharper. But it appears to me that the SS4000 not only had better shadow detail but suffered far less from film grain. Both of these are also a pain when scanning. The Nikon could remove the grain to the Polaroid standard but by then the Polaroid image was sharper. I have also found that if you scan slides the moment you open the box for the first time, it takes less than 5 minutes to despot them and you don't lose any overall sharpness compared to ICE. Usually you can despot whilst scanning the next slide. For the family archive I'd quite like the Nikon as some of these are in a dreadful state, but otherwise I prefer my A4000/SS4000. Steve - Original Message - From: Dan Honemann [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 8:06 PM Subject: RE: filmscanners: Time to upgrade: Opinions wanted I thank all of you for participating. I believe I found answers to most of my questions. Only time will show if I am going to be happy with my choice. So what did you finally choose, Peter? And _are_ you happy with it (so far)? I shoot color slide film (velvia and provia 100--leaning toward standardizing on the latter) and bw print (everything, from delta to t-max to agfa to tri-x, but I'm considering standardizing on the C41-processed XP2 super), and my oldests slides/negs are only a year or so old, and all are kept in sleeves and boxed carousels so I imagine they are pretty clean. I'd thought I'd start with the Nikon LS-40 (Coolscan IV), since it's the cheapest of the three I'm considering, but Ed and others have hinted that it doesn't have high enough resolution for slide film--and I'm more concerned about those than the negatives since I'm comfortable enough in a darkroom for bw work. So that brings me to the LS 4000 vs. SS 4000: the same decision (no doubt) that many have faced. The fact that my slides and negatives aren't scratched (not that I know of, anyway) and that the price of the SS is quite a bit lower than the LS, has me now leaning toward the Polaroid. The only concern is the lower DMax and the lack of a batch feeder, but I can probably live with both of those limitations. Hmmm. Did I just make up my mind? :) Dan
Re: filmscanners: why not digital minilabs?
Yes the quality is great. I tend to do most of my prints on my Epson 1270 but some I do have printed on the Fuji Frontier. At the Lab I have used the the biggest they do is 10*15 after that the Durst Epsilon (also good but only 254dpi). The results are better than the 1270 and can even stand upto quite serious abuse. As yet I haven't tried a Lightjet but these are better still. I also saw the output from a Pictograph which was also very good. If I was selling the prints (something I have considered) I would be too worried about the durability of the 1270 prints - but they are still pretty good and compare favourably to most of the poor results I have seen from UK film labs. The digital prints seem to be a lot more reliable. The only thing you have to watch with the digital printing labs is that they show perfectly things like grain and posturisation. My Epson hides all but the worst cases due to the way it lays down the ink. Steve - Original Message - From: "Tomasz Zakrzewski" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 9:14 PM Subject: filmscanners: why not digital minilabs? Most of you use ink-jet printers for the output of your pictures. Why don't you use digital minilabs, like Fuji Frontier? Great quality, 300dpi, up to 22x13,7", archival quality (especially on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper) and last but not last photographic paper. I will read your answers with great interest. Tomasz Zakrzewski
Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Does CMM work on Win2000?
Surely you should archive with the correct profile where it is known. You can always ignore it later, but if you don't know what it is to start with you can never get the exact archive image back. Steve - Original Message - From: Maris V. Lidaka, Sr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 10:59 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Does CMM work on Win2000? Yes, for the web. But what about for print? My understanding is that colors outside of the sRGB gamut are printable, primarily cyans. My method, then, is to use Adobe or Bruce RGB for working with the image, then archive without any embedded color space, but convert to sRGB for posting on the web. Maris - Original Message - From: Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 8:27 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Re: filmscanners: Does CMM work on Win2000? [snipped] | In the absence of expensive hardware and software to accurately profile my | whole setup, I'm beginning to think that sticking to sRGB is probably the | simplest way out. | | Rob | | | |
Re: filmscanners: Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dimage 7 camera
- Original Message - From: Lynn Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 10:25 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dimage 7 camera Steve wrote: A Casio QV3500 + 340 MB microdrive (250 high res jpegs [and you can delete the bad ones to make way for more]) can be had for less than the price of a 35mm camera with 28-70 zoom + half decent film scanner (Acer 2740). Isn't that a little *harsh*, Steve? I suppose the difference between half decent and competent isn't enough to argue over, but I'd submit that Acer scans are at least 85% decent, even though I belly-ache about them often enough. ;-) Fair enough, poor use of English. What I really meant was that, judging by opinion here, anything significantly cheaper is so poor in comparison that it is not worth considering. Depending on what 35mm camera you're talking about (even so-so SLR's are around 200+ $US around here, body only), you're talking $600-850, which will buy a *good* mid-range digital camera from any number of mfgrs, but not a Coolpix. Since I'm planning to get a DC for my daughter, I'm hyper-interested in the subject. Casio doesn't quite ring bells, but I might very well be overlooking something. I bought my Casio almost by accident. There were the first round of 3MP cameras being reviewed on the web ( I particularly like Steve's