Re: filmscanners: Mac users

[Stan McQueen <stan@smcqueen.com>]

At 03:39 PM 9/20/2001 -0400, Martin Greene wrote:
>With the idea of saving money and possibly getting a better scan, I gave up
>a Nikon LS4000 that I recently bought.  I received the SS4000 from Ecost
>yesterday.  So far, I am terribly disappointed.  The documentation is
>terrible.  Polacolor I find to be very poor.  Silverfast documentation is
>awful, and I find that my scans are not sharp.  I've downloaded a trial
>version of Vuescan, which, after much, much effort and crashing of my Mac
>G4, gives the best results, if one can figure out how to configure it.  On
>the other side, the Nikon was a cinch to set up, the software a pleasure to
>use, the documentation preety good, and digital ICE a marvel at removing
>every conceivable spot to be found.  In doing quality comparisons, so far I
>have not found that there is any more shadow detail in the Sprintscan, and
>possibly there may be more in the Nikon when using 16x Mulit-scanning, which
>admittedly is painfully slow, but the pain is considerably less severe than
>dealing with all of those spots and with the poor software and documentation
>of the Polaroid.  Also, I find almost as much spotting has to be done on a
>Sprintscan scan as on the Nikon without ICE, the dust spots being a bit
>softer but still there to be seen.  I haven't given up on the Sprintscan yet
>as I feel maybe there is more I need to learn about how to use it optimally.
>But, if I can't improve things much further, it's good by Sprintscan and
>back to the LS 4000, much as I can't afford the difference in price.  Thanks
>for the help you've given on this forum.

Well, that's very unfortunate. That wasn't my experience. I unpacked the 
scanner and plugged it into the SCSI cable I had had my Microtek 35t+ on 
and was scanning with Vuescan 15 minutes after I opened the box. Since then 
I have removed my old SCSI card and installed the one that came with the 
scanner, installed the software, etc. I expect I will still be using 
Vuescan for most of my work because I am used to it, but SilverFast looks 
like it has some great capabilities even if it is a horrendously 
complicated interface. Of course, if I had moved from a Nikon LS4000 
instead of from a Microtek 35t+ I might be less impressed.

Stan