filmscanners: I got a Nikon LS-40 on Loan

[EdHamrick@aol.com]

I just thought I'd let the people on this mailing list know that
Nikon loaned me an LS-40 today.  I installed it and traced
the USB commands, and it looks like it will be quite easy to
add support for it to VueScan.  It encapsulates SCSI
commands in USB packets, and these SCSI commands are
almost identical to the commands used by the LS-2000.

I haven't done any testing of image quality or sharpness
since I'm mainly focused on getting it working with VueScan.

It appears to have the same type of limitations as the
LS-30/LS-2000.  For instance, the LS-40 is 12-bits, the
LS-4000 is 14-bits.  The LS-4000 has single-pass
multi-sampling, support for the SF200 slide feeder, and
support for the roll film adapter, the LS-40 doesn't.
In addition, the LS-40 uses USB and is 2900 dpi,
while the LS-4000 uses Firewire and is 4000 dpi.

I looked at the .inf file for the LS-4000 and it
uses SCSI over Firewire, which means it should
be just as easy to add support for in VueScan.

I hope to get the LS-40 supported in the next few
days (maybe a week) and I'll work on the LS-4000
whenever Nikon can loan me one.  The LS-40
will be supported on both Windows and Mac OS
in the next release.

If someone wants to modify the Linux SCSI->USB
device driver, I'd be happy to tell them what
modifications are needed.  Once this is done, the
next release of VueScan will work with the LS-40
on Linux also.

Regards,
Ed Hamrick