Plustek OpticFilm 120

rishij · February 10, 2012

Sam,

Very interesting/informative stuff! In Paul's thread you mention:

Consistency in inverting negative film images is not otherwise possible since the software inverting the image has no reference to help it know “true” black and “true” white relative to the film itself. It fails to be consistent for the same reason auto white balance fails.

</blockquote>

I'm curious about this statement.

It's not the 'inversion' process in and of itself that leads to this inaccuracy, is it? Because, in Photoshop, the 'invert' function simply maps new R, G, B values to (255-R), (255-G), (255-B). Leaving a discussion of color profiles aside, there's no other way to do this inversion, correct?

If I understand your post above here on photo.net properly, the inaccuracy in automated scanning software then comes from an attempted 'auto white balance' where casts are removed by neutralizing the darkest/brightest portions of the frame... which is of course prone to error (especially when sometimes a cast *should* be preserved since even the human eye-brain system has a limit as to how much it'll shift interpreted white balance... if this weren't so then the pre-dawn 'blue hour' would just be gray, right?).

So, if I'm still following you correctly, then isn't Erik Krause's Advanced Workflow the best way to deal with negatives? That workflow suggests you scan a blank frame of your negative roll; this determines optimum exposure since if you 'autoexpose' a blank frame, you'll cap your exposure so that know darks are clipped. Next, you adjust the individual R, G, & B gains so as to render the orange mask neutral (neutral blacks). I suppose at this point one should re-autoexpose the blank frame to determine optimal exposure in the presence of those R, G, B gains (can't remember if he suggests you do this). Now, scan the entire roll using these settings as positive film. Then, invert in Photoshop.

Shouldn't this give accurate 'base' scans from which to work from, getting rid of any orange mask/scanner light source casts, with consistency from frame to frame throughout an entire roll?

Also, I thought I remember reading somewhere that either Vuescan or Nikon Scan attempts to remove the orange mask by reading the edge of the frame (unexposed negative). Is this not true then? (not that it affects me much, because I use Krause's workflow, and seem to get consistent results... though don't quote me on that... it's been a while & I mostly scan Velvia 50 which is much easier to be consistent with using proper IT8 targets)

I realize this doesn't get at neutral whites (since that needs to be determined from a black, exposed portion of negative), or at the correct curves you need to apply to maintain a neutral gray ramp... but for the latter you'd need to build your own profile. I've had limited success with this by shooting my own color charts... but the funny thing about this is: if you're trying to get accurate colors by shooting color charts and trying to get a colorimetric match, aren't you actually removing the characteristics of the film from the equation? Meaning, if you do this (successfully, not an easy feat) across many different film types, they final resulting picture should look the same... meaning Portra will look like Ektar will look like Fuji Pro 160...

Or am I missing something here?

Sam, have you ever tried building LUT profiles for film? Or do you think it's more wise to stick to simple R, G, B correction curves? I've heard the latter is preferable.

Thanks, this is fun stuff! Rishi

jens_g.r._benthien · February 10, 2012

I think if you can calibrate a scanner with an IT 8 target the whole process would be easier and deliver consistent results. With VueScan and my Nikon Scanners I can use IT 8 targets and calibrate the scanner for different negative films - it works without any additional software and delivers great results, as long as your scanner can deliver linear scans.

I really don't yet see a reason to use iCorrect EditLab Pro or ColorPerfect D1.05.

samagnew · February 10, 2012

The manual workflows described are pretty much a manual way of doing what the automatic software does. The key step is where you take the three colour channels and adjust the endpoints according to the histogram. This step is where you (like the automatic software utilities) are making an assumption that the brightest bit for each channel is essentially white and the darkest bit is essentially black. If you have shadows and/or highlights which are less than perfectly neutral you will be introducing a colour cast that will be troublesome to remove. Since your endpoints now differ from the "real" endpoints of the film (in other words, you have perhaps unwittingly defined very dark brown as "black" and very bright pink or yellow as "white" and remapped the image to these black and white points you selected when you defined the endpoints for each channel) the correction required to correct any cast is no longer a simple gamma curve.

