Scanning photos

[Evening Star]

Busy scanning my film archive into digital. Scanner software has facility to deal with Kodachrome. However, software help file and Kodak site is vague as to whether I treat Ektachrome as Kodachrome or as normal positive. Thoughts?

[Loose rivets]

As someone who has been spending many hours recently scanning prints, negs and transparencies, I would be interested to know what type of scanner you are using and the soft that gives that choice. I have not seen such an option with the Epsons.

I tried a 4490, $270 from Staples, (PC World best buy ) and it was quite good, but the 35mm film holders were total tatt. I returned it entirely because of this very, very poor plastic molding.

To fill a gap, I purchased a 3170 refurb for $70 with free delivery. It is fair, but the colours seem to need tweaking more than the 4470. The film holders are perfect. How could Epson have made such a backward step?

PhotoShop Elements are bundled with both machines.

this has been reduced too much for photobucket to be of much use Johnson Space centre

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v703/walnaze/KidstheJohnson.jpg

I am seeing some pics of my mother and me that were poor prints or even just dirty negs until now. My collection of transparencies are without a doubt, the best carriers of data. The ordinary colour negs are a tad disappointing.

[Evening Star]

I would be interested to know what type of scanner you are using and the soft that gives that choice

Nikon Coolscan V hardware with Nikon Scan 4 scanning software (although I merely use that for capture and process using Photoshop Elements). All very good (complete with dirt/mark reduction processing) ... so good infact that there is a part of me that questions whether the alternative settings are an unnecessary complication. However, with 25 years worth of slides to scan, I am keen to get it right at the outset!:hmm:

[Conan the Librarian]

This is an old hobby horse of mine, but it is all very hit and miss if the monitor/camera/scanner/printer are not calibrated. Somewhere you need a benchmark, so that the colour you see is accurately represented across all the component parts, because otherwise, you end up like the guy with two wristwatches, that doesn't know the time.

Monitor is probably the best starting place, but you can also calibrate scanners, printers or anything that has to deal with light and colour. It is a Pain in the Bum, but once done, you will be able to see the difference. For my own Epson 3170, I use Silverfast software, which is superb. There are some good calibration options in there, though some are additional cost.

I had a large XP crash before Christmas and lost all of the calibration. I dread having to do it again, but it has to be done. When I get around to it, I might have to start posting on the Agony Aunt and Medical forums.

Conan

[Loose rivets]

It's nice to hear that someone else in the world has bought something that I have plumped for. Usually I buy the Edsel model of anything.

I got my son one of the 21" Sony flat screens. So many are being sold off now because people don't want a tube on their desk. It was about $180. It is utterly superb for his work of graphic design, and he of course has to get final prints to a very high colour accuracy.

The Nikon kit is out of my price range I'm afraid, and I gather that most models don't cover the old Kodak neg sizes...i.e. they are specifically for 35mm in slides or strip.

I notice too, that I can get down to a res that will show the chemicals on the film. So I seem to have all the ‘magnification' that I need. But I haven't thought this through fully.

I have an acquaintance in Austin who's father has literally thousands of transparencies. Many of them from Vietnam. Since the pictures from transparencies are so good, I wondered if one could take shots off the screen...I think I have compared this with my movie copying on an earlier thread. The speed at which one could copy would be phenomenal...if it would work. A friend in the UK used two sheets of optical glass. (I wondered if two junked scanner beds would work) With some paraffin wax or some such, pressed in between. He has been a photographer for 60 years, and he still thinks this is the best system. It might be that this would not be good enough for stills.

Right now, I'm copying a birthday book. The earliest entry was a birth-date of 1774, so I'm going for a detail that gives the fibers of the paper. 3m per (small) page. This is just in case I have the same disaster as my father. He lost everything in a house fire, and when I finally met his new family for the first time, I was able to show them pics of him from a period they had no record of.

However, I still haven't got an D-SLR!!!

[Evening Star]

Think I am on the way to solving the problem. There is a difference apparently, which I understand (in maybe a slightly naive manner) to be that Kodachrome transmits more infrared and therefore there is the risk of greater contrast, biased towards the shadows (effect less noticeable with highlights). This apparently especially affects Digital ICE scratch and dust reducing plugin. Presumably this risk is such that some software, veering towards the professional end of the market, has to take this into account.

However, I use Digital ICE for all my scans and on normal setting it seems to have no real effect on contrast, plus it saves a lot of cleaning up of the scanned image (on fine there is a lot of blurring, so guess fine is for badly 'dirty' images and a lot of work with the unsharp mask). Confirming this finding is this article Scanning 35 mm Slides (http://csanet.org/newsletter/fall05/nlf0504.html). There is no real difference when using Digital ICE, and the comparison with Ektachrome is interesting.

Bottom line is that really I should relax and judge my results by what I see on screen, not in theory. Where the theory helps is to analyse and correct the odd rogue scan.

[Loose rivets]

I got D-ICE with the 4490, but I was told that it would not work with the 3170. I wasn't too worried cos the ICE prog stated that it might reduce the quality to a greater or lesser extent.

This is all a matter of degree of course, but I was concerned with getting the data saved at this stage and any fine tuning could be done later.

It sounds as though you are not finding any problem with using this system unless you go to the extreme end of the correction scale and that's encouraging for the future.

i'll look at the link right now :-)

a few mins later and i have read it ant the sub links. Mmmm...does seem that i'm a bit outclassed here. my pics are okay but not worthy of such professional care. still, aiming high and just missing, is better than aiming low and achieving it.