David Irisarri wrote:
>Hi,
>
>The other day I was thinking that I am starting to fed up with my Nikon
>LS-4000, scanning all my family slides and negatives. Why? My workflow is the
>following one:
>I load Vuescan and I scan every slide at full resolution and then I use
>bicubic reduction to 1:2 to store my LS-4000 raw images into my 500 Gb RAID. I
>have stored thousands of images but the main problem is film flatness. LS-4000
>depth of field is so small and these slides and negatives are so bent that
>it´s really impossible to get corner-to-corner sharpness.
>
Exactly what my research concluded, which is why I rejected the Nikon
scanners and bought a Canon FS4000, which has DOF and autofocus that
make questions of sharpness in the scanning itself a non-issue.
>But after these odd work I must optimize every image within Vuescan to get the
>final IMAGES to put them all together with Ulead Media Studio into my Family
>DVD.
>
After a recent experiment, I am convinced that one excellent way of
getting scans from VueScan that require minimal post processing is to
make or get film profiles. I previously posted about my first effort:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now I didn't do anything careful, controlled and scientific. I just put
an IT8 target down on a flat surface in the sun and took a shot if it in
the middle of a roll of Portra 160NC. When I got the roll back, I
started scanning it as usual until I hit the target shot. I then did the
profiling. When I took the shot, I was having trouble with reflections
in the glossy target, which was also curling a bit, so the shot of the
target wasn't square and perfect, as you can see. The profiling worked
well anyway, and I was quite impressed with the results on subsequent
frames. I then went back and rescanned the first frames. The differences
are quite remarkable and greatly reduce any PS adjustment needed. I
don't know about those with great color sense like C.H., but to me the
colors are exceptionally accurate. Of course, I have the target and one
of the other subjects right at hand to compare. Anyway, here are some
examples. Luckily, the roll is mostly of shots taken out on a wander, so
I was able to select a lot of different subjects, lighting, etc.
Examples are just as they came from the scanner, no other processing
except for downsizing <http://galleries.moosemystic.net/VuesProf/>.
With a film profile, about all there is to do is watch for the white
point on shots with strong reflections. You can see 2 different WPs in
the 2 scans of the car, I actually like the effect on the lower one
better, even though more of the sun reflection is blown out.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That doesn't, unfortunately, answer the question of what to do about
older films where one can't buy a new roll and include IT8 target shots.
The Advanced Workflow section of the User's Manual proposes a solution
and I've seen posts on the Google group:comp.periphs.scanners forum
saying it works, but my first effort left a greenish cast in the
results. And the way this works, the cast is in the RAW files. More to
research there. In the meantime, I have or am getting rolls of all
still available films of the same type as my old images.
>Why not usign slide duplicating with OM to 4/3 adapter and then process all
>the images with PHASEONE CAPTUREONE PRO? Speed, wonderful colour, sharpness,
>4:3 aspect ratio for TV, etc... They only problem is dust but I think is not
>going to be a trouble due to sharpness won´t be so high; I suppose!
>
Well, you have posed the million dollar questions which I haven't yet
seen answered by empirical testing. First, will the results be sharp
enough to better your film scanner? Second, how bad will dust be? My
suspicion is that the answers are going to be unfavorable for the slide
copier, but that's just a guess.
>Please I´ve never have made this type of work and here in Spain I cannot buy
>anything related to OM. What could I buy to do this work with PRO results?
>
Consider a third approach, a high end flatbed scanner. The reviews of
the Epson 4870 and 4990 and the Canon 9950F place their results with
35mm film above the older generation of 24-3200 ppi film scanners and
almost equal to the properly focused results from an LS-4000
<http://www.photo-i.co.uk/index.html>. Probably actually equal for
anything but very large prints or extreme crops. All of these have
effective hardware dust removal. The Epsons can scan scan 4 strips of up
to six frames each or 8 mounted slides at once the Canon can do 5 strips
or 12 slides at once. And they all add MF capability to the 35mm. The
4990 can even do 8x10 film and potentially a whole roll of 36 film
images. I'm not sure just what you mean by PRO results. If you mean
sharp scans with good color balance and dynamic range and IR dust
removal, all these will deliver. You do need to be aware that
essentially all digital images need some sharpening, and that this is
especially true of flatbeds used for film. The reviews clearly show what
the issue involves.
Moose
Moose
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