What is far preferable is a stored set of endpoints determined from a strip end as well as a stored set of gamma curves determined from applying those endpoints to a greyscale image on the roll and colour balancing it with per-channel gamma curves. The endpoints plus curves applied to any other frame should yield accurate colour.

To put this another way. Take a slide scan or digital camera image that is already positive and colour accurate. Note the per-channel histograms. The endpoints for each colour are not necessarily the same. If you make them the same (as per the workflows referenced or as the various softwares discussed to automatically) you will be degrading the colour integrity of the image as you will see if you perform the experiment.

As far as the character of different films. They are not, in my experience, as easy to remove as that. If that were the case, every colour-accurate slide film would look like every other one. Bad colour accuracy is not the defining character of any decent negative film.

rishij · February 10, 2012

Wait, <a href="../photodb/user?user_id=4252304">jens g.r. benthien</a>, how do you use IT8 targets to calibrate a scanner for negative film?

-Rishi

rishij · February 10, 2012

If you have shadows and/or highlights which are less than perfectly neutral you will be introducing a colour cast that will be troublesome to remove. Since your endpoints now differ from the "real" endpoints of the film...

</blockquote>

How would my endpoints differ from the 'real' endpoints if I'm scanning a blank frame of negative film to determine the true black point?

I concede that I'm not determining a true 'white point' since I'm not sampling an overexposed, 'black', piece of film. But I should be effectively removing the orange mask of the negative film with the workflow previously described.

-Rishi

samagnew · February 10, 2012

How would my endpoints differ from the 'real' endpoints if I'm scanning a blank frame of negative film to determine the true black point?

</blockquote>

Re-read what I wrote. The endpoints on the "end strip" (a frame with some fully exposed and some unexposed film) WILL be the true endpoints. The endpoints on any random image from the middle of the roll will not. If some unexposed film is present at the margin then you may have the opportunity to sample that as a "true" black but you will still be guessing at the white based on whatever is brightest on that particular frame.

This is the problem I am discussing.

jens_g.r._benthien · February 10, 2012

Rishi,

get a reflective target here: <a href="http://www.targets.coloraid.de/">http://www.targets.coloraid.de/</a>

shoot it with a negative film, and calibrate your scanner with the negative.

Repeat the process with each emulsion you have, save your profiles and apply them accordingly for future scans.

rishij · February 10, 2012

Jens: Thanks. I've actually tried that (I get all my scanner/reflective targets from Wolf Faust), to a certain extent, with limited success when actually building profiles. And this methodology you propose is exactly what I referred to earlier when I mentioned that if you follow this to its logical conclusion, it'd remove all characteristics of the film itself from the equation. Therefore a scan of Pro 160C would look like Portra would look like Ektar because in the end you're just trying to recreate the reflective color chart accurately, NOT the way the particular film in question would render that chart.

This is very different, for example, from IT8 profiling for slides. There, Wolf Faust actually records the IT8 chart on the film, then uses a spectrophotometer to measure the color values of the color patches *on the film itself*. Therefore, when you build a profile from this frame of film, you're just attempting to match the colors the scanner recorded off the film with the same colors on the film as measured by the spectrophotometer. Thereby rendering an accurate representation of the way the chart looks on the film, not in the real world under some lighting condition.

You can't do this with negative film because it doesn't make any sense to spectrophotometrically measure color patches recorded on negative film, since the colors are inverted & affected by the orange mask.

-Rishi

rishij · February 10, 2012

Re-read what I wrote. The endpoints on the "end strip" (a frame with some fully exposed and some unexposed film) WILL be the true endpoints. The endpoints on any random image from the middle of the roll will not

</blockquote>

Sam, I understand that, and believe I've been saying the same thing. I'm not using any random image from the middle of the roll... I'm using the unexposed leader to render a neutral white (which becomes a neutral black upon inversion).

