At 2:40 PM +0200 15-10-01, David Mantripp wrote:
>Bill,
>
>Can I pick up a side point here ? You said:
>
>>
>> BF: One thing about this scanner is that it takes minor surface
>> scratches, such as those produced by film processing rollers, and
>> turns them into major artifacts in the scans.
>>
>
>I have a Microtek ArtixScan 4000 (aka Polaraid SS4000) and, regretably, the
>local E6 labs here in Southern Switzerland excel in adding linear scratches
>which I assume are of the nature you mention.
BF: Yes.
>The 4000 turns these into
>long smudges, about 10 pixels wide, which even in flat areas (sky) take
>forever to fix manually.
BF: I'm glad you mentioned this because I was about the send the
LS-4000ED back and try an SS4000 instead; but if the latter also
shows these then I still have a problem.
>Since I'm stuck with these (2) labs (this is really Hicksville in pro-photo
>terms), I have been looking at tackling the problem at the scanner end, and
>hence felt that really I need ICE.
BF: In my experiments I have found that ICE does an amazingly good
job of removing these artifacts; as well as dust spots, etc. I've
been thinking that it's better to have a scanner that doesn't have
these problems in the first place rather than one that requires you
use ICE to remove them, but I suppose it's better to have removable
scratch lines than unremovable smudges.
>However, from what you say, I could infer that not all scanners are equal in
>the way they react to such scratches. Is this the case ? Can anybody say
>how the SS120 behaves - it is down to this or the Nikon 8000,
BF: I don't know about either of the above, but I don't see any
evidence at all of these scratch lines when scanning with my
ScanMaker 8700 flatbed at 1200 dpi or with my old Minolta Dimage Scan
Dual film scanner at 2400 dpi. They DO show up in Nikon scans made
at 1000, 2000 and 4000 dpi. I have a fried with a Canon FS4000 film
scanner who says he has never seen these, but then he's pretty picky
and might send his film only to processors using dip and dunk
equipment and hence not have these scratches in the first place.
>and I have to
>say that I have had quite enough years of wrestling with bad software...
BF: Although I have keen frustrations with certain aspects of the
Nikon software and hardware, on the whole NikonScan software is good
and runs very reliably on my Mac OS 8.6 based computers.
--
======================================================================
Bill Fernandez * User Interface Architect * Bill Fernandez Design
(505) 346-3080 * bill@billfernandez.com *
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