Banding issues with Nikon 9000

[parasko]

Hi all,

Does anyone know how to prevent or minimise banding with the Nikon 9000?
The banding appears when I try to lighten dark areas of an image in PS and it is prominent when there is less detail in this dark area of the image (think sky, sea etc).

I am using Vuescan to scan Provia 100f 35mm slides.

Does the (very expensive) Silverfast software deal with this problem better?

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

In vuescan choose "Fine Mode". It is on the first tab of controls when you use Vuescan in Advanced mode. The Fine Mode setting eliminates the banding issue.

 

[Robert Lai]

If you don't want to use Fine Mode, try this:
Input | Number of samples: set this to anything greater than 1.


This allows you to use your two rows of sensors, and reduces some shadow noise to boot. There is not a big hit in terms of scanning speed.

 

[parasko]

Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated. It looks like Fine Mode does the trick.

I'm trying to extract as much information as possible from my 35mm slides in order to be able to print as large as possible. For those of you familiar with Vuescan, is there a setting I should be using other than the following below?

Input
Scan resolution =4000dpi
Fine Mode
Number of Samples =1. What is the difference between Fine Mode and Number of Samples?
Media = Image. Does anyone know the difference between Image and Slide Film?
I'm still experimenting with Multi Exposure at this stage.

Filter
Infrared Clean =Light

Output
Output = Raw file 48bitRGB. Is there a real world difference between the 48bit and 64bit option?
Printed Size = What setting should I choose to produce the largest/best scan possible?

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Multisampling is not the same as fine mode. What multisampling does is that it makes multiple exposures of each pixel and averages them to reduce noise. For underexposed slides, or slides with a lot of deep shadow detail, multisampling will improve detail and noise in those dark areas. I have not seen any improvement using it for either color or black and white negs.

 

[craygc]

Multi-sampling is about potentially improving bit depth accuracy. Even though the Nikon 9000 is touted as a 14-bit per channel scanner, this has nothing to do with its ability to capture 14-bits of useful information. Every doubling of the scan sampling gives you an extra bit of accuracy. For example if the first 12-bits were giving consistent data in a single pass scan, 2x would get you 13-bits, and 4x would get you 14-bits. Thats theory, measuring it or determining what you might need per frame is not a trivial task and for most people, you probably wont notice much of a difference. As mentioned previously, there is certainly a time penalty for using multi-scanning and that penalty increases almost linearly to the number of passes employed. On both the Nikon 4000 & 9000 with Vuescan, I always scan at 8x - about 30 mins for a 645 and 1hr for a 6x7 - for 16x the time almost doubles.

 

[mfogiel]

Do not select : Image, select :Slide Film ( or Transparency - don't remember now, as my scanner is in my office). This will ensure you don't get highlight clipping. Also, very important: always make a preview, and observe the histogram for clipping, or compressed tone range. Often it shows clipping, owed to some dense ( or bright for slides) film area being selected or compresses the range, because borders are included. Make sure, your frame selection is ONLY taking the image, not the borders. I only scan B&W negatives, always in the fine mode. The multiple pass multisampling only makes sense for slides ( it serves to recover the detail in the shadows)- beware of long scanning times, if you use MF negatives without the glass carrier, as after half an hour or so, the heat from the scanner can start bulging film.