Re: filmscanners: I love/hate SilverFast

[RogerMillerPhoto@aol.com]

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, 
david@hoffmanphotos.com 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