[filmscanners] Re: nikon 4000 ED

["Arthur Entlich" <artistic-1@shaw.ca>]

Digital ICE is an infrared scan that "sees" materials opaque to Infrared
light.  This includes dust, dirt and some types of surface damages,
which lower the frequency of the light during transmission.

It tends to pass through clear plastics, and most film dyes (although
some Kodachrome dyes are partially opaque to IR light).  REAL black and
white film leaves a form of silver on the film surface, which is what
creates the grain and density.  IR light doesn't go through this
developed silver surface on the film.  As a result, it all looks the
same to the IR scan.  The digital ICE assumes it is all dirt, finger
prints, surface damage, dust, etc. and therefore attempts to remove it.
  As you know, dust and such shows up as white on a black and white
positive from a neg, so the reason your image looks so dark is that the
digital ICE IR scan is telling the software to remove the image itself
as, in effect, a big bunch of dirt. So you get nearly the equivalent of
a blank piece of film, which would give you a dark black image.

So, you cannot use dICE with real black and white film.  You can use
dICE with chromogenic films which use dye to create the image and the
silver is almost all bleached out, like with color transparency and
color negative films.

Right now the only fix seems to be using dust and scratch filters in
Photoshop, and hand removal with rubber stamp/clone tools etc.  I do
know some dust removal software is being written which will eventually
be able to work without the use of IR light, but its still in development.

Art


contradasaletta@aol.com wrote:

> I recently purchased a Nikon 4000 ED scanner.  So far I have had very good
> luck scanning color negatives and using the Digital ICE control to remove
> scratches.  However, when I attempt to scan a monochromatic negative
> everything works fine until I enable Digital ICE processing.  If I try to
> scan my monochromatic negatives with Digital ICE, the scan turns almost
> completely black and is unusable.  I've tried to brighten the image with the
> analog gain control to no avail.
>
> Has anyone else had this problem?  Is it possible to use Digital ICE
> processing along with monochromatic negatives?  If Digital ICE is
> incompatible with monochromatic negatives, is there another method I can use
> to remove the scratches from my negatives?
>
>
> Thank you very much.
>
> Antonio Isidori
>
>
>


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