Essentially, I'm curious as to how to manually solve the issues you raise.

If you set the R, G, B analog gains so as to render the orange mask on an unexposed portion of the film neutral, you'll essentially get neutral blacks upon a simple inversion operation... do you agree? Since I'm scanning as a 'positive', these gains essentially render a neutral white in the actual scan (prior to inversion).

Now, how could I get neutral whites (neutral blacks in the actual scan, prior to inversion)? Let's say I scan a portion of overexposed film from the end of the frame in Vuescan. What settings in Vuescan would you alter so that in the non-inverted scan, the blacks are neutral? Typically I think of getting neutral blacks a matter of setting the R, G, B offsets (e.g. in monitor calibration). Vuescan offers the following under 'Color Balance: Manual':

<ul>

<li>Neutral red</li>

<li>Neutral green</li>

<li>Neutral blue</li>

</ul>

These alter the 'red, green, or blue component of neutral color' & are set to 1 as default.

Then there's:

<ul>

<li>Brightness red</li>

<li>Brightness green</li>

<li>Brightness blue</li>

</ul>

... which are listed as gamma multipliers for the individual channels.

In general, though, I thought the prevailing philosophy was to leave 'color balance' set to 'none' in Vuescan.

I understand that this doesn't even begin to get at finding the curves to maintain a neutral gray ramp, but one thing at a time...

In a nutshell: is there any way to accurately get a neutral scan of the overexposed frame of negative film in Vuescan? That is: if R, G, B analog gains allow you to get a neutral scan of unexposed negative film, what are the equivalent sliders/settings to render the overexposed portions neutral (neutral black point prior to inversion)?

Thanks, Rishi

samagnew · February 10, 2012

I would do the exposure for R G B based on mask in scanner software as you are actually setting your scanner exposure to capture maximum information. I usually leave a little margin to avoid clipping black (positive black). Apart from locking exposure I wouldn't do anything else in scanner software. Curves and white (positive white) I would set as layers in Photoshop and apply them to all frames after scanning.

I feel a little bad about the thread highjacking. I was really just quite moved by Paul's images and felt moved to respond regarding his frustrations with inverting consistently. I'm really excited about this scanner. If it is good it will be a fantastic resource and I really hope is sells well. If it does, I wonder if Plustek would punt on a real film scanner like this for 4x5. It has been a very long time since the last film (not flatbed) scanner was available that would do 4x5. It is only a little bit wider, really, than 120 film...

Sam

rishij · February 10, 2012

On the contrary -- I feel like this discussion helps the thread if Plustek is listening.

Essentially, if you set the R, G, B gains in software based on a scan of the blank leader, & these gains actually alter either voltage multipliers or integration times for each color channel during the actual scan, then one *can* effectively get rid of the orange mask & get consistent inversions in post.

This could be a built-in option in future scanners/software.

-Rishi

P.S. Yes I also leave a bid of a margin so that the max RGB in a scan is something like 240 (8-bit).

samagnew · February 10, 2012

As I understand it, the exposure for each R G B colour in a scanner is usually varied simply by varying the "dwell time". So the aperture is fixed, the sensor gain is fixed, but the time the film is exposed to each colour sensor varies. To double the exposure for blue, for example, the scanner merely exposes the film to the "blue sensor" for twice as long as to the "red sensor". This is a very simple procedure and as far as I know is common to all scanners that can scan negative film.

For example, if you scan in "negative mode" the scanner normally works this all out for you. However, if you scan in "positive mode" you normally have to set the three different exposure times or "analog gains" yourself.

So it's not the hardware that needs to change, it's the scanner software. And I fear that the market is too small these days for the likes of Plustek to invest in creating their own scanner software. They will probably bundle Silverfast or something like that.

Sam

rishij · February 10, 2012

Right. 'Integration time' wasn't the right term; I meant 'exposure time'.

