No more film

[tobey bilek]

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All the computers are on Yosemite now and they warn that the KM 5400 is a power pc product and will no longer be supported.

 

I ran a new back up and did the upgrade. I thought I could trick it to work if I launched from an external HD that had an old OS and KM software on one partition. No dice.

 

Tried Vue scan. Delta 100 looks nice. Portra NC looks like , well terrible. Next was Silverfast. Looks a lot better and has more controls. Neither seems to work as well as the original KM software.

 

But the biggest issue is digital looks so much better for color, why would I want to use color film?

 

I will probably reopen the printing half of the darkroom and make monochrome prints.

There are two Focomat IC last models, upgraded V35 and a dozen bulbs and assorted other machines up to Omega 4x5`s, one color, one mono.

 

The prints I made were always beautiful and Ilford does not obsolete old stuff. The scales and chemical jars are still there and tightly sealed. And I don`t need to hunt around for fllm and color chemicals.

Edited December 28, 2014 by tobey bilek

[Stealth3kpl]

I know a few Pakon F135+ users are running the scanner successfully on Yosemite. The scanner only runs on XP, so they run the XP software in a VMWare partition. It must be possible for you to get around your problem. With time, many K5400 users will be in the same boat and will work things out. Give it time. Is there a Facebook 5400 group?

Pete

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[wattsy]

I run a 5400 via Vuescan and agree that it isn't ideal with colour neg. I would have thought that the old Dimage software will run via a virtual XP installation (unfortunately Bootcamp requires Windows 7 or later on relatively recent Macs) and might give this a whirl at some point in the near future.

 

The Pakon interests me as a means of obtaining decent colour scans (for 10x8 and smaller prints, digital contacts, etc.) with a minimum of fuss but I'm leery about acquiring additional pieces of kit when I'm trying to simplify my photographic life.

[wattsy]

But the biggest issue is digital looks so much better for color, why would I want to use color film?

 

I agree with you that obtaining good colour scans using a Minolta 5400 and today's Mac hardware is a bit of a pain (and I also share the attraction towards the, IMO, logistically simpler all-digital workflow) but I firmly disagree that colour digital looks better. It really doesn't and I have kidded myself about this for too long. (That said, for the first time in 8 years I no longer have a colour digital camera for my M lenses and I do feel slightly ill-at-ease about that:confused:.)

[graphlex]

There's a version of Silverfast 8 for the KM 5400. It works fine on Mountain Lion and I'd expect it to run on Yosemite. You can confirm this with Silverfast tech support. SF produces good scans from negatives (and excellent ones from chromes). The user interface is abysmal, but Mark Siegel's ebook helps a lot.

[tobey bilek]

I did try the Silverfast Studio 8. Makes Vue scan look poor on color neg.

 

Can I partition a hard drive and install Lion or something similar and use it for scanning with the KM software which is the best I found so far?

 

Since drives are so easily changed on a Mac Pro, can I stick in a blank new one and install an older version from recovery disks I have from say 2008?

[plasticman]

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Stick to digital. And don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. Thanks. Bye.

[wattsy]

Can I partition a hard drive and install Lion or something similar and use it for scanning with the KM software which is the best I found so far?

 

Since drives are so easily changed on a Mac Pro, can I stick in a blank new one and install an older version from recovery disks I have from say 2008?

 

If your Mac originally came installed with Lion then, yes, no problem – you can install Lion on a separate partition or hard disk and boot from that whenever you need to. Generally speaking, the oldest operating system you can use to boot any Mac is the one that it originally came with (though there have been exceptions when a model specification stays the same during a transition from one OS to another).

[NJH]

Why is everyone so enamoured with Apple products. I bought a brand new custom built PC a few months back with Win 7 Ultimate installed, cost me less than a Mac Air, flies with everything I chuck at it and runs the KM5400 and its OEM software fine. Funnily enough its not colour I have a problem with on this scanner, its the multipass scanning and my inability to get multipass scans without feint scan lines in them, tried separating the cables making any cable runs at 90 degrees to each other etc. doesn't matter I always still get the nicest scans from single pass which is a shame as it struggles to dig into Velvia shadows.

[bender73]

Why is everyone so enamoured with Apple products. I bought a brand new custom built PC a few months back with Win 7 Ultimate installed, cost me less than a Mac Air, flies with everything I chuck at it and runs the KM5400 and its OEM software fine. Funnily enough its not colour I have a problem with on this scanner, its the multipass scanning and my inability to get multipass scans without feint scan lines in them, tried separating the cables making any cable runs at 90 degrees to each other etc. doesn't matter I always still get the nicest scans from single pass which is a shame as it struggles to dig into Velvia shadows.

