I have no experience on Photo CD service. But I have been using my Nikon
LS-10 for five years and now the LS2000. The auto exposure system of the
scanner (at least my scanners) is very simular to the auto exposure of
the mini-lab printing machine. They will find a white point and bring
either R,G,B (the less intense one) to the max level (or close to the
max 255) then adjust the rest of the two color with same ratio. So you
will see the blue sky in many prints are lighter then expected or even
becomes white.
The auto exposure system in many case give you a pleasing look, higher
contrast and brilliance. But in some cases especially if your picture is
trend to have a special tone, the color will be shifted and in many case
highlight and shadow will be lost. In some way it is necessary as the
printing paper can shows a D-max of only around 2, negative is around
2.6 and slide is around 3.4. (the figures were come from an internet
site but I forgot the address) so some highlight and shadow must be
discard otherwise the picture may look flat.
But your problem can be solved by experience operators, that of course
require a better lab and extra handling cost. A calibration shoot is the
way I use to cal my LS-10 but I am not sure PCD will handle in this way
or not. Actually the PCD service is not so impressive, there is a site
comparing different models of scanner including PCD service, the comment
for the PCD is quite poor.
http://www.cix.co.uk/~tsphoto/
Regards,
C.H.Ling
Accura Digital Imaging
http://www.glink.net.hk/~accura
Sebastien Roy wrote:
>
> Hello everone,
>
> I just got a back of 50 slides scanned by Kodak PhotoCD.
> The results are quite bad. It seems the scanner can't
> reproduce the contrast range of the slides. So it arbitrarily
> destroys dark and light areas of the pictures.
>
> The slide are shots of ceramic objects over a black velvet background,
> under overcast sky lighting. Of course, I don't mind loosing details
> in the dark areas, but not in the light areas.
>
> Is this a know problem? And how do I fix it, without requiring
> a skilled (and expensive) technician to do everything by hand?
>
> Did anybody use a "calibration" shot on a roll to set the scanner
> once for a whole roll? And what can be used as a proper calibration
> tool?
>
> I'm starting to believe that automated scanning is almost as bad as
> automated printing. I hope I'm wrong...
>
> Digitally challenged,
>
> Sebastien
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