RE: filmscanners: Dust removal software?

["Jawed Ashraf" <Jawed@cupidity.force9.co.uk>]

Nice advice.

Just one point: negatives get scratched, seemingly routinely by labs.  I
bought the LS40 for ICE, *specifically* because of scratches which were
driving me barmy.  Dust, by comparison, was giving me little problem.  So I
don't fall into the group: "people who sing the praises of ICE are people
who have a dust problem".  I have a scratches problem.  (I am now the proud
owner of a digicam and intend never to shoot film again - well, I suppose
I'll release the shutter on someone else's camera with film in it, if they
like...)

So if you have negs that are scratched, then you still have to seriously
consider ICE.

If you solely shoot slides and store them well then you prolly have very
very few scratches to deal with, ever.  I think Roger is right, you can then
remove the dust (brushing/blowing and rubber stamping) and forget ICE.

Jawed

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of
RogerMillerPhoto@aol.com
Sent: 01 September 2001 17:52
To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
Subject: Re: filmscanners: Dust removal software?


I've never used ICE, but I do own a Polaroid SprintScan 4000 and am
perfectly
happy with it.  I think that people who sing the praises of ICE are people
who have a dust problem, either because of the own making or because of
circumstances beyond their control that require them to scan slides that
have
been abused by someone else.  If you do not have a major dust problem and
already own a scanner with ICE and are happy with it in all other respects,
you can always turn off the ICE feature.  The Polaroid is an outstanding
machine and at $700 is an outstanding value and I can't understand why
anyone
would buy anything else.  But I believe the $200 rebate ends at the end of
this month, so you'll need to act fast if you decide to go that route.

My slides come from a professional lab and I do not have a dust problem.
After I mount the slides in the carrier, I visually inspect them for dust,
use a Staticmaster brush to remove any dust that I do see (this happens with
about 20 percent of the slides) and then immediately insert it into the
scanner before any dust can settle on it.  Many of my slides are of models
against a white background, so if there were any dust on the slide, it would
be very obvious.  But I rarely see it.  Occasionally, I will miss a piece of
dust which becomes obvious when I do a prescan.  I simply use the
Staticmaster on the slide again and rescan.  But that's very rare.

If you were to get the Polaroid SS4000, it will probably come with both
Insight software and SilverFast software.  More than likely, the SilverFast
software will be the old version.  It would cost $90US to upgrade to the
current 5.5 version ($45 for the Ai part of SilverFast and another $45 for
the HDR part, though you could get buy with upgrading only HDR and still
have
available all of the features of the upgrade).  If you are a professional
photographer who requires the use of the scanner in your business, I'd
recommend against upgrading SilverFast.  The old version is great for
slides.
 But the upgraded version is extremely buggy and is not usable at all with
my
SS4000 because it won't scan the entire slide and the actual scan doesn't
match the crop box of the prescan.  (The same SilverFast software is also
unusable with my SS120 medium format scanner as it causes crashes.)  The
SilverFast company has been very unresponsive to my problems.  If you scan
negatives rather than slides, the SilverFast upgrade which includes
something
called NegaFix sounds promising.  But as I said, the SilverFast upgrade is
buggy and doesn't work with my SS4000.  Insight was supposedly upgrade
recently and I believe it is supposed to work better with negatives than it
used to.  David Hemingway of Polaroid hangs out on this list (another major
advantage of buying a Polaroid) and can tell you more about Insight as I
haven't used it due to spending all of my waking moments trying to
troubleshoot SilverFast.  And of course, Vuescan has a good reputation on
this list (I haven't used it yet) especially for negative film.  It only
costs $40 with a lifetime of upgrades for as many scanners as you'll ever
own.

So my recommendations are:  1) Don't worry about dust if you take reasonably
good care of your slides and negatives.  2) Buy the Polaroid SS4000, which
is
very good scanner for a very good price.  3)  Use Vuescan for scanning
negatives.  4) Use the old version of SilverFast for scanning slides, though
if you don't want to invest the time in learning how to use it, Vuescan
might
be OK.  5)  Stay away from the SilverFast upgrade until (if?) they get their
problems fixed.

In a message dated 9/1/2001 4:11:01 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
martbarb@earthlink.net writes:




As I'm not happy with the softening of images that seems to come with the
excellent dust removal cab abilities of Digital ICE, and can still return it
and get another machine.  I'd appreciate information from users of the
Canonscan 4000 and the Polaroid 4000 as to how these machines handle it.  I
do want to be able to remove some of the junk, but would be willing to do a
little work the rubber stamp in Photoshop if I could retain a sharper image.

Martin