reviews http://www.steves-digicams.com/ ). I decided I'd upgrade my JVC GCS1 which was pretty awful (half-decent would be a gross exageration) but was still good enough to get me hooked. I went for a browse round a few internet sites to see how much the 2MP cameras had dropped in price when I happened across the 3MP QV3000 for more than a £100 less than the cheapest price of the equivalent 2MP model. I couldn't find the credit card quick enough. I have always been delighted with the Casio. Sure the Nikon 990 has very marginally better absolute image quality is probably a bit more solid and it has one of those marvellous twisty lens designs (don't let anyone tell you otherwise) but ultimately it was nearly twice the £430 price and you can't use the wonderful microdrive. Days after purchasing the camera I put these samples on the web (I was one of the first owners). http://www.greenbank.themutual.net/qv3000.htm When I took the samples I was trying to induce the best known digital problems jaggies and purple fringeing. If there is significant interest here e-mail me off list and I will write a mini review and post a few samples and expose what I have found to be the significant problems with the QV3000 much of which applies to many 3MP digicams. In general it has been much better than I ever expected and I use it much more than my two 35mm cameras. Kids in particular love it. Steve OTOH, we might *both* be under our respective kitchen tables when this discussion hits the List. ;-) Best regards--LRA From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dimage 7 camera Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 18:56:19 +0100 A Casio QV3500 + 340 MB microdrive (250 high res jpegs [and you can delete the bad ones to make way for more]) can be had for less than the price of a 35mm camera with 28-70 zoom + half decent film scanner (Acer 2740). On screen or in smaller prints there is little between them except the huge depth of field on the digicam pictures. Yes there are still some quality problems with digicams but there are also some benefits no dust, no scratches, no grain, no fingerprints, no human processing f**k ups, immediate feedback, exposure latitude, slower shutter speeds can be hand held, macro pictures are much easier to take, decent results out of the box unlike the damn scanner. I have little doubt that 35mm film quality will soon be surpassed in MOST respects by prosumer digicams. Like with CD and vinyl some people will maintain that analogue is better for quite some time, but ultimately 99% will convert to digital. The original poster was talking about using one for web pictures - I'd say he'd be completely mad to use film. I'm just off to hide under the kitchen table ( as once advised by the UK government in the event of nuclear attack!!). Steve - Original Message - From: Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 1:49 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dimage 7 camera rafeb [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Oh, indeed. I think digital cameras are closing fast on 35 mm format. In another year or two there really won't be any reason left to shoot 35 mm film. Only if the prices also come down. I can't see the point in buying a 3Mpix digicam when I can buy a good 35mm SLR for half the price. The digicams at 35mm type resolution are going to be expensive for a while yet... Rob
Re: filmscanners: cd making question
I've been looking into automatic set-up of a web page thumbnail browser of a set of pictures and I have found the following quite good. http://www.hnm-freeware.com/ (click on web gallery creator) Jpeg only http://basepath.com/Albumatic/ can cope with TIFF (uncompressed) as well as jpeg - it can also do a webpage with frames. Neither can do a slide show but both could be set up to auto-start on a CD by adding autorun.inf as described below in the original message. You could also set them up to produce a set of thumbnails that could be used as a CD cover. Steve - Original Message - From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 10:20 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: cd making question On windows Set up a html file in the root directory to show the files (assume it is called index.html for this example) then create an autorun.inf file in the root directory of the CD with the following lines: [autorun] OPEN=start.exe index.html This will automatically start explorer with the file index.html. Steve - Original Message - From: cjcronin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 7:53 PM Subject: filmscanners: cd making question Hi, I want to make/burn cd's with images on them and have a thumbnail file on there too, that will automatically start when the cd is popped in the drive. So the user will have thumbnails in front of them and then they can click on an image to open it. Or if they want to, they can close out the thumbnail file and open the files in an imaging program. Hope I'm making sense Anyone have a suggestion as to how I can do this. Thanks! Jules Jules http://www.angelfire.com/md2/Jules/index.html
Re: filmscanners: cd making question
On windows Set up a html file in the root directory to show the files (assume it is called index.html for this example) then create an autorun.inf file in the root directory of the CD with the following lines: [autorun] OPEN=start.exe index.html This will automatically start explorer with the file index.html. Steve - Original Message - From: cjcronin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 7:53 PM Subject: filmscanners: cd making question Hi, I want to make/burn cd's with images on them and have a thumbnail file on there too, that will automatically start when the cd is popped in the drive. So the user will have thumbnails in front of them and then they can click on an image to open it. Or if they want to, they can close out the thumbnail file and open the files in an imaging program. Hope I'm making sense Anyone have a suggestion as to how I can do this. Thanks! Jules Jules http://www.angelfire.com/md2/Jules/index.html
filmscanners: workflow