I'm intrigued by your method of subtracting out the variance in black via layers in Photoshop. Do you mean that you scan an overexposed portion of film, then calculate how much to subtract (or divide?) from each channel to get them to be equal? Then create an appropriate layer in Photoshop (using the color selector tool), then subtract that from your scan before inversion?

You're right that, at this point, it's really an intelligent software issue.

I wonder what the variability in the color of overexposed film for any given film type is... if it's not much, one could figure out 'canned' subtractions/corrections. And this might be better than trying to determine corrections from any individual frame of film... this latter approach is unacceptable to me (and to you too, it'd seem) because it gets rid of color casts that *should* actually be there.

For example, you never 'auto white balance' *all* your digital images... right?

-Rishi

mark_druziak · February 10, 2012

Plustek is still here listening... carry on!

paul_bohman · February 10, 2012

The most useful thing Plustek could do, from my perspective would be to convince silverfast (or whichever brand of software you end up

bundling with the scanner) to create useful profiles for the latest versions of Portra. I contacted Silverfast a while back and they said they

weren't going to create any more new negafix profiles, but that's ridiculous. That leaves the rest of us photographers to stumble around

on our own, and waste hundreds of hours trying to figure out something that we're paying Silverfast to do for us. It's their software. It's

their job to give us what we thought we were paying for to begin with. When I realized how useless the Silverfast negafix profiles were, I

was annoyed to the point of being kind of angry.

And, from the other recent comments on this thread, it sounds like we need a better way of ensuring consistent white balance. I was

really excited about doing my own scanning until I actually started doing it and realized that it requires an enormous investment of time to

get the color balance right… every time I scan anything! I was expecting the processes to take some time, but I wasn't expecting it to be

exasperating. But it is.

I've considered moving to positive chromes just to avoid the headaches of dealing with the color balance problems of negatives, but for

the type of work I do, shooting people, the best films are negatives. I want to use them.

rishij · February 11, 2012

Paul's frustration is extremely representative of anyone who cares about high-quality scanning. I spent hours, days, weeks, months, years researching scanning methods. It was a fun learning experience, but someone with less academic interest would've either given up or settled for less a long time ago.

I even went as far as modifying the light source & building my own holder to flatten film properly with a Minolta DSE 5400. It worked wonderfully, on par w/ the film flatness of an Imacon without all the problems that come with rolling film around a drum (mis-registration of film if you've ever trying to overlay/HDR scans). I switched to chromes for color accuracy b/c with proper IT8 profiling, at least I could be sure that WYSIWYG... in fact, with a properly calibrated workflow, I can scan the same slide on 5 different scanners & the resultant scan will look *exactly* the same, contrast & color-wise. But even there I had to communicate with the writers of an open-source color calibration package (bless their hearts!) & get them to change some of their profiling behavior to address a certain issue with profiling (the 'blacker than black' problem).

What I'm trying to say is-- if these sorts of issues had been worked out to begin with, and *not* sold as a $25,000 scanner in the Flextight X5 (and they don't even have a color profiling package included), maybe a lot more folks would still be having fun with film :)

I'm glad that Plustek took a step in the right direction & realized the importance of calibration, including IT8 targets & the software for it in their packages. Something Nikon/Canon/Minolta/Imacon should've done a long time ago. Dealing with issues like accurate negative scans also warrants some R&D (and doesn't seem very hard at any rate... at least setting the black & white points from unexposed & overexposed film leaders). Erik Krause's 'Super Advanced Workflow' should've been implemented as standard in most software packages by now.

And then there's the question of resolving power & film flattening techniques. I hope Plustek has made some improvements in the former; as for the latter, short of wet scanning (too tedious) & Flextights (too expensive), I don't know of any techniques to write home about. Though a friend of mine & I were researching one method we haven't had the time to fully see through yet. Anti-Newton glass is another option, but has its own host of problems that must be dealt with.

