roger_smith4

<p>Thanks for weighing in. The test patterns are smooth grayscale and color wedges from NEC. I can also make my own wedge using Photoshop's gradient map tool, going from black to white. There are visible steps when viewed on this monitor but not a cheap TN one.<br /><br />I personally use Outback Photo's test print and have for years: http://www.outbackprint.com/printinginsights/pi049/essay.html<br /><br />I have it open in CS3. While there is no banding visible when printed I see vertical lines on the B&W gradient with this monitor. This is my first LCD monitor after a few CRTs and I didn't have any issues before.</p>

<p>I have a NEC p221w monitor and am trying to determine whether the banding I see in artificial gradients is normal behavior or not. The helpful NEC tech support staff tell me it's not what for an IPS display would look like (the p221 is a PVA) and are willing to exchange the monitor, but I don't want to do that if it's inherent to this type of screen. I don't see any such artifacts on an old CRT or cheap office TN display I use.<br>

<br />The monitor is calibrated using Spectraview II software and an Eye One Display 1 puck. I've also calibrated using the Eye One match software and looked at it after a factory reset and for gradients it looks the same to me.<br /><br /><br />I see bands with artifical gradients, both self-created in Photoshop, when using the vignetting tool in Lightroom and with the test images NEC ships Spectraview with. I don't see it on real world photographs.</p>

<p>Here are several files demonstrating the issue. Please ignore moire waves that I couldn't figure out how to avoid- the issue I care about are clear, sharp vertical bands.<br /><br />http://jingai.com/phototests/IMG_8678.jpg<br />http://jingai.com/phototests/IMG_8697.jpg<br />http://jingai.com/phototests/IMG_8698.jpg</p>

<p>Thank you for any insights. If you have a p221 yourself, open Spectraview and hit Control-T to go to the test patterns.</p>

<p>Emblend does work to combine multiple exposure (not just panorama.) I use Photomatix's blending feature but have no use for large numbers of exposures with my work (normally less than 4 shots.)</p>

<p>Maybe there is some kind of urban lifestyle or art/poetry magazine looking for photos to illustrate their stories with? I think that might be a more possible home for this type of work than selling to the participants. Keep it up!</p>

<p>The cell phone camera looks better than I would expect. It's similar to P&Ses from just a few years back (lots of smeared detail but okay in small sizes.)</p>

<p>I think the GF2 looks very good with clean and crisp detail and realistic saturation. This shot may be slightly overexposed which is why the color's somewhat washed out. The F2 looks okay but notice some of the missing detail in the pavement and in the brick wall. I'd definitely take the GF2 over the other two cameras and if it were mine I'd shoot raw to get the most out of it.</p>

<p>Okay, I opened this thread using IE8. The three squares look duller in IE than in Firefox or Photoshop. The orange and yellow are more noticably dull than the cyan. For what it's worth, looking at the Spectraview info window, my monitor seems to have more saturated reds than blues.<br>

Using the file dragged from IE8, there's no difference between Photoshop using the embedded AdobeRGB and converted to sRGB.</p>

<p>Tim, I looked at the image on my calibrated NEC p221 in ICC-aware firefox, then opened the image in Photoshop and assigned AdobeRGB and then converted in Photoshop to sRGB. All 3 images look identical.</p>

<p>I don't see much difference between fine and fine + multisample or multiexposure for color neg film. If you had a lot of bright highlights I'd consider multisampling but otherwise would just get the exposure right and ignore the other "features." Here the multisample + multiexposure are turning the detail into mush.<br>

Slide film is a different story as it's more challenging for the scanner.</p>

<p>Scanners have an easier time with lower contrast film, so Astia is easier to scan than Provia which is in turn easier than Velvia. The saturation is a non-issue. I have some workarounds to overcome hardware limitations when scanning contrasty film at www.jingai.com/scanningguide/</p>

<p>Here's one approach for scanning color neg. film with Vuescan. I see no clipping whatsoever as clipping is a software, not a hardware issue with color negative film.</p>

<p>http://jingai.com/scanningguide/sec%203%20balancing%20color%20film.html</p>

<p>I've read that the custom NEC Eye One Display 2 for wide gamut displays does not work well with software other than Spectraview. I'm using a regular Eye One with my NEC and SpectraviewII and it works fine.</p>

<p>Sarah, to get the right resolution you might need to update your graphics card driver or if your manufacturer hasn't updated it using a third party driver like the one from http://www.omegadrivers.net/<br>

<br />I had to do this to get a new NEC monitor to work right with a 2004 era laptop graphics card.</p>

