Scan Dual 3 workflow....HELP!!!

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szekiat

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I've been using a Scan Dual 3 for nearly 2 years now and have yet to sort out a proper workflow. Most of the time, getting accurate colors seems to be a hit and miss thing and contrast control is never there! I had some luck using vuescan for a majority of my tri-x but now i've got a new batch of low light astia and velvia and after 2 weeks of tinkering, its still not coming up anywhere close to what is projected or on the lightbox! Anyone wanna share their workflow of scanning with the darn thing? I run a mac and am proficient with PS. I'm almost tempted to throw in the towel and switch completely to DSLRs at this rate. HELP!!!!!

thanks!
sk
 
Scannin B&W is difficult at best IMO. Colour is much easier. Sorry I can't help you much.
 
Slides are usually much, much easier for me with my Nikon. Have you tried scanning as an "Image" in VS? It'll look ridiculously dark as a preview, but it'll come out in the final scan. Give that a try.

allan
 
I have a Scan Dual IV, so I don't know if this helps, but I was NEVER able to get satisfactory color from Vuescan. I use the OEM software, sRGB, no correction. Single pass seems to be fine. I get an exact match with the slide, pretty much. Hope this helps.
 
So far i've figured out to use image and raw via viewscan, then from the raw file start messing around.. I get nervous having the light bulb burning while I try to figure out what's going on, since there is no minolta any more to sell more light bulbs...

One would argue that the vuescan 'raw' is really just a tiff but so what..

What I wish I knew, and I think there is a way to do this, is how to set the exposure then leave it like that for a whole roll of film. I think the vuescan instructions say something about locking the exposure and color on a completely blown out (white) slide, or maybe it 's lock the exposure on a properly exposed slide, and the white balance on a blown slide.. that sounds more right.
I do wish it was more clear cut. I still don't know when I'm just altering some software thing that edits a file's pixles, vs adjusting something in the hardware of the scanner. What does the brightness slider do- add gamma value or increase ccd time ?
Is the vuescan-driven scan dual III fixed exposure? If not, how and what changes the hardware exposure level and why?

The way I think I am trying to work it is--
Set the white balance using a blown slide, then lock that..
Get the right exposure using a good-looking slide from the light table, so the whole dynamic range of the scanner is utilized- maybe even scan multiple passes to reduce noise in shadows..
Lock that exposure so I can do the whole roll like that.
Save as maximum resolution raw, which is just a tiff, to open in photoshop or whaever or play with further in vuescan.


The minolta software on mac is not great either- it's hard to find the settings nested in odd places. Vuescan for all it's oddities in the interface, is quite good considering the wide range of hardware it works with. Also many people use it so there's a chance of finding help.

To add further confusion, there is a colorsync control panel with profiles in it, two for the dimage scan dual III.. one linear and one not linear?
Oh and what's this deal with some kind of calibration target?

All this drove me to buy a slide projector last week.
 
aad said:
I have a Scan Dual IV, so I don't know if this helps, but I was NEVER able to get satisfactory color from Vuescan. I use the OEM software, sRGB, no correction. Single pass seems to be fine. I get an exact match with the slide, pretty much. Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Same here. I scan slides and B&W negs on an SDIII with a PC at the highest possible resolution, with a 4x sample on color positives, using the Minolta software, then do all my correcting on the .tiff using Elements 4.0. Very rarely make corrections using the Minolta program unless it's a little tinkering with levels. Mostly I work with Provia 100F and 400F, and with Ilford Delta 100 and 400, plus some XP2 Super. Most of the photos in my RFF gallery went this route.
 
Let's back up a bit here...

First, are you sure you've dialed in your monitor in terms of color calibration? Up to a point, you can get away with things being off a bit when dealing with b/w images, but definitely not with color. And you need the scanner and monitor to be on the same page in this regard.

(While we're on the subject of monitors, is yours CRT or LCD? If it's the latter, getting color right can be tricky if the monitor wasn't designed with graphics use in mind)

Second, color profiles: same deal as above...scanner and monitor have to be working with the same profile. "Adobe RGB" or "Adobe RGB 1998" usually does the trick for both to start with.

Third: some slide film emulsions are just more ornery than others. From my experience, Kodak's E6 Ektachromes (particularly E200) have been the easiest, followed closely by Fuji's Provia series. From there, things fall off a good deal: Astia has been somewhat hit-or-miss for me, although it's fairly easy for me to rein in most of its peculiarites. Same with Agfa's E6 films (of course, I don't have them to kick arouund any more). But since I've had something of a "love thang" with Kodak's Portra C41 films for the last few years, I find myself using Portra for about 75% of my color work, with most of the balance taken up by Fuji's Pro 400/800 emulsions, leaving the proverbial sliver for E200 and Kodachrome. And I can practically scan Portra in my sleep...it's that easy.


- Barrett
 
thanks for all the input guys.

Barrett, my monitor's calibrated with a Monaco Optics calibrator and renders colors from my DSLR truely. I use a tight color workflow with my screen and printers both profiled. Monitor is calibrated every time i start any serious processing so i think that should be fine.

i seem to be having the same questions about slides as clintock at the moment. What do all those settings change? Also, even after i lock everything, i can't get accurate exposures when doing the scan and shift method for my xpan slides. It drives me up the wall and then some. Of late though, i've also been shooting low light stuff with astia and while it projects ok, it doesn't scan well at all. I know its a lot of shadow detail but surely there must be a way to tune up the lamp on the scanner? No? What does the RGB value adjust? Lamb brightness or does it just postprocess my pixels differently?

The OEM software for mac is just crap. There's next to know control on the hardware end and mostly just post process stuff which i prefer doing in PS to start. Anyhows, thanks for all the help. More anyone?
 
Wasting much too much time with the scanner and vuescan i found what many probaby already knew, but here goes:
The slider that appears when you check the 'exposure lock' button on the 'input' page seems to be a hardware adjustment. I think that's the RGB value you were asking about.
Cranking it up to a higher value seems to reduce noise in shadows and increase detail there, but at the expense of running some other more brightly lit things out of gamut, and/or blowing out highlights at extreme settings.

I was able to see the results of the shadow area manipulation by jacking up the brightness slider in the 'color' page.

that's all I got.. helps so far on a dark in-bar shot i've been using as a test..
 
I put up a thread on scanning color neg using manual rather than automatic with my MK 5400. It is on Photo.Net , digital darkroom, 1/30/2007. Last night I added the sample scans.

Basicaly I do a manual prescan, open the exposure control tab, move the three RGB sliders to the right to bring up the density. They adjust the color and finally the density.

Save the settings for the next time you do that film with the save setting function and next time recall with load setting.

Take several evenings to read the software manua and find where all the necessary settings are. It is overly complicated, but once you get it and find the controls, the software works VERY WELL.
 
I might add that you need to apply the changed settings with the icon in the tool bar. This is a pain in that you need to make a change, click an icon, make a change, apply.
 
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