geoff....

The Minolta became a bit of a pain in the Bum... had to warm it up for a half hour to avoid streaks.. found it was not as sharp as it used to be.. tended to give strips of "pixelisation" on an occassional basis.

 

I remember my Sprintscan was very sharp, it is to do with the patented system Microtek use to focus.

 

The 4000tf gives sharper scans. Being bundled with Silverfast makes it an attractive proposition.

Any users who can help.

 

Replaced my Minolta 5400 with 4000tf. Very happy with the output through the

bundled Silverfast software.

 

Scanwizard Pro V7, however, doesn't work. The prescan brings up the image black.

 

I am scanning 35mm profiled Velvia 100F images.

 

Many thanks..

 

Geoff Wise

www.wises.com.au

In regard to manual focusing, that is OK if you are using the Minolta software, as a screen pops up to assist. If you use Vuescan, which I use for most shots except for unusual lighting, which Vuescan does not seem to interpret well, then manual focusing is a bit of a hit and miss.

 

In addition scanning with the manual focus button with Minolta software still has not given the same sharpness that the old Sprintscan did.

 

My wokflow with the Minolta is to turn it on for a half hour, then calibrate, then start scanning. I leave it for a half hour because this seems to reduce the green lines that appear on some scans, a issue reported extensively in the past.

 

What is interesting in Australia, is that there has been stock outages on the Nikon 5000 for a while now with no date when stock will be available, it was supposed to be April.

 

Perhaps they are reducing stock in advance of a new model.

I have been doing a bit of research as I plan to change my 5400 soon. Not overly happy with the sharpness. Had a Polaroid Sprintscan and looking at old scans was amazed at how much finer the detail was achieved with it. The Microtek 4000tf is the evolution of the Sprintscan. Those "few" that use it talk of the fine detail and ability to draw out detail from the shadows and highlights. The Dmax of 4.2 Microtek say is more honest and say good scans can be achieved with one pass, the other manufacturers achieve their Dmax of 4.8 through multi-scanning.

 

I am interested in other peoples opinion of the Microtek 4000tf.

 

Perhaps the answers might assist the original posters assesment.

 

Geoff Wise

www.wises.com.au

I would be interested in hearing about the battery life.

 

One of the reasons I have not bought is the reported "short" battery life compared to film.

 

I am interested in the effect on the life of the battery in -5deg C to 10deg C.

 

I like long distance hikes and have found my 300D battery does not last long, it can reduce battery life by half without being used in the cold.

 

My EOS 3, film camera, has significangly more life in low temps and lasts much longer all round.

 

Imput gratefully received.

 

Geoff Wise

www.wises.com.au

Foto Reisel, my prefered choice, Ted's Camera Store, Fletchers Photographics all deal with Professional's and stock Fuji, in Sydney.

 

Go to www.yellowpages.com.au or www.whitepages.com.au for phone numbers and link to the address.

thank you all for your feedback..

 

I changed to Firefox and it works beautifully.

 

Problem is I found out Firefox displays indented lists on my website incorrectly... site being www.wises.com.au - Wise's Wilderness.

 

Ah, fix one problem and find another.... the joys of the internet and computers...

I too have not been able to view all thumbnails. The top 10 or so

display and then the rest don't. I have posted this question before

with no real result.

 

See attached photo.

 

I have switched ISP to no avail. Each time I shut down my IE cache

is emptied.

 

The earlier ISP said this was the cause of the problem..

"Some customers using a newly assigned APNIC IP address range in the

59/8 block have reported difficulty accessing a few websites.

 

The fault is not caused by Internode: The fault is caused by the

websites themselves, who are incorrectly blocking some Internode

customers (and customers from many other ISP's) due to misconfigured

packet filters.

 

When notified of sites that don't work, Internode staff will make

efforts to contact the operators of faulty websites and provide them

with technical assistance to get the problem solved. Customers

should be aware that not all website operators respond to those

contact attempts, so some websites may continue to be unreachable

until the website operator finds out about their bug through other

means.

