Minolta 5400 or Coolscan 5000

[DavidTT]

While I have found the discussion of the merits of silverfast and
vuescan very interesting and informative, I'd like to bring this back to
the topic I originally posted:

I have been trying to gather information from people to help me decide
between the Minolta 5400 and the Nikon Coolscan 5000. I am interested
in knowing any pros or cons that people may like to share about these
scanners.

Thanks!

As stated in an earlier OT post, I'm also debating whether to upgrade
from a Polaroid ss4000 to one one these. Since I care more about the
hardware comparisons, my criteria are:

- full frame scans (the ss4000 can do this)
- sharper focus edge to edge
- better shadow details
- less flares (halo around light subject against deep shadow
background). The flares are supposed to be due to dusty mirrors. The
implication is a scanner designed to minimize dust collection inside.
- multisampling support
- native sw at least as good as the ss4000's (not saying much)

I was unable to get these questions answered from the online reviews of
scanners, but did get a few answers here about full frame scans and
multisampling. Thanks. My feeling is that these scanners will be better
than the ss4000 in the shadow areas due to 16bit depth, claimed higher
dmax, and multisampling. Whether sharpness will be better is unknown.

If you care about the goodness of the native sw, that's a different ball
game.

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

I'd read that, but doesn't the newsgroup still get complaints about
bands in shadows from time to time? Or is this just a false
impression I've developed?

Isn't that the problem this scanner has had operating under Vuescan
rather than with the native software? If so, Ed reckons he has fixed it
now, something to do with the IR lamp being on at the same time as the
white lamp. Fairly recent discussion here that I didn't take much
notice of as I don't use either the scanner or the software, so you
should be able to track it down.

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

Actually, I don't agree with that on at least two grounds. In order to
achieve these results (new) users are advised to ignore all features
and just set the gray point. (Witness Ed's advice to *turn-off* the
Kodachrome setting in VueScan and use the gray point instead!!!)

That is just a rather convoluted and insincere way of agreeing that
Vuescan does give pretty good scans straight out of the box without user
fiddling and adjustment.

Well,
you can do that just as easily with virtually *any* scanner software
and NikonScan's user interface is vastly superior to VueScan's.

Actually that is not the case. For a significant number of users there
seems to be great problems getting anything that is acceptable from
Nikonscan without a deal of faffing around, even just to get a raw scan
that they have no skill to be able top process in Photoshop to achieve
as good a result as Vuescan and Silverfast get straight out of the box.

Actually, to be accurate, (unlike VueScan) NikonScan *has* a user
interface.

Ooh handbags at dawn, Don - bitch, bitch. ;-)

Second, superior to what? To their inability to use the software
properly, *not* superior to what the scanner can produce. Indeed,
their "point-and-shoot" meddling will only corrupt what the scanner
could deliver under optimal conditions.

And that is exactly the point - for many users that point-and-shoot
option *is* the best they can get because they don't need to understand
and implement the processes to get anything as good, let alone better,
themselves.

A new coat of paint does not
improve the structural weaknesses of a building, it only masks it to a
lesser or greater degree. Would you call that coat of paint superior
to the actual building work?

If that new coat of paint lets you sell or rent the building for more
then it certainly is superior to building work! And it is very superior
if the difference lets you indulge in that LS-5000ED instead of cutting
a dash for the LS-50ED. It's the end result that matters, not some
interim step. As long as it is safe, why spend money making it last
another 50 years when a lick of paint and a scrub will reverse the flow
of money from your wallet.

Which neatly gets us off this digression and brings us back to the
subject matter...

The key is his mistaken notion:


You lose a lot of quality this way.

You don't! You're just getting what the scanner is capable of, and you
get it unadulterated.

Until he comprehends this all else will go over his head.

I don't disagree, but your response was inaccurate too. There are cases
when scanner adjustment is necessary to get an improved raw scan. You
also assume that the processing abilities of Photoshop are some sort of
pinnacle every other package should aspire to. But there is little
evidence for this. For example, had you bought the LS-5000ED then your
workflow would immediately lose an LSB off the data - Photoshop only
processes to 15-bit accuracy. So your argument that Toby was facing
180deg from the truth, isn't accurate. His argument is wrong, and more
wrong than yours, but yours is not 100% correct either - there are
exceptions.

I never said it was inferior and that's not at discussion. The problem
is all of his "conclusions" are based on a wrong premise (see above).

And I chose to address one aspect of your statement which was also
inaccurate and leading to the wrong conclusion. The fact that you now
wish to exclude that from the discussion is neither here nor there - you
chose to come back and argue that your critique was 100% valid in the
context, but read the context, the thread, rather than Toby's one
remark. Your remark is just as open to criticism as his was - though
you prefer not to see it that way.

Furthermore, he can't tell the difference between "better" as in
getting more out of hardware (his original claim above to which I
responded) and "better" in the sense of making it easier for the user
at the expense of real quality (your parallel point which just
confuses him into thinking that, somehow, user-friendliness directly
translates into superior hardware output quality).

For many, user friendliness *IS* superior output, and whether that comes
from the hardware or software is irrelvant, we all judge on the end
result. Whilst it is perfectly true that in skilled hands your workflow
will result in a superior end product, that is not the case for the
unskilled.

Just to get completely off topic, its a fair bet that as an American you
drive a car with an automatic transmission - why? Because its easier
and gives the results you need as well as a manual transmission,
possibly with less grinding noises? Of course Carlos Saintz, the rally
driver, will tell you that you will get better performance with manual
transmission control, and he'll demonstrate it too. But that disparity
of views could just be down to a difference in skill level between the
two of you. Then Michael Shumacher will demonstrate that there are
parts of the automatic transmission that do improve performance and can
outperform Saintz with a semi-automatic one. But are you going to junk
your car for one with a semi-automatic shift, or even a stick shift -
why not, when you know you are losing a lot of performance in that
sluggish (3 cog?) automatic? Because your definition of "better" is not
the same as Saintz or Schumacher's. What about the Greenpeace activist
that views the best performance vehicle as a bicycle? The point I am
making is that skill, interest, necessities and a host of other
pressures determine what you consider "better" to be. In your context,
Toby was wrong in his claims, but you were also wrong in your claim that
best was exactly the opposite of the process he claimed to be best, as
well as assuming that your workflow is not without its limitations
itself.

So, before we descent into such esoterics (which will just confuse him
even more) we have to make it clear to him that the above notion as it
relates to getting the most out of hardware is just plain wrong.

But he is not talking about "getting the most out of the hardware", he
is talking about getting the best result from the *combination* of
hardware, software and the skill available to bring the two together to
achieve the optimum result. Silverfast, like Vuescan, combines those two
aspects wuith a minimum level of skill much better than Nikonscan does,
whilst at the same time offering all the capability and more to get the
best out of the hardware if he chooses to. Like most folk though, Toby
rightly appears to be judging better quality on the end result, not some
semi-abstract construct part way through the process, but consistent end
pictures that look good, sharp, smooth well balanced - and in a fraction
of the time he struggled with NikonScan for. In a very real sense that
*IS* better. Better for him in his particular value set.

Otherwise, he will (and does!) misinterpret your statements (relating
to usage) as tacit support of his mistaken notion (relating to
hardware output quality) and that will just reinforce it and make it
that much more difficult to correct later.

Just as others would misinterpret any blanket agreement with your
statement as tacit support for it in entirety. That is why I used the
words "Not exactly" and provided an example of an exception to your
general rule.

So, for starters, you should maybe distance yourself clearly from his
above statement (without equivocation!) to help him understand that.
Once he does, and is willing to learn more, *then* it's the time for
"yes, but...", "except on Friday 13th and full moon..." etc.

I think that is pretty clear to most readers by the words I used - "not
exactly" - in long hand: yes that is correct in a general sense, but
there are situations (which are not that unusual) where the third party
software in itself will outperform the combination of raw scan from
native software into Photoshop.

Nothing! No amount of curves adjustments will ever bring back the
missing dynamic range. It will just make it worse. (The case of coat
of paint hiding structural deficiencies.) This was clear to me even
before I started. So...

I relied on facts, I ran tests, I read, I learned (all good advice to
him as well) and then achieved exactly what I said was possible all
along with Analog Gain because it was a simple yet irrefutable axiom.
There *is* a global setting for scanning Kodachromes with LS-30.
However, it's a relative one.

Its also a very different one from the global setting that the later
scanners use to achieve a much more tightly controlled result, which is
why Nikon would not even begin to try to help you. In particular, that
blue LED your LS-50 is a significant improvement over the one in the
LS30. In short, the hardware wasn't up to the job you wanted to the
software to achieve.

 

[Bruce Graham]

As stated in an earlier OT post, I'm also debating whether to upgrade
from a Polaroid ss4000 to one one these. Since I care more about the
hardware comparisons, my criteria are:

- full frame scans (the ss4000 can do this)
- sharper focus edge to edge
- better shadow details
- less flares (halo around light subject against deep shadow
background). The flares are supposed to be due to dusty mirrors. The
implication is a scanner designed to minimize dust collection inside.
- multisampling support
- native sw at least as good as the ss4000's (not saying much)

I was unable to get these questions answered from the online reviews of
scanners, but did get a few answers here about full frame scans and
multisampling. Thanks. My feeling is that these scanners will be better
than the ss4000 in the shadow areas due to 16bit depth, claimed higher
dmax, and multisampling. Whether sharpness will be better is unknown.

If you care about the goodness of the native sw, that's a different ball
game.

from google - no warranty expressed or implied!!

- Bruce

************************************************

Topic: Summary of SS4000 cleaning discussion

Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2002 14:29:23 -0700
From: HPA

Summary of SS4000 cleaning discussion.

HOW DO I KNOW IF MY SCANNER NEEDS CLEANING? By opening the unit and
examining the optical mirror. Or, if you want a preliminary idea of
how dirty the mirror may be before taking this step, look at the amount
of dust underneath your scanner. If you do not use a dustcover, this
is likely to be a good indicator of how much dust may be on the optical
lens and mirror (this is because the scanner has open holes and serves
as a dust collector, unless you have a dust cover).

HOW DO I OPEN THE UNIT FOR EXAMINATION AND CLEANING? First, get the
scanner unplugged from the computer and out on a clear well lit table
where you can work on it. Turn the scanner upside down, you will see
four plastic catches on the bottom sides near the corners. A small
flat screwdriver can be used to pop open these catches. Be careful not
to break them. Once you have released the catches and have slid the
top off, you will see the mechanism. The top cover and main chassis
will, of course, still be connected by various wires. Connect the
power cord to the unit and press the power button on. The scanner
will attempt to go through one cycle. Be observant, at one point the
optical mirror will be perfectly revealed. It may take a few tries to
see how it works. As soon as the mirror is perfectly accessible, pull
the power cord so it freezes in that position.

HOW DO I CLEAN THE OPTICAL MIRROR? With compressed air. Air comes in
two forms, a compressor or a can of dust-off available from camera
stores, etc. If you have compressor, set to about 40 lbs of air
pressure. I recommend you use a medical compressor because it does not
have oil pistons. (Regular air compressors sold for general machine or
airbrush use oil pistons, so make sure your compressor does not emit
tiny oil droplets out the nozzle) If you use the canned air, remember
not to hold the can at an angle because some of these squirt a liquid
out if held at angles other than generally vertical. Perhaps you can
put the scanner on its side while blowing the dust away. Another
suggestion for canned air is to put a downward bend in the tube that is
used to extend the nozzle, you can do this while slightly heating the
tube with a match. Blow off the mirror and lens real good.

WHAT IT THE MIRROR NEEDS FURTHER CLEANING? Then you need denatured
alcohol available from hardware or paint stores (which is NOT drugstore
isopropyl alcohol). Use lens cleaning tissue, and put a little
denatured alcohol on the tissue. Fold the tissue over and drag it
across the mirror using no pressure. Do not get the alcohol on plastic
parts or let it get behind the mirror, or let it drip all over
everything. Use each tissue only once and discard.

WHAT CAN I DO TO KEEP THE UNIT IN GOOD CONDITION? Make a plastic
dustcover. Or, put it in a plastic bag when not using it. Anything to
keep dust from getting into it is a good thing.

This is not authorized factory service information. I am not
qualified to do anything, I have no education, I don't know anything.
These are practical suggestions for do-it-yourselfers and are based on
my personal experience of doing it. My remarks about cleaning the
mirror come from questioning a life-long camera repairman. I have no
factory training or information. There are many people on this list
who are scanner scientists and mechanics and can probably offer better
information, so let's hope to hear from them.

Good luck

Thomas

 

[David J. Littleboy]

What about the Greenpeace activist
that views the best performance vehicle as a bicycle?

Have you ever met a Greenpeace activist that doesn't own a car???

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

Have you ever met a Greenpeace activist that doesn't own a car???

Not just one, but many.

 

[Don]

That is just a rather convoluted and insincere way of agreeing that
Vuescan does give pretty good scans straight out of the box without user
fiddling and adjustment.

No, it's not. It's a proof that *any* scanning software (I'm aware of)
can achieve comparable results (certainly beyond any difference such a
casual user can spot) when using the above, simple procedure, thereby
eliminating the key "feature" or advantage of point-and-shoot software
(ease of use).

It's just as easy to set a gray point in NikonScan as it is in
VueScan. Much easier, actually, because in NikonScan it's right there
in front of the user, unlike the "secret VueScan handshake" (right
click).

Actually that is not the case. For a significant number of users there
seems to be great problems getting anything that is acceptable from
Nikonscan without a deal of faffing around, even just to get a raw scan
that they have no skill to be able top process in Photoshop to achieve
as good a result as Vuescan and Silverfast get straight out of the box.

Not if one follows the same procedure in NikonScan: click on the gray
color sampler, click on a neutral area on the Preview, hit scan. That
gets comparable results to the same procedure in VueScan, for example.

Ooh handbags at dawn, Don - bitch, bitch. ;-)

But I thought you agreed? ;-)

I had my handbag on the ready, hoping for a Monty Python style
recreation of the battle of Hastings (I think it was...) by that
Woman's Auxiliary Club or whatever... (how's that for vague?).

As a Python connoisseur I'm sure you know the skit I'm referring to
and will be able to fill in the blanks...

And that is exactly the point - for many users that point-and-shoot
option *is* the best they can get because they don't need to understand
and implement the processes to get anything as good, let alone better,
themselves.

Right, in relative terms, but not in absolute terms. And, as I
outlined above, if that's all they want to do (sacrifice quality for
convenience) they can do that with any scanning software I'm aware of.

I don't disagree, but your response was inaccurate too. There are cases
when scanner adjustment is necessary to get an improved raw scan.

You know that... I know that... Most people in this newsgroup know
that... But he doesn't seem to know even the most elementary basics.
If we start telling him that auto-exposure is not always 100% accurate
and that he needs to adjust Analog Gain, his head will explode...

So, baby steps... First, let him get to grips with the most elementary
basics.

Besides, we also have to consider order of magnitude here. The
difference between Auto-Exposure and Analog Gain fine tuning is far,
far less than the difference (massive corruption, actually) he will do
messing around with curves in scanner software. This nuance is bound
to get lost on someone who thinks that when you scan raw you "lose a
lot of quality". Not just "lose quality" mind, but "lose a *lot* of
quality"!

You
also assume that the processing abilities of Photoshop are some sort of
pinnacle every other package should aspire to.

No, this is not about Photoshop but about the fact that when using
scanner tools one is working off of a tiny Preview. Neither Photoshop
nor any other image editing software could do substantially better
when forced to work through such a "keyhole". With scanner software's
very limited tool chest, one is also missing a substantial number of
essential tools, such as numerical displays (mean, median) etc.

Your remark is just as open to criticism as his was - though
you prefer not to see it that way.

Indeed it is. But you are now talking about fine shades and nuances
which you and I agree on, but are way over his head, and will only
confuse him.

For many, user friendliness *IS* superior output, and whether that comes
from the hardware or software is irrelvant, we all judge on the end
result. Whilst it is perfectly true that in skilled hands your workflow
will result in a superior end product, that is not the case for the
unskilled.

And we are not going to help them by giving them the impression that
the *relative* improvement they experience (comparing their results
with and without point-and-shoot) compares even close in *absolute*
terms with the results of someone who knows what they're doing.

Just to get completely off topic, its a fair bet that as an American you
drive a car with an automatic transmission - why?

Let me stop you right there... Two wrong assumptions:

1. I'm not an American, I'm Canadian, eh? ;-)
2. I don't even have a driver's license. I ride a (push) bike! Yes, in
the snow too... We Canadians are a hardy bunch! ;-)

Now, you were saying... ;-)

But seriously, I get your gist but I don't think this particular
example really addresses the point. You will still cover the mileage
either way. An automatic may be more convenient but the *absolute*
"quality" (in this case actually quantity) of mileage is still the
same whether you drive an automatic or not.

When someone uses point-and-shoot in our context they do get the same
convenience as the driver using automatic but - unlike driving - they
don't cover the same mileage or, in our context, get the same quality
as someone who knows what they're doing.

Toby was wrong in his claims, but you were also wrong in your claim that
best was exactly the opposite of the process he claimed to be best, as
well as assuming that your workflow is not without its limitations
itself.

The problem with that is that you are putting my workflow through much
more scrutiny which you are not applying to his "workflow".

Yes, I may need to fine tune using Analog Gain, but so may he,
although he's not even aware of it! Indeed, the likelihood that he
will need (major) fine tuning is much higher!

Nevertheless, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and, since we
have this potential need for fine tuning on both sides of the equation
we can strike it from both sides of the equation, and that's what I
did.

After that - when we remove this fine tuning requirement - what we are
then left with is that his statement is exactly the opposite of truth.

But he is not talking about "getting the most out of the hardware", he
is talking about getting the best result from the *combination* of
hardware, software and the skill available to bring the two together to
achieve the optimum result.

Yes, he is talking about getting the most out of hardware (by
referring to raw) even if he doesn't know it. And that's exactly my
point! We have to make it clear to him what the implications of such a
statement are - and do that on the very basic, elementary level -
before we even have a hope of teaching him the rest. Assuming he even
wants to learn...

Judging by his absence, his head probably already exploded as we argue
how many angels can dance on the head of a pin... ;-)

Its also a very different one from the global setting that the later
scanners use to achieve a much more tightly controlled result, which is
why Nikon would not even begin to try to help you. In particular, that
blue LED your LS-50 is a significant improvement over the one in the
LS30. In short, the hardware wasn't up to the job you wanted to the
software to achieve.

That's not really correct. I have to preface, though, by saying I
don't have the time to test this to my satisfaction. One day...

But at least on the surface (comparing histograms) "LD-50" ;-)
Kodachrome setting does not produce significantly different results
(regarding Kodachrome compensation, of course) from the LS-30 once I
apply the Kodachrome correction I came up with empirically. Actually
they are surprisingly close! I say "surprisingly" because I didn't use
*any* tools, not even an IT8 target with the LS-30, but presumably my
sample was large enough to get a good enough approximation.

The only difference I see is actually in the *red* channel. It appears
that the red dynamic range of the LS-50 seems somewhat wider than that
of the LS-30 after I apply the correction. However, I am comparing a
2700 scan with a 4000 scan, plus, LS-50 is 14-bit so all that combined
may account for the difference in the red channel histogram width.

But, like I said back then, it's not so much the abundance of blue
(which is what everybody notices first, me included) but the absence
of red which seems to be the main problem! On reflection, that makes
perfect sense! One can always compress "too much" dynamic range (as in
blue) but you can't conjure missing dynamic range (as in red) so it
reasons that the absence of red would be much more detrimental.

Don.

 

[Don]

Have you ever met a Greenpeace activist that doesn't own a car???

Erm... (fx: raises hand sheepishly)

Actually, technically not an activist but I certainly support most of
their aims. Don't even have a driver's license. Not particularly for
ideological reasons, but just find I never needed it.

A real Greenpeace activist owning a car would be a contradiction in
terms, like...
"military intelligence"
"postal service"
"Nikon support"
"VueScan user interface"
etc... ;-)

On a serious note though, most cars in Europe, for example, are hybrid
vehicles with minimal emissions, certainly far less than 4WD monsters
common in North America. So an environmentalist driving such a low
emission vehicle would not be a contradiction.

Don.

 

[Don]

Not just one, but many.

Actually, research consistently shows that for inner city trips under
45 mins bike is the fastest, closely followed by public transport with
the car as the distant third. With ever increasing inner city
congestion this time is bound to go up.

The notable exception is London (U.K.) where they introduced a
"congestion charge" to limit the number of vehicles. So, the bike wins
again because cyclists don't have to pay this fee.

Don.

 

[David J. Littleboy]

Not just one, but many.

Glad to hear things are changing: I knew too many nature freaks with cars
when I was in the states; every time one would insist on offering me a ride
somehere, it would take 3 times longer than walking. Biking in Tokyo is
largely limited to housewives grocery shopping, white collar works going to
the train station, and bankers and insurance salespersons making their
rounds to the customers, often holding an umbrella in the rain. (A friend
and I put our heads together to figure out how to make our fortunes, and
what we came up with was an umbrella with a cell phone in the handle, or at
least a clamp to hold a cell phone.)

(Sorry about the grumpy noise: there's a nasty document in the inbox and I
don't have time to do any scanning this weekend.)

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

 

[DavidTT]

It's the end result that matters, not some
interim step.

You must be in the Bush/Blair camp, which paints an end result that is
questionable at best.

Just to get completely off topic, its a fair bet that as an American you
drive a car with an automatic transmission - why?

Most Americans drive with automatic transmission because there are more
of them on the market. This is the same reason why most Europeans drive
with manual transmission in Europe. But this American drives a manual
transmission.

 

[DavidTT]

On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 00:23:17 +0100, Kennedy McEwen


Let me stop you right there... Two wrong assumptions:

1. I'm not an American, I'm Canadian, eh? ;-)
2. I don't even have a driver's license. I ride a (push) bike! Yes, in
the snow too... We Canadians are a hardy bunch! ;-)

We should forgive those who use auto focus point-and-shoot from across
the Pond.

 

[DavidTT]

from google - no warranty expressed or implied!!

- Bruce

************************************************

Topic: Summary of SS4000 cleaning discussion

Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2002 14:29:23 -0700
From: HPA

Summary of SS4000 cleaning discussion.

HOW DO I KNOW IF MY SCANNER NEEDS CLEANING? By opening the unit and
examining the optical mirror. Or, if you want a preliminary idea of
how dirty the mirror may be before taking this step, look at the amount
of dust underneath your scanner. If you do not use a dustcover, this
is likely to be a good indicator of how much dust may be on the optical
lens and mirror (this is because the scanner has open holes and serves
as a dust collector, unless you have a dust cover).

HOW DO I OPEN THE UNIT FOR EXAMINATION AND CLEANING? First, get the
scanner unplugged from the computer and out on a clear well lit table
where you can work on it. Turn the scanner upside down, you will see
four plastic catches on the bottom sides near the corners. A small
flat screwdriver can be used to pop open these catches. Be careful not
to break them. Once you have released the catches and have slid the
top off, you will see the mechanism. The top cover and main chassis
will, of course, still be connected by various wires. Connect the
power cord to the unit and press the power button on. The scanner
will attempt to go through one cycle. Be observant, at one point the
optical mirror will be perfectly revealed. It may take a few tries to
see how it works. As soon as the mirror is perfectly accessible, pull
the power cord so it freezes in that position.

HOW DO I CLEAN THE OPTICAL MIRROR? With compressed air. Air comes in
two forms, a compressor or a can of dust-off available from camera
stores, etc. If you have compressor, set to about 40 lbs of air
pressure. I recommend you use a medical compressor because it does not
have oil pistons. (Regular air compressors sold for general machine or
airbrush use oil pistons, so make sure your compressor does not emit
tiny oil droplets out the nozzle) If you use the canned air, remember
not to hold the can at an angle because some of these squirt a liquid
out if held at angles other than generally vertical. Perhaps you can
put the scanner on its side while blowing the dust away. Another
suggestion for canned air is to put a downward bend in the tube that is
used to extend the nozzle, you can do this while slightly heating the
tube with a match. Blow off the mirror and lens real good.

WHAT IT THE MIRROR NEEDS FURTHER CLEANING? Then you need denatured
alcohol available from hardware or paint stores (which is NOT drugstore
isopropyl alcohol). Use lens cleaning tissue, and put a little
denatured alcohol on the tissue. Fold the tissue over and drag it
across the mirror using no pressure. Do not get the alcohol on plastic
parts or let it get behind the mirror, or let it drip all over
everything. Use each tissue only once and discard.

WHAT CAN I DO TO KEEP THE UNIT IN GOOD CONDITION? Make a plastic
dustcover. Or, put it in a plastic bag when not using it. Anything to
keep dust from getting into it is a good thing.

This is not authorized factory service information. I am not
qualified to do anything, I have no education, I don't know anything.
These are practical suggestions for do-it-yourselfers and are based on
my personal experience of doing it. My remarks about cleaning the
mirror come from questioning a life-long camera repairman. I have no
factory training or information. There are many people on this list
who are scanner scientists and mechanics and can probably offer better
information, so let's hope to hear from them.

Good luck

Thomas

Thanks Bruce for digging this up. As stated in an earlier response, I
did find and try this. After removing some lint on the mirror, the
ss4000 flare problem diminished somewhat but not entirely.

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

Glad to hear things are changing: I knew too many nature freaks with cars
when I was in the states; every time one would insist on offering me a ride
somehere, it would take 3 times longer than walking. Biking in Tokyo is
largely limited to housewives grocery shopping, white collar works going to
the train station, and bankers and insurance salespersons making their
rounds to the customers, often holding an umbrella in the rain.

Sounds like the ideal market for Segway... ;-)
Seen any in use there yet?

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

On a serious note though, most cars in Europe, for example, are hybrid
vehicles with minimal emissions

Don, now you really are talking out of your wrong end! Speaking from
Europe, yes the UK is technically part of both the geographic continent
and the political union, there are extremely few hybrid cars, very small
fractions of a percentage point of the total number of vehicles.

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

You must be in the Bush/Blair camp,

What has that got to do with the price of fish?

which paints an end result that is
questionable at best.

Why is a better end result questionable? If it works for you, that's
what matters.

Most Americans drive with automatic transmission because there are more
of them on the market.

And why are there more of them on the market, when a manual Tx gives
better performance. Do Americans not care about performance or do they
dust have a different value system for it?

This is the same reason why most Europeans drive
with manual transmission in Europe.

Same question in different terms: What drives what is on the European
market? Do Europeans care more about performance than Americans, or
just have a different value system for it?

But this American drives a manual
transmission.

Found the clutch yet?