Following on from Tony's method here's mine - under a new topic as it has nothing to do with Polaroid 120s. I don't think I'm too good at the actual image processing side so I'm going to brush over a lot of that and describe the overall workflow. I am aiming to have scans of anything vaguely useful so first of all when I receive my slides back from processing I do NOT open the box until I am ready to scan the lot. I then batch scan everything (unless it is really obviously bad) straight out of the box at 4000dpi 48bit portrait format with Vuescan. This is before I really look at them - I know its hard - but its the best way to beat the damn dust. Sadly it's too late for my older slides and I just have to work round the dust/scratches and muck in other ways. I tend to try and match the crop number from Vuescan to the slide number in the box - it helps with cross referencing back to the originals. To do this delete all the crop files in your Vuescan directory and if there is a slide 0 scan it last and rename it crop.tif. Where you have slides you do not want to scan create a place marker file crop00nn.tif so that the numbering keeps in line. Next delete the place markers and move the rest to a new directory for this box of slides. If I'm starting with a box of largely bad slides I just scan the OK ones and rename to get the right slide number. In order to minimise the dreadfully slow processing of 100MB TIFFs, I then do a photoshop batch run through the whole lot reduce them to 600x400 8bit and save them as a jpeg. At this point I weed out and delete any rubbish. Then I attempt to do overall colour balance (sometimes straighten horizons) on the small jpegs (use record actions for later processing of the TIFF). Sometimes if things are particularly problematic I will rescan the slide with Vuescan or Silverfast and remake the jpeg. Once I'm happy with the jpeg I despot the TIF and perform the processing I did to the jpeg to the TIF. Crop as required but ensure I don't crop something out that I later might decide I want. For absolute favourite images (hopefully at least one in every box) I save a 16bit copy for archive because one day I may figure out how to process it properly. I then try do something to minimise the film grain/CCD noise. The most effective way to do this is to down sample but I am trying to avoid this as it is really a one-way process and CD-Rs are pretty cheap. If in doubt I stick with 4000dpi, but for higher speed film I usually down sample. The next bit I am not too sure about, but until someone comes up with something better or points out some really nasty side effect I quite like it. The main way I minimise the noise is with gaussian blur - below radius 0.9 the effect on sharpness is not too drastic. My favourite technique at the moment is to use a 3 layers. The bottom layer I sharpen quite aggressively ensuring the unsharp mask threshold is set high enough to avoid sharpening the grain/noise - even a little over sharpening is good be bold (see later). I tend to sharpen it twice once about 70% radius 1.4 - 1.8 threshold about 12 and then re-shapen it 100% using threshold 6 . The middle layer I gaussian blur about 0.8. I then blend the lower 2 layers at around 40-60% to get the desired result (some over sharpening is disguised here). The top layer I leave as the original to compare before and after results. When I am happy with the result delete the top layer and merge the bottom 2 to get a sharper less grainy image. Now I have an image I am happy with I save a TIFF and overwrite the jpeg with a new small jpeg from the TIFF. The jpegs still help with locating images quickly - I think one for web use would be a good idea. Group the images into sets for burning to CD-R add a text file (not word KISS) index. I burn 2 CDs (on two different brands) one copy I keep and one I send/take to Mum (250 miles away). From my CDs I can produce images at required sizes relatively quickly. I keep meaning to add a simple html viewer to quickly scan the contents of a CD or more likely a directory to help locate images. I also quite like the idea of a CD case sized thumbnail printout - but I haven't got round to this either. Any offers/suggestions for these will be gratefully accepted. Steve - Original Message - From: Tony Sleep [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 7:07 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Sprintscan 120 and new negative proile scheme On Wed, 13 Jun 2001 11:28:21 -0600 Michael Moore ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Tony: Would you be so kind as to give a step by step outline of your technique for dealing with color neg from exposure to final output? Am particularly interested in how you are dealing with 1. inversion...do you do it with the scan software or take it into PShop 2. setting white/black/gray points/ etc. Thanx Mike M. I don't actually have a single regime, but a rather variable recipe which I adapt
Re: filmscanners: Time to upgrade: Opinions wanted
I was considering trading up from my Artixscan 4000 (SS4000 clone) to a Nikon because I'm sick of removing dust specks, the Nikon was said to be sharper with better shadow performance and faster, not to mention GEM and ROC. In reality Rick's sample do show that Nikon generally has the best shadow detail. ICE would be useful but immediately scanning film after processing avoids much of the dust problem. The AS/SS4000 does apppear to be better in other ways - particularly grain. The Nikon sharpness is also only better with the post processing features off which negates most of the Nikon's advantages. I think I'll keep my AS4000 for now. Steve - Original Message - From: Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 18, 2001 12:24 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Time to upgrade: Opinions wanted Based on http://www.samcos.com/rick/equip/scannertest/ssvsed.htm ( if done accurately) SS4000 is overall better than Nikon 4000. Since Nikon IV is not as good as his more expensive brother (this is easy to see!) the Polaroid is a clear winner. With no real knowledge about CanoScan FS4000US and Dimage Scan Elite I would still consider them somewhere in Nikon IV/4000 category. Based on this assumption SS4000 is the best scanner in $1700 category sold for about half that much. Can anybody confirm this? Any thoughts?
