VueScan or NikonScan?

[Kennedy McEwen]

K,

I found your stats. In that case there did not seem to be any
clipping.

Precisely - that is why it was posted in direct response to Philips
claims that "NikonScan tries very hard to clip the shadows" and that the
exposure adjustment "doesn't work" for negatives. Both points were
disproved by the statistics of the scans as presented.

In fact, maybe I wasn't clear, but many times Nikon Scan does not
clip.
But a significant amount of times I have had this problem. When I made
adjustments to exposure, I just found I clipped one end of the
histogram
vs. the other (i.e. lost detail in either highlights or shadows not
being
able to get detail in both.

Indeed, and the post I made directly in response to that claim referred
to a negative which had been specifically selected to provide an image
which had an extremely overexposed white object (a porcelain cup) in the
foreground, due to it being on-camera flash lit. As I made clear in
that, even though the default Nikonscan exposure did result in some
clipping of the whites in the cup such that the specular reflection of
the flash was lost in the overexposed white porcelain, minor exposure
adjustment pulled that into range at the expense of darkening the main
subject but *not* clipping the blacks.

....unless I used Vuescan or Silverfast).

Quite specifically, the scan was virtually indistinguishable (apart from
very minor colour balance differences) from that achieved with Vuescan
at an exposure adjustment of -0.8EV, and the similarity of both scans
could be confirmed by the level of combing in the histograms after
extreme gamma correction to brighten the subject in both scans.

In short, even in this extreme case where virtually the entire dynamic
range that the film could record was used up in meaningful image,
Nikonscan had no problems capturing the image without saturation of
either blacks or whites and there exists a wide range of exposures where
neither end clips. In fact, having explored this further with the same
frame, shadow clipping does not begin to occur until the exposure has
been adjusted by at least -2EV - ie. more than the entire Analogue Gain
master control range! (And this includes the frame border, so the film
simply doesn't contain anything more black than that!)

I have also raised this issue with Nikon Tech support (there denials
being
as vehement as yours) going as far as sending them a couple of
negatives to
demonstrate my point. Guess what, they couldn't get the full dynamic
range
contained in the Nikon Scan output either! They ended up making
statements
like; "...that's what's on the negative", "....you could probably use
curves to
retrive the detail..." etc. But the bottom line is they could not get
the full dynamic range of the very same negatives that I was able to
get using either
Vuescan or Silverfast.

There is a significant difference - I have both Vuescan and NikonScan
here and have no trouble obtaining virtually the same image from
NikonScan as Vuescan produces with an extreme range negative.

I will not post anymore on this issue, my experience has been that
when it comes to capturing the full dynamic range of many negatives
without
having "brick wall" fall-offs at either end of the histogram with
corresponding
loss of either highlight or shadow detail in the scan, Nikon Scan
cannot match
the capabilities of either Silverfast or Vuescan.

I have already stated why that is your experience, and it is not a fault
of NikonScan.

Thanks for the spirited dialog

You are welcome, but its a shame you could not provide any evidence to
back even the reduced scope of your claims that you have ended up with.

 

[Dave]

I'm in the "should" camp. I'm not an artist and I don't want to make
creative images. I just want the image to accurately portray what I
saw when I took the picture so I can either reminisce about it or say
"See, this is what it really looks like." Accuracy is my goal and my
nightmare is trying to reconcile what I see on the monitor to what I
see in my mind. Impossible to get right, of course, but worth trying.

 

[Dave]

I'm in the "should" camp. I'm not an artist and I don't want to make
creative images. I just want the image to accurately portray what I
saw when I took the picture so I can either reminisce about it or say
"See, this is what it really looks like." Accuracy is my goal and my
nightmare is trying to reconcile what I see on the monitor to what I
see in my mind. Impossible to get right, of course, but worth trying.

 

[Dave]

I'm in the "should" camp. I'm not an artist and I don't want to make
creative images. I just want the image to accurately portray what I
saw when I took the picture so I can either reminisce about it or say
"See, this is what it really looks like." Accuracy is my goal and my
nightmare is trying to reconcile what I see on the monitor to what I
see in my mind. Impossible to get right, of course, but worth trying.

 

[Dave]

Media to "Image"?? I hadn't heard that. I was setting media to
whatever kind of media I was using. Is that all the time or only when
you're doing that reset procedure you described?

Your "digital negative" idea makes a lot of sense and that would
certainly be appropriate for a professional or an artist who would
then work with every image in Photoshop, but I'm just trying to learn
how to get good scans so I can scan all those 35mm slides rotting away
in my closet. I hope scanner settings will get me to the accuracy I
was talking about in an earlier post. Considering your perspective,
however, makes me think I'll scan the especially impressive slides a
second time as virginally as possible and put them in a separate
folder in case I want to tweak them in Elements. Good idea. Thank
you for that.

