[filmscanners] Re: What can you advise?

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

You've raised exactly the crux of the issue.  Nikon scanner users have
no choice.  They must use dICE when it is available to them.

I have an admission to make.  I live is a rural area, where the air is
often dusty.  We live on a dirt and gravel road. My digital studio is in
a finished basement.  It is carpeted with a medium pile rubber backed
glued down carpet.  Because of all the equipment and furniture I have
all over the place in my work area, and all the paper everywhere, and
because I still have a lot of magnetically sensitive storage media
around, I have only, in the last 10 years vacuumed here twice.  It is
just too much work to do it.  I run part of my business in the same area
where I manufacture paper goods which are cut and laminated by the
thousands, and create a lot of particulate matter. The area directly
connects to an unfinished basement area where I do shop work, auto
repair, do airbrush painting, we store our recyclables, etc. and the
rafters are covered in cobwebs.  We have a 35 year old oil heat central
hot air furnace, which is NOT clean, and the ducts have been cleaned
exactly NEVER since we moved here, over 20 years ago, and were probably
never cleaned since the house was built. Most all of the house is
carpeted and the house has stupid blown textured ceilings which not only
collect dust, but shed this white plaster-mica mix.  We are in an
earthquake zone and get hit every few weeks with one which gives the
house a good shake.  We have a standard low tech filter in the furnace
and a electrostatic cleaner (ozone producing) which we run about once a
month for a few hours.  The chimney and firebox have been cleaned once
in 20 years. I occasionally "dust" the digital lab area and I run a
manual floor sweeper about once a year, if that, on the exposed areas of
the carpet. Other than the spiders, we have no pets. If I run my finger
down any flat surface I get a fair wad of paper dust and general dust.
I do keep my slide and negs in boxes and holders.  I use either a very
soft 3/4" wide nylon artist's paintbrush (most of the time) (no radio-
isotopes involved) or sometimes I set up an air compressor with a nozzle
(only when running a lot of slides through).

I print up to 13" wide and sometimes I double that to make proofs with a
seam down the middle, so some images get pretty large. Some films are
over 20 years old and have been "around", and have some scratches. The
SS4000+ scans I do require minimal to no spotting.  Rarely do I have to
spend more than 2-3 minutes at most to clone and clean images, and that
is mostly when it is a very large print.

On the other hand, every scan I do on the Minolta Dual Scan II needs
some spotting work regardless how much I clean the film and some need a lot.

If you have only worked with a Nikon or Minolta scanner, you probably
think I am speaking from another dimension when I say even under the
conditions I have here I need to do very little spotting on those scans.

So, now that I have done a true confession, I hope you can still respect
me ;-)

Art



Paul D. DeRocco wrote:

> How does one do this? Seal the room and install an air filtration system?
> Wear a smock, hairnet and gloves? I store slides in boxes with no gaps
> between the slides, yet I still find dust on them. I clean them with proper
> fluid and pads until I can't see anything under a magnifier, pop them in the
> scanner (LS-2000), and find there's still crap all over them if I turn off
> ICE.
>
> --
>
> Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
> Paul                mailto:pderocco@ix.netcom.com
>
>
>>From: Austin Franklin
>>
>>Well, I'd say if you want the best results from any scanner, simply keep
>>your work environment, film storage, scanner etc. free of dust.  For many
>>years before "Digital ICE" people made dust free images in both
>>the darkroom
>>and with scanners.
>>
>>IMO, "Digital ICE" is no substitute for sloppy work habits and a
>>sloppy work environment and bad film storage.
>>
>
>
>


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