Re: filmscanners: MF Scanner list
Check on some of the better known camera sales sites (check for address in a camera mag) eg. http://www.jessops.com http://www.digitalfirst.co.uk (they do for extra 10% of purchase 3 year warranty - not tried using one so I don't know how easy it is to claim) and possibly some of the bigger computer ones: http://www.dabs.com http://www.insight.com/uk http://www.simply.co.uk http://www.pricewatch.co.uk and particularly for the Minolta http://www.ixm.co.uk (exchange and mart) http://www.qxl.com or second-hand camera dealers I know MXV sometimes have scanners http://www.mxv.co.uk There are lots of others - have a look Steve - Original Message - From: Ian Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 15, 2001 3:26 PM Subject: filmscanners: MF Scanner list Hi! Can anyone list Model/Price/Dealer for UK available MF film scanners? My rough guess at models: Polaroid 120£2800 Minolta Scan Multi£1800 Nikon8000£? Umax 4000? (flatbed) £4000 Ian
Re: filmscanners: OT: Device recognition, Win 98
This doesn't always work in all systems. With W98SE here it never does, I have to restart, although with W95 it was fine. Works evertytime on my Win98SE with Artixscan 4000T. I suspect there are a host of issues that allow this to work or not. Some combinations of hardare and software work others don't, it's a particular problem on PCs. I had not disimilar problems with Via USB - after much work I persuaded it to work with Win 98. On 98SE I abandoned my USB mouse + keyboard they just refused to work reliably. Steve
Re: filmscanners: New Nikon performance
I suppose its possible Polaroid owners are unwilling to admit they spend their nights at home doing dust spotting, since they laid out all that ca$h on the SS4000, but I'd expect someone would break ranks and blow the whistle. I just have the Artixscan 4000T. Unless you keep your scanner and images in a slicon chip factory or some other unusually clean environment. It's a bloody nightmare. I'd love to hear from others who have experience with either or (even better) both scanners and who doesn't have an ongoing professional relationship with either or both manufacturers. I'd love to give a Nikon a go - if ICE is 95% effective I would probably buy one. I'm not willing to drop another grand on something that isn't a lot better. Steve
Re: filmscanners: CANON FS4000US vs NIKON IV ED
I have the Artixscan 4000T (same as SS4000) and dust is a big problem. The best solution is to put the film through the scanner before you do anything else with it. I currently have a box of slides that I have had for over a week and haven't even opened them because I want to take the lid off and scan them before the dust arrives! Older slides are just covered in the stuff - even if you have only taken them out of the box a couple of times. Worst of all seem to be the ones that have been back to several labs for re-printing - these just seem to pick up all sorts of muck. If you look at the archive of this list you'll see all sorts of solutions for dust removal before scanning. Ultimately you can expect to spend 5-10mins cloning out dust on an exceptionally clean slide. 2 hours is not unknown for a bad example. I don't know how well ICE would cope with the good or the bad examples, but I for one have better things to do. Some people round here say it's good for the soul. I say it's a FPITA and it can't be good for your eyes either. Steve - Original Message - From: Chris Hargens [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2001 2:25 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: CANON FS4000US vs NIKON IV ED I hope some good reviews come out, otherwise I'll probably opt for the SprintScan 4000. It's price has gone down and it's bundled with SilverFast. Also,overall, I've heard good things about Polaroid's customer service. Finally, I'm not sure that NOT having an onboard dust and scratch removal option like FARE or ICE would make a significant difference, since, according to what I've read, the SprintScan scans/read less dust, scratches, etc. than the Nikon systems. Chris - Original Message - From: jm1209 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 08, 2001 12:02 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: CANON FS4000US vs NIKON IV ED i guess the long wait for the improved canon was a waste of time. it seems that i always wait for the next improved version of many computer products and they wind up not being all that much better. the nikon has a better advertised dynamic range but less resolution. possibly this may be a better combination anyway. i am a new to this film scanner business and hope more people respond with their opinions. thanks jim Arthur Entlich wrote: AR Studio wrote: Canoscan FS4000. but resolution is lower. Does that help? Helen + Andrew Well, That's disappointing. I'm hoping you got a defective one ;-) Sounds like it is little to no improvement over the 2700 FS 2710 then. Art
Re: filmscanners: which scanner for slides ?
3. Minolta may be USB, but USB devices has the advantage of being hot-swappable which means they can be turned on after the computer has been booted, and it will be detected. If I remember correctly, SCSI devices need to be turned on before you boot the system, in order for the SCSI controller to detect it. Generally in Win 9x/ME you can turn any device on and go to device manager of system properties and click on refresh and the device will work. Remember with USB you can take your scanner anywhere and plug it into any modern machine - you'll probably need to install some drivers as well. The downside is speed and some USB devices don't like some USB controllers. My USB controller on a Via KT133 motherboard is a complete PITA. Steve
Re: filmscanners: Sprintscan 4000 (/ Nikon 4000 / Artixscan 4000)
I wish some of these people who I hypothesize are moving from Polaroid to Nikon would put some side-by-side evaluations of their machines on the web before selling the Polaroid - I'd like to see how the edge sharpnesses compare and how discernable the color differences are. Bill Ross I would like to know too and as such would love the opportunity to try a Nikon 4000 against my Artixscan 4000. Does anyone know of a retailer in SE England that will demo a Nikon 4000 or alternatively is there anyone in the SE of England who has one - I could visit with slides, negs , blank CD-R , wine/beer to give it a try. I'll put the results on a website for all to see. Steve
Re: filmscanners: Any insight on H.P. vs Epson printers
If you use the HP for plain paper text as well as photos I'd stick with the HP as IMHO it does this much better. In my experience I have found Epson photographic type output on specialist papers is slightly better, but I have not seen the same image printed on both printers by a competent operator. One advantage with Epson is the jets are not part of the ink cartridge which I understand leads to more consistant results from one cartridge to the next. I have no idea how significant the difference is but it also means clogging can be fatal. See other reasons below from Art. You can go to a shop and get a test print, but there are all sorts of operator, media and software issues that may influence the result. Your best bet is a friend with an Epson who knows how to use it. That way you can hopefully compare the best possible results from each printer. Steve - Original Message - From: Arthur Entlich [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2001 8:34 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Any insight on H.P. vs Epson printers I don't have either printer. I do have sample prints from the 1270. There are more issues than image quality. In fact, more and more the qualitative differences between basic print output is not the issue with inkjet printers, because, very simply, they are getting very close to one another in output quality. The issues are more complex, and you can't use a loupe to see most of them. How fast does the printer work? Does output take 10 minutes or one minute? What type of paper can the printer use, (surfaces, weight, etc) and how do the inks respond to different paper types? How much do papers cost, if the printer requires a special paper made by a specific manufacturer? What is the maximum print size, versus paper size that can be used? How long do the images last before fading, and under what conditions? Is fading fairly uniform or tend to emphasize one color more then others? How much does the ink cost per print? What is the usable life of the ink carts, once opened? Is there more