RE: filmscanners: Nikon Scan & VS Negative dynamic range

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

Well, I've located the palette you're referring to, but all it has in there
is:

-Strip Film Offset (yes I use the evil strip film adaptor)
-Manual Focus Adjustment
-Scanner Extras - which contains a Calibrate button and a Help button
-Scan Bit Depth

So, no sign of this contrast thingie...

You using a Mac?  You really using 3.1?  It doesn't appear in the manual -
dare I say it!  Care to send a screen dump?  Maybe it understands older
scanners - maybe older scanners don't have Analog Gain so the contrast
thingie is exclusively for them.

Maybe Nikon thought that the Analog Gain palette provided enough control for
the LS40/4000 - how funny that is!

I've just, as a test, set the Master Gain to -2 and then the R, G and B
gains to -1 (i.e. -3 total!!!!) for a frame that features the moon (late 80s
Kodak Gold 200).  Yep, the moon's detail appears - but of course nothing
else does.

Vuescan gets the whole range without me even having to do any tweaking
(actually since I had Color balance set to none the top of the histogram
came out at 198!).

Jawed

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
> [mailto:owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Julian Robinson
> Sent: 06 September 2001 15:15
> To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
> Subject: RE: filmscanners: Nikon Scan & VS Negative dynamic range
>
>
> I have NS 3.1, and on my system there is a tool palette called Scanner
> Extras.  If you open this, there is a setting called Prescan Mode
> which you
> can set to Low cont neutral (or hi key or lo key).  But note that this
> setting only appears if you have "Negative" selected rather than
> "Positive"
> for your film type - IOW it is not available for slides.  Maybe you were
> set to slides the day you looked in there.  I was mystified for
> quite some
> time because I thought I saw it... then I didn't... then...
>
> It reduces the contrast of the scan, so that the whole histogram will fit
> into the available range which is how I like it - then into PS in 16 bits
> and reshape from there.
>
> Julian
>
> At 22:36 06/09/01, you wrote:
> >I've never seen these options in Nikon Scan 3.0/3.1.  Where should I be
> >looking (I can be blind like this sometimes)?
> >
> >Jawed
> >
> > >===== Original Message From Julian Robinson
> <jrobinso@pcug.org.au> =====
> > >Have you tried Scanner Extras / Prescan mode / low cont neutral?
> > >
> > >Julian
> > >
> > >At 09:44 06/09/01, you wrote:
> > >>It is very simple: NS decides to clip a neg scan if the dynamic range
> > >>encoded in the neg is more than a certain amount.  I don't
> know what this
> > >>amount is, but I can demonstrate a very strong difference
> between NS and
> > >>Vuescan in this respect with shots on Supra 400.
> > >>
> > >>No amount of adjustment to NS's master or R, G, B light output levels
> > solves
> > >>this problem - you can tweak the output levels to choose
> which you'd rather
> > >>lose (shadows or highlights) but you cannot get the full
> range of such
> > a neg
> > >>with NS.
> > >>
> > >>Maybe older versions are different.  I write this with
> respect to NS3.0 and
> > >>3.1 working with my LS40.
> > >>
> > >>(Hoping I haven't grabbed the wrong end of the stick.)
> > >>
> > >>Jawed
>
>