Scanning Woes...

JamSee

JamSee

James Craig
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Hello everyone,

I'm asking for a little advice... I have been using my Coolscan IV ED for a few years now, and have had quite a rocky relationship with it. I have never been happy with the scans that it has produced; I thought that it was the scanner that was overexposing and causing a hazy cast over many of the scans.

I made the switch to Vuescan from NikonScan and the changes were dramatic; The colours and/or tones were far more faithful to the prints or negs.

However, the scans are still not as sharp as I would like. After shooting and scanning 2 rolls of Velvia 50 last week I am a little disappointed. The transparencies are far better looking, and sharper than the scans.

There are so many variables that I don't know where I may be going wrong; Have I reached the the scanners limit in capabilities, perhaps I am too expectant of the scans, or is there something I am missing in Vuescan?

Here are some images from those 2 rolls. They look ok for the most part, but enlarged on my monitor the sharpness is just not there.

Any thoughts appreciated, and apologies for this long whiney post!

James.
 
DN,

The grain is very soft when viewed 1:1... I'll post a fullsize crop asap. Again, perhaps I am being too critical of a 10-yr old scanner.
 
JamSee said:
Here are some images from those 2 rolls. They look ok for the most part, but enlarged on my monitor the sharpness is just not there.
Click to expand...
I had the same complaints when I viewed my first scans.

Viewing a 2900dpi scan at 100% magnification on screen ruthlessly exposes any motion blur in film-based pictures.

Can you see film grain in your scans at 100%? If so, the problem is rather in your shooting technique and not in your scan.


Did you also try to verify scan sharpness on a BW film (not a chromogenic one)? These films have more clearly defined grain, which might help you to better diagnose the problem.
 
4627012892_4c2f713cc5_o.jpg


A 100% crop of this.

I sharpened the image in LR. Is this normal quality?

While on the topic; is it advisable to save as a tiff over jpeg, and to use 64 bits per pixel for both input and the tiff? The jpeg comes out around 5 meg, while the tiff is around 30-40... I'm seeing marginal improvements in IQ between them 😕.

Thanks for your responses, going to scan in monochrome now.

James.
 
My $0.02 If you're looking at these at 100% and expecting razor sharpness then yes, your expectations are too high. Frankly they look good to me. How do they print?

If you still feel they're not sharp enough then a little USM in Photoshop is all that is needed.
 
You could use Unsharp Mask like said or any really great plugin on sale over the web. One of my favorite is the Nik Software.

It's sure you can't expect drumscan Imacon results with your Coolscan, but... This seems to be a pretty good scan. Maybe the Nikonscan add some kind of sharpening that Vuescan does not. I get pretty good result with the Vuescan, but yes they are soft. It's still the same scanner but the algorithms used are different. I clearly prefer to add the sharpening myself in photoshop than the one used automatically in the scan software, far more powerful, but time consuming....
 
Just commenting on the scan - it is not a very large crop - I agree (I guess about 2400 spi). But it was shot obviously rather wide open where the lenses just do not perform at their best. In my experience a 2400 spi scan from sharp low ISO slide looks sharp with just small amount of unsharp masking.

Just make a photo on a slide film of some contrasty object (flat or larger distance) at f/5.6 - f/11 and post a few 2400 spi scans. If you still do not get results you like you may send a few slides to a lab that uses either Coolscan 5000 or Imacon (or better of course).

TIFF - vs - JPEG: if you are getting close-to-perfect scans that need nearly no adjustment at all then JPEG would work. But as soon as you start towork with levels, curves and colors you will see that you miss the image information that was lost in the compression (mostly the color tones).

Also - try scanning with larger resolution (3000 - 4000 spi) and sample down to 2400 whether you get better results as with straight 2400 spi. This is sometimes the case (especially with lover end scanners, even though your Nikon should be quite good).
 
I think your scans look pretty much like I'd expect. Do you have an example of a 100% where a smaller f stop was used?

I'd recommend always saving to tif, you can do so much more in lightroom with a tif than a jpg. Though some people on the web recommend otherwise, I think you should always scan at the highest dpi possible, especially with slow, fine grained film like Velvia.
 
Pixels v. Grain

Pixels v. Grain

2900 DPI will not show grain in Velvia, you would need at least 5000 DPI.
I see pixels from the size of your scan, you should be able to make a good 8X10 from what you are doing with a decent printer.

Are you looking for an excuse to buy a newer scanner?

Tell your wife that I said that you need a better scanner, but between you me and the wall, what you are making at that resolution is just fine and to be expected.

I can find the grain in Velvia with my 9000ED, but it is just there. Good scanners can find the grain, but only the best scanners can find detail in shadows, grain be damned. It's all about latitude, I'm sure that if you start judging your scans from that angle you'll have much more to be legitimately concerned with.
 
Thanks all for your input!

It's reassuring to hear that the scans are as expected.

My major concern here was that the scanner was missing focus, and on my limited budget I cannot afford an upgrade right now!

bmasonoh: I haven't had the chance to print yet, I don't have my own printer, but I'll have access to one soon! 🙂

Double Negative: Thanks for the tiff info.

