aesop Posted December 28, 2007 Share #1 Posted December 28, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) I recently acquired a Nikon Coolscan IV LS-40 ED film scanner and have hooked it up to my Mac (Tiger). So far, I have been distinctly underwhelmed at the results of my initial attempts at scanning - to my mind, they lack the requisite bite, clarity, tonality or resolution. The negatives were correctly exposed and developed, so I begrudgingly attribute my limited success to poor technique on the scanner. I am a total novice in the field of scanning, and talk of ICE, compression formats and suchlike set me on edge. This rather grim situation is not helped by the fact that the scanner came with a rather meaty but poorly put together instruction manual. I would appreciate some direction. For instance, is there some "Sesame Street" resource I can access to improve my situation? Thanks. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted December 28, 2007 Posted December 28, 2007 Hi aesop, Take a look here Film scanning advice required. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
andybarton Posted December 28, 2007 Share #2 Posted December 28, 2007 What software are you using? I (and many others) would recommend Vuescan, from VueScan Scanning Software. It's about £40 for the Pro version which will give you access ti unlimited updates forever. The Hamrick site has also got lots of useful info about scanning and links to other resources. Scanning is something that you have to learn, I'm afraid. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
aesop Posted December 28, 2007 Author Share #3 Posted December 28, 2007 What software are you using? I (and many others) would recommend Vuescan, from VueScan Scanning Software. It's about £40 for the Pro version which will give you access ti unlimited updates forever. The Hamrick site has also got lots of useful info about scanning and links to other resources. Scanning is something that you have to learn, I'm afraid. ...oh, dear, Andy, this is not good. I may have my strengths, but I was blissfully unaware that I required additional software to use the scanner . I will do some research on Vuescan, inter alia, in the hope slaying the scanning dragon. One more thing - my resultant TIFF files weigh in at beefy approximately 35MB per image. Is this the norm? Thanks for your support. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ndjambrose Posted December 28, 2007 Share #4 Posted December 28, 2007 ...oh, dear, Andy, this is not good. I may have my strengths, but I was blissfully unaware that I required additional software to use the scanner . I will do some research on Vuescan, inter alia, in the hope slaying the scanning dragon. One more thing - my resultant TIFF files weigh in at beefy approximately 35MB per image. Is this the norm? Thanks for your support. Much depends on your expectations from your scanner. Many people are happy with straight scans, but I never have been. In my opinion all scans -- from whatever scanner you care to use -- lack bite on some level. Usually this is characterised by poor contrast, incorrect black and white points, and less than optimal sharpening. Most people (or rather, most people with higher expectations) use the scan only as a starting point, and follow on with corrective post-processing in Photoshop or similar to get to a final version. It's possible to use Vuescan or similar software to have more control over your scan settings, but this is still inferior to what can be done in Photoshop. Your resultant tiff files at 35 Mb scan aren't beefy. For 135 film you should be scanning at least 3000 dpi and 16 bit in order to get optimal quality. This will produce an output file of around 60 Mb in size. You can of course downsize this, or scan at lower resolutions, but you will be throwing away potential quality that you could otherwise preserve. My scans average between 60 Mb - 90 Mb each depending on the resolution I use. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andybarton Posted December 28, 2007 Share #5 Posted December 28, 2007 ...oh, dear, Andy, this is not good. I may have my strengths, but I was blissfully unaware that I required additional software to use the scanner . I will do some research on Vuescan, inter alia, in the hope slaying the scanning dragon. One more thing - my resultant TIFF files weigh in at beefy approximately 35MB per image. Is this the norm? Thanks for your support. The scanner may (should) have come with some software already (Nikon Scan), but 3rd party software is nearly always superior in this instance. Vuescan or SilverFast are the two top choices. My Nikon scanner is the Mark V model, which can do 4000 dpi scans. At 16bit, the files are around 125MB for a full frame. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
cocker Posted December 28, 2007 Share #6 Posted December 28, 2007 ...oh, dear, Andy, this is not good. I may have my strengths, but I was blissfully unaware that I required additional software to use the scanner . I will do some research on Vuescan, inter alia, in the hope slaying the scanning dragon. One more thing - my resultant TIFF files weigh in at beefy approximately 35MB per image. Is this the norm? Thanks for your support. Andrew, Andy is right - you will have Nikonscan. Vuescan and Silverfast were what I used with my provious Epson scanner (as the Epson Scan s/w was not that good). When I got my Nikon 5000 ED I started to use Nikonscan and was pleasantly surprised. It's worth playing around scanning the same negative using different settings in Nikonscan to see the results. You can save each of them as presets and go back to the ones that give you the best results. But as Andy said, its a hard road to the best scans and we all, I suspect, have learned by experience and trial and error.:( Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
