[filmscanners] RE: Oh no! Not another "which one should I buy" question

["Paul D. DeRocco" <pderocco@ix.netcom.com>]

> From: Ed Lusby
>
> I've been lurking in the group for a long time, but now I'm actually going
> to buy a scanner. Most of my old slides are Kodachrome64, so I
> haven't been
> encouraged by the postings here regarding the difficulty of Kodachrome
> scans. Is there any scanner that scans kodachrome well?  The other
> "requirement" I have is the potential future need to scan lots of
> slides. I
> only know of one scanner with bulk loader, the Nikon 5000.  Does anyone
> know if this scanner is any good on Kodachrome?  Are there other scanners
> with bulk loaders for mounted slides?

I have an old LS-2000, which I believe is basically the same technology,
albeit lower resolution. The problems that it has with Kodachrome are:

1) The LEDs have narrow spectra, and don't see Kodachrome in the same way
that they see E6 slides, and they come out blue and rather dark. This can be
corrected for pretty well with a Kodachrome-specific profile.

2) The digital ICE dust and scratch remover doesn't work as well on
Kodachrome as on other films. Indeed, I've heard that on some old
formulations, it doesn't work at all. On the slides I have, post 1980, it
seems to work okay, softening the image just a tad, but properly removing
the scratches.

3) The Nikon has narrow depth-of-field, which makes it unable to focus on
badly curved slides.

I can't swear that they haven't made any changes (different color LEDs,
better profiles, different wavelength IR channel, greater DOF) in the 5000,
though.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@ix.netcom.com

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