RE: filmscanners: Re: Nikon LS4000ED inquiry

["Neil Cotty" <neilc@apphosting.com>]

Hi all,

Firstly Bill - you said something about scratches on the neg, that could be
the camera my friends N70 (I think it was) used to do that all the time and
my 801s had a similar problem. I know it was the camera because I used to
process my own film. Had it serviced, something to do with the sprung
back..! Sorry it was years ago now.

>o The filmstrip holder is not so nice.  It had four independently

I agree with this, it's awful, but it does work fine once you get the strip
in there it's just very hard to get it aligned due to the film wanting to
curve, when you do get it in there it works well.

>o It also comes with a motorized filmstrip adapter.  The is a cool

I don't quite agree with this, I think the motorised adapter is the best of
the bunch if you  want to scan quickly and hassle free say for the web and
small prints, for me it is much sharper than using plain slides. I imagine
there's quite a deal of production variance between people's scanners, mine
works fine with this adapter. The glass slides do help, it's just a lot of
them introduce newton rings so I end up having to unmount them. This doesn't
bother me at all as it's not so hard to do and I only mount the very best
shots anyway.

>high-volume work.  Think of each scan as being a hand crafted job and

Totally agree, and the Nikon software is good for tuning only, if you take
care and use the right options you'll get good scans. Fast scanning,
consistent focus however is not good. I always find the point of critical
focus through a loupe then set that in the software manually. Works ok.
However I find NS awful for Neopan BW 1600 film, I just can't get it close
in RAW mode so just use Vuescan. Much easier and better detail. I use NS for
the chromes. I don't bother using Neopan anymore now I do only digital,
Provia 400 pushed or not works much better, well it and PS conversion at
anyrate. <G>

>o You need tons of RAM if you want decent speed.  First you need RAM

Yep, it was a dog on my 128mb 400 celeron, but on my new athlon 1.4 with
512mb it scans a full 14bit 120+mb file in around 5 minutes, thats with ICE
and 16x oversampling. I don't use Gem on Velvia/Provia but it does work well
on the negs you speak of.

>note that Photoshop itself needs working RAM that is 3 times the size

Yes, I allocate about 350-400mb ram to photoshop and give it it's own
partition to use for the scratch disk, I can open a 120mb file in around
6-7secs. Perf. after that is fine.

Cheers,
Neil