On 19/09/2012, Richard L. Hess wrote:
> Hi, Don,
>
> Your points are well-taken, but I have been using north daylight (that
> illuminates the basement windows near the scanner) as well as 5K
> fluorescent (Chroma 50 in a light table), and fluorescent monitor
> backlighting (as a quick check at night) and find no significant
> issues with any film not being reasonably captured by either the Epson
> V700 or the Nikon LS5000ES. These are both high end (short of drum or
> the Hasselblad system). In the limited testing I did with the Nikon
> D200 and the Nikon 60 mm f/2.8 AF micro-Nikkor, I used a Omega
> "Chromega" 2-1/4 x 2-1/4 enlarger lamp head (with no colour correction
> dialed in) as the light source (which is a halogen MR-16 style lamp).
> While the results were good, the feed issues, the lack of Digital Ice,
> and the lack of an auto feeder did not favour this approach. I also
> recall an issue with cropping and centring/straightening the slide.
>
> A good portion of the throughput on the Nikon occurred when I filled
> it up with 60+ slides just before bed and if I got up in the middle of
> the night re-filled it with another 60+ slides. So that's 800 "free"
> additional scans a week.
>
> For all that has been said about this, I offer
> http://www.pbase.com/rlhess/demos I've added item 6 this morning.
>
Good stuff. The Velvia examples are the same quality as I get on a
camera.
> What is there is:
> (1) A preliminary reconstruction of a self-portrait from the late
> 1930s or early 1940s of my mentor, Milton F Gentsch, from the contact
> prints he made at the time of the three-glass-negative 8x10 set that
> were separated in the tricolor camera at the moment of exposure. I
> have the glass negative sets for perhaps fifteen or so of his carbro
> prints. Sadly, the prints are nowhere to be found--I do not know what
> happened to his sister's estate when she died and even my 35 mm
> Kodachromes of the carbro prints have not turned up during the
> scanning. I don't know where they are hiding. I only have my memory of
> the carbros to adjust colour to. This sample is not true to the carbro
> (tri-color carbon) print and I have not had time to work on it. The
> three prints were scanned on an Epson 1660 flatbed (now gone). These
> 8x10 negatives were one of the reasons I bought the V700 as it can
> handle 8x10 transparencies.
>
> (2) A V700 scan (on the glass) of a 127 Brownie negative. Made with
> either a Brownie Bullet or Brownie Holiday Flash camera on Kodacolor
> film in 1961. Scanned from the negative using the native Epson
> scanning software. I still have the quality Abercrombie and Fitch
> nylon flag and all the colours are true to recollection with the
> exception that the scanning software might have opted for today's
> taste (helped along by Fuji Velvia) for slightly more saturated than
> real life colours. Since it was a negative, there was no real way of
> judging or calibrating the image, although there was an effort with
> IT8 charts and a "spider" to calibrate my full setup half way through
> the project and things were close as we did not do colour adjustment
> manually at any point prior to saving the "raw" scan files outside of
> the Digital DEE (@8) on the Nikon.
>
Much the same as I get on my Epson 750 from bare film.
> (3 & 4) Two Nikon LS5000ES scans from Fuji Velvia. Notre Dame
> Cathedral in Paris and the Roman Aqueduct at Caesaria in Israel at
> sunset using our standard settings for Velvia. By the way, Velvia was
> the only film that gave the autofocus on the Coolscan a headache. It
> found focus reliably on all other films, but missed a couple percent
> of Velvia images. There was a significant amount of Kodachrome 25 in
> the overall scanning project and there were no significant focus
> misses that I caught and yes the slides are being retained.
>
> (5) Is a series of V700 scans on the glass of a 5x7 original
> transparency shot in a Linhof technical camera I inherited from Milton
> and have subsequently sold when it was clear that I would not use it.
> I bought the Schneider Super Angulon 90 mm lens for this project (I
> needed the excuse--also sold years ago). The original TIFs are only
> 130 MB (43 MP) each because I knew we actually had issues with film
> flatness in the Linhof--a problem I never really solved and perhaps
> one of the reasons why 4x5 seemed so much more prevalent than 5x7 in
> the overall photography world. A friend either just sold or is about
> to sell his 6x9 cm Arca rail camera system. The colours are pretty
> true to the original Ektachrome transparencies--which I was never that
> thrilled with. Lighting was tungsten.
>
> (6) Is another sub-folder that contains a V700 scan originally made at
> 175 MP 16 bit of a Linhof original made with the Zeiss Double Protar
> (or was it the Schneider Super Angulon--I seem to remember the Protar)
> that I inherited with the camera. There is a small detail as a 16-bit
> TIF from slightly to the right of centre above the lower barn roof.
> There is also a Kodachrome 25 scan of the same basic scene after the
> cows went in. That is a JPG of the raw 12 MP standard scan--the mount
> was included to make certain we did not cut off any images as there is
> some tolerance in slide positioning even in the Nikon and also
> slightly varying sizes of mounts (not counting "super slides" which do
> not scan in the Nikon). This was made on the 1981-01 trip to Toronto
> from NYC after I had accepted the job at McCurdy Radio to go find a
> house. The lady who owned the farm was friends of the family and I had
> not stopped in to see her for years. I took the Linhof out in Glendale
> once more and realized that it was not for me standing under the black
> cloth fighting with focus while my wife stood by and that 35 mm fit
> more with my style of shooting (VR and great quality at higher ISOs
> has almost completely gotten me away from using a tripod--heck, the
> normal ISO for the digicam is 200 while my best quality images were
> shot at ISO 25-50 in 35 mm).
>
The Nikon scanner obviously works very well, but it is out of production and
expensive. Like a Nakamichi Dragon.
Regards
--
Don Cox
[log in to unmask]
|