Philip said:
What worries me is not so much the resolution (probably the area that has
seen most improvements) but the treatment of color accuracy.
CCD scanners use different techniques for color separation: narrow band LEDs
(in Nikon scanners) or wide band cold cathode (in many other scanners).
Well, that is definitely one aspect. It can sometimes be difficult to discuss colour, since many subjective aspects
could enter the conversation. Bruce Lindbloom has some very nice articles on colour, perhaps I should have provided
some links to him.
Starting out with a slide that is not correctly exposed, using an undisclosed
scanner, undisclosed software for color correction, there is no way of
telling whether his results have anything to do with CCD scanners in
general.
It definitely could have more to do with the software. The default included software in many CCD film scanners is
not that great. Imacon include some very nice software, and then there is SilverFast, which seems to wake-up many
low end systems. As many have noted on this group, even switching to a relatively low cost VueScan software can give
improved results over the factory software.
Maybe he just used a scanner that can't handle badly exposed Provia, or maybe
didn't use the right techniques to correct the colors (a few minutes in gimp
seemed to result in a image than he showed).
He is fairly good about answering e-mails. I suggest sending him a message and asking him.
I think the perfect article on scanning is something we will never see posted to the internet. There are easily
enough variables and aspects to comprise a book or two. If we were to just discuss colour, then there are a set of
variables and conditions just for that.
Standardizing on a Q-13 or Q-60 target might help with colour analysis, though we would still need to consider the
output limitations. SWOP is one standard, though nearly every printing place I know of strives to do better than
that. There is a new emerging proposed set of standards called GraCOL, which might be something you would find
interesting.
Ciao!
Gordon Moat
A G Studio
<
http://www.allgstudio.com>