Matus: Unfortunately the coolscan IV has a max dpi of 2900. I guess this is one of the major drawbacks here.

Oh Two: I'd love a new scanner! But the advice here suggests that my results are par for the course with this scanner and dpi...

I'd be interested to hear how you manage your workflows re: Files. Do you save original tiff files, and then have another set of modified files that you have worked on?

Regards,

James.
 
Last edited:
I have been waiting for various epiphanies in scanning, but truly, I am no way any kind of expert.

That said, the Coolscan 4000 is really a very good scanner, am not sure what you could really upgrade to. I would love the 8000 or 9000, for MF, though I picked up the Epson V750 for that purpose.

For 35mm, I think the 5000 was pretty much the end of the line, and the big difference between the 4000 and 5000 as I understand it is the 5000 is USB not Firewire.

It really should do what you need if it is working right.

It is slow when scanning large Tifs, but it is a scanner best set up, turned on and walked away from for a few cups of coffee, and it also benefits from a good computer.

There is a website showing how to easily modify the feeder to take full uncut rolls, so you should get good workflow from it. The one I am thinking of also has tests with Vuscan and the Nikon scanning software, I am not convinced which is better.

When someone works out the shadow detail things on scanners, I am interested, for one. Digital cameras and files as well please.

If you take film in for printing, they are going to scan it, and I am pretty sure you are on your way to making better scans than they can for printing.

I believe my 4000 can scan about 64 MB Tifs from negatives.

Always like to hear more about several softwares for scanning, I am looking to upgrade my desktop and use it primarily for the three scanners I want to use more. I have a low cost larger format flat bed, and it works much better with the Twain on PS than the software that came with it, which seems to be saying there are combinations of scanners, computers, and software that are better than others.

Nice to see the contributions from those who have worked out some of these things.

Regards, John
 
You either have noise reduction (of any kind) on or the IV ED is not very sharp by default. I get sharper results with the EPSON V700 or my older Coolscan V.
 
I am happy with the scans of my V ED at 4000 dpi using Nikon Scan with all the bells and whistles activated. That is when I can get them. I have never been able to get more than 4 - 6 in a row without having to turn the scanner off and back on again to reset. The problems are divided 50/50 between:

a. Scanning just stops, the progress bar gives up, anywhere in the process — scanning or digital ice or processing image

b. Everything goes fine except an image will have misaligned bars or striations running through the short dimension

Turn it off and on or reboot and all is well again for the next 4 or 5 scans. I only have 2 gb memory so I think maybe an increase might help.
 
Last edited:
Dick: What sort of computer setup do you use for scanning? How much RAM/hard-disk space/processor speed do you have at your disposal? You certainly don't need last week's computer to scan well, but if the computer is straining to get the job done (as it sounds like, based on your description of your scanner's behavior), that's more than enough to cause problems.

James: I'm not sure if this has been touched upon by anyone, but have you tried focusing manually via VueScan's controls?

I agree that this scanner's maximum resolution won't easily tax the grain structure of a film like Velvia (my Minolta 5400 can do it, but something like a drum scanner or Imacon can show it better), so you might want to shoot a test roll of something just a bit faster, in a tripod-mounted camera, under somewhat-controlled conditions, then put the scanner through its paces.


- Barrett
 
amateriat said:
Dick: What sort of computer setup do you use for scanning? How much RAM/hard-disk space/processor speed do you have at your disposal? You certainly don't need last week's computer to scan well, but if the computer is straining to get the job done (as it sounds like, based on your description of your scanner's behavior), that's more than enough to cause problems.

- Barrett
Click to expand...

Thanks Barrett —
It's an HP Deskjet 4 yr old PC with AMD 64X2 processor, 2 GB RAM. I keep thinking a little more RAM might help. My HD is maybe 20% full. I also wonder if I could assign more temporary RAM to the HD or something like that.
 
Dick, I have had similar issues with my IV, the striations especially. Usually solved by a simple reset.

Barrett: what is the best method for manually focusing via vuescan?

Regards,

James.
 
James: I don't have the CS IV, but I recently got hold of the previous CS III. I rarely invoke manual focus (AF works beautifully on my Minolta 5400), but I'll check out how the CS III works with VueScan and get back to you.

Edit: When I bought my very first film scanner (a Nikon Coolscan LS-10) it was manual-focus only, and the Nikon Scan software at the time had a fairly simple manual-focus routine that worked rather nicely. I'll be finding out if VueScan manages this with similar elán, or not.


- Barrett
 
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I'd agree that the 100% crops are not as sharp as I am getting from my Coolscan 5000, or was getting from a Cooscan V. If the slides are out of focus, that could explain it. Otherwise, I'd wonder about the scanner's focus.

I've found that I get the best results using NikonScan with all advanced settings turned OFF. Set to max dpi, max bit depth. For convenience I usually turn on Digital ICE, but the 100% crops are slightly less sharp with it than without it (yet still sharper than your example above).

Note that you have to be careful when scanning batches with NikonScan - it tends to reset itself to some undesirable default settings unless you click all of the settings in a certain order before scanning. At least that is my experience...
 
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