Scanning woes, need some advice

[DougK]

I just got some autumn color slides I shot with my Trip 35 last weekend back and boy oh boy, is that a nice lens! However, I'm going through fits trying to get decent scans so I can show 'em off to y'all. I just can't seem to get decent scans from negatives or slides; prints seem to scan fairly well but everything else comes out muddy and all the sharpness from my lenses gets lost. I've tried VueScan which has done an excellent job on prints but chokes when I try to scan anything other than prints. :bang:

Can anybody provide some suggestions to a scanning newbie on recommended dpi, target image size settings, and other such that they use to get good results? I'm fully prepared to hear that I bought an inadequate tool for the job (Epson 2580 Photo), but since my budget won't stand running out and buying another scanner, I'd like to get the best I can out of what I've got for the time being. I'd hate to have these shots sit in a box where they can't be appreciated (plus a friend at work is already begging for a couple of my pics to use as wallpaper and I'd hate to disappoint her...).

Thanks in advance!

 

[rover]

Well, first of all, when it comes to the interested young lady, get to a camera shop and have those slides scanned by a pro so you can present her with a CD on Monday.

Now, regarding your scanner, what exactly have you done to try to scan your slides? I have an Epson 3200 and don't take a lot of slides, but I have had some success scanning them with the Epson software.

 

[DougK]

Well, I've tried using the included Epson software in auto, home, and professional modes, but the highest resolution I can convince the software to use is 800 dpi; I had to lie and tell it I was trying to make an 11x17 print. This produced tolerable results color-wise, but the file was unworkably huge and still didn't reflect the sharpness and detail that was in the projected slide. I know I'm going to lose a little of that, but it still seemed overly muddy to me.

When I tried VueScan last night, the scanner froze up and wouldn't even respond. I thought this was odd, since it works to scan prints with few problems, although again, I'm not getting anywhere close to the sharpness in the print.

I rather suspect there's a large component of user error in this whole situation, but I'm just not sure where I'm making my mistakes. I'm wondering if I should just crank the resolution, tell it scan to the original size, and then worry about resizing in Photoshop?

 

[DougK]

I think I figured it out. I was messing myself up by telling it what size to print. If I just tell the Epson software "target size original", it lets me crank the resolution as high as I want/need to.

Now that I've gotten past the cerebral flatulence, hopefully I'll be able to get some scans for y'all and post some of my stuff soon.