 

If you have contact details for a website operator, you can inform

them that they are incorrectly blocking 58.0.0.0/8 and/or

59.0.0.0/8. Internode will provide them with technical assistance in

unblocking those addresses even if the website operator is not an

Internode customer if such assistance is required"

 

The ISP said they contacted Photonet and they would fix it up.

 

I changed to another ISP and still not go. It is only at PHOTONET

that I am having this problem.<div></div>

Many thanks for your effort in replying.... thank you again.

I guess I am hoping to save some time here.

 

I still prefer to shoot film. I have been using 100F. I use this

film because I find it post scanning gives more flexibility than the

old Velvia 50. The 50 I found was more contrasty and had more

colour saturation but lost detail in the shadows after scanning. I

figured it would be better to add the saturation and contrast at the

digital stage before printing than try and reduce it if need be. I

stopped using Velvia 50, went to the Provia 100F, which was not what

I want but it gave me "more" usable latitude after scanning. 100F

came along and I have been happy with this - reason, it gave me more

flexibility at the post scanning stage, had improved colour

saturation and more accurate colour.

 

Now there is 100 RVP. I have been reading the reports on photonet

but they seem to be divergent. Two comments that stood out where

loss of detail in the highlights and a magenta lean. But the

comparisons seemed to be against the 50. Noone complained about the

level of saturation.

 

I was wondering if anyone had compared scans of the 50, 100 and 100F

from the perspective of which gives the greater flexibility of

output post scanning, rather than which is the "punchiest". One

example would be which gives more detail in the shadows and

highlights.

 

FYI, my monitor is calibrated, I use the Minolta 5400 to scan and

the latest Vuescan used with Wolf Faust calibration data gives very

good output straight from the scan with minimal modification. I

work in Ekta Space. I used to get the "minolta streaks" in the

scans but since letting it warm up for 30min, initialising the

scanner and reducing the number of multiscans and stopped using ICE,

I have found the scans to be very good. I find the process of

manually fixing up the dust gives me a more intimate connection with

the image.

 

I also have a 300D digital camera. What I really like about digital

is it gives a much wider tonal range and the white balance functions

give very good colour temp correction. On cloudy days you can see

the shades of grey in the clouds which a film shot would require a

GND to make it visible. There is also the advantages of being able

to experiment because you get an immediate response. I often use it

as a fancy light meter. What I don't like with the RAW output is it

needs to be modified to, eg, give a Velvia look to the file. There

is a PS Action at the Adobe site which someone made to approximate

that look. Fuji with their digital canera with Nikon mount seem to

produce RAW output that mimicks their various film emulsions, it is

interesting that the most popular landscapes on photonet were taken

with these Fuji cameras.

 

It would be nice if someone develops a PS action which accurately

mimicks the various films characteristics. It would save a lot of

experimentation.

 

I get to test my first rolls of 100 next weekend.

 

Any comments humbly received.

Carry two. One lasts for about a week with an EOS3.

 

Visit my website...

For images http://www.wises.com.au/overlandtrack.htm

For trip reports http://www.wises.com.au/trip.htm

For general info http://www.wises.com.au/otinfo.htm

 

There is now a fee of $100 in the peak season, which you can pay on arrival to the parks and wildlife service, at Cradle Mountain, if you are walking the overland track.

 

Hope you enjoy it.

In reply to Justin, yes I agree with you. I too seek to just make the print/image match the slide. Which also means being there at the right place, the right time, for the right light.

 

Perhaps I am being a bit of purist. I just want to represent nature as it is - remarkable, we just need to learn to see it.

 

In regard to the photo, ahh to live in a country which is not dominated by evergreen trees.

I guess we have to live with the limitations of SRGB too. I found posting an image OK for printing becomes flat when converted to web display, the contrast has to be increased as well.

I look at the images being posted these days and cannot help but

feel that most images have had their colours boosted or filters

added.

