Anyone else's Vuescan workflow just break?

[bhuij]

I like to consider myself fairly competent scanning with Vuescan, as I've been doing it in multiple formats for several years.

 

But I'm stumped at this. I use an old Epson Perfection 4490 to scan my 120 negatives. The scanner itself can be used as a flatbed or transparency scanner, by adding or removing the white barrier that blocks the backlight.

 

For years, my workflow for B&W film has been to set VueScan to "Mode: Transparency," then preview, set my black point on a space between frames using the "lock exposure" box, and scan each frame at my desired settings to a 16 bit lossless TIFF.

 

This was working fine even a few days ago when I last scanned B&W negs.

 

Today I fired it up to scan a roll of 120 that I developed last night. Set everything up like normal and opened up VueScan to get going. In the "Mode" drop down, I now have Flatbed, Transparency, 35mm Slide, and 35mm Film. Um, okay. I went with Transparency since that's what I've always used. Upon previewing, I got this lovely monstrosity instead of my usual smaller area which shows the negatives plus a bit around the edges (defined by the size of the actual backlighting hardware in the scanner):

 

http://i.imgur.com/bZKhlz9l.png

 

If you couldn't tell, that is the entire plastic negative carrier that came with the scanner, holding a strip of 120 film... and obviously it looks awful. I can't get a decent scan out of this.

 

Tried every other mode. 35mm Film and 35mm Slide force the preview area to be the wrong shape, size, and area no matter what I set the other settings to. Flatbed obviously doesn't work as it isn't backlit, although I tried.

 

What changed here? I have even tried earlier versions of VueScan, thinking that my update to 9.5.77 broke the workflow, but even going back as early as 9.4 I still had the same 4 options for Mode under the Input tab, two of which were never there before.

 

See my settings (I tried all 4 modes, no dice):

 

http://i.imgur.com/MNbUewQl.png

[bhuij]

Update: After spending an hour or so troubleshooting, I found that my transparency unit was not functioning. Not sure why or what the deal was, but I basically unplugged everything (including unplugging the top half of the scanner with the TPU from the bottom half with the sensor), let it sit a few minutes, and plugged it all back in. Everything went back to normal, including my VueScan "Mode" options. No explanation for why a disconnected TPU would result in gaining a nonfunctioning "35mm Film" and "35mm Slide" option on my scanner, but there you go. All's well.

[PapaTango]

Software will often detect hardware changes--subsequently eliminating, adding, or greying-out options based on the configuration. ;)