 

Apple is all about simplicity and stability. Their OS is far better. It is based on Linux and very stable. Every PC I owned got slow after years. That includes being totally OCD and de-fragging often. Apples just work. They speed up. They wake from sleep in 1 second or less. De-frag? What is that? Antivirus software? huh?

[pop]

Apple is all about simplicity and stability. Their OS is far better. It is based on Linux and very stable. Every PC I owned got slow after years. That includes being totally OCD and de-fragging often. Apples just work. They speed up. They wake from sleep in 1 second or less. De-frag? What is that? Antivirus software? huh?

Glad to see you so happy. Happyness is in the eye of the beholder. Others are not so happy with those products.

 

The OS in an Apple is a pure Unix. It has nothing to do with Linux.

[NJH]

True but they have bloated it over the years. I prefer the user experience now on Win7 to the OSX 10.9 running Macbook I have. I used to be a big fan of Apple products but its only MHO but they lost their edge, the simplicity is being replaced by fancy stuff and cludgy hardware like my 13" Macbook and its repeated 'sleep wake failures', look it up. Apple also are not backwards compatible, I have loads of software from my 2 generations back Macbook which will not run on the latest OSX, however I haven't got anything yet not to run on my brand spanking new Win 7 machine which used to run on my old XP machines even going back a decade.

 

The KM5400 is a pretty incredible scanner.

[chrism]

Four options for you:

1.I wouldn't give up on Vuescan too soon if I were you. It isn't as easy to use, and experimentation (plus lots of tutorials on the web) are necessary. You can get good results with colour negatives with practice though. The author is very responsive to questions and really earns the shareware cost of the app. I use it for a KM5400 II, and a Nikon 9000.

 

2.If that sounds like hard work, it is also easy to install a VM running Snow Leopard Server (you can't virtualise SL client) and you can do it with a free VM like VirtualBox. In there you can run Nikon Scan and KM DiMage to your heart's content.

 

3.Buy an old Mac or old Windows XP machine and use either simply for connecting to your scanner.

 

4. Buy my old Imacon 848 and its Flextight software runs happily in Yosemite!

 

Chris

[AlanG]

You don't need an old machine. Even with the newest PCs and newest version of Windows, you have an option to set it up to dual boot to 32 bit Windows XP if you need that for drivers. I don't know if you can do that on a Mac but since you can run Windows on a Mac, you have that option too.

[Luke_Miller]

You don't need an old machine. Even with the newest PCs and newest version of Windows, you have an option to set it up to dual boot to 32 bit Windows XP if you need that for drivers. I don't know if you can do that on a Mac but since you can run Windows on a Mac, you have that option too.

 

In the Windows world that works as long as your scanner does not require a SCSI interface. The option you mention is actually an XP emulate mode. That mode will not recognize a SCSI card. Now you can set your Windows PC up to do a true "Dual Boot", but that requires you to own a copy of XP to install.

[AlanG]

Yes I was talking about dual boot not emulation. I have a SCSi card running for use with old scanners.

[Luke_Miller]

Yes I was talking about dual boot not emulation. I have a SCSi card running for use with old scanners.

 

It turns out I had one of the Adaptec SCSI cards (AHA-2940UW) that has drivers for Windows 7, so my SCSI scanner happily co-exists with my Windows 7 64-bit OS. I also found the INF file hack for my Minolta Scan Multi Pro so it also runs using the OEM and Silverfast scanning software. Hack not needed for VuScan. So there is hope for using older scanners with the modern operating systems. Now I have to decide what to do with my XP system that was my scanner platform.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Luke_Miller

[}{B]

I run a 5400 via Vuescan and agree that it isn't ideal with colour neg. I would have thought that the old Dimage software will run via a virtual XP installation (unfortunately Bootcamp requires Windows 7 or later on relatively recent Macs) and might give this a whirl at some point in the near future..

 

I run my Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400 Mk1 on a PC with Windows 7 using the Vue Scan driver and the original Minolta software. Apart from the new driver it is exactly the same as using it with XP.

[250swb]

Rather than an Apple Vs Microsoft debate isn't this about a simple problem of learning to use Vuescan?

 

Steve

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[wattsy]

Not in this particular case, no. I have the KM5400 and one important feature of it - the manual focus dial - doesn't work (meaningfully) via Vuescan. There is a kludgy and very time consuming workaround to achieve a manually focused scan (which is almost always far sharper than an auto-focused scan on the 5400) but it is much more efficient to manually focus using the dial with the original dimage software interface.

Edited December 31, 2014 by wattsy