than one type of ink available for the printer? Will the inks types available fulfill the needs I have in mind? Are the cartridges refillable, or are ink cartridges available by other than the manufacturer? (what would happen if the company went under, decided to stop producing the ink carts, or simply made the carts overly expensive?) Can individual ink colors carts be replaced, rather than having to toss a cartridge due to one color running out? How durable is the printer? Is the ink head permanent or replaceable? Will the head be more apt to clog in the type of climate I will be using the printer in? What is the warranty like? How long is it, what's covered, is shipping included, will they cross ship? Years ago, print quality was a, if not THE major issue in deciding which printer family to buy. With the current quality being offered in that department, other issues become the deciding factors. Art Dan Kimble wrote: I am looking to buy another printer. I currently have an HP970cxi which has PhotoREt III technology (HP's latest three color + black) and I think it prints great. I have not seen a side by side comparison of the HP's vs the Epson's. I have heard a lot of talk about the Epson 1270 on this list, but has any one done a fair comparison?? Any help would be appreciated. Dan
Re: filmscanners: What causes this ... projection
Whoops - sorry that was meant to be off-list has Laurie and I have already bored you all tears with this one. Steve - Original Message - From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2001 12:50 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: What causes this ... projection Hi Laurie Part 2 here - part 3 may take some time as I'm quite busy and it's also the area where we have the least common ground. I thought I had covered this with some sort of statement like even when viewed quite close-up, but I must have rephrased this and removed it before I posted the message. You did in your original message; but everything is relative. Some films and scenes display the grain more prominently than others as you have noted and are obvious even at further distances; while others display grain less prominently even at quite close distances. However, the grain is none the less still there in all cases. You recent test seems to bear not only this point out; but the tests from what I can tell given the comparative information you provided are inconclusive on my point that the screen texture masks the grain structure more so than a smooth surface under the same conditions would for the same original. I said this in the original reply I hadn't considered this and nor did I fetch my screen when I tried the slides tonight. But I can see that how this would work. I didn't try the screen test as I would probably of woken my son extracting it from his bedroom. I felt that the test onto the paper would also show more clearly what the scanner sees. Once I had seen the grain on the Velvia slide (I had seen it on the Fujichrome 400 years ago) I didn't see a lot of point in trying with the screen. But my feeling is: a textured surface helps mask the grain as the minor dark spots will have lighter spots reflected from the pits to mask the effect. The grain being darker will reflect less so the converse effect will be less pronounced. This will lead to a reduction in randomly distributed darker spots. Could be complete bullsh*t, but it seems fairly logical to me and until I get the screen out and find out otherwise I am pretty confident that you are right about the screen. Steve
Re: filmscanners: What causes this and is there any easy solution ?
- Original Message - From: Laurie Solomon [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 5:13 PM Subject: RE: filmscanners: What causes this and is there any easy solution ? As a preface, when you project the slide much of that grain is masked by the surface texture of the screen you are projecting on as well as by the distance you need to use to project to those projection sizes as well as to view the projected image; but the grain is probably still there just as it is in the scanned image ( this can be determined by looking at the transparency under a high powered loupe). When you scan at 4000 dpi, you are probably both picking up the grain as well as any other noise and exaggerating it so as to make it more sharply defined and apparent. So the projection effectively helps mask the grain what a happy coincidence. The point about the distance may be the main reason. In a normal room you switch on the projector (with no slide if you have a relic like me) and suddenly realise that you have dust floating everywhere. Over a longer distance there will be more dust that will effectively randomly filter the smallest details i.e. the grain. I wonder if you used the screen in a chip FAB unit (exceptionally clean environment) whether the grain would be more apparent. Why are you scanning at an optical 4000 dpi? Could you scan at a lower optical resolution if necessary? Lower sampling rates lead to higher noise to signal ratios. Whilst resampling down from 4000dpi will reduce noise to signal ratios. I am pretty certain that it is always best to scan at best optical and then resample down if you require a lower resolution. While for 35mm slides and negatives 4000 dpi optical resolutions may be good if you are going to engage in extreme enlargement and/or cropping, they may not be required ( and even be problematic in the case of some films and images) for prints 8x10 and under. I am hoping to archive the pictures in a form that will allow any one to be selected at random to be output at any size that I may require at that time. Perhaps I'm being a bit over ambitious, but I don't see a lot of point in archiving them digitally if I can still get better prints from the fading original. I have heard that one sometimes can scan materials that generate the sorts of problems that you are experiencing at lower resolutions and save them in Genuine Fractals' lossless mode to a .stn file, which upon opening can be both resized to almost any size as well as upsampled with the added bonus of frequently smoothing out the sharpness of the grain presentation being displayed via its use of fractal and wavelet technologies. I have not tried it for that purpose (e.g., to smooth out the sharp appearance of grain structure displays); but if you are having the problem it might be worth a try. None the less, I would reduce the scan resolutions and see how low you need to go to eliminate the problem versus the minimum resolution you need to output the portion of the image that you want at the size you want. I did try this by resampling a 4000dpi to 2000dpi and 1333dpi and then resizing back (without GF), but you have to reduce the pixel count too much and you are better off blurring the original. GF would have produced marginally better results, but in my experiene GF is slightly better in the 2x-3x range not a miracle worker so I still think a slight blurring would be better. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Steve Greenbank Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 6:15 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: filmscanners: What causes this and is there any easy solution ? Today I'm going for the dual prize of most boring picture (see attachment) and most dumb question ever on the list. Mark asked me about a problem in the background of some pictures http://www.grafphoto.com/grain.html The problem is that my sample (a bit of sky) from a slide projects with perfect continuous tones at any size even 40 inch by 60 inch and it still looks reasonably sharp (within reason) but yet when I scan it at 4000dpi I get a grainy effect that will show up in an A3 print and a soft image in general. The problem often gets worse with sharpening . I have found that a unsharp mask threshold 9+ usually avoids sharpening the graininess. Alternatively a gaussian blur removes it but if you do this to the whole image you end up with an even more soft image but on the plus side you can sharpen it more aggressively and use a threshold of 3-4 which means much more gets sharpened. Obviously carefully selecting the sky/problem area and blurring that separately is probably the best option but it takes ages to do this accurately and you still may get noise problems elsewhere. Am I right to assume the noise is grain, CCD noise and chemical faults on the film ? Does every see this noise ? Should I see less with SS4000/A4000 scanner
Re: filmscanners: What causes this and is there any easy solution ?
