Re: filmscanners: open and control
I just came in on this discussion on this note. Interestingly and coincidentally, I was reading Photogaphy Until Now by John Szarkowski this morning. My historical comments will of course be colored by what Szarkowski chose to tell me... Part of the popularity of Daguerre's method was the openness compared to Talbot's calotype. However, a large part was due to the product. The daguerratype astounded people. It was something new and different. The calotype was more of an extension of existing art at the time. Despite its popularity, the daguerreotype rather quickly reached the limits of its technology. The demise of the daguerreotype was due to more than it's openness. Modern photography can trace its roots to Talbot. After about 1850, both methods were superceded by the wet plate method. Wet plate ruled photography for the next 30 years. Aound 1880, wet plate was surplanted by the dry plate method, which was developed by many and popularized by Eastman. With wet plate, the photographer was required to control the entire process. Essentially, he had to create the plate, expose it and then develop it all on the spot. With dry plate, the chemistry became so difficult that the creation of the plate and often the developing was done by a third party. George Eastman made that third party ubiquitously Kodak. To paraphrase Szarkowski, after the adoption of dry plate, the methods and materials available to photographers were what Kodak and the other photographic companies decided to supply them. While the hard ball tactics of George Eastman and Kodak are legendary, they don't extend back in time to Daguerre and Fox Talbot ;). Anyway, I found it interesting... Andrew Robinson Lynn Allen wrote: Bob Croxford wrote (very interestingly): Daguerre was paid a pension by the French government to make his invention free to everyone, (except the Brits). Fox Talbot on the other hand controlled everything through his rigid patents. The result was that no one tried to circumvent the daguerreotype while lots of inventors tried, and succeeded, in circumventing Talbot's patents. The result was a huge boost to neg/pos photography while Daguerre's ideas stayed in a cul-de-sac. This is a story that I haven't read up on sufficiently, to my lasting shame. I know I *really* should stay out of this one, but you all knew I'd be drawn in, didn't you? ;-) It seems to me that George Eastman circumvented Talbot's and other patents very successfully vis-a-vis sensitized-paper and celuloid negatives--and then proceded to take over or eliminate almost every other film and camera-maker in the USA within a short span of time. This probably relates more to the variations of the nations' laws than to the hypotheses at hand, viz control vs. open, IMO.
Re: filmscanners: VueScan Question
Walter Bushell wrote: Dear Mr. Hamrick: Is it necessary to rescan with infrared every time, IOW, when doing multiple scans of the same film is it necessary to do an IR scan every time? With my ScanWit 2740 scanner it takes about 35 minutes to do a 16 pass scan (including the 16 IR scans), with a 666* Pentium III and 128 MB ram. With 48 bit scanning and heavy cleanup it does a great job on my problem film, but for a 4 fram shot its go take a walk time. * Dell says 667, but we really know what's happening. How dare Dell take such liberties with their rounding off of processor speeds. Off with their heads ;-) You raise a good point about the 2740 Acer. Unlike the other dICE scanners (which have an Infrared channel) which do the IR scan at the same time as the color scans, Acer requires a separate IR scan. It does seem a bit unnecessary to do 16 IR scans, one would think. Art
Re: filmscanners: Used Nikon LS-20 for sale
Karsten Petersen wrote: It sometimes makes subtle stripes in the very dark areas of a slide (that's the reason why I recently bought a Polaroid SS4000... quite happy with it!). I had it serviced by Nikon a couple of weeks ago (cost me DM351), they say these results are normal and due to the technical limitations of an 8-bit scanner. Thus, according to Nikon, the scanner is in perfect working condition. (If you ask me [or my photo gear supplier], that's a bunch of BS.) Can I ask you two silly questions? 1) Why did Nikon charge you DM351 to fix a scanner which was operating within the normal technical limitations of the scanner? 2) Why would you spend DM351 to have a scanner serviced which you were going to put on sale for less than the servicing cost? Art
Re: filmscanners: LS-4000 First Impressions WAS - Nikon Scan 3.0 crashes under Win98 SE
Hello, I'm using NikonScan 3 on CS - IV as a plugin inside photoshop and it never crashes, but I have problems saving cropsettings, It seems that NS is loosing its settings when I switch to another picture or even when I rotate the same picture, then I have to load the desired settings again. So lots of software problems has to be fixed by Nikon, (very soon I hope.) - Original Message - From: Enoch's Vision, Inc. (Cary Enoch R...) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 1:54 AM Subject: filmscanners: LS-4000 First Impressions WAS - Nikon Scan 3.0 crashes under Win98 SE At 23:36 02-06-01 +0200, Manfred E. Bendisch wrote: today I've received my new Nikon LS-4000. What a difference compared to my old HP photosmart. The problem is that the Nikon scanner software (Nikon Scan 3.0) constantly crashes, especially when I try to use ICE or other advanced features. I'm running Windows 98 Second Edition. Any ideas what might be wrong? I picked up my Nikon LS-4000 in Atlanta on Tuesday and am still getting familiar with it. I found that NikonScan is very unstable when used stand-alone. It can scan only one time and then it crashes. However, when I use its TWAIN module inside of Photoshop 6 it never crashes. I'm scanning a 40-year-old badly faded filmstrip with everything turned on, ICE, GEM, