Minolta SE5400: is this level of streaking normal?

[Juha Koivisto]

I recently bought a used Minolta Scan Elite 5400, and while it's mostly
performing well, there's some streaking present when using the grain
dissolver. Upgrading the firmware to 1.10 may have helped a bit, but did
not fix the problem completely.

The streaking is more apparent in Vuescan but can also be seen in the
Minolta software. With grain dissolver off (resulting in shorter exposure
times) the scans are fine, but unfortunately in the Minolta software this
also means turning off ICE.

I put some test scans here:
<http://www.hut.fi/u/jkoivist/se5400/streaking.html>

The real question is, is this normal, or should I have the scanner
serviced or replaced?

An idea for fixing this in Vuescan: It would be nice if one could create
a file listing the problematic pixels (I'd be happy to just write it with
a text editor), and Vuescan would replace them with the average of the
neighboring pixels. Even if there are 50 pixels to be ignored, like in
my scanner, this would only result in loss of 1% of the total resolution
which would likely not be visible. There could be a checkbox in advanced
settings to turn this filtering on or off (or maybe even a pulldown menu
for selecting between different defect lists, to allow for different
levels of correction).

Something like this could of course also be implemented independently as
a postprocessing filter (to be launched instead of the external viewer),
but that would require always scanning the full width (and saving with
full resolution) so the filter knows which pixel is which.

 

[David O'Rourke]

I'd have to say that it looks typical. I don't know at what level or
quantity Minolta considers it a defect. I use a Scan Elite and a Scan Elite
II, both do it to varying amounts. As you've noticed exposure or possibly
analog gain make it worse. It also appears in the IR channel, which can add
lines of blurred pixels for no particular reason.

I really like you idea of creating a defect list. I find myself, for really
important scans, copying and pasting one pixel wide strips in Photoshop.

Sorry I can't offer any help.

David

 

[Olaf Ulrich]

I recently bought a used Minolta Scan Elite 5400,
and while it's mostly performing well, there's some
streaking present when using the grain dissolver.
Upgrading the firmware to 1.10 may have helped
a bit, but did not fix the problem completely.

I suggest writing a problem report to Minolta.

I bought my DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 in January this year
(with Scan Utility 1.1.2 and firmware v1.9), and upon arrival
I tested it anxiously and carefully for any evidence of streaking
which I read about so much before. Result: no streaking at all.

A few weeks later it gave me one fat horizontal streak while
scanning a black-and-white negative with ICE off and Grain
Dissolver on. The next day I updated to Scan Utility 1.1.3
and firmware v1.10 and had no more problems since then.

Wonder why so many owners of this scanner have problems.
Is your scanner placed physically close to the computer or
to the CRT monitor? Mine is two feet from the mini-tower
computer and four feet from the monitor, on an extra table,
and it's connected to the PC via FireWire. No streaking at
all---none, zero, nil, nada.

Olaf

 

[Alan Browne]

I suggest writing a problem report to Minolta.

I bought my DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 in January this year
(with Scan Utility 1.1.2 and firmware v1.9), and upon arrival
I tested it anxiously and carefully for any evidence of streaking
which I read about so much before. Result: no streaking at all.

A few weeks later it gave me one fat horizontal streak while
scanning a black-and-white negative with ICE off and Grain
Dissolver on. The next day I updated to Scan Utility 1.1.3
and firmware v1.10 and had no more problems since then.

Wonder why so many owners of this scanner have problems.
Is your scanner placed physically close to the computer or
to the CRT monitor? Mine is two feet from the mini-tower
computer and four feet from the monitor, on an extra table,
and it's connected to the PC via FireWire. No streaking at
all---none, zero, nil, nada.

Good ideas. My DSE 5400 sits about 15cm from the side of the
monitor and 15 cm from the tower on the other side. I also use
firewire, but I doubt it has any bearing on the streak issue at
all. The only way to see any streaks at all is to both greatly
increase the brightness of the monitor and zoom in on very dark
areas of a 5400 dpi scan... then some streak noise appears ...
faintly. None of this of course appears in a print of a finished
high res scan stored as TIF or JPG. I do believe that Minolta
had some lemons out there, and some people got them.

Cheers,
Alan

 

[Hecate]

I recently bought a used Minolta Scan Elite 5400, and while it's mostly
performing well, there's some streaking present when using the grain
dissolver. Upgrading the firmware to 1.10 may have helped a bit, but did
not fix the problem completely.

You're using an old version of the software. The latest, as I was
recently informed is version 1.5. You have version 1.1.0.

 

[Juha Koivisto]

Wonder why so many owners of this scanner have problems.
Is your scanner placed physically close to the computer or
to the CRT monitor? Mine is two feet from the mini-tower

I seriously doubt if the monitor (or anything else) could cause this kind
of streaking, but I'll try moving the scanner next time.

All ccd's have some defects, the question is just, how much is too much...
Could someone with a "good" scanner please try a simple test, to establish
a kind of reference level with which to compare: scan a piece of unexposed
slide film at full resolution, with grain dissolver on, and color balance
neutral if using vuescan, and put the image somewhere or post the results?

The kind of worst-case streaking this test will produce is of course not
very relevant for real scans, but it's a simple way of getting results
which can be duplicated by anyone who shoots slide film, and would be most
helpful for all who are wondering if their scanner is performing as it
should.

 

[Juha Koivisto]

[me: Upgrading the firmware to 1.10 may have helped a bit,]

You're using an old version of the software. The latest, as I was
recently informed is version 1.5. You have version 1.1.0.

Uh, that's FIRMware 1.10, which as far as I know is the most recent - or
is there a newer version available somewhere?

 

[Hecate]

[me: Upgrading the firmware to 1.10 may have helped a bit,]

You're using an old version of the software. The latest, as I was
recently informed is version 1.5. You have version 1.1.0.

Uh, that's FIRMware 1.10, which as far as I know is the most recent - or
is there a newer version available somewhere?

Sorry, I misread what you'd said. However, the problem that occurred
was cured by a software upgrade which is now at 1.1.5.

 

[Wilfred]

[me: Upgrading the firmware to 1.10 may have helped a bit,]


You're using an old version of the software. The latest, as I was
recently informed is version 1.5. You have version 1.1.0.

Uh, that's FIRMware 1.10, which as far as I know is the most recent - or
is there a newer version available somewhere?

Sorry, I misread what you'd said. However, the problem that occurred
was cured by a software upgrade which is now at 1.1.5.

Yes but Juha is talking about VueScan - he's on Linux so he can't use
the Minolta software.
Juha, did you try the following: give the scanner some time to heat up
(perhaps half an hour) and then, in VueScan, select Scanner->Calibrate
before you start scanning.

 

[Juha Koivisto]

Yes but Juha is talking about VueScan - he's on Linux so he can't use
the Minolta software.
Juha, did you try the following: give the scanner some time to heat up
(perhaps half an hour) and then, in VueScan, select Scanner->Calibrate
before you start scanning.

Well, in a pinch I *could* use the Minolta software (on an old laptop with
usb1...) but it's not working so well either: while the firmware and
software (1.1.5) update may have fixed some of the fainter streaks, a few
still remain. Besides I suspect this "fix" is at least in part based on
clipping shadow detail, and the software also has problems with focusing,
so I would very much prefer using VueScan.

I have tried recalibrating after a couple of hours, recalibrating with
grain dissolver selected (although I'm not sure if it will be applied
during the calibration process), and recalibrating with the Minolta
software and then reconnecting the scanner to the linux machine, but
none of these helped, unfortunately.

 

[Fernando]

I have tried recalibrating after a couple of hours, recalibrating with
grain dissolver selected (although I'm not sure if it will be applied
during the calibration process), and recalibrating with the Minolta
software and then reconnecting the scanner to the linux machine, but
none of these helped, unfortunately.

Sorry Juha, but as many other DSE5400 users reported here (including
myself), Vuescan can't seem to obtain a proper calibration from this
scanner, no matter how hard you try. I tried every possible
combination, I even tried calibrating within Minolta Scan Utility
first, to no avail. Just switched on or after hours of using, with or
without GD and/or IR, always the same streaks. And low DMax, too
(black point is too high).
It seems that MSU (and Silverfast) uses a different calibration
technique.
Too bad, since as you mentioned, MSU is not very good: getting a
properly focused scan is a pain...

Fernando

 

[Wilfred]

Sorry Juha, but as many other DSE5400 users reported here (including
myself), Vuescan can't seem to obtain a proper calibration from this
scanner, no matter how hard you try. I tried every possible
combination, I even tried calibrating within Minolta Scan Utility
first, to no avail. Just switched on or after hours of using, with or
without GD and/or IR, always the same streaks. And low DMax, too
(black point is too high).
It seems that MSU (and Silverfast) uses a different calibration
technique.
Too bad, since as you mentioned, MSU is not very good: getting a
properly focused scan is a pain...

