Re: filmscanners: Brief review of LS-4000

["Maris V. Lidaka, Sr." <mlidaka@ameritech.net>]

Thank you for a very thorough, very detailed review.

Maris Lidaka

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dieder Bylsma" <dbylsma@bigfoot.com>
To: <filmscanners@halftone.co.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 12:19 AM
Subject: filmscanners: Brief review of LS-4000


| Just thought I'd pipe in with my own two pfennings,yen,cents, 
| whatever about the LS-4000 now that I have one in my paws.
| 
| One of my biggest concerns in purchasing this scanner was that the 
| scanner would be a 'domestic' version for Japan only, i.e. it's power 
| supply would only be for 100 V 50/60 Hz. Well, As Ed Hamrick 
| mentioned a while back wrt the USB LS-40 and as I've confirmed, the 
| scanner comes with a multi-voltage power supply. Good for 100-240 V 
| 50/60 Hz. First problem solved. =)
| 
| The second problem is one that I'm working through by carefully 
| reading the documentation (multiple language documentation on a 
| separate CD and a single-language install (Japanese) on the other CD) 
| and fiddling with the buttons and options. Looks like this scanner 
| has a lot of potential here. Yikes, a veritable plethora of options 
| compared to the LS-30 or the LS-2000.
| 
| 
| Strip film adapter
| ------------------
| 
| The film handling of the strip film feeder looks like it has been 
| significantly improved over the take up spool method of the 
| LS-30/LS-2000. Instead of the film being drawn into a roll within the 
| film feeder adapter, it is pulled into the scanner and from what I 
| can determine, stays flat within the scanner. Because the LS-4000 has 
| a roll-film adapter (which I'll be purchasing once my wallet recovers 
| from the LS-4000), it has a straight-through path from front to back. 
| The film is inserted into the film feeder at an oblique angle of 
| about 30 degrees off vertical instead of the 90 degree (horizontal) 
| approach of the LS-30/LS-2000. It pulls the strip completely within 
| the scanner and there it stays until you're finished with that strip. 
| I haven't tried it with a 6 frame negative strip yet, but with the 4 
| frame negative strip, while scanning any of the frames, the film 
| strip stays within the innards of the scanner. When the film strip is 
| ejected after being in the scanner for a while, it shows no sign of 
| curling as in the LS-30/LS-2000. This is great news. =)
| 
| When using the strip film feeder, as with the LS-30/LS-2000 there are 
| two options for thumbnails...either numbered without a thumbnail 
| preview or numbered with a thumbnail preview with frame numbers. 
| Unlike the LS-30/LS-2000 series though, with the LS-4000 it does not 
| show the correct number of thumbnails in the non-preview mode and 
| always shows 6 frames. This is corrected once you choose the 
| thumbnail & preview option. Ditto for the roll film adapter...all 
| rolls will show as 40 frames until you do a preview. This is 
| documented in the PDF documentation.
| 
| The machine is very quiet and the advancing of the film is much much 
| more quiet than the the LS-30/LS-2000.
| 
| Another quirk is that despite the scanner being a firewire scanner 
| (IEEE 1394/iLink), it has only one port, which means it has to be at 
| the end of a firewire chain. Nikon recommends against using Firewire 
| hubs with the scanner. They do include with the machine a PCI 
| Firewire card so the presence or absence of a firewire port in your 
| PC/Mac shouldn't be an obstacle to using the scanner. That being 
| said, unless I want to install the PCI card into my machine this 
| means my firewire options are limited by the lack of firewire 
| pass-through/daisy-chain options.
| 
| 
| 
| Scanning
| --------
| 
| Doing thumbnail scans and previews is remarkably swift. If you want 
| to do quick adjustments etc, it's easy enough to do. As mentioned 
| above, there's a load of options not available in the previous 
| incarnation of the software. Incidentally, the software can be used 
| for the LS-30/LS-2000.
| 
| Now for NikonScan tidbits. It helps considerably if you have gobs and 
| gobs of RAM. Even with the fastest of machines, with the size of 
| images it can produce (14 bit 4000 dpi of a ~35mm negative frame 
| gives ~120Mb file sizes), it will take all the memory it can get its 
| hands on. Because I have a Mac, I can set the memory allocation for 
| the NikonScan software, whereas with Windows, you will rely on the OS 
| to keep up with the ballooning demands of the scanning software.
| 
| To push the software and the scanner a bit, I scanned a negative at 
| 4000 dpi, 16x multi-sampling, 14 bit colour, with Digital ICE enabled 
| in its 'normal' mode and then used GEM (Grain Reduction) set for the 
| default of 3 (on a 0-5 scale). The first time I did that, it took 
| over 40 minutes from start to finish. This was because I had not 
| increased the memory allocation from its paltry default (think about 
| 70Mb?) and it was spooling the 121+ MB file to and from the scratch 
| drive (a nice fast 7200 rpm IBM drive). Bumping up the RAM allocation 
| to 580Mb and redoing the scan, the improvement in scan time was 
| considerable. I think it was reduced by at least 2/3 to about 15 
| minutes or so. This is not something I would do on a regular basis 
| since 4000 dpi is well in excess of my normal needs, but at least it 
| gives some idea of how long it could take.
| 
| Grain Reduction and Restoration of Colour are CPU-bound processes. 
| They do not rely on the scanner for anything and take up the bulk of 
| the time for generation of a picture. NikonScan has a long way to go 
| before it approaches Photoshop's ability to handle 100+Mb picture 
| files when displaying large image files like this. I am surprised by 
| how long it took on my machine since it was a Dual Processor G4 with 
| a fair amount of RAM (640Mb), so I'm assuming that NikonScan hasn't 
| been optimized for the G4 nor is it MultiProcessor aware (The G4 has 
| a special vector math unit ideal for manipulation of matrices of data 
| such as what is found in graphics -- which is why Apple always shows 
| off how fast its machines are using a G4 and Photoshop which is 
| optimized for the G4). I would presume the corollary that NikonScan 
| isn't optimized for the PC versions of 'AltiVec' (3DNow by AMD I 
| believe?).
| 
| 
| Results
| -------
| 
| The results of the scan are quite amazing, but I'm not sure about 
| what I should compare this against, so I will post some review shots 
| of the scanner later. Right now the biggest barrier for me for 
| further exploration of the scanner is that the software is all in 
| Japanese, so this is slowing me down somewhat.
| 
| more later...if anybody wants to see what the scanner can do with a 
| calibrated slide (Q60?) I'd be glad to help out, 'cept I don't have a 
| Q60 here. Snail mail is fine though and I'd return it back to the 
| sender as soon as I received it.
| 
| 
| Dieder
| -- 
| Dieder Bylsma             |
| ______________________________|
|