Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

[Julian Robinson <julian1@dynamite.com.au>]

I also would like to put a word of support for Nikonscan here.  I use 
LS2000 and Nikonscan 2.5.1.  I have tried Vuescan but just can't get it to 
do anything better than Nikonscan (EXCEPT reduce jaggies) so I continue to 
use Nikonscan.  There has been a lot of negative discussion about Nikonscan 
- I really cannot see why people bag it so much.  I get predictable output 
and generally excellent colour 98% of the time from negs.  I don't do much 
slides, but they were fine too. I certainly get better results colour-wise 
than I could ever get out of Vuescan, and VS was *much* slower.

I do agree that the jaggies is a real problem, and have not been impressed 
by the results of my email discussion with Nikon USA about this. I am about 
to send mine back for "repair" re jaggies - I have little hope but will 
report how it is dealt with.  (remember this is in Australia).  I also have 
troubles with focus depth of field, but that is not a software problem.

re the blown highlights / loss of sky detail comment, my technique to avoid 
this is as follows...

IME NIkonscan default auto settings cut off too much at the high end (and 
maybe the shadows end too), so I use the option - Scanner extras / prescan 
mode / low contrast neutral.  This means I get the whole range of a neg 
into the histogram.  At 16-bit there is no problem re-expanding it to get 
the cut off at the actual tips of the white and black points, then I can do 
whatever contrast enhancement etc I need in PS.

Not sure how this translates to the LS30, but I think it is still valid.

Julian

At 05:01 10/04/01, you wrote:
>Rob wrote:
>
> > The detail in the skies tend to "blow out" in Nikonscan with the
>LS30 since
> > it only works with 8 bit data - this has the side effect of reducing
>apparent
> > grain in the sky.  Unfortunately Nikonscan is useless for me since I
>get
> > jaggies with it, so I have to use Vuescan.  I may be able to
>"improve" things
> > a little by deliberately adjusting the white point, but I don't want
>to
> > lose too much sky detail.
>
>The trick with the LS-30 is to hardware calibrate your monitor
>(PhotoCal/Monitor Spyder is great, and not too expensive), set up
>color management in NikonScan using the supplied scanner profile, and
>use the excellent NikonScan curves dialogue to tone/color correct
>before scanning.  You'll be outputting 24 bit files to PS, but the
>corrections are applied in hi bit space.  Then, if need be, apply
>tweaks with an adjustment layer before printing.
>
>Nikonscan's CM works as well as possible, with a near perfect match to
>the result in Photoshop.  Also Nikonscan does the best color
>corrections out of the box of anything I've seen, on chromes and negs.
>And, as I noted previously, the sharpening algorithm it uses is very
>good.
>
>Dave


Julian Robinson
in usually sunny, smog free Canberra, Australia