dave_osborne

I've just profiled my Nikon Coolscan V with a Wolf Faust IT8.7 target

using Vuescan.

 

Am I right in thinking after successfully profiling the scanner any

subsequent scans should be at least *close* to the original with

Color|ColorBalance set to Neutral?

 

After profiling I have a horrendous magenta cast. Set to White

balance it's not half bad.. but then it wasn't half bad on white

balance before profiling.

 

The target was for Velvia 100, 100F & Astia 100F and I followed these

instructions:- http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc6.htm

 

I've done a search and found a recent post with a very similar problem

to mine (except with a blue cast). They fixed it by following Mendel's

advice to reset Vuescan back to defaults and re set all options by

hand. This didn't make any difference for me - even after deleting

the vuescan.ini file.

 

Any ideas what could be up here?

Not sure about Elements but in PS there is an option (in Colour Settings) to automatically convert any embedded colour spaces into the working colour space - I've been caught out a few times having that switched on and silently converting all my Adobe 1998 files into sRGB.

Make sure Elements is preserving any embedded colour space info. All I can think of at the moment.

Upe - the misalignment problem where the images never match up is vertical misalignment.. what I had in my Bessas was a horizontal misalignent which is harder to spot which just meant it was impossible to focus accurately in some situations.

One way to know for certain is the scotch tape over the film plane trick with the shutter locked open in B mode - using a Loupe you can see exactly what's being focused on through the lens and compare that with what the rangefinder is focusing on. If you get different answers it's misaligned. Of course there's not reason to go through all that if you're happy with you results - but I certainly wasn't at the time.

I had 2 bessa R bodies and both came with alignment problems. Although the RFs can be adjusted I found it difficult to get spot on and so did my repair man. I got fed up not being able to trust the focus and eventually replaced them with SLRs.

Just my experience.

"Forget slide film. It has even worse grain than a good negative film"

 

This was what I was always told. Don't know if things have changed in time or what but finally I got round to trying some Sensia 400 myself... and was very suprised to see that the grain was way better than the Kodak 400UC negative film I'd settled on (this is shooting for scanning btw).

 

So pretty much give it a try yourself - people seem to have extremely different views on the subject.

When you resinstalled did you make sure and reconnect the scanner to the PC only after the NikonScan software was installed? Ofterwise it can pick up the wrong drivers for it.

 

Probably obvious but try making sure the scanner is turned on and windows has confirmed "New hardware is installed and ready to use" before starting NikonScan. Only time I've seen that error is starting NikonScan without switching on the scanner and often I have to stop NikonScan, switch the scanner on and restart NikonScan before it'll pick it up.

 

Otherwise since both seem to be operating independantly but not communicating perhaps try another USB cable..?

 

(I'm just regurgitating tips given to my on my current quest to make my own Coolscan V work)

Yep using NikonScan 4.02, and Spybot is part of my normal routine.

 

In a slightly unexpected turn Nikon got back to me suddenly changing tack and asking for the SysInfo from my laptop and which USB chipset it has... so sounds like they're one the right lines looking for incompatabilities.

Cheers again.

...even better!

You can select how many you want up a max of 16.

 

In your position if you haven't already tried it - give the NoiseNinja demo a shot instead of shelling out on Vuescan just yet. I think maybe it'd be more successful in removing noise than multipass scanning and might be money better spent.

I belive multipass scanning is to reduce noise... since noise is essentially random the theory is it'll average itself away the more passes you do of the same image. Never noticed the difference myself.

I'm pretty sure it's not a resource problem...

Just had a hang (after 15 successful scans - a record!) with the task manager open.

 

NikonScan leaps to 99% CPU and stays there for a while then drops off to idle. 119 Megs virtual memory used by NikonScan and 83 megs actual. Not a lot. Several gigs free on each harddrive.

 

I'd just tried upgrading the BIOS and VIA chipset drivers on the Acer in the hope that'll help. Evidently not.

 

In the meantime I've ordered an IT8 target.. thanks for the tip.

Oh missed a question.. no I'm not using GEM - I think it's the devil. I scan full resolution tiffs with ICE on normal and all the other bells and whistles turned off.

Thanks again Roger... good suggestion about the Task Manager monitor... I'll do that next. I know (and double checked) the hard drive is fine spacewise.

