Pink scans! Help.

[dshugar]

Hi all - I just bought a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000ED and proceeded to try scanning a few slides this afternoon. Whoa Nellie - my scans are completely pink! For starters, I get a hardware error when starting the software (first Nikonscan 3, then Scan 4), but the previous owner of the scanner said that that was normal and you've got to wait a few minutes before starting up the software. Seems funny. Anyway, when I finally do scan something, I get these horrible pink scans (see attached). I also tried a demo version of Vuescan with the same results. Help! Is this something I'm doing without realizing?

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

What kind of film are you scanning? Is it Kodachrome? Kodachrome won't work with the Digital ICE and will give off color results. I have the 8000ED and have never had that problem....its all I can think of.

 

[Thardy]

In vuescan try advanced mode. Under Input - choose the correct type of film, ie slide or negative, you can also choose bit depth for scanning.

The tab for Filter allows choice of restoring color, fading.
Color has white balance and depends on your choice will set white and black point and other parameters.

You can also tell the software which specific film you're using and color space. I choose sRGB for the printer, output, and monitor.

The film and scanner color space is left at built in on my software.

Those are the settings i've been using.

I remember getting strange colors at one time, but forgot what I did specifically to fix.
it.
Good luck.

 

[dshugar]

Hi Chris - it's not a Kodachrome issue. I was scanning Fuji, and besides, I tried with both Ice enabled and disabled.
Thanks Thardy, but unfortunately that didn't seem to work. I found the exact same problem on photo.net here: http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00HxFz and the guy seems to have "fixed" the problem by inserting the second film holder/adaptor, scanning a frame of negative film and then reinserting the slide holder. Even if that works, it's certainly not an ideal situation! I tried this and it seemed to work the one time I tried but I'm not really interested in doubling my scan times. Anybody have any other suggestions?

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Try this. Turn the scanner off. Reboot your computer. When then computer is back up and running, turn on the scanner and wait until the scanner is totally done with its warmup procedure (blinking light on front stops blinking). Then, open front of scanner but do not put neg in yet. Open Nikon Scan. Then insert neg and see if it works. I am thinking maybe the scanner wasn't totally booted up (its own startup takes a couple minutes at least with my 8000, which is of the same generation as your 4000) and that caused the problem. I may be wrong, but its worth a try. If that don't fix it and no one else comes up with an answer I'd call Nikon's tech support and see if it needs repaired or if they have any ideas.

 

[Arvay]

I do not now whether tis will be of help but sometimes the scanner mistakes in color when the scanning frame is larger than the colour zone and also covers the black borders of the slide or white borders of negative.

 

[dshugar]

Hi folks - I received my scanner back from Nikon. They did a complete overhaul and clean/adjust, as well as firmware upgrade. Cost: $192. The scanner works perfectly now. Now all I need is to train a monkey to finish scanning my books and books of slides! And perhaps another monkey to keyword and caption everything.