RE: filmscanners: Nikon Scan & VS Negative dynamic range

[Mike Duncan <mgduncan@esper.com>]

Jawed,

>
>You using a Mac?  You really using 3.1?  It doesn't appear in the manual -
>dare I say it!  Care to send a screen dump?  Maybe it understands older
>scanners - maybe older scanners don't have Analog Gain so the contrast
>thingie is exclusively for them.
>
>Maybe Nikon thought that the Analog Gain palette provided enough control for
>the LS40/4000 - how funny that is!
>
>I've just, as a test, set the Master Gain to -2 and then the R, G and B
>gains to -1 (i.e. -3 total!!!!) for a frame that features the moon (late 80s
>Kodak Gold 200).  Yep, the moon's detail appears - but of course nothing
>else does.
>

In the Edit menu (Mac), select Preferences, Advanced Color.  There, you
will find black and white point settings.  I guess I'll have to scan the
grayscale target again. :-)   Color Balance Tool has contrast setting just
below brightness.

BTW, I scanned a severely underexposed Kodachrome (max white = 80/255).
The desired image was hard to see by eye.  I tried VS w & wo multiscan in
Image media and NS3.1 w Master Gain=2 and w & wo GEM.  The  GEM results had
the least grain with the best color & shadow detail. VS required a lot of
tweaking to get good color.  I haven't tried VS's grain reduction yet.

.

Mike Duncan