 Dan C |
Another "Which One" Scanner Question Hello all! I am in the market for a good film scanner. I have considered both the Canon FS4000 and the Nikon Coolscan IV ED. Half of my 35mm slides are Kodachrome and I have noticed (from reviews) that they both do not work well with Kodachrome as far as the dust removal software goes. Is this an internal drawback (hardware) or a software drawback? Can I solve this in photoshop and how? Also, allot of my pictures are night shots. Anyone have any experience with these scanners or other scanners for these types of pics? Is black true black? I know that on my flatbed (outdated HP scanjet 5200c) the dark spots tend to "bubble" with print scans. Last question: Why, if the output resolution does not have to be more than 300dpi, is there the option for such high resolutions? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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doug Nelson |
You're right in that Digital Ice and other proprietary clean-up programs don't work on Kodachrome. When that is the case, simply go in and clone out the dust spots. It's slow and tedious, but it's one option. Another is Ed Hamrick's Vue Scan (edhamrick.com). It's only $40. Also, there's an explanation at luminous-landscape.com of how to cut Digital Ice out of the process altogether and do the cleanup another way. It's rather involved. For your last question, it's because a 35-mm slide is so small that it needs 2400 ppi or more for a decent scan. When you scale the image in Photoshop (Image/Image Size, Resample Unchecked) to a usable size (5 x 7, 8 x 10), the pixels spread out to 240 pixels-per-inch or more, which is ideal for printing.
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doug Nelson |
Last sentence sould read, "...the pixels spread out to 240 pixels-per-inch or more . . . ".
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Wayne Attridge |
This is really a question more than an answer. As an experiment I scanned a photo on my flatbed Canon at 600 dpi and had my friend scan the negative on his HP negative scanner. At all resolutions up to 2400 dpi, my flatbed was far superior to the negative scan. I would like to scan several thousand negatives that I have but am concerned about the quality. Is the new Canon 4000 going to give me a scan from a negative that would be good enough to blow up to poster size if it was taken on asa 100 film. I don't want to buy one if it is not going to do a good, well better than good, job. Does anyone have some real world experience with this.
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Heather K. Jacobsen |
Hi, I just recently bought the Canon FS4000 after I thought I had done my homework well enough. I have mixed feelings now about my purchase. I was very happy and excited when I scanned my first few batches of negatives. There seems to be no problems with this scanner and negatives. But when I scanned a few of my favorite slides, I was very disappointed. It seems to have problems calibrating blues and greens, so that my pix came out looking muddy, flat, and not vibrant in color at all. Imagine my disappoint, especially when scanning Velvia slides! There is no way to manually adjust calibration yourself. So I searched the interent for an ICC profile (I can explain if you need me to) for this scanner, and didn't have much luck. There seems to be profiles out there for all but this scanner! I returned the scanner to Canon (I live in the Philippines so customer service is a bit different here!) and they could not fix the problem, so they replaced the unit and the same thing happens. I have since been able to find a way to get around this. I use another ICC profile that makes the image almost close to its original, then make adjustments in Adobe Photoshop. But I shouldn't have to do all this for the amount of money I spent. If I could do it over again, I might have gotten a different scanner. What really made me want to purchase this one, was the high resolution capability. Since you asked, its good to have high resolution if you have a lot of images that you would like to crop and enlarge to 8x10. I think that you can get a poster size print from this scanner with an uncropped (or not cropped by much) image. But you have to be willing to go through a bit of work to get your slides to look good! I hope this helps.
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Vincent Lowe |
The reason that the dust removal doesn't work with Kodachrome is because the Kodachrome emulsion retains some silver particles. In normal colour films the silver is completely removed in processing and replaced with coloured dyes. When scanning, the slide is scanned with an infra-red beam as well as RGB. The infra-red beam goes through the dyes but is stopped by dust particles; the position of the dust is marked and the software interpolates from surrounding pixels. In Kodachrome the metallic silver particles also stop the infra-red. Kodachrome is unique in this respect for a colour film but note that all 'normal' monochrome films retain the silver so the dust removal doesn't work with these either. This doesn't apply to the chromogenic (I think that's the word?) type monochrome films that are processed in colour chemicals (Ilford XP2 etc.).
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doug Nelson |
The Nikon film scanners have been a pro standard for years, first the 2700 ppi LS-2000 (what I have) and then the current LS-4000. If it's slides you want to do, I'm afraid you really should go with a scanner that allows multiple overscanning, up to 16 times with the Nikons. Slides are SO dense in the shadows, unlike negs which are thin in the shadows. I wonder if something isn't brewing at Nikon. The 4000 is getting cheaper. Maybe a newer model is on the way. If I had it to do over, I'd get a 4000 ppi scanner with overscanning capability and use Silverfast scanning software. If you want sizes a lot bigger than 11 x 14, then you should be looking at Photoshop techniques for raising the resolution without wrecking the image integrity, or something like Genuine Fractals.
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Dan C |
Thank you all for your answers! Heather, From what you have said I think I will go another route other than the canon and take advice from Doug and save up money for a 4000 dpi Nikon because I have way too many slides to spend so much time with them . By the way what is the ICC thing? Thanks! Dan
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Michael Daily |
Here is another solution, and that is canon 9900 f, which is flat bed scanner. SO it can scan documents and negatives and photo. The highest dpi is 3200, but more interesting it this scanner will 35mm, medium & large format negs. I purchased one 2 weeks ago and it fast, although I need upgrade my USB connection 2.0. Best of all it is only $400. If you go to Canon's web site and scanners, you can compare the models and this will answer may of you questions. Bt the way Canon's customer service has been great. michael
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Dan C |
Thank you, Michael. I am wondering though, do you get allot of dust on that scanner of yours? I have a flat bed scanner as well (it doesnt do slides) but dust is a very big problem. I have read that the most recent flatbed scanners are good but they have a tendancy to attract dust no matter how hard you try to physically remove it. It would be neat if they invented an anti static device... So I am under the impression that film scanners are a little bit better since it is internal and dust is kept out... I am truely not sure. I do know that a drum scanner would be a dream to have... but $10,000 is a little much. So anyhow... Thank you for the suggestion. I will look into it as well :} Dan
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Michael Daily |
Dan I have only had this scanner for 2 weeks and do not see a big dust problem so far and have scanned several rolls of film (35mm & medium format) this scanner has an option to remove dust and I have not tried that yet. I purchased this at Fry's and I am not sure where you live, but many large retailers offer 30 day trial period. The next question involved is price, how much to you want to spend?????? What I can say is that I am happy (need to upgrade my USB to 2.0) I'm exploring the world of medium format and this scanner comes with trays to accommidate such. I can scan up to 3200 dpi and it is suppose to interpolate to 9600 (I have not figured that one out yet) but $400 I am happy and will kept it. That is my 2 cents worth. If you have a large retailer near you and they have this unit, to them you reservations about dust etc and see if they will let you try for 30 days or if not call Canon and see if they offer such a solution. michael
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Dan C |
The first picture is blown up to show the "bubble" effect that I am talking about. The second pic was worked on in Photoshop (i used a little bit of median noise to mask the unwanted effects somewhat). If you have an example of waht your scanner can do that would be wonderful! Thanks!
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Dan C |
The first picture is blown up to show the "bubble" effect that I am talking about. The second pic was worked on in Photoshop (i used a little bit of median noise to mask the unwanted effects somewhat). If you have an example of waht your scanner can do that would be wonderful! Thanks!
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