Re: filmscanners: SilverFast vs Others

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

I have the (old) Nikon LS-30 and an Epson Perfection 1200U flatbed scanner.
I bought Silvervast SE for the flatbed for $49.95 or thereabouts but I would
not think of buying it for the Nikon.

I loke Silverfast's tone and color controls.  For <$50 it is worth it to me
as it performs better than Epson's TWAIN 4 for the flatbed.

For the filmscanner, I prefer VueScan as it gets the range and color scanned
essentially well in the first instance, and *will* pick up all of the
dynamic range my scanner will retrieve, and any corrections I wish to make I
will make in Photoshop.

If I should want to make tonal or color adjustments in the scanning process,
I can do those very well in NikonScan 3.1 rather than shelling out for
SilverFast as described by Roger.  I think SilverFast a very good program,
but for me the VueScan-PhotoShop combination is better for film (slide and
negative) and the cost is just not worthwhile over VueScan plus NikonScan.

For my flatbed, however, the <$50 cost is worth it over the Epson TWAIN 4.

Maris

----- Original Message -----
From: RogerMillerPhoto@aol.com
To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2001 4:46 PM
Subject: Re: filmscanners: SilverFast vs Others


In a message dated 8/4/2001 11:28:18 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
jpgrove@blueyonder.co.uk writes:


I have read a great deal about SilverFast, can someone tell me the
advantages of SilverFast over say Nikon Scan 3.1 and VueScan?

James Grove



I can think of several hundred differences between SilverFast and Vuescan,
all measured in dollars.  Not only is SilverFast extremely expensive, but
they charge for each upgrade and for each scanner you happen to own.  I use
SilverFast with my Polaroid scanners and feel that it is one of the most
powerful programs available.  Also, it is available with an IT-8 calibration
slide.  I don't believe Vuescan has IT-8 capability, but I don't know for
sure as I don't use Vuescan, but I'm sure that Vuescan users would argue
that
it isn't necessary anyway.  I have to admit that I'm really pissed off at
SilverFast right now because I just spent many hundreds of dollars extra to
use it with a new Polaroid 120 medium format scanner and they shipped me the
old version of SilverFast and not the current version which has been
improved
so that it does an adequate job with negatives.  Since my medium format work
is mostly with negatives, I'll be forced pay an extra $45US for something I
should have received in the first place.  And then I may have to pay another
$45 to upgrade SilverFast for my SS4000 (used only for scanning slides) so
that the user interface is the same for both scanners.  For that extra $90
in
SilverFast upgrades I could have bought Vuescan for myself, another copy for
a friend, and had enough money left over to start a dot com.  And with
Vuescan, I'd never pay another upgrade fee.  Ever.

I don't know anything about Nikon except that version 3.0 was reported to be
buggy and 3.1 is supposed to be better in that regard.

My advice would be that you download demo copies of SilverFast and Vuescan
and make up you own mind as to which is better for your application.
Vuescan
has an advantage over SilverFast in that you can usually get your Vuescan
questions answered on this list, and that's important while climbing the
steep learning curve of any scanner software program.  SilverFast just
started a user forum, but I don't know yet how valuable that's going to be.