Emily - I'm using a Nikon LS5000 to scan my slides but it should be about the same. The first thing I did was to mount all of my slides and negatives in Gepe mounts that hold the film flat from corner to corner. That made the biggest difference in scanning focus. I'm not using VueScan but Silverfast and that makes the next biggest difference. You can scan twice at different exposure and combine them in one Raw file. There is a profile for every kind of film, including Kodachrome. (If you put that film code on the edge of the film into Google, it will tell you the kind of film it is.) You can use Digital ICE on everything except B&W negatives and Kodachrome. Those contain too much silver to use ICE. It may seem like a lot of work to remount everything in Gepe mounts but if you only want to scan everything one time and you want the best results possible, it is definitely worth the time and trouble. I've done several hundred thousand slides that way and am very pleased with the results. Tina On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 3:24 PM, Emily L. Ferguson <elf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I've borrowed this scanner for a month or two and, since Nikon does not > support it on Macs with Intel chips, I am forced to use VueScan. > > Most of the images I am scanning are negative film, exposed with some early > Olympi and aftermarket lenses. The quality of the lenses is not very good, > but never having looked as scans off this combination of camera and lens I > don't know whether the flaws I'm seeing in the scans are the result of the > kit or the scanner. > > The scanner has both a slide module and a strip film module, but does not > have the film carrier which can be used with the slide module. > > Here are some observations: > > All other things being equal the strip film scan is sharper than the slide > scan no matter where I place the focus tool. > > The strip film scan is very, very soft at the edge where the film strip was > cut, but internal frames are uniformly unsharp at the edges perpendicular to > the film sprocket hole edge. > > There appears to be no way that I can get access to ICE through VueScan, but > sometimes it seems to have worked and other times it doesn't. > > My question here is about maximizing sharpness in my scans. Strip film has > serious problems with the image on the end of the strip, while film in a > slide mount has substantial sharpness problems throughout the image. > > If you have this Nikon film scanner, or experience with it, can you give me > any suggestions for how to proceed? I have pretty much concluded that I > need to place every neg that I wish to scan in a slide mount to combat the > cut-edge problem which seems more serious than the overall-lack-of-sharpness > problem. This is OK with me as I would like to stop storing all the film I > have that contains images I would have trashed had they been digital. > Cutting each keeper negative off the strip and ditching the rest of the > strip could seriously reduce my film storage. > > Some comments on VueScan, for those of you who may be contemplating a > project like this: > > VueScan has a lot of liabilities, the most irritating of which is that it > fails to see the scanner if VueScan has been hidden but the scanner powered > off. For instance, if I shut the scanner down for the night and put the Mac > to sleep for the night without quitting VueScan, the next time I power up > the scanner VueScan cannot find it. > > The error message from VueScan under these circumstance is beyond lame, > completely uninformative. > > There is no information in the help files for VueScan about the significance > or usage of that strange blinking circle with a tiny little F in it. None. > Buried in the drop-down menus is a Focus command. Hmm. > > VueScan's list of films, used to adapt its scan to the bias of each of those > films, does not use any of the codes, neither numeric nor alphanumeric, that > appear along the sprocket-hole edge of the film strip. > > So I'm mostly looking for suggestions about how to improve my scans from > those who might have had experience with this scanner. Not so much from > those using VueScan - that's just a gripe fest. > > Thanks. > > -- > Emily L. Ferguson > mailto:elf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > 508-563-6822 > New England landscapes, wooden boats and races > http://www.landsedgephoto.com > HOT OFF THE PRESS! SAILING SEPIA IMAGES VOL II: > http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/elfpix > Check out my Spring daily photograph project at: > http://tinyurl.com/3a6m7g6 > And Summer: > http://tinyurl.com/22juo5s > Autumn now complete here: > http://tinyurl.com/26pdgz9 > Winter concluded here: > http://tinyurl.com/2co5wkg > > -- Tina Manley, ASMP www.tinamanley.com