 

On Vuescan - you blinded me with science regarding the IT8 targets so can't comment on that until I've done some reading. But the fiddliness I was refering to is that Vuescan never tracks the frames correctly. Ever new strip I give it I have to faff around aligning the offset for the 2nd frame before starting a batch - a real time waster.

But as I said it may be that Vuescan is what I'm going to have to live with.

 

I'll even try a 3rd cable..!

 

I really appreciate the help.. cheers folk.

Roger I never said anything went wrong when scanning with Vuescan it's that I feel I get better results with NikonScan (I know is contrary to others experiences).

I like having the option of Vuescan for B&W but I don't want to be forced to use it for transparancies of which I scan hundreds a month and find Vuescan slower, more fiddly and produces noisier and grainier scans - nothing horrible... if I hadn't had the NikonScan results to compare them to I probably would have been quite happy.

I was very happy with my workflow with NikonScan and I'm having trouble settling on something without it.

But... if it comes down to it if I have no other option I guess I'll have to live with it.

 

Just out of curiosity why would there be no technical reason Vuescan would fail when NikonScan does?

 

This whole thing has made me a lot more interested in Silverfast... I may to give that a go.

 

PS Jim - I managed a grand total of 8 scans at 8bit before the hang kicked in!

So the computer can see the files on the DVD on the computer where CS2 is installed... Can you open them with another application like Irfanview or just the Windows Picture & Fax viewer? Or even just copy the files off the DVD onto disk? Either of these things working OK would probably rule out a burning problem and point towards the files being in a strange state coming out of the scanning software.

Will do... I'll try anything!

Nope I've never tried that... I need 16 bit so never occured to me.

Are you thinking along the lines of resource issues with bigger filesizes? Just trying to work out what it'd tell us if it worked ok...

(Just got a reply from Acer support - the expected brush off - they can't be expected to provide support 3rd party software/devices etc etc)

Not exactly what you're asking but I've always found GEM to be poor to disasterous when compared to 3rd party noise reduction software like Neatimage or NoiseNinja.

These could be a way around your problem as opposed to a solution... you'd get better results to boot.

Worth a check... It is USB 2.0 since I use it for transferring large quantities of data to an external disk drive and it definitely is going at USB 2.0 speeds. As for whether there's an internal hub in the laptop I don't know how to tell.

 

I checked the installation guide and looks like I've been connecting the scanner at the correct point... after NikonScan is installed. So looks like that's another one to scratch off the list :(

yes John you are making Nikon support sound near saintly in comparison to KM's folk!

Right Jim.. there's a thing I've not tried... I've uninstalled - ran regsweeper as supplied on the NikonScan CD - deleted all Nikon folders - then reinstalled after a reboot... but I'm not sure about when I've been connecting the scanner.. something else to check and test. Thanks for the pointer.

 

I get the problem with 2 different USB cables.

That was supposed to be "should NOT put and undue load on.."

I agree - it's not looking like the scanner's fault.

I have 1 Gb RAM.. same as I did on my previous laptop. I'd suspected it was just a resource issue but the problems occur when I am just browsing the internet which should put an undue load on the system (which is pretty high spec really)

 

What happens is right in the middle of a scan the scanner just stops dead and NikonScan freezes. I have to EndTask the ass off the program and turn off and on the scanner and start again.

Sometimes I get the error "Scanner does not appear to be powered on" after 5 mins or so of freezage.

And other times I get "The autofocus operation has failed." Then after that... "A data transfer error has been detected. Please try again."

 

All very frustrating and making my life very difficult!

Ok maybe I was just looking for an easy way out... Funny what you say about the support people at Minolta John.. I have exactly the same opinion of the Nikon folk. Trying to get them to run though any sort of problem determination before they repeat the eternal mantra "send it in for service" is a nightmare. I'm certain they'd find nothing wrong with it and I'll be left 3 weeks further down the track with the same problem.

 

So I have intermittant NikonScan/scanner incompatibility with my Acer Ferrari... what'd you guys do?

 

I'll try opening a call with Acer and see how quickly they tell me to take a running jump!

 

Also I might try to look at Silverfast - just in case that works a dream and is the answer to all my ails...