<p>The media settings barely make a difference for certain papers. I've tried multiple ways looking for a performance edge and could barely measure the difference between glossy, semi-glossy and luster.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Thus my reason for pre 4000 to go with the Plustek.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>In your last post it was about the "8/16 bit change" now it's the OS?<br>

There is a workaround to get it to work with 64 bit OS: http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00Ryck?start=70 or you can use Vuescan.</p>

<p>I don't think that's quite right JDM- the ink/paper combination is critical. See the range in results for K3 inks and variants here:<br>

http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/cgi-bin/mrk/_4552c2hvd19kb2NfbGlzdC80</p>

<p>Bruce, on the independent non-profit testing site I listed there are test results for Bamboo and Epson K3 ink. If you donate to Aardenburg you can view all the results and help keep their tests going! I did.</p>

<p>For 35mm I'd get the 7600 over a flatbed if that were my only choice. I also think a used scanner is a very viable prospect- I bought two that way (FS-4000US and LS-5000) and have no regrets.</p>

<p>I don't think bit depth of the A/D converter is a reasonable indicator of scan quality. You can pair a high-bit A/D converter with a lousy CCD and poor optics and wind up with a bad scan.<br>

<br />I think you'd also be hard-pressed to see the difference between a 14 bit and a 16 bit scan.<br>

In case anyone cares about bit depth, here's a summary from Nikon:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The COOLSCAN LS-2000 and LS-40 film scanners are capable of scanning an image at a bit depth of 12 bits while the COOLSCAN LS-8000 and LS-4000 can scan at a bit depth of 14 bits. The LS-5000 is capable of scanning at 16-bits. This means that each pixel is measured to an accuracy of 1 part in 4026 per color of red, green and blue with 12 bit (1 part in 16104 per color with 14 bit, 1 part in 65,536 per color with 16 bit)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Here's an old thread on this topic- I thought the post by Kennedy McEwan was useful:<br />http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/005LdN?start=10</p>

<p>Charles, I wouldn't judge scanners by manufacturer's specs as for resolution and DMax they may be totally unrealistic. The Coolscans have low noise electronics and decent lenses.</p>

<p>Keep in mind you may need to redo all edits if your monitor is off by enough. My father's was failing and overly dark and as a result all of his edits were extremely light and had to be redone.</p>

<p>I'd start with the test print from Outback photo to see how your monitor and printer compare: http://www.outbackprint.com/printinginsights/pi048/essay.html</p>

<p>Generally in LR I'd start from the top and work down- fix the biggest problems first (like exposure.)</p>

<p>The R1800 is a better printer than the 2200 and is physically just about identical to the R2400. It even takes several of the same inks (just about- Y and PK). It was aimed at a market segment that cared more about color glossy prints than neutral B&W.</p>

<p>Personally I'd get the Octoinkjet waste ink tank and keep it running for a few more years. I did this with my other Epson (haven't yet needed to with my R1800) and highly recommend it.</p>

<p>Ha- the Diana and its plastic lens is not made to be "inspected" at any size. I'll see if I can get you a crop when I get home.</p>

<p>If you want to see the difference yourself you can download the free trial of Passmark benchmarking software: http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm<br>

You can benchmark your computer and compare it to systems of your choice online. I did this and see little difference between a good graphics card from 2004 (which has DVI) and one in a new computer for 2D graphics.<br /><br />I think hard drive speed, processor and ram are much more important bottlenecks than the video card.</p>

<p>I agree with Pete on the uselessness of an IT8 target and usefulness of a plug-in. <br>

Here's another way to color balance negative scans which should work across scanner types: http://jingai.com/scanningguide/sec%203%20balancing%20color%20film.html</p>

<p>I use a holder from an Epson flatbed to "scan" Diana 120 slides using a Canon 20D (8mp). The resulting image is lower resolution but has better color fidelity and lower noise than the middle-range flatbed. I can also jack up the brightness of the light source (flash) to compensate for uniformly dark slides which is handy. </p><div></div>

<blockquote>

<p>Operator's shortcoming aside on both images, the Coolscan produces excellent scans but 1DsIII is not a capable as a serious scanning tool (much less for archival).</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That's too categorical a statement unless you meant to say the "1DsIII is not AS capable as a serious scanning tool." Considering the number of people who find flatbed scans acceptable for their purposes, the 1DsIII appears a good bit better than that to me based on this scan.<br>

<br />Based on another document on the site I think the author is actually making a case for using DSLRs to do quick and dirty sorting and categorizing of film rather than using it as an alternative to scanning.</p>