Simon,
> I tried scanning some Delta 100 black and white negs on a Nikon LS4000 ED
> and the quality was awful, using either Nikon Scan 3.1.3 or Vuescan. I
> tried scanning as monochrome, as colour and as colour positive and inverting
> in Photoshop. In all cases the preview image looked fine but the actual scan
> showed tiny white spots all over the images.
I use an LS-30 and have the same problem. The little specks are dust
or similar defects on the negative. ICE doesn't work for silver-based
film list Delta 100. You would see the same thing on colour negative
if you turned ICE off, I think.
The real problem I have with it is grain exaggeration. I can get much
less grainy scans from a paper print.
> I can't seems to get a good black and white scan at all. Can anyone tell me
> how to get good black and white scans?
Nikons only support RGB readout, therefore using monochrome and/or
negative settings in the scanning software is always a lottery. I use
straight RGB scanning, then convert to grayscale and adjust the
look-up table in ImageMagick or GIMP (no M$ on my computer).
> When scanning colour slides (Provia 100F and Kodak EBX 100) the scans have
> too much red in them. Is this a facet of this scanner?
Shouldn't be. The scanner has separate exposure times for the three
channels which can be set by the software. I have no idea what
Nikonscan, VueScan and friends do with the exposure. SANE lets you
select each of them separately, and offers both auto-exposure modes
supported by the scanner. With this method, you can play around until
you get perfect white balance. The response to the exposure times is
very much linear, so a little calculation can speed up the process
substantially.
Also, SANE gives you a general multiplier, so that you can change all
exposures by the same factor and keep the white balance as it is. This
way you can make best use of the available dynamic range of the
scanner. Judgement is done with the histogram (Nikonscan & Co. might
have one as well, I wouldn't know...).
> When scanning a strip of slides (or negs) in the strip film adapter, the
> left edge of the preview image and scanned image is not straight, it bows in
> at the centre and into the image area. Has anyone else seen this? It is
> annoying as I had to crop a part of the image when I didn't actually want
> to.
Oh. Have you checked that the mask in the film strip loader has a
straight edge? Since the light passes through the film pretty much at
a right angle, I wouldn't expect curling to have such an effect.
> Also, the preview in Nikon scan looks very clear whereas the actual
> completed scan image in the Nikon Scan window looks muddy and grainy, and
> you can see the white spots, that I mentioned above, on the image.
The opposite of SANE then...
> Any help, answers or opinions on these would be welcome.
Try SANE, it lets you select scanner options directly. Currently there
is no dust removal, but I'm working on it...
Andras
===========================================================================
Major Andras
e-mail: andras@users.sourceforge.net
www:
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