Flextight 343 notes

[Dante_Stella]

Hopefully this will help bring out some detail on these units (and Flextights in general) that has not been seen before.

https://themachineplanet.wordpress.com/2016/11/08/imacon-flextight-343-odi-et-amo/

If there is some question left unanswered, let me know so I can address it in Part II.

Thanks!
Dante

 

[hanskerensky]

Great article (as ususal) Dante !

 

[Dante_Stella]

Great article (as ususal) Dante !

Thanks!

Dante

 

[k__43]

Great article - I always wondered!

I am happy as a one could be with my LS-8000 - never wanted to "upgrade" even less now.
Two observations I had with it that I'd like to run by you:
- C41 B/W looks weird scanned with it. In fact the only scanner I tried that handled that sort of film well was the Canon FS4000 .. might this be a illumination reason? Meaning CCD is better than LED for this? Anyway - I dropped this sort of film a while ago anyway.
- Highly subjective observation but I find slide seems to come out slightly more blurred than C41 color in my LS-8000. Maybe that is just my expectations of resolution in slide being too high but I still think there is something there, maybe it has to do with the illumination as well. some sort of halo thru the film base.
I stopped looking on my scans at 100% zoom and am happy now.

 

[Dante_Stella]

Great article - I always wondered!

I am happy as a one could be with my LS-8000 - never wanted to "upgrade" even less now.
Two observations I had with it that I'd like to run by you:
- C41 B/W looks weird scanned with it. In fact the only scanner I tried that handled that sort of film well was the Canon FS4000 .. might this be a illumination reason? Meaning CCD is better than LED for this? Anyway - I dropped this sort of film a while ago anyway.
- Highly subjective observation but I find slide seems to come out slightly more blurred than C41 color in my LS-8000. Maybe that is just my expectations of resolution in slide being too high but I still think there is something there, maybe it has to do with the illumination as well. some sort of halo thru the film base.
I stopped looking on my scans at 100% zoom and am happy now.

C41 B/W can be affected greatly by whether you scan as color or b/w. I think it's better to do it in color (which will make it look orange), but you can then monkey with the channel mixer in Lightroom or Photoshop to get the contrast right.

CCD is the sensor type; LED is the light source. LED and some halogen-lamp scanners with condensers have higher contrast and are brutal on film defects; fluoro tubes ("cold light"), not so much.

Flare might mean that the mirror in your scanner is dusty. It's not a huge deal to clean, but you have to be reasonably careful.

D

 

[johannielscom]

Nice article, Dante! Very informative!

Mine is the old Imacon Photo scanner, with the SCSI interface. I have it hooked up to the highest-specs and maxed-out Apple Mac G4, with a RAID array and 2Gb of 333Mhz memory 😎 😎 😀 and it still is a pretty capable kit that can support the scanner and the Imacon software very well. I get lovely scans from it.

Although I understand that your machine planet approach mostly targets the mechanical component of the scanners, I'll venture a question concerning the software anyway: in the possible types of film, there are a lot of now obsolete films that I never shoot and cannot obtain anymore. Yet, a few more modern film types that I do shoot, are missing.

Do you know how to edit the film list in the Imacon software? I would be most obliged if you could help me out!