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

Actually, research consistently shows that for inner city trips under
45 mins bike is the fastest

Fastest is, like hardware output, only one parameter in the entire
equation of which transport is best. Other parameters include
convenience, personal space, journey distance (ie speed), load capacity,
and personal safety.

Also, "research consistently shows that" bicycle riders are more likely
to be killed in road traffic accidents than truck drivers. Its bleeding
obvious though! Of course city trips under 45minutes are faster by bike
- longer than 45minutes gets you out of most cities and into regions
where bikes simply cannot compete! Just like your argument about the
hardware output, whilst generally true it is not 100% consistent with
the full transport picture.

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

But I thought you agreed? ;-)

I do, but (and this is where you seem to have a problem) I accept that
others have a different value system which places more emphasis on
getting the best result for the minimum effort.

I well recall the first time I ever evaluated Vuescan, many years ago
when I had a Nikon LS-20 scanner. What amazed me was that it could
produce a perfectly acceptable image without any adjustment at all - in
fact, adjustment was a real pita because it didn't even have a preview
facility. Meanwhile, the first scan on Nikonscan 1.63 from the LS-20
was always unacceptible and required significant adjustment using the
preview just to get an acceptible result, and a *lot* of work to get
anything better than Vuescan would produce. The fact that I could get
something better with Nikonscan was why I stayed with it, however
Vuescan had the controls to produce better as well, but the user
interface made them less intuitive, and (IMO and clearly yours too)
still does. That does not mean everyone has (or should have) the same
opinion.

And, now it comes to mind, that was another case where your workflow
would have produced an inferior end result: the LS-20 is a 10-bit
internal device with only 8-bit output. All processing in NS1.63 was
implemented in the scanner itself, via look-up tables to 10-bit
precision. A raw scan could only be processed to 8-bit precision in
Photoshop.

 

[Toby]

OK guys, I did some experimenting and here is what I came up with.

I scanned a B&W neg with Nikon Scan 4.0 with my LS 4000. First I scanned it
totally straight--no messing with levels, curves, etc. Then I "optimized" it
by going into the curves dialog after prescan, setting black point and white
point, and adjusting the curves to give me a pleasing overall tonal balance
and contrast.

I went into PS and adjusted the first "raw" scan to visually match the
"optimized" second scan, then compared the histograms. The first one,
adjusted in PS, was much gappier than the second, adjusted pre-scan.

I did the same test again, except that for the first scan I adjusted B & W
points pre-scan, but did not play with curves. The second scan had both the
B & W points set and the curves set to give a nice tonal balance. Again I
adjusted the first scan to match the second in PS, and again the first scan
ended up with a much more ragged historgram.

I have to add here that I was working in 8 bits. This would probably not
have been the case had I been working in 16 in PS.

But it does point out that if you are going to be working in 8 bits it is
better to make the adjustment prescan in 14 or 16 bits or whatever your
scanner can do.

That is what I meant when I said that you lose quality if you scan raw and
then adjust in PS. I was assuming you are working in 8 bits. Are you?

I went on to do some comparison scans in SilverFast and NS--both neutral--no
prescan adjustments except setting black and white points. Interesting
results. The SF scans of positives were definitely better than the NS scans.
There was a marginal improvement (though very slight) in shadow detail it
seemed to me, but more importantly the color balance was much better--so
apparently SF uses a slightly different mix of the RGB LED intensities.

However with B&W negs SF was definitely inferior--while the overall balance
of tones was better there was a big gap between dark grey and
black--definitely a step lacking, whereas the tonal range in the thinnest
part of the neg was much smoother using NS. I will have to go back and try
to change the analog gain and see if I can smooth that out.

While I understand Don's point about all the bells and whistles on SF--the
auto theses and thoses, I was referring in my post to the nicer tonal
rendition I find using SF. And in fact when I adjust the NS scans (with
their smoother tonal range) I again end up with a gappy histogram, as
compared to the SF raw scans (although those still contain the tonal gap in
around zones 8-10).

Toby

That is just a rather convoluted and insincere way of agreeing that
Vuescan does give pretty good scans straight out of the box without user
fiddling and adjustment.


Actually that is not the case. For a significant number of users there
seems to be great problems getting anything that is acceptable from
Nikonscan without a deal of faffing around, even just to get a raw scan
that they have no skill to be able top process in Photoshop to achieve
as good a result as Vuescan and Silverfast get straight out of the box.

Ooh handbags at dawn, Don - bitch, bitch. ;-)


And that is exactly the point - for many users that point-and-shoot
option *is* the best they can get because they don't need to understand
and implement the processes to get anything as good, let alone better,
themselves.