-Rishi

jens_g.r._benthien · February 11, 2012

Has anyone tried this approach:

<a href="http://www.colorneg.com/scanning_slides_and_negatives/scans/Hamrick_Software/VueScan/">http://www.colorneg.com/scanning_slides_and_negatives/scans/Hamrick_Software/VueScan/</a>

I am not sure if the colorneg software is necessary for the post processing. I am doing the rest in <a href="http://www.pl32.com">PhotoLine</a> if the results don't look correct.

Another interesting link for the film profiles included in Colorneg:

<a href="http://www.colorneg.com/filmtypes.html?lang=en"></a><a href="http://www.colorneg.com/filmtypes.html?lang=en">http://www.colorneg.com/filmtypes.html?lang=en</a>

mark_druziak · February 11, 2012

Rishi, Resolving power and re-designing the film holders to hold the film flatter were two high priority design goals.

I haven't seen the scanner yet, but the CTO who is also part owner of the company, said some things that made me very confident that this scanner will be something Plustek will be very proud of. If you have met many CTO's, you will know that these guys aren't marketing guys and pretty much tell it like it is!

samagnew · February 11, 2012

This is a heartening development. Glad I'm not just speaking in a vacuum here.

I agree with the above sentiments. There is absolutely NO reason that negative film cannot be as colour consistent from frame to frame as slide film. It is still high quality dyes on film and x mix of light will produce x mix of primary colors. The problem is in the history of the products. Slide film was used for publication and has a whole history of being painstakingly colour matched on output for WYSIWIG. Color neg was always hugely popular with consumers and the traditional reproduction involved colour balancing by eye for a nice final image rather than for accuracy (e.g. every corner photo lab).

It is an absolute waste of time for each of us here to laboriously re-invent the wheel from first principals. It is shocking the number of charlatans who make their money by claiming to have solved the issue when they are merely peddling another "close enough" solution. Silverfast, negfix8, ColorPerfect, etc. etc., I'm looking at you! The people who come closest to getting this right are Vuescan who at least have an option to make getting a good usable raw scan easy (the old "lock film base", "lock image colour" two step. If you select to also have a "RAW" output it will give you a non-inverted TIFF that should have all three channels with the same exposure on each frame).

ColorPerfect. They are so close! I've gotten some brilliant results in the past but they are another purveyor of auto-white balance magic. You can sometimes get great results but never consistent ones. This is because they seem to want you to edit to a final image within their plugin rather than allowing you to get an accurate "flat" conversion.

My current workflow involves finding an appropriate scanner exposure for all three channels and fixing it. One that gives me no clipping on either end of the scale for all channels.

Next, I scan all frames in the roll at this same fixed exposure and try to take at least one picture of a neutral greyscale target on each roll.

Next I bring in the scan of the "end" and go through a set of actions called "CNeg" from an old free set of photoshop actions called "DonzRGB". This simply automates creating a bunch of layers with levels and curves controls with helpful labels.

Next I set "black" and "white" from the "end" scan frame and leave all the other layers alone.

Next I copy this layer set to the frame with the greyscale and do whatever I need to with the "curves" layer to get a neutral grey scale.

Finally, I take the layer set from this frame and copy it to all the other frames. This gives me consistent accurate colour on all the frames in that roll and a good base image for each frame that I can then make artistic adjustments to.

But what a lot of work! Both to come up with the workflow from first principals and then to manually implement. Someone could automate this if they cared. If they did then the vast bulk of "new wave" film shooters might find themselves with excellent images rather than mostly-disgusting-looking "retro" images. This would raise the puplic perception of modern negative film from a curiosity to a real contender.

Someone should automate all of this as part of the scan process. Photography and the future place of film in the public imagination deserves it. The company that makes it easy as part of their scanner solution could make a whole new market. Rather than merely add a little dpi here and a little dmax there they could have a product that fundamentally improves most people's scans!