AFAIK, Ed Hamrick is aware of this and he's still working on it. I don't
kow how close it is to the top of his list, though.

 

[Dierk Haasis]

AFAIK, Ed Hamrick is aware of this and he's still working on it. I don't
kow how close it is to the top of his list, though.

Hopefully not very far. I'd at least have on of my scanners working
perfectly with VS. With my ScanMaker x6 on Win95 I can't use it,
crashes.

 

[Hecate]

AFAIK, Ed Hamrick is aware of this and he's still working on it. I don't
kow how close it is to the top of his list, though.

Yes, and he's been saying at least for the whole of this year...

And you must have missed the post where he said he was giving up.
Unless he's changed his mind. ...Again.

 

[Wilfred]

Yes, and he's been saying at least for the whole of this year...

And you must have missed the post where he said he was giving up.
Unless he's changed his mind. ...Again.

Well, he did, apparently. I guess he realizes that the market of DSE
5400 owners who are not satisfied with the Dimage Scan Utility and who
think Silverfast is too expensive, is too big to be missed. Anyway, I
suppose you've switched to Silverfast by now? I'd be interested to hear
some comments about it - haven't heard too much about it here. The
reason seems either that it's flawless or that nobody actually has it.

 

[Ed Hamrick]

Well, he did, apparently. I guess he realizes that the market of DSE 5400
owners who are not satisfied with the Dimage Scan Utility and who think
Silverfast is too expensive, is too big to be missed. Anyway, I suppose
you've switched to Silverfast by now? I'd be interested to hear some
comments about it - haven't heard too much about it here. The reason seems
either that it's flawless or that nobody actually has it.

Actually, I gave my 5400 to someone to review it, and haven't had one
for a while. I need to buy another one, but every time I think of doing
this, I read a rude message from someone here (usually a 5400 owner),
and then just move on to something more fun.

Now that I think about it, I just don't enjoy reading this newsgroup
any more, since there are too many abusive, rude people who post here
now. I'm unsubscribing - bye.

Regards,
Ed Hamrick

 

[Ralf R. Radermacher]

I'm unsubscribing - bye.

Not to worry folks. Our diva is just being a little bad tempered again.

Lost count on how often we've had this over the years. Never lasted
longer than a few weeks.

Pity, though. Still thinking about a replacement for my ageing LS-2000
and not too enthousiastic about buying another Nikon scanner. The 5400
would have been an interesting alternative. But not without Vuescan.

Maybe we should try to convince Minolta that it might be a good idea to
give Ed a hand.

Ralf

 

[Wilfred]

Not to worry folks. Our diva is just being a little bad tempered again.

Lost count on how often we've had this over the years. Never lasted
longer than a few weeks.

Pity, though. Still thinking about a replacement for my ageing LS-2000
and not too enthousiastic about buying another Nikon scanner. The 5400
would have been an interesting alternative. But not without Vuescan.

I have to say that my 5400 is working reasonably with VueScan. For me
the IR cleaning problem was the biggest drawback but Ed has solved that
one. I don't experience streaking in such a clearly visible way as some
others report here. I use VueScan more than teh Minolta SW.
You could always follow Bart's approach of producing raw scans with the
Minolta SW, then processing it from file with VueScan. But then you
don't have VueScan's exposure control and you can't switch off the grain
dissolver when using infrared cleaning.

Maybe we should try to convince Minolta that it might be a good idea to
give Ed a hand.

I don't know if Mnolta is that communicative ...

 

[Wanadoo]

EXCELLENT!

It is much correct to say: We must convince Ed to give Minolta a hand! Minolta's software is still
a really piece of sh.t...

Pascal (happy Minolta DSS user).

PS: in the near next Vuescan version, would it be possible to log (in a kind of text file) the
successive black/white point values, brightness and so on (image cropped dims, ref position etc.),
computed for each scan during a process of several scans? It might help a lot to determine quickly
the overall quality of the job done.

 

[celebrate]

Actually, I gave my 5400 to someone to review it, and haven't had one
for a while. I need to buy another one, but every time I think of doing
this, I read a rude message from someone here (usually a 5400 owner),
and then just move on to something more fun.

Now that I think about it, I just don't enjoy reading this newsgroup
any more, since there are too many abusive, rude people who post here
now. I'm unsubscribing - bye.

Good riddance. Speaking of being rude, read your own posts.