If that new coat of paint lets you sell or rent the building for more
then it certainly is superior to building work! And it is very superior
if the difference lets you indulge in that LS-5000ED instead of cutting
a dash for the LS-50ED. It's the end result that matters, not some
interim step. As long as it is safe, why spend money making it last
another 50 years when a lick of paint and a scrub will reverse the flow
of money from your wallet.

I don't disagree, but your response was inaccurate too. There are cases
when scanner adjustment is necessary to get an improved raw scan. You
also assume that the processing abilities of Photoshop are some sort of
pinnacle every other package should aspire to. But there is little
evidence for this. For example, had you bought the LS-5000ED then your
workflow would immediately lose an LSB off the data - Photoshop only
processes to 15-bit accuracy. So your argument that Toby was facing
180deg from the truth, isn't accurate. His argument is wrong, and more
wrong than yours, but yours is not 100% correct either - there are
exceptions.

And I chose to address one aspect of your statement which was also
inaccurate and leading to the wrong conclusion. The fact that you now
wish to exclude that from the discussion is neither here nor there - you
chose to come back and argue that your critique was 100% valid in the
context, but read the context, the thread, rather than Toby's one
remark. Your remark is just as open to criticism as his was - though
you prefer not to see it that way.

For many, user friendliness *IS* superior output, and whether that comes
from the hardware or software is irrelvant, we all judge on the end
result. Whilst it is perfectly true that in skilled hands your workflow
will result in a superior end product, that is not the case for the
unskilled.

Just to get completely off topic, its a fair bet that as an American you
drive a car with an automatic transmission - why? Because its easier
and gives the results you need as well as a manual transmission,
possibly with less grinding noises? Of course Carlos Saintz, the rally
driver, will tell you that you will get better performance with manual
transmission control, and he'll demonstrate it too. But that disparity
of views could just be down to a difference in skill level between the
two of you. Then Michael Shumacher will demonstrate that there are
parts of the automatic transmission that do improve performance and can
outperform Saintz with a semi-automatic one. But are you going to junk
your car for one with a semi-automatic shift, or even a stick shift -
why not, when you know you are losing a lot of performance in that
sluggish (3 cog?) automatic? Because your definition of "better" is not
the same as Saintz or Schumacher's. What about the Greenpeace activist
that views the best performance vehicle as a bicycle? The point I am
making is that skill, interest, necessities and a host of other
pressures determine what you consider "better" to be. In your context,
Toby was wrong in his claims, but you were also wrong in your claim that
best was exactly the opposite of the process he claimed to be best, as
well as assuming that your workflow is not without its limitations
itself.

But he is not talking about "getting the most out of the hardware", he
is talking about getting the best result from the *combination* of
hardware, software and the skill available to bring the two together to
achieve the optimum result. Silverfast, like Vuescan, combines those two
aspects wuith a minimum level of skill much better than Nikonscan does,
whilst at the same time offering all the capability and more to get the
best out of the hardware if he chooses to. Like most folk though, Toby
rightly appears to be judging better quality on the end result, not some
semi-abstract construct part way through the process, but consistent end
pictures that look good, sharp, smooth well balanced - and in a fraction
of the time he struggled with NikonScan for. In a very real sense that
*IS* better. Better for him in his particular value set.

Just as others would misinterpret any blanket agreement with your
statement as tacit support for it in entirety. That is why I used the
words "Not exactly" and provided an example of an exception to your
general rule.

I think that is pretty clear to most readers by the words I used - "not
exactly" - in long hand: yes that is correct in a general sense, but
there are situations (which are not that unusual) where the third party
software in itself will outperform the combination of raw scan from
native software into Photoshop.


Its also a very different one from the global setting that the later
scanners use to achieve a much more tightly controlled result, which is
why Nikon would not even begin to try to help you. In particular, that
blue LED your LS-50 is a significant improvement over the one in the
LS30. In short, the hardware wasn't up to the job you wanted to the
software to achieve.
--
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.
Python Philosophers (replace 'nospam' with 'kennedym' when

replying)

 

[Toby]

But even VueScan can be used by a knowledgeable user to get good
results (again, by ignoring everything and just scanning raw).

However, all that was not the gist of the discussion. It's the notion
that point-and-shoot delivers purest data, which is patent nonsense.

This was never the point of my discussion. My point was that it is better to
make your adjustments prescan while you are working in 14 or 16 bits
(depending on your scanner) than afterwards in PS--if you are using 8 bits
there.

Point-and-shoot has nothing to do with that.

Toby