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steve_bennett6

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Posts posted by steve_bennett6

    Virtual PC v Boot Camp v Parallel's

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    <p>Ken -</p>

     

    <p>It is pretty easy to <a href="http://www.parallels.com/en/download/workstation/">download an evaluation copy of Parallels</a> and try it out for yourself. The proof is in the pudding! The only thing that matters is if the tool gets the job done for you.</p>

     

    <p>I use Parallels every day, though admittedly not for device or processor intensive tasks. For me, it works just great. I am using the 2.0 version. I haven't yet upgraded to the 3.0 version which has better support for USB and high performance graphics.</p>

     

    <p>--Steve<br>

    Scanner choices for 1000s of APS + slides + negative scanning

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    <p>The SF-210 is not a terrible piece of equipment. It does have some issues and does cost too much. However, it is indispensible for large numbers of slides.</p>

     

    <p>The Nikon APS feeders are a bit expensive and have their own issues. However, assuming that you don't want to remove the APS film from the cartridge and cut it, what alternatives are there?</p>

     

    <p>If speed with good quality is a primary goal, you might want to investigate outsourcing the work to a service company like mine. Kelly's comments are well taken - you can do a better job culling and deciding what to spend the most time on than anyone outside of your family. For some images, spending more time in scanning and post processing can improve the images marginally. Images that both warrant and benefit from more advanced treatment in family photo collections is generally very small.</p>

     

    <p>Someone outside of your family will be able to get very good results very quickly without consuming all your evenings and weekends for months to make a project like this happen. There is a definite time vs. money tradeoff in work like this. You can choose to spend a moderate amount of money buying equipment and doing the work yourself (and spending many hours on the effort) or you can spend slightly more (questionable... depending on the quantity of images) and have the work done. If this is a labor of love, then by all means dig in. If your time has value, this needs to be factored into any cost analysis.</p>

    8600f 35mm scan with borders

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    <p>You might try using Viewscan instead of whatever scanning software came with the scanner. Viewscan includes "border" and "buffer" settings (on the crop tab). These settings allow you to specify a larger scan area, but instruct the scanning software to ignore the outer part of the crop for purposes of determining exposure and color information. I haven't seen this on other scanning software.</p>

    old 35mm slides to cd

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    <p>Hi Joseph - </p>

     

    <p>I agree that time is the big cost when scanning a sizable archive of images. This motivates possibly using a service such as the one that I own. When you add up the costs for a scanner (if you don't already have one), software and your time (even at a few dollars per hour), you quickly exceed the cost of paying someone to do the work. It can be fun and enlightening to scan the images yourself, however!</p>

     

    <p>You may want to take a look at noise reduction software such as NeatImage or Noise Ninja. They can really help with underexposed images that can result in noisy/grainy digital images.</p>

     

    <p>On the capture side, multi-pass can help to reduce noise in deep shadows a bit, but it can't recover badly exposed images.</p>

     

    <p>I also suggest making dust and scratch removal (i.e., ICE) a requirement for scanning. Without it, you will spend too much time dusting the resulting digital images (though, be prepared for it to interact badly with some flavors of Kodachrome).</p>

    Cataloging Photos - Best Software?

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    <p>One thing to note with regard to Lightroom and Aperture: they won't change the IPTC data in the original image files. Hence, the cataloging work that you do is lost if you decide to change programs. For this reason, I prefer something like iView or iMatch which give me more flexibility in handling the original files. I actually use both, depending on the task I want to accomplish. This "don't modify the original" approach makes sense for many RAW workflows, where you wouldn't want to edit the RAW file directly, but for many other workflow styles, this is a problem.</p>

     

    <p>(Someone please correct me if I have missed some part of the functionality of Aperture or Lightroom. I like many other aspects of these packages, but the database parts have left me a bit cold.)</p>

    Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 & Kodak 100UC= Green Cast

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    <p>Hi Stephen -</p>

    <p>You might try with ROC and GEM disabled to see if you get the same result. I suspect that ROC especially might be causing some color shifting.</p>

    <p>You might also try to same scan with Vuescan (trial version is free). You might find that you get better results using Vuescan generally (at the expense of having to learn the user interface of the program).</p>

    Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 ED & 56 X 92mm color neg.