Lynn said Howcome Polaroid users aren't seeing it? Or are they just not talking about it? Mines an Artixscan 4000T a (I'm told) SS4000 apart from the box and the software. You've seen my section of sky I don't know if its any better or worse than anyone elses, but it is definitely there. Incidentally I tried something suggested by Lynn (off list) involving A channel of LAB mode. A gaussian blur 1.0 followed by unsharp mask 200%,radius 1, threshold 1 and most of it was gone and the sharpness was retained. Later I will look in to this more and check for flaws and try different blurs and unsharp mask. Steve
Re: filmscanners: What causes this and is there any easy solution ?
Anything USB will track better because of the higher sampling rate. Unfortunately the MS USB mouse I bought didn't like the KT133 VIA chipset on the motherboard. This is a common problem with Via chipsets see: http://www.usbman.com . When I first installed the motherboard I couldn't use USB at all with my Epson 1270 and the USB mouse keyboard caused periodic crashes. Eventually I gave up on the mouse and keyboard but I managed to persuade the printer to work. It's not entirely Vias fault though has my Casio camera has had absolute zero problems from day 1. If you have a PS/2 mouse, AT YOUR OWN RISK, you can overclock the sampling rate. Never heard of anyone permanently damaging anything with this procedure but I am sure it can be done (I have tried it before myself). If you did permanently damage the PS/2 port you would have to use a USB or serial port mouse - you have been warned. Steve - Original Message - From: Maris V. Lidaka, Sr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2001 5:22 PM Subject: Re: filmscanners: What causes this and is there any easy solution ? Be sure that you are using an *optical* mouse or trackball - it will track much more smoothly.. Maris - Original Message - From: Steve Greenbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2001 5:05 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: What causes this and is there any easy solution ? | I'll try this and see how it compares with gaussian blur. I was hoping | someone would have a solution that didn't involve carefully selecting | sections of a 20Mpixel image. It takes ages to get it right and I wish I had | a bigger monitor there just isn't enough room for the picture on my 17 inch | screen.Sadly there isn't enough room in the house for a significantly bigger | screen. | | Maybe, with practice I will be able to select sections better. Has anyone | tried adjusting their mouse movement settings (slow it down,reduce | accelleration) to make this easier ? | | Steve | | - Original Message - | From: Lynn Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2001 1:00 AM | Subject: RE: filmscanners: What causes this and is there any easy solution ? | | | The solution looks so easy that I probably don't understand the problem | completely. :-) There are two quick ways you can do corrections: | 1) make two scans the same size in Vuescan; one normally, the second with | a | slight positive offset of manual focus (about +1 to +1.5). The second scan | will have corrected much if not all of the g-a, and the subject will be | a | little blurred--but surprisingly little (you might even decide to stay | with | that one, unless you're doing large blow-ups). | 2) load the first scan into Photoshop or your favorite image processor. | Select All and copy it. Then load the second frame in (it's OK to delete | the first one without saving, since you have a copy). Paste the copy over | the second, blurry copy, and Erase the sky from the top layer down to the | blurred layer. | | If you can get a Selector to work, like the Magic Wand for example to | select | just the sky portions (I almost never can--I think the wand is | over-rated), | it's even simpler--select the sky only, and have-at-it with any or all of | the blur filters. :-) | | Another way is to use Channels (if they're available in your programs) | either to select and copy a mask, or--as I'd say in this case--to isolate | the redish pixels in the sky and eliminate them. | | | |
Re: filmscanners: What causes this and is there any easy solution ?
