Mikrotek 1800f & Silverfast AI

[ardea]

Hello,

I just purchased a 1800f from the boys in New York for LF/MF scans.

It came bundled with Mikroteks ScanWizard and SilverFast Ai6.

 

Intallation for both softwares was a breeze.

 

Using the ScanWizard, a quick reflective scan from a higloss

magazine cover that had a models face and numerous colors was

outstanding for color fidelity when opened in PS8 considering there

was no color calibration performed.

As I use Silverfast Ai6 for my Epson 3200 I tried Scanning a

4x5 'chrome at 48 bits using the bundled SilverFast(SF), the scan

was very clean with a little noise in the deep shadows. Not anywhere

near the noise of the same image from my Epson 3200. Scan time was

considerable faster too.

Trying to see if I could improve on the shadow noise I clicked on

the Multiple Sampling icon on the SF toolbar and selected 4 passes.

(one can perform 1,2,4,8,16 passes on the Epson 3200) I would

normally do 4 or 8 passes on my 3200 and that cleaned up the shadows

very well, but try as I might the 1800f would only do 1 pass even

though you could select 1 thu 16. Reading the manual, at the last

resort, states that "availability of this feature depends apon the

scanner model used". I wonder if the 1800f does not support this

feature. So have any of you using the 1800f with the bundled Ai6 run

into this problem?

Thanks, Richard

[tedharris]

Yes, the 1800f supports multiple passes. I routinely use it that way. However, most of the

time I use it with Scan Wizard since that is the way I calibrated the scanner. I do this with 4x5

and 5x7 trannies.

[rob_landry]

I think the 1800f supports single-pass multi-sampling, so only one pass is made, with each line being sampled multiple times by the CCD before moving the scan head. You will know multi-sampling is working by the increased scan time.

 

The Epsons (without Vuescan) can only do multi-pass sampling whereby the scan head makes seperate passes depending on the number of samples chosen. This works okay, but can result in alignment errors. Vuescan now offers single-pass multi-sampling with Epson and Canon flatbed scanners.

[tedharris]

Sorry, I meant multi sampling.

[ardea]

Thanks for the info...Richard