Lest anyone think this is all theory and hot air, these are the recent images I have created using this workflow. What you won't see, unfortunately, is the greatly reduced effort overall in getting to a good pleasing rendition versus the many other avenues I have been down in the past:

Also just about anything recent in my stream (2012 or newer). I want to specifically point out the last image of the studio shot of the cupcake with the white background. I challenge you to take a shot like that through the scanner software of your choice as "negative", through negfix8, through ColorPerfect or anything else and come out with something that isn't mush! It would be fantastic if this could be a properly solved point-and-click solution for all of us. Kodak, after all, are making some AMAZING colour negative film these days. Aparently, they have even now found out that it is the business they are actually best at.

paul_bohman · February 11, 2012

Assuming Plustek has created a product with high resolution and good Dmax, the last two hurdles, as mentioned previously are 1. film flattening, and 2. color balance.

I'm not opposed to doing wet scans, so if the Plustek holder allows for wet scans, that would solve the film flatness issue, even though it is kind of tedious to do wet scans. In fact, the best approach would be to have a good dry holder plus a good wet holder. I don't have any ideas on how to create a good dry holder, because none that I've seen work very well. As far as a wet holder goes, the best approach is to place the film on the bottom of the glass, so that the camera doesn't have to shine through the glass. (This is the ScanScience approach; refer to their web site) The glass can cause diffraction and Newton rings, and anti-Newton glass is kind of like putting an anti-aliasing filter on a digital camera's sensor: it blurs the resolution slightly.

But hey, if you can come up with a good way to do dry scans so that I don't have to spend the energy doing wet scans every time, I'm all for that. I'll still do wet scans for my most important images, so make sure I have that option too.

rishij · February 11, 2012

Rishi, Resolving power and re-designing the film holders to hold the film flatter were two high priority design goals.

</blockquote>

Mark, thanks, that's very encouraging. Not to be a downer, but as Paul points out, we all have yet to see a dry flattening method that actually works (same level of resolved grain as you'd expect from a drum scanner). We were working on modifications to a novel material for this purpose... worked well in initial tests, but as I mentioned earlier we haven't had the chance to see the project through yet. The only other way I can see a holder actually flattening film is by applying tension to the film-- easy for 35mm (yet still no one did it?!); harder for MF (Nikon tried with their MF holder... but it was a poor implementation, especially as MF or LF is even harder to keep flat across the frame). I'll be very curious to see what you guys come up with.

Next I set "black" and "white" from the "end" scan frame and leave all the other layers alone.

</blockquote>

I take it you do you this using 'Levels' in Photoshop?

Kodak, after all, are making some AMAZING colour negative film these days. Aparently, they have even now found out that it is the business they are actually best at.

</blockquote>

Haha, yes, but what happens when Hollywood completely switches to digital? Maybe we'll be lucky and have more directors follow Christopher Nolan/Wally Pfister's awesome/inspiring example of shooting more and more on 65mm Kodak negative film, then contact printing to make copies to preserve resolution from shoot to theater :)

anti-Newton glass is kind of like putting an anti-aliasing filter on a digital camera's sensor: it blurs the resolution slightly.

</blockquote>

I wouldn't call it blurring; however, AN glass can introduce its own texture if the etching is not fine enough or if your light source is too collimated (and most are, I guess due to design & efficiency constraints).

Has anyone tried this approach: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.colorneg.com/scanning_slides_and_negatives/scans/Hamrick_Software/VueScan/" target="_blank">http://www.colorneg.com/scanning_slides_and_negatives/scans/Hamrick_Software/VueScan/</a>

</blockquote>

Essentially there they're recapping Erik Krause's 'Super Advanced Workflow' philosophy of getting a neutral scan of the negative to begin with by adjusting exposure & individual R, G, B gains. In my opinion, it's really the only way to go when scanning negatives.

Assuming Plustek has created a product with high resolution and good Dmax

</blockquote>

Oh yeah, regarding Dmax... how many of you have held your chromes up to a nice bright light source (e.g. the sun) & seen a world of detail in the shadows that not even a Flextight can pick up? :)

Mark: another question for the Plustek scanner-- have you found a way to deal with the pesky 'pepper grain' problem?