So the projection effectively helps mask the grain what a happy coincidence While there maybe some merit to your comments about dust in the air masking flaws in the slide being projected, I had the actual surface texture of the projection screen in mind as well as the actual viewing distance independent of any dust. The further away from the screen you view the image the less likely you are to see things like grain in that like a Surrat painting your eyes tend to blend the individual particles of grain into a single continuous tone structure even though under a loupe or standing up close you will still see theindividual grains. I thought I had covered this with some sort of statement like even when viewed quite close-up, but I must have rephrased this and removed it before I posted the message. Anyway I just tried it 40x60 inch projected onto plain white paper. With Velvia (circa 1990) (I used the slide from which the original sample of blue sky was made). I have to get within 16 inches to see it at all and even then it is so faint you might miss it if you weren't looking for it. Even from 3-4 inches it is minor. I then tried some early Fujichrome 400 (circa 1985) and you can see the grain easily from 15 feet on some slides. I can't wait to try scanning some of these! As for screen texture, most screens have a pebbled or/and rectilinear surface intended to gather and concentrate light so as to make them brighter (they are not smooth surfaces without any texture); this surface texture also tends to break up individual noise and grain patterns so as to mask the grain structure of what is being projected unless it is really very graining so as to have the appearance of an old newspaper 65 line screen halftone. I hadn't considered this and nor did I fetch my screen when I tried the slides tonight. But I can see that how this would work. Lower sampling rates lead to higher noise to signal ratios. I think there is probably a point at which there is NO PERCEIVABLE decrease in the signal to noise rations and further increased optical resolutions are of little practical point except to permit increases in output sizes while still maintaining a reasonably high quality non-interpolated resolution or to permit cropping and enlarging of small portions of the original while maintaining reasonably high quality non-interpolated resolutions. Most monitors cannot use resolutions over 100 dpi and most printers cannot use resolutions over 300 dpi. Since the less noise you have the more apparent the display of grain will be, it may be a good thing to compromise and allow some noise to be introduced in order to tone down the sharp appearance of grain structure. To some extent a little noise may help. Indeed some noise is sometimes added deliberately in some signal processing techniques. My sketchy understanding of digital signal processing tells me that you require 2x (a few experts insist 4x is better[just], but for the rest of this post I'm going to use 2x) the final output sampling rate to achieve an almost totally accurate output. Hence CD's sample at 44KHz to achieve accurate sound up to 22KHz. I think the 300dpi used in the best printers comes from the human eye being unable to see more than 150dpi so you need 2x150 or 300dpi to achieve the desired result. So for a 12x18 you need 3600x5400 which is just short of 4000dpi. I have seen Velvia printed well at 20x30 so I believe a scan of at least 6000x9000 (6000dpi) would be better still. In the case of the Fujichrome 400 you are probably right that 4000dpi and possibly 2000dpi is a waste of time. Something to try on a rainy day and there's plenty of them in the UK :-) Whilst resampling down from 4000dpi will reduce noise to signal ratios. I am pretty certain that it is always best to scan at best optical and then resample down if you require a lower resolution. Although resampling down from 4000 dpi may or may not reduce the appearance of noise but not the actual existence of noise, b it also will result in the loss of informational data that cannot be gained back later and the possible production of other troublesome artifacts. The reduction in resolution that does reduce signal to noise rations is not via the use of resampling but via the actual reduction in optical resolutions being used from 4000 dpi to some optical resolution under that if your scanner has an optical resolution of 4000 dpi. If it has a maximum optical resolution of less than 4000 dpi than any scan over that is an interpolated scan that has been upsampled by the scanner software and not an optical resolution, while any scan less than the maximum optical scan resolution is an optical resolution. Up sampling should generally be avoided if at all possible as it will always lead to some nasty artefacts. I tried it in the hope the artefacts introduced would be less noticeable than the noise removed in the down sampling. While it is true that
Re: filmscanners: A Good Epson Customer Service Story
Definitely 5 colour + black. This is the main reason for the better photographic quality. http://www.epson.co.uk/product/printers/inkjet/styphoto2000p/spec.htm Steve If I remember correctly, the 2000P Color Cart is 3 color vs. 5 for the 1270 MIke
Re: filmscanners: Stellar ghosts and Nikon Coolscan IVED (LS40)
I think I would clone them out. Steve - Original Message - From: Harry Lehto [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 8:25 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Stellar ghosts and Nikon Coolscan IVED (LS40) On Fri, 11 May 2001, Rob Geraghty wrote: OK, it sounds like some sort of aberration in the scanner lens system. Is there anyone near you with another film scanner you could send a sample slide to in order to test it? Maybe with a Polaroid scanner? Out of interest, does it make any difference if you insert the slide into the scanner the other way up? Yes, it makes a difference... I did some further testing last night. I turned the slide 90 degrees, and sure enough the ghost rotated 90 degrees in repect to the stars (that is if you keep the orientation of the stars fixed) = so clearly due to the scanner and not the slide. Furthermore, I measured the effect on about 10 bright stars in the field, and noticed the following behavior. Along the line that is parallel with the long edge and goes through the center of the slide you seem to have no ghosts, but as you approach the longer edges of the slide you see these the ghosts emerging from the stellar image, the closer you are to one of the long edges of the slide the more pronounced the effect is. You can understand this as internal reflections (as was suggested by Art in the messages that arrived last night) if you consider that the scanner scans perpendicular to the long edge of the slide. Clearly such a process is optimized to the centerline. Actually the ghost images are also there on the center line, but they are superimposed on the stellar images making a nearly unnoticeable halo. Yes, replying to several of you, I have a neighbour just down the road who has a scanner too.. It's not a polaroid, but a Canon FS 2710. So I ran the same picture on through his scanner - similar resolution. And boy that must have been one of those moments, when