 

[Dave]

I'm in the "should" camp. I'm not an artist and I don't want to make
creative images. I just want the image to accurately portray what I
saw when I took the picture so I can either reminisce about it or say
"See, this is what it really looks like." Accuracy is my goal and my
nightmare is trying to reconcile what I see on the monitor to what I
see in my mind. Impossible to get right, of course, but worth trying.

 

[Dave]

That comment was just so good I had to say it four times.

Sorry. Google was hanging up on me and I wasn't getting the
confirmation so I kept trying. Apparently, it remembered each try.

 

[Don]

Media to "Image"?? I hadn't heard that. I was setting media to
whatever kind of media I was using. Is that all the time or only when
you're doing that reset procedure you described?

According to the author that's the most reliable way (Media: Image).
Setting to relevant media introduces internal "corrections" by VueScan
which often make matters much worse. Image, on the other hand, just
gives you what's on the film and then you make the corrections
yourself by choosing the gray point.

I "learned" all this when proving to the author that his dogmatic
stance "you don't need individual Analog Gain" was wrong - which he
had to rescind, in the end. Just like you, I instinctively used the
appropriate media and got miserable results (green snow, for example).
That's when the author suggested the procedure I repeated here
(including using Media: Image) and I've since seen him suggesting that
as a cure-all solution to virtually any VueScan problem.

But, I don't even like VueScan! I wish one the VueScan fans would
chime it!

Your "digital negative" idea makes a lot of sense and that would
certainly be appropriate for a professional or an artist who would
then work with every image in Photoshop, but I'm just trying to learn
how to get good scans so I can scan all those 35mm slides rotting away
in my closet. I hope scanner settings will get me to the accuracy I
was talking about in an earlier post. Considering your perspective,
however, makes me think I'll scan the especially impressive slides a
second time as virginally as possible and put them in a separate
folder in case I want to tweak them in Elements. Good idea. Thank
you for that.

Most welcome!

I'm actually in the same boat - simply digitizing my life... What I
really wanted all along was a hassle-free workflow where I could do
all this without thinking and in a couple of weeks. Famous last
words...

The more I agonized about whether an image looked right, the deeper I
got in. Months later, after several false starts and realizing it's an
unending undertaking because - as someone once said - of my lying
eyes, I decided on "digital negatives". It's not optimal because you
need a lot of storage and it makes the whole process longer and more
convoluted.

One last hint. I do make slight corrections to the "negative", in
particular minimal cropping (only to remove uneven edges) and
"permanent" corrections like removing blemishes. I figure those are
one-offs and not likely to be repeated.

However, color correction, contrast, etc. are a neverending nightmare
but at least I can go back to "square one" and try again. For example,
when I now look at my first corrections (done when I started all this,
which - at the time - I thought were perfect) they seem amateurish and
unbelievably bad... And since I have no "negatives" I had to start all
over again. Granted, not everyone may be so picky, but it's something
to keep in mind.

Don.

 

[Dave]

Interesting and thanks again, Don. I'll try setting Media to Image
when I get back to scanning slides. I'm done with the negatives now
and working on scanning prints with my flatbed and VueScan doesn't
support my old Visioneer. Take care.

 

[Jerry C.]

SNIP



I don't have too much of a problem with departure from "Windows guidelines"
if you mean User Interface conventions. They are pretty meaningless to e.g.
a Mac/Linux user anyway.

Functionality is more important, and inter-platform portability is obviously
a major benefit for Ed Hamrick because it cuts down on development time.
I also greatly value the single interface for all my scanners. I have so far
used VueScan on 6 different models, 5 different brands, and I never had to
re-learn the particulars of the interface to operate them.

There is also other specialized software that doesn't follow Windows GUI
conventions, and which allows to do similar tasks in fewer
key-strokes/mouse-clicks. Once learned (not a real issue for specialized
applications because they usually have other features than a word
processor), that results in higher productivity.

Just my 2 cents.

Bart

============================================
Bart, thanks for injecting a little common sense. I'm a scanning
novice, having just returned a Dimage ScanDual IV and about to buy a
Coolscan V (I think!). I'm lurking in this thread trying to learn a
little about the pitfalls and recommendations of the hardware and
software. Detouring this thread onto the value of "Windows guidelines"
just about knocked me off my chair. I can't help but think about
"start" before "shutdown", "My Computer" which actually says ZERO about
it's use, and other idiotic MS implementations. BTW, I am an
experienced and knowledgeable Windows user, so this is not coming from a
Mac user.

Your observation of Vuescan being portable to different scanners is a
valuable advantage I hadn't thought of.

Jerry C.