[filmscanners] Re: Nikon LS4000 scanning techniques

["Dieder Bylsma" <scanners@spacemoo.com>]

>I tried turning the Auto exposure off on Nikon scan and it gave good
>results which could be adjusted in Photoshop, then one day it started
>blowing out the high lights, so I switched it back on, but it doesn't
>adjust levels, so what does it do and why is there the option to switch
>it off?

hm. I've noticed that Nikon scan's settings are on occasion 'sticky'
and will reset themselves to the previous settings used. This can be
a bit unexpected. If you set it up to do a non-auto-exposure
preview/scan, save that setting and quit, does it 'stick' upon
relaunch?

FWIW, while I'm scanning a whole swack of old Kodachromes where
ICE/Infra-red defect mapping has no effect, I tend to use Vuescan
because the colours are more consistent, and it is somewhat faster.
Do wish I didn't have to manually 'spot' the resulting slides, but
that's just the nature of the very infra-red-opaque Kodachromes I'm
using.

Typically, however, I use Nikon's software since I like its GUI
better. Much easier to scan a roll of 40 frames and make a custom
setting for each thumbnail frame (if you have a whole bunch of
'settings' for different varieties of film settings) and then scan
the whole batch in one big 'scan'.

As for which is 'better', well, Vuescan's fade reduction seems a bit
more 'natural' for the types of Kodachromes (mid-late 60s) I'm doing,
but Nikon's ROC is absolutely phenomenal when it comes to some
seriously underexposed shots as well. Guess it's the right tool for
the job. If I'm not sure about which one is better, I just throw the
batch through the scanner twice, one with Nikon, one with Vuescan and
A:B them all to see which ones I like better or have more room for
further tweaking.


Dieder

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