I was happy to see an optical distortion. A similar phenomenon was visible in the images scanned with the Canon scanner, but here the image looked like a small comet (similar to a coma distortion), but with two separate tails, a red one and a green one. So instead of one blue-green ghost spot, there were two more noticeable tails of different colors pointing in the same general direction as the spot is in the picture scanned with the Nikon. The size of the distortion was more or less similar to what I had in the Nikon scanner. It appeared that the tails had a significantly higher level than the ghost spot I saw with the Nikon. It appears that I hit the ( not so bad afterall) limit of the Coolscan IV scanner. It seems also that this phenomenon may be a common problem to desktop scanners. I think you should see it at any bright source (e.g streetlight) against a (nearly) pitch black background and here only on edge of the light that is closer to the edge of the slide. It should not effect significantly ordinary day time images. The web reference had one typo in it... So here they are again. http://www.astro.utu.fi/~hlehto/nikontest/crop0016.JPG http://www.astro.utu.fi/~hlehto/nikontest/crop0020.JPG Since it appears that I'll have to live with it, are there any remedies for removing this effect from the images? It appears that if I could scale the image by a few % in y direction only, skysubrtact and multiply the new image by a suitably small number, I would have a mask that I could subtract from the orginal image to get rid of the effect. Can this be done easily? Regards Harry
Re: filmscanners: Another Mission Completed
Congratulations to Lynn - how long did it take and how many images have you archived ? I am attempting a similar project and finding it difficult even to get going. When I bought my scanner I had already seen the results (even A3) that could be had with a 3Mpixel digicam (which is technically 8 bit colour depth and less than 0.75Mpixel Red Blue and 1.5Mpixel Green) and an Epson 1270. I figured with a decent scanner 20Mpixel (full RGB 12bit colour) image A3 would be a breeze provided the original image was OK. Oh dear, how wrong you can be. After the initial shock of my first scan I decided that this noise was normal and caused by grain, CCD noise and faults in the film and have been struggling around these problems ever since. Some slides are relatively easy others are near on impossible. Obviously I don't want to print them all A3 but I do want to archive them to CD at full scan resolution dust and other imperfections removed and colour balanced. At a later date I would then like to get the best print possible, from any image selected, with minimal fuss. I could accept that most images will only ever be viewed on the screen or printed 6x4 and this would be easy, but I am hoping to be able to print : most A3 minimum (roughly 4000dpi slide scan equates to 300dpi print) a few bigger still (after all I have had good 20x30 Cibachromes) and for the odd photographic duffer that is special for other reasons - anything will do! Am I asking too much ? To date I have only seen my own 4000dpi scans so I don't really know if these are the facts of scanning life or if my machine is duff : There will be significant noise in all continous tones ? The scanned image at any comparable size will always appear terribly soft compared to when projected unless significantly sharpened in software which generally amplifies all the flaws ? High contrast images (most slides) are a complete pain in the rear ? It will take forever just to figure out how to use the damn thing. There will always be dust (and I should have got a scanner with ICE so don't bother to rub my nose in it, please) Steve
Re: filmscanners: Another Mission Completed
How about wrap them in groups of say 10 in food wrap (cling film in the UK)
and include some silica gel which could be replaced every couple of years.
Should be very cheap and I dont see why it shouldn't work. A more expensive
but more durable option would be to replace the cling film with air tight
plastic food boxes - you'd still need the cling film.
Steve
- Original Message -
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 7:47 PM
Subject: filmscanners: Another Mission Completed
On storage of CDs
Out of curiosity, anyone live in humid coastal areas (eg Florida)?
My CDs develop mould very quickly, the only workable solution seems
to be these demhumidifier cabinets. Gets filled fast, and cabinets
are expensive.
Needless to say, mould has attacked many early slides ('twas young
and careless then).
Anyone has better and/or cheaper alternatives?
Cheers
Lawrence
--
Sent through GMX FreeMail - http://www.gmx.net
Re: filmscanners: A Good Epson Customer Service Story
My original Epson Stylus Photo ended up with a couple of clogged jets which I could not clear. Possibly my use of third-party ink was to blame; or possibly I let the printer sit too long (6 months?) without being used. It never occurred to me to complain to Epson; I just bought a new Stylus Photo. A number of people have had this problem with Epsons. It's probably been done on this list before, but: Turn the printer off by the button on the front - they park they're heads. (Quite why anyone just pulls the plug on a precision instrument is beyod me). Don't leave the printer on if your not going to use it. (Head parking again) If your not using it for a length of time - there are quite a few recommendations here, but I go for printing a test page or nozzle check (on cheap or even waste paper) every couple of weeks. If your out for months I heard something involving sealed plastic bags but I'm not sure as I never had to the face the problem. I think I'd leave it with a trust worthy friend to use or just turn on and print the test page. Yet to have a problem (fingers crossed), but on the other hand if it fails you'll have a good excuse (for your nearest and dearest) to buy the latest version which are still getting faster and better at an amazing rate. Steve
Re: filmscanners: Medium format in a 35mm scanner?
- Original Message - From: Asael [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 5:16 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: Medium format in a 35mm scanner? It can be done with the HP Photosmart scanner by not closing the lid all the way and feeding the MF film via the partially open lid. However, matching up the two strips is a lot of work since they may (read will) feed-in at different angle. Asael Photovista is absolutely amazing at stitching images. Yet to see a single join and it even works well on old PC's. Last year I stitched 4x50MB scans with it on an AMD K6 233 with 64MB of memory. I left it expecting it to take almost forever, but accidently noticed it had finished 15 minutes later. The 2 downsides are that it only stitches horizontally (but you can rotate images to stitch in both directions), the other is perhaps more of a problem is you have to output JPEGs. Ultimately I have tried about half a dozen stitching programs, some are very poor, others work well most of the time, but for me only PV seemed work everytime. Try it free here: http://www.mgisoft.com/support/downloads/trial.asp Steve