Cheers, Rishi

wolf_weber · February 12, 2012

Wow, this forum has exploded. Literally... Just goes to show how smart Nikon's decision makers are when it comes to abandoning a product line.

As to 'pepper grain' Rishi, which can be worse (mostly due to lousy lab work) than hi-ISO noise from dg cameras,

a scanner-incorporated diffuser may provide the best (in all relativity) solution. My Nik. 9000 however only does a fair job, by far not as good as some of the top-of-the-line Imacons. At a price, without saying...

rishij · February 12, 2012

Hi Wolf,

Thanks & yes I know: I've researched many different materials as diffusers & their effects on pepper grain & have found a satisfying solution. Just wondering if Plustek did :)

Also, I'm surprised that you say the Nikon LS-9000 only does a fair job. In my tests, it did the best job of suppressing pepper grain of any scanner I've tried (LS-4000/5000, Minolta DSE 5400 series, Imacon 848, Flextight X1), though I admit I haven't yet tried the Flextight X5, which supposedly has a more diffuse light source than the X1.

Here's the LS-9000 vs. the Imacon 848 (pay attention to the tiny black specks sprayed all over the image, not the big specks which are dust/gunk that don't show up on the LS-9000 scan b/c of IR cleaning): <img src="http://rishisanyalphotography.com/ForumPostFiles/photo.net/PepperGrain/LS9000vsImacon848_PepperGrain.jpg" alt="" width="800/" /> <a href="http://rishisanyalphotography.com/ForumPostFiles/photo.net/PepperGrain/LS9000vsImacon848_PepperGrain.jpg">Link to full-resolution image</a>

Here's the LS-9000 vs. the LS-5000: <img src="http://rishisanyalphotography.com/ForumPostFiles/photo.net/PepperGrain/LS-9000_vs_LS-5000.jpg" alt="" width="800" /> <a href="http://rishisanyalphotography.com/ForumPostFiles/photo.net/PepperGrain/LS-9000_vs_LS-5000.jpg">Link to full-resolution image</a>

Please view the above images at full-resolution to really appreciate the differences.

A lot of the pepper grain is, in fact, removed by the IR scan, something the Imacons lack. However, the LS-9000's light source appears to be diffuse enough that even without IR cleaning pepper grain is not typically a huge problem. The LS-9000, despite its shortcomings, was really a well engineered product, IMHO.

-Rishi

wolf_weber · February 12, 2012

Rishi, "In my tests, it (LS-9000) did the best job of suppressing pepper grain of any scanner I've tried"... That may be so. Hard for me to compare apples with oranges as your test scans were done with VueScan. Results seem to confirm my own with Nikon's scanning sw. The LS-9000 surpresses pepper grain at the cost of image sharpness. Results are a bit too soft for my taste. Perhaps I should have mentioned that... Since, for the occasional film or slide film scan, I do employ my Nikon mostly, I should pretty much know what I am talking about. Results from top of the line Imacons may only be superior from subjective viewing, because of the high price one pays and higher pixel resolutions. For the new Plustek 120 model, the co. is actually advancing "10.660 dpi" with a special 8-coat lens (no manufacturer given) that promises to be superior to most previous ones... ISRD IR-channel..? Yes. "Noise-surpressing sensors", multi exposure function, Silverfast AI Studio 8, etc. I am selling my Nikon while the market will still give me more than what I paid. Towards the new Plustek, I might add. If the sounds of the trumpet-speak turn out to be real.

By the way, no reference here as to the new Plustek OpticFilm 8200 AI, apparently a much improved 7200 35mm scanner.

wolf_weber · February 12, 2012

Meant to end my previous posting as follows (got cut short by the Forum's sw): "our man" Mark seems to be more than a few yards behind the curve... No reference here as to the new Plustek OpticFilm 8200i Ai, apparently a much improved 7600i AI 35mm scanner. Updates soon, Mark..?

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