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    <p>Hi Jerry -</p>

     

    <p>The internal fine motor mechanism inside the 9000 is limited in its travel distance -- it can only cover ~80mm. Hence multiple scans and then stitching is the only option for these larger films.</p>

     

    <p>This limited travel has implications for scanning workflow for other films; you can't preview the full holder area and then select areas for scanning like you can on a flatbed. I find this to be one of the most frustrating things about using this otherwise very good scanner from Nikon.</p>

     

    <p>Given the large size of the 6x9 negative, you might try using a good flatbed and see if it meets your needs quality-wise. This might save you time, effort and frustration.</p>

    Best Value, Scanning Service, Mounted Slides

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    <p>Hi Eddie -</p>

     

    <p>This question comes up frequently.</p>

     

    <p>For even $1 per image you will get high-resolution (4000 PPI) digital images that are great for many uses, including printing, sharing on the web, slide shows, etc. But the scanned images don't look like they came from a DSLR. Dark areas are difficult for film scanners, Kodachrome causes problems and grain and digital noise may be evident. We are spoiled by the great quality we get from our DSLRs. Having said that, I think that you will be happy with the results. Film scanners do a very good job of capturing images from most slides.</p>

     

    <p>If you have not had experience with scanning film, I encourage you to see the results for yourself. Only by actually seeing the scans can you really evaluate if your needs are met. This will also help you to decide if you do, in fact, need to scan any of your slides on a drum scanner (I suspect that you don't unless you are planning on very large prints.).</p>

     

    <p>Full disclosure: I work for a company that makes money doing film scanning. We offer 15 free 35mm scans to new customers. We do all of our work in the USA.</p>

     

    <p>Regards -</p>

    Terabyte backup drives anyone?

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    <p>Hi Nels -</p>

     

    <p>Please be aware that most of the lower end RAID network attached storage solutions don't perform very well. In particular, the speed at which you can write data to the drives is seriously limited. This isn't a problem is it is your backup drive... but if you intend to use the RAID as your primary storage area, then this can be very problematic.</p>

     

    <p>One thing to investigate is an external SATA array. This improves bandwidth substantially, but with some limits on placement of the backup device, etc.</p>

     

    <p>I have found that you need to spend a couple thousand dollars to really get a good performing RAID box for active use. This amounts to basically another relatively high-end PC acting as a server, equipped with a PCI-E RAID controller and running Linux (non-server versions of Windows just don't perform well...).</p>

     

    <p>This is a painful topic... and is only going to become more painful as we all push the shutter release more often (and scan our film images at 50MB or more each).</p>

     

    <p>Regards -</p>

     

    <p>--Steve<br>

    Can this be true?

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    <p>Hi Jerry -</p>

     

    <p>I suspect that ICE was applied and simply couln't reduce the effects of the deep scratches on this slide. A more aggressive application of ICE may reduce the effect, but probably at the expense of detail in the image and overall sharpness. If this is Kodachrome, that brings in other issues with ICE.</p>

     

    <p>Beyond that... it doesn't look like any effort at all was applied in post processing the image or in setting up the scanning software. Looking at the histograms of the full image that you posted shows that the black and white points have not been set appropriately (meaning that data was "left on the table" during the scanning process). It appears to me that no post processing (except perhaps some cropping) was applied to this image.</p>

     

    <p>My guess is that this was processd by a technician that doesn't have the necssary skills to do a good job for you. Or, the company simply won't devote enough time to each slide to allow a good job to be done. Are the rest of the images that you had scanned equally poor? The Nikon 5000 can do a wonderful job... but simply owning one and putting it on your website doesn't mean that you will get good quality scans.</p>

    Have 2000+ slides to scan...

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    <p>Hi LouAnn -</p>

     

    <p>I tend to agree with Jordan that sending these out to a scanning service is the right answer, though this is a tough call.</p>

     

    <p>It really comes down to time. It will cost about $1 per slide to have a service do this work. It will likely cost from $300 - $1500 for you to do it yourself (for scanner, software, books, cleaning supplies, etc.) in addition to the many, many hours required. I suspect that unless you are very interested in learning the ins and outs of scanning that you will be better served by having a service do the work. (It is regularly pointed out that you can buy a scanner and resell it after the project is complete - and this is definitely true, at least for higher end scanners.)</p>

     

    <p>Doing the scans and post processing will take a huge amount of time -- regardless of the stats given by the scanner manufacturers. A scanning service can do these scans for you, providing you high-quality scans from very good equipment using ICE and color/exposure correction for less than $1 each (less than $1 each for 4000PPI scans >50MB images with my company). The project will be completed much faster than you could ever do it yourself and quite likely at a lower overall cost. You will have the high resolution TIFF files for further manipulation in Photoshop/etc., but you should expect to get digital images that require no additional work for almost all uses.</p>

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