filmscanners: Nikon 4000 ED review part II

[Dieder Bylsma <dbylsma@bigfoot.com>]

Just an FYI for those interested

Ok. It's now been a week since I bought the LS-4000. A few updates 
are in order.

First some corrections.

Strip film adapter
------------------

I wrote that the film is completely held within the bowels of the 
scanner while it is being scanned. This is incorrect. This was only 
the case for a short strip of 4 frames. For a 6 frame strip, some of 
it definitely 'hangs out'. No big problem though.

Second correction is that the film is not pulled in at such a steep 
angle as stated. The film intake is probably about 1 to 1.5 cm above 
the film path within the film scanner itself, so it's a mild intake 
angle of about 30 degrees or so. So the film isn't being as nicely 
bent as my earlier statement would indicate.





Now for the new parts of a review.



I went back to the store where I bought the LS-4000 and asked if they 
could order for me the SA-30 which is a roll-film adapter. They said 
sure, and so we started getting the necessary details. The salesman's 
colleague interrupted our order-taking and a few minutes later, this 
'special order' had been filled! <laugh> It turns out they had an 
SA-30 roll film adapter in their stock room and not everyone knew it. 
Well, I go for the premise that if you're going to order something, 
make sure you have the money for it. So I bought it there and took it 
home.

SA-30 Roll Film adapter
-----------------------

Kit contents: plastic secondary brace, roll film spool and roll film 
intake adapter.
The plastic secondary brace is attached by the supplied screws to the 
back of the film scanner. This serves as the mounting plate for the 
roll film spool holder. The roll film spool holder extends probably 
20 cm / 8 inches from behind the scanner and is a self-contained 
unit. It has additional spring-mounted finger-tightening screws to 
attach the adapter to the roll-film mount. The SA-30 intake/film 
feeder goes in the front much the same way that the 'strip film' 
adapter is inserted. Total time for installation was about 5 minutes.

Closer inspection of the SA-30 feeder and comparing it to the SA-21 
(LS-4000ED version of the strip film adapter/feeder) shows a very 
slight difference between the two. The SA-30 has a very fine very 
soft brush that lurks just below the intake of the film. I'm not sure 
what it is supposed to do since it doesn't actually come into contact 
with the film, but that's all the difference I can see.

Feeding of the film is done with the shiny part of the emulsion 
upwards. Since I insert frame 1 first, all my roll film images need 
to be flipped horizontally in the scanning program. No big deal.

NikonScan 3 has an option to do automatic thumbnailing/previewing 
upon insertion of film. Obviously if I were to do a preview of every 
single frame (in addition to thumbnails) it would take a very long 
time to do. So instead I have the scanner set to do 'thumbnails' 
instead which is really really quick and takes place in the same 
process as the initial 'ingestion' of the film. (First the scanner 
takes the film in until it gets to the end so it knows how many 
frames are involved). Time to thumbnail an entire 37 exposure roll of 
film from insertion of film to the thumbnails being displayed...I'd 
guess about 2 minutes total.

 From there, I can use the Nikon Scan software to adjust the 
positioning of each of the thumbnails (i.e. with dark night shots it 
is difficult to see where one frame starts and another ends). 
Fortunately with a DataBack on the Aria printing exposure 
measurements between each frame it is easy to see where the frames 
end. You can adjust the framing of each frame in thumbnail mode.

 From there, a few quick settings (unless you want to preview and 
correct each one) and a click on the scan button and then the scanner 
prompts for Image base name, starting image number and numbers of 
digits for number sequence (i.e. 2 for counting up from 00 to 99) and 
you're set to go. Depending upon the settings the scanner will take a 
variable amount of time to finish. It will roll out the film as 
needed. If you leave the film adapter idle for a certain am't of 
time, it will eventually spit out most of the film, leaving a tongue 
of the film inside the adapter. I have a soft-cloth under the film to 
make sure it doesn't get scratched.

One final detail about the auto-inject adapters for 35mm strip film. 
They are much much more quiet than the previous generation. But even 
better than that, they have a 'lock' feature. If the film is in the 
scanner and you turn the machine off, the film cannot be removed, nor 
the adaptor since the adaptor and the film are locked into place. 
This wasn't such an issue with the previous strip film adapter which 
had a self-contained spool, but when dealing with a film adapter that 
is a straight-through film feeder (no curves in the film path), the 
potential for ripping, bending film is there if the adapters were 
removed and film was still in the adapter and in the other part of 
the film scanner.

Software
--------

Thanks to the efforts of a friend in the US, I managed to get a copy 
of the English language version of NikonScan 3.0 sent to me. This has 
made using the scanning software quite a bit easier. But contrary to 
speculation, it seems that any language version of NikonScan can use 
the LS-4000.  The software is fairly decent, I haven't fiddled with 
it much, but I'm pleased with the results.

Now my standard procedure is to scan files in at 14 bit colour 1350 
dpi and fiddle with them in photoshop before archiving the files. 
NikonScan offers a whole bunch of additional nice options (which are 
also available in Photoshop itself) such as unsharp mask, 
Luminance,Chrominace, Hue editing along with Curve editing, 
auto-contrast etc etc, but when it comes to dealing with the files it 
can generate (122+Mb files from a 35mm frame) Photoshop does a better 
job.

The only thing I do have enabled now that I didn't always when using 
the LS-30 and Nikon Scan 2.5.x was the ICE defect removal. It is 
better than ever IMHO. I haven't had a need yet to use the Grain 
Reduction algorithm  nor the Restoration Of Colour, but I have seen 
how wonderful a job it does on some fairly tough negs. (pictures of 
fireworks that I took last summer....I left a developed roll coiled 
in a plastic film canister and it came out quite scratched easily 
visible to the naked eye). Manually fixing vs ICE is a no-brainer. 
ICE gave better results and took less time when dealing with that 
type of situation.

D.
-- 
Dieder Bylsma                 |
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