filmscanners: Nikon Coolscan LS4000 - Peppery scans with Fuji chromes (Conclusion)

["Kah Heng, Tan" <kahheng@pacific.net.sg>]

At 09:20 AM 5/20/01 -0700, you wrote:
>On the face
>of simply examining your wwweb posted example, it is difficult to
>believe it is the scanner (... the "peppering" is too random ...
>location and size ...), and especially when you say it "appears" to be
>film specific.
>
>    By all means ... exchange the scanner.  If the retailer accepts
>it, it would be the best way to troubleshoot it being a scanner
>problem.  If not, I'd begin playing with other slides, and other Fuji
>slides which have been developed elsewhere.
>
>shAf  :o)

Hi

Just a followup:

I have come to the conclusion that the specks that I am seeing in the scans 
are actual microscopic dirt on the slides. They appear to be systematic 
dirt that is a result of dirt (somehow) introduced during the processing 
(probably dirty water) - I use the same lab for all my slides. I am going 
to contact the lab tomorrow and highlight the problem to them.

It was never an issue until now because on a lightbox, it's impossible to 
see due to the diffused light (or extremely short distance to the light 
source). But all the slides if seen using a specular light source clearly 
show microscopic dirt. And this is true for ALL the slides. I have only a 
10x loupe to see through but it's clear enough. Whatever dirt I can make 
out with the loupe corresponds to what I see in the scan.

And Digital ICE curing the ills quite confirms that there are problems with 
the surface of the slide itself.

This is one amazing scanner and am I glad I bought it. It pulls every bit 
of detail on the film. Not as sharp as a drumscan of course (I can see CCD 
'blooming' where certain highlight areas meet with dark parts, but for the 
money, its TRULY awesome.

There is a lot more work that Nikon needs to do with Nikonscan 3.0 for the 
Mac. Right now, its just not a very responsive piece of software (and I 
have it as much as 350 megs of RAM partition). Screen redraws are terrible 
and file saving is donkey slow.

Now, I just hope Ed Hamrick writes a version of Vuescan usable on OS 8.6 
with this firewire scanner. The curves for colour neg films are what I am 
dying to use.

Regards to all
Tan