Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

["Michael Moore" <miguelmas@qwest.net>]

Dave: Please explain what process you are using to get from negs or trans
to a 24x36 ( I assume photographic) print? What scan DPI, print DPI, print
process, etc.
Thanks.

Mike M.

Dave King wrote:

> Tony,
>
> You're to be commended for bringing this problem to our attention.
> I've mulled it over a bit and come to some conclusions.  I could be
> wrong however, so with that in mind, here are my opinions.
>
> It seems to me from eyeball guessing that my LS-30 is resolving grain
> in 100 ISO films at roughly 40-80% distortion, which looks pretty bad
> on the monitor at 100% view.  800 speed color neg film does much
> better at what I would guess to be roughly 25% distortion.
>
> The silver lining to this cloud is aliasing distortion (with the
> LS-30) looks worse on screen than print, IMO.  When the ink hits the
> page aliased grain looks more or less like analog grain, being worse
> in certain tonal areas than others.  Personally I don't find the
> actual image degradation objectionable, even all that noticeable, in
> prints of full frame negs up to 24x36 inches with slight interpolation
> to reach that size.  Perhaps this explains in part why this problem
> hasn't assumed greater weight in the work a day world.  Still, other
> things being equal (they never are), I would prefer less aliasing
> distortion.  But I suspect that when aliasing distortion levels are
> kept under about 100%, the effect in print will be *relatively*
> negligible.
>
> Dave King
>
> PS - Just for funsies I recently printed a max res file from an Fuji
> S1 digital camera to 24x36.  While the image was remarkably good in
> many respects, and completely grain (pixel) free in areas of even
> tone, image resolution was far less than from even 800 speed neg film
> scanned in the LS-30.  For the time being at least I'll take the
> grain, aliasing and all.
>