aesop Posted December 28, 2007 Author Share #7 Posted December 28, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) The scanner may (should) have come with some software already (Nikon Scan), but 3rd party software is nearly always superior in this instance. Vuescan or SilverFast are the two top choices. My Nikon scanner is the Mark V model, which can do 4000 dpi scans. At 16bit, the files are around 125MB for a full frame. ...gadzooks, Andy - sounds like I will also need to invest in a sturdy external hard drive for my images, possibly >500GB. I have read the specification sheet for the Mark IV model, but am unable to comment on its capabilities for the simple reason that I do not yet understand how the technospeak actually manifests itself in gritty daylight <sigh>. This is going to be one long slog - I have visions of endless experimenting. In the interim, is anyone able to provide direction on the various multimedia compression formats? On a basic level, I need to fully understand why one type would be preferable over the other, etc. . Thanks. Sota. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andybarton Posted December 28, 2007 Share #8 Posted December 28, 2007 Welcome to the digital world. I now have over a terabyte of storage on my desktop and that isn't enough... Tip Nr 1 - Only ever work on tiff or psd files. Never, ever, ever work on jpgs. Every time you save a jpg, the image gets degraded - something that doesn't happen with tiffs or psd files. Tip Nr 2 - Work on 16 bit files and convert to 8 bit when you've finished, if you want to post on the web (web browsers only recognise very few formats, with jpg being the one you want to show on the web. Jpgs are only 8 bit) Tip Nr 3 - To show on the web or print via an inkjet, use the sRGB colour space. There is only one browser that can understand other colour spaces (Safari on the Mac) and if you want others to see the colours that you see, use that space Tip Nr 4 - Macs show images brighter and lighter than PCs. Therefore if you use a Mac, some PC owners will see a much darker image and think that you don't know what you are doing. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
aesop Posted December 28, 2007 Author Share #9 Posted December 28, 2007 Welcome to the digital world. I now have over a terabyte of storage on my desktop and that isn't enough... Tip Nr 1 - Only ever work on tiff or psd files. Never, ever, ever work on jpgs. Every time you save a jpg, the image gets degraded - something that doesn't happen with tiffs or psd files. Tip Nr 2 - Work on 16 bit files and convert to 8 bit when you've finished, if you want to post on the web (web browsers only recognise very few formats, with jpg being the one you want to show on the web. Jpgs are only 8 bit) Thanks to everyone for their input so far. Andy, when you say "Only ever work on tiff or psd files" and "Work on 16 bit files and convert to 8 bit when you've finished", am I correct in my assumption that all of these functions/options are available on the Mark IV model? Sota. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andybarton Posted December 28, 2007 Share #10 Posted December 28, 2007 Yes. The IV scanner will save images in 16bit. This is what you need to software for, to get the image from the scanner and into your computer Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Antony Posted December 29, 2007 Share #11 Posted December 29, 2007 Scanning is a bit of a black art, you'll need some practise to get really good results. Like others have said Vuescan and Silverfast generally give you more control than the scan software in the box with your scanner, although you should be able to get pretty good results with the basic software. In addition to other recommendations to scan 16-bit and use TIFF I'd like to say I personally find setting the white and black points crucial to getting the information from the neg. I tend to scan so that the lightest tones (sky or highlights) just record as very light grey and the darkest shadow as dark grey with just a hint of detail. When imported into Photoshop the image will look flat, and quite frankly a mess, but all the info should be there and just a short time in curves or levels should give you a decent tonal range. If the image seems to lack 'sparkle' you could try this trick:– Open the Unsharp Mask filter, set these approximate values, amount 25 Radius 75 pixels then play with those settings until your image looks OK. This will give a 'contrast sharpen' that should make your images 'pop' Sometimes I follow this up with a small 50 amount 1.5 Radius Sharpen to make the fine detail 'snap' too, but remember keep those fine details in both shadow and highlight. Remember that you don't want to over-sharpen as this will emphasise the 'false grain' that scanning tends to introduce. Regards Mark Photo Utopia Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tobey bilek Posted December 30, 2007 Share #12 Posted December 30, 2007 The Nikon software has density and color balance controls which is all i really use when I scan. Save as a TIFF. Put it into photoshop and you can do all the fancy corrections here much easier than with the scanner which has all the controls, but slows down considerably. Within two threads of this is some ones scans from his new Summarit. They are quite nice and when things get critical, I will take a Leica scanned neg over my Nikon D200 image any day. Take the time to learn where the controls are in the Nikon software. Everything is there. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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