 

The images look dramatic but somehow it detracts from what we are

attempting to capture - nature at its finest.

 

This seem to be particularly so in scenic shots.

Hmm, I would be pleased if my wife said I am only good if I use viagra... at least I would get the opportunity to be good...

For some unknown reason when I view an individuals portfolio of

images about half display and the rest do not, this has only been

happening for about a week and half now?<div></div>

So what was the photoshop plug in that gets rid of the streaks?

 

Thanks..

I have been wondering if the change in scanning technolgy of the II has anything to do with the banding/lines that appear on some models of the I when scanning. In my case I get lines when the scanner is set to multi sampling.

There was mention at the Europe site that you can use custom ICC profiles, which will make it very attractive for Velvia users...

I have been using mine for over a year and have had a couple of issues.

 

When it works properly the output is much better than my old Sprinscan 4000.

 

Of particular concern is intermittant streaking that appears on some images. A sample is attached. I really wish I could figure out a way to get rid of it. The problem doesn't happen all the time but enough.

 

My workflow is to do a 16 bit scan with the colour management turned off and output at 4000 dpi using the Minolta software. This person has developed a profile for the film I use, Velvia 100F, http://www.ethervizion.com/lost_found/. He recommends the above proceedure and opening in photoshop using the profile and converting to Adobe RGB, which Photoshop allows. As a result of his methods I am now able to profile my scanner and I will get a IT8 slide of velvia and buy some software and do a profile of the film.

 

This method has greatly improved the colour accuracy of the scans, as one fault with the 5400 is you are unable to attach a profile to an image. I found that the output was not correct; in particular, some green would become super saturated and almost glow, for example.

 

Doing a linear scan with colour management turned on and opening with the Minolta profile and converting to Adobe RGB, was the best method I could find prior to the above new method.

 

Vuescan up until recently had a problem giving correct colour using the 5400, which was admitted by Ed Hamrick. The correction is certainly an improvement as I have always felt a Vuescan scan gave a touch clearer detail in a scan.

 

I used the Velvia profile with Vuescan and found the output similar to the above new method I use with the minolta software and photoshop. The advantage of using Vuescan being I now have a linear raw file that I can play with in Vuescan.

 

The scanner is slow.

 

Scanning mounted slides can result in the corners being out of focus, and have found using the slide film in strips, using the neg carrier solves that issue.

 

Sometimes I reinitialise the scanner, to allow it to recalibrate, and this seems to help with reducing my first problem of streaking.

 

I am not sure if it a faulty sensor or dirty sensor or if it can be fixed or if it is another problem.

 

I would be greatfull of any other experiences and solutions.

 

Hope this helps..

 

Geoff Wise

www.wises.com.au<div></div>

Having used Silverfast then moving over to Vuescan with a SS 4000 for the last four years I have recently bought the 5400. I did some comparisons between the Vuescan and DiMage software and thought the outcome of the Dimage was quicker to achieve with a truer look to the original slide, in terms of colour. Upon retrying and thinking a bit more with Vuescan a similar result occurred to the DiMage. My issue is the beauty of the Vuescan is its ability to do a "Raw" scan to disk and you can then open it back up and manipulate it to whatever result and resave it. Also it allows for profiles to be created for the film and the scanner.

 

Unless I am wrong the Minolta software won't let you work with a scan saved on the disk. Am I wrong? If so how do you do so? I understand the 16bit linear scan produces a scan with a gamma of 1, effectively I guess the same as a raw scan with Vuescan. Why then would you do a raw scan in the 5400?

 

Also the Exposure Control facility of the DiMage allows for adjustment of the Master, R, G and B Channels and save that setting for application to other scans, ie make a setting for Velvia 100. Problem is how do you get an accurate setting? Use a calibration slide, if so, How?

Vuescan has the ability to scan a piece of overexposed transpancy, work out the colour characteristic then lock in that setting, suggested for use with each roll of film but, haven't tried it, it may be good enough to use the all shots done with Velvia... etc..