After sitting for four years with IEEE1394 interface failure, I got a chip
from *bay and fixed my 4000ED in June this year. It took me so long to fix
the scanner was due to the uncertain about the chip failure and the
difficulty of replacing a 80pin QFP chip. I have not do fine pitch SMD
soldering for 20 years but it worked. After that I have made a few hundred
scans then it was idled until now.
Seeing the scanning discussions I tried to power up my 4000ED just want to
hear the long missing startup sound. It is a shock to me, there was no power
up sound and light anymore!!! It is very frustrating, this time the power
supply failed. I don't know how long it will take for me to decide to fix
the scanner again as there is no immediately need.
Moose, I agree with you about the dust problem, IR removal is great. On the
other hand for saving old film archival, I can live with some dust.
For color, it is not a easy job for many peoples even for scanner output,
digital camera copied color negatives are much more difficult. To me, I
enjoy playing with it, with thousands image adjustment at RGB curve level
(other simple tools won't work such as RGB sliders!) I managed to get
reasonable good color most of the time. As for ICC, how many of your film
roll are having ICC chart shot? No, not one for me in the pass and I don't
shoot film anymore.
If I have a choice, I will use film scanner as it provide more accurate
color, IR dust removal and better film handling. Digital camera copy is just
a compromised alternative even though it digitize faster than film scanner
and has much less flare (compared with my 4000ED). The narrow tone range in
negatives is a challenge to many digital cameras especially the Canon.
C.H.Ling
----- Original Message -----
From: "Moose" <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
I've browsed some more, and must agree with you. Many words about nothing
much and certainly nothing special. Just a couple of things I noticed.
Casual mention of the lack of IR dust/scratch removal, but no indication
of the additional time spent spotting. I know CH found this an expeditious
solution (and I'll bet did a better job with color), but I find the IR
solution magical. No, it won't work for the B&W mentioned near the end,
but the thrust of the article is color neg film. For that, slides, now
including KR, the time the computer spends unattended scanning is well
worth it to me for clean scans.
Take a look at the woman at 400% (which isn't the same thing in a PDF
where, as here, the embedded image is being downsized for page display).
Do You want to fix the white speckles on her arm?
They carefully treat scans and photos with exactly the same NR,
sharpening, etc., as though that's somehow more scientific, fairer, or
something. But it is just wrong, Find the settings that optimize each,
then compare the results, is the correct way to evaluate the alternatives.
Here, too, their limited scanning equipment makes their generalizations
suspect to me. One of the reasons I went with a Canon scanner is that it
doesn't have the grain, dirt and scratch accentuating light source of the
Nikons.
The color just isn't very good, after all that effort. In the grain/noise
comparison image, the scan is green and the photo seems a little bit
reddish. If my v. slightly red-green color blind eyes can see that, it's
probably even worse for most folks. Oh, I see, he has 'balanced the color
channels'. That seems wrong to me.
The portrait just doesn't look particularly like good color to me, but I
don't know the model.
As I mentioned, they seem completely unaware of the use of ICC color
profiles to get color/contrast right. No help for old films, but amazing
for recent films where a profile may be available or may be made.
--
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