Re: Does MF color slides scanning in 24 bit still make sense
Re: Does MF color slides scanning in 24 bit still make sense
- Subject: Re: Does MF color slides scanning in 24 bit still make sense
- From: Paul Schilliger <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2016 23:05:44 +0100
Don,
Many good points to think about in your Sunday's considerations. I have tramped the poor man's path to elusive high-end results for many years. I was lucky to stumble on a rusting Scan Mate Plus drum scanner in an auction almost 20 years ago. Tied to a UMAX clone of Macintosh, it gave me incredible scans for the times. But the motor soon started to have problems, which produced sawtooth edges, and the builder, even he stood next door, had stopped the production and could not provide a replacement. I then succumbed to the sirens of marketing, and purchased a Quato X-Finity Pro, with 48 bit Silver-Fast software! ...I should have believed my eyes during the demo more than the vendor's claims, for I wasted 5K on that day. The colours were accurate, because I had your Velvia HCT target. But beside detail fuzziness due to cheap optics, which had to be corrected with more unsharp masking that normal, flare made it's way in the shadows and needed to be corrected as well, and the
images had a distinct cheap look. So I soon had break the bank again for a used Scitex Eversmart. This was the best flat-bed scanner line of the time, with non-blooming CCD and a tall form factor (70Kg!) to avoid as much internal reflections to the slides as possible. It did thousands of scans and it never asked for a service, and is still operational. No wonder the Israelis are good at armament after building those scanners. But when came the trend to 16 bit, this simpler model was not included in the upgrade program. So I have been reluctant to do more scans with it for quite a while. Years ago, I scanned some slides on the 3 systems to compare. I'll have to dig the CD's out of the boxes in the garage. All scanners were calibrated, and the colours were alike. But I fully agree with what you say about flare being what sets PMT scanners apart. Those scans are brilliant. Not because they are sharper or have more pixels or better colours, but because they are naturally
modulated without the need to resort to much correcting curves, local contrast and unsharp masking.
So I should hopefully be able to ad a Sony test to the former tests and see for myself. In this prospect, I tried to gather my assets. My old G4 is on it's way to retirement, due to hangs and weakening power supply, so I picked a used mirrored drive door that seems to have enough life span ahead to accompany me into retirement. The Scitex Eversmart depends on Mac OS-9, and my whole calibration tool box depends on CS2 and Tiger. By chance, Adobe provided a fix for the obsolescent licensing of the CS2 suite, and I could install it on my old PowerBook to run the ColorVision ProfilerPro printer calibration software. But BasICColor Scan+ (used for your chart) is a problem, because it is machine dependent with Protekton match lock, and it cannot be deactivated to be moved to another computer. I will have to keep the old G4 tower around just to use it once every second year for a scanner or camera profile, unless there is someone at BasICColor who is willing to help, even the
software doesn't stand in the program any more, they have always been helpful to me in the past. But enough rambling and wasting your time, and thanks again for your input!
Kind regards
Paul Schilliger
email@hidden wrote on 19.01.16 21:00:
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2016 17:35:50 -0500
>From: Don Hutcheson<email@hidden>
>To:email@hidden
>Subject: Does MF color slides scanning in 24 bit still make sense
>Message-ID:<email@hidden>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>
>The main issue with camera capture vs drum scanning is not resolution nor dynamic range, its flare.
>
>Before discussing what I mean, lets look at the question of resolution:
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