filmscanners: Nikon 4000 ED Review Part III

[Dieder Bylsma <dbylsma@bigfoot.com>]

At 20:21 +0100 04/19/01, Richard wrote:


>  >> when it comes to dealing with the files it
>>>  can generate (122+Mb files from a 35mm frame) Photoshop does a better
>>>  job.
>>
>>  I am enjoying your review, but how does 4000ppi @ 35mm come out to an 122+Mb
>>  file?
>>
>>  Todd
>>
>>
>
>Scanned at 16bit will produce a 122Mb file.


yep. And if I scan the whole frame that is visible when using the 
slide film/manual film strip holder the file that can be generated is 
about 130Mb at 14bit/channel. I believe NikonScan pads the 14 to 
16bit when generating TIFF files.

Last part to the review. =)


A few comments about NikonScan 3.0.
-----------------------------------

I am impressed at the accuracy of the colour that is available now. I 
do very little fiddling to get the colour balance 'right', although 
when I need to, the tools are easily accessible. Which brings me to 
the biggest issue I have with the software...those floating windows 
of the Tool Palettes (and why can't they name the tool palettes 
instead of 'Tool Palette 1'). Certainly you can drag the palettes 
around to make your own custom 'windoid' containing what you need and 
now what you don't (i.e. I don't use LCH and the 'Info' window). Yes 
you can expand and collapse the windows, but with all those windows 
around it becomes quite difficult for me to manage window management 
while doing the scans.

As a rule when I'm scanning with the scanner, my default resolution 
is 1350 dpi with 2x multiscanning and 14bit/channel. I toss it into a 
TIFF file and do further tweaking later in Photoshop. If I max out 
all the features of the scanner (16x multisamples, 4000 dpi) it takes 
*forever* to scan a whole neg but the results are worth it.

Additional features about NikonScan that I haven't investigated 
thoroughly yet are the 'Grain reduction algorithm' and the 
'restoration of colour algorithm'. I hope I don't need to explore the 
'ROC' for a while yet...it'd be somewhat alarming if 2-10 yr old negs 
that have been properly stored are fading in colour already.


Gotchas
-------

Read the README! A suggestion for those using NikonScan 3.x...read 
the 'read-me' carefully...there are some interesting 'quirks' that 
Nikon has documented with strange work-arounds. Guess that's the 
result of a X.0 release. For instance a nice new feature (haven't 
tried to see if it's available in the LS-30) is with the slide 
adapter. It will auto-sense that you have inserted a new slide in and 
you can get it to do an auto-preview upon insert. Saves another 
'click' of the mouse and makes bulk slide scanning less agonizing 
short of buying a bulk-slide feeder. I'm not going to do that for a 
long while... =) But with this new feature there is a strange bug 
documented whereupon the scanner won't do an auto-preview if you've 
set auto-focus on insert and auto-preview and clicked on the preview 
button once while the scanner has been powered up. I've read that 
report a few times in the ReadMe and still can't quite figure out a) 
what the problem is and b) what their workaround is.

Get lots of RAM. More RAM = happier scanning experience. NikonScan 
3.0 works well. As noted before though, I wouldn't use it to do 
editing of large files unless you can be certain that it will all fit 
in available RAM. Each process seems to involve the duplication of 
the image, manipulation and then consolidation before the next 
process. (at least by empirical observation of how often NikonScan 
pages out to disk)

Do NOT change the status of your USB or Firewire bus while the 
scanner is in use. i.e. do not plug in or remove devices from these 
buses while NikonScan is running. This will crash NikonScan 3.x on a 
reliable basis. This is documented obliquely in the README. I had a 
problem with another firewire device on the firewire bus 
intermittently turning off and everytime that happened the software 
crashed and the scanner needed to be power-cycled.



Changes from NikonScan 2.x
--------------------------

Other features I've noticed that have changed substantially with 
NikonScan 3.0 is the method of handling cropping and magnification. 
Sometimes I see detail in a preview and want to take a closer look so 
I crop in and magnify. With NikonScan 2.x the scanner would only scan 
that particular part specified by the crop. Not so for NikonScan 3.x. 
Now it does a new high rez scan of the whole slide/picture and saves 
it to memory. So magnified previews take longer than before. But 
since the whole image is now in memory, you can zoom out and 
providing your zoom ratio (dependant upon the crop box size) is the 
same you can quickly look at other parts of the picture.

A new file format has been introduced into the scanning application 
and is called NEF format (Nikon E??? Format) that is with the 
NikonScan software and the Nikon D1 camera. This preserves the raw 
scan data in the file and stores sharpening/filters separately so 
that you can adjust a file post-scan without having to do rescans. It 
doesn't seem to include the ICE feature in the format from what I've 
seen which I think would be a handy feature to have. i.e. you cannot 
turn ICE on and see if fine/normal modes make satisfactory changes. 
It seems that the ICE defect reduction process is part of the actual 
scanning/acquisition process itself much like multisampling.

Unsharp mask can be adjusted with three parameters: radius (called 
'Halo'), threshold and amount much like Photoshop. I'm not sure which 
application's 'unsharp' is better though.

Additional SA-30 comments
-------------------------
The SA-30 roll film adapter is a marvelous accessory. It has made 
scanning rolls of film far less tedious than before and it a joy to 
use. Toss in the film, 2 minutes later you have up to 40 thumbnails 
which you use to adjust the orientation and the film spacing 
(sometimes the frames aren't framed correctly if there isn't any 
inter-frame black space to distinguish two frames (i.e. nighttime 
shots etc) ). The thumbnails are sufficient to change orientation and 
do minor adjustments and with the saved settings (as available in the 
NikonScan 2.x software) you can quickly use a variety of settings for 
a single roll of film. For instance sometimes there's a blank garbage 
frame (from accidentally taking a picture without a lens on...duh...) 
so I can skip that frame and with the other frames if there's one I 
really like I can get the scanner to scan it at 4000 dpi while the 
others are at 1350 dpi etc.


Miscellaneous comments
----------------------
NikonTech support says that the 4000ED (and I would presume the 
LS-40) can handle strip film positives...this is great to hear. I 
will put it to the test next time I shoot a roll of slide film. 
Previously the auto-framing of the frames would not work with uncut 
slides.


Conclusions
-----------

I like the LS-4000 ED. It works well and is a remarkably well put 
together package. Like its predecessor it is a solid piece of 
machinery with a metal frame and a solid 'feel' to it. The software 
works well, with the caveats noted in these reviews and certainly 
makes scanning far less tedious than ever.

-- 
Dieder Bylsma                 |
______________________________|