Fuji film status update.

As I increase my work in film again I also am busy scanning old family slides and there are a bunch of them!. I'm using a Coolscan IV and it works beautifully. It is limited to my older XP machine as it is not compatible with my Windows 7 or 10 machines. I can spend an hour or so and scan 25-50 slides at a time. I'm glad to see Ektachrome coming back. I shot thousands of images on E-6 and processed it as well. Mostly 100 or 200 speed but it worked great. The problem then was getting good prints without going through the pricey CibaChrome system. I used a lot of that too.

 

Rick H.

Rick, I believe if you decided to use vuescan, you could then use the scanner on a Win 10 machine. The drvers are built into vuescan.

Rick, I believe if you decided to use vuescan, you could then use the scanner on a Win 10 machine. The drvers are built into vuescan.

Yes, Vuescan supports pretty much every scanner imaginable and it's also current, maintained software.

With that said, there are benefits to using the Nikon software-as I said I find that real ICE as in Nikon Scan is better than Vuescan's implementation of infrared channel scanning.

I THINK you can get real ICE with Silverfast, but the fact that it requires a separate license for every scanner has always turned me off of it.

Yes, Vuescan supports pretty much every scanner imaginable and it's also current, maintained software.

 

With that said, there are benefits to using the Nikon software-as I said I find that real ICE as in Nikon Scan is better than Vuescan's implementation of infrared channel scanning.

 

I THINK you can get real ICE with Silverfast, but the fact that it requires a separate license for every scanner has always turned me off of it.

Silverfast does indeed have real ICE. I agree about the license issue though. I use Silverfast on the V700 for 4x5 film.

Silverfast does indeed have real ICE. I agree about the license issue though. I use Silverfast on the V700 for 4x5 film.

Unfortunately, I bought my V700 used and it didn't come with the original disks. I think they shipped with a version of ICE.

I'm going to stick to Snow Leopard on my Mac Pro for scanning for the time being so that I can use the Nikon and Epson software.

In all honesty, I like Vuescan enough that I'd pay a good pile for an "enhanced" version if it mean getting real ICE. Unfortunately, as I said, the implementation that they use leaves something to be desired(I have made side-by-side scans to show how much better ICE is) and it keeps drawing me back to the clunky Nikon and Epson software.

Also, as a side note, I wish Nikon had hired some people who really knew Mac programming back in the day. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I've NEVER been happy with the Mac version of any Nikon software as compared to the same version compiled for Windows.

1.2gb?

I manage to get 70mb or so at 6200dpi. Granted I do scan in JPEG.

1.2gb?

 

I manage to get 70mb or so at 6200dpi. Granted I do scan in JPEG.

16 bit 4x5 scans are huge in TIF

Unfortunately, I bought my V700 used and it didn't come with the original disks. I think they shipped with a version of ICE.

 

I'm going to stick to Snow Leopard on my Mac Pro for scanning for the time being so that I can use the Nikon and Epson software.

 

In all honesty, I like Vuescan enough that I'd pay a good pile for an "enhanced" version if it mean getting real ICE. Unfortunately, as I said, the implementation that they use leaves something to be desired(I have made side-by-side scans to show how much better ICE is) and it keeps drawing me back to the clunky Nikon and Epson software.

 

Also, as a side note, I wish Nikon had hired some people who really knew Mac programming back in the day. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I've NEVER been happy with the Mac version of any Nikon software as compared to the same version compiled for Windows.

Unfortunately, I bought my V700 used and it didn't come with the original disks. I think they shipped with a version of ICE.

 

I'm going to stick to Snow Leopard on my Mac Pro for scanning for the time being so that I can use the Nikon and Epson software.

 

In all honesty, I like Vuescan enough that I'd pay a good pile for an "enhanced" version if it mean getting real ICE. Unfortunately, as I said, the implementation that they use leaves something to be desired(I have made side-by-side scans to show how much better ICE is) and it keeps drawing me back to the clunky Nikon and Epson software.

 

Also, as a side note, I wish Nikon had hired some people who really knew Mac programming back in the day. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I've NEVER been happy with the Mac version of any Nikon software as compared to the same version compiled for Windows.

I believe that if you download the latest software from Epson, you will get ICE. It does work better than VueScan's IR clean. I say this as a VueScan user.

The problem with ICE is that it was a product of Applied Science Fiction, a company which got bought and destroyed by Kodak. They've probably lost the source code by now. ROC and DEE are in the same boat.

SilverFast's IR dust removal is pretty good, but not as good as the genuine ICE in Nikon Scan.

I use a Windows XP under Parallels on my iMac for most operations on my Coolscan V. Sometimes SilverFast Ai (native) is better using Q-60 calibration for Kodachrome. I also find that SilverFast is the only way to get good color on Ektar 100 using the film profile, Nikon Scan gets strange color casts with Ektar 100.

I have had trouble with the preview window in VueScan being grossly mis-calibrated, and have given up using on it with the Coolscan. I still use VueScan for multi-page PDF flat-bed scanning.

The problem with ICE is that it was a product of Applied Science Fiction, a company which got bought and destroyed by Kodak. They've probably lost the source code by now. ROC and DEE are in the same boat.

If indeed the source code is gone, that's a real loss.

I've run side-by-side tests on both my Epson and Nikon with scanning the negative/transparency both with ICE(in their respective software) and with Vuescan's IR cleaning algorithm. ICE does the seemingly impossible of both "catching" more and also preserving detail.

On the other hand, my first scanner was a Canon, and it came with Canon's proprietary IR scanning technology called FARE. I did find that Vuescan did a better job than FARE.

With that said, I do so much B&W relative to color anymore that any of the technologies are off the table for me :)

The vast majority of the Ektar I've shot has been in 120, which means I've used the Epson. I play with different profiles in Vuescan, and there's one(I forget which) that does a pretty decent job of getting nice colors.

When Vuescan was first developed, one of its real strengths was that they had a color profile for virtually every color negative film Kodak was making at the time and had made in relatively recent history. Unfortunately, now either they've stopped trying to get profiles or Kodak won't provide them(I suspect it might be the latter) and the best you can do for current film is "close enough." Even 10 years ago, it was nice to be able to just click "Portra 160NC" or "Gold 400" and get good colors without extraordinary effort. The new Portra 400, for example, doesn't really seem to match either the 400NC or 400VC profile although VC seems closer(my impression is that the current Portra films fall somewhere between NC and VC in color rendition, which I guess makes sense if you're going to replace two different emulsions with one).

If indeed the source code is gone, that's a real loss.

 

 

When Vuescan was first developed, one of its real strengths was that they had a color profile for virtually every color negative film Kodak was making at the time and had made in relatively recent history. Unfortunately, now either they've stopped trying to get profiles or Kodak won't provide them(I suspect it might be the latter) and the best you can do for current film is "close enough." Even 10 years ago, it was nice to be able to just click "Portra 160NC" or "Gold 400" and get good colors without extraordinary effort. The new Portra 400, for example, doesn't really seem to match either the 400NC or 400VC profile although VC seems closer(my impression is that the current Portra films fall somewhere between NC and VC in color rendition, which I guess makes sense if you're going to replace two different emulsions with one).

Point of information (From the mouth of the domestic equine): Ed Hamrick derived the film profiles in VueScan from those made by Kodak for the old PhotoCD. When that was discontinued, Kodak stopped making the profiles. Al Edgar confirmed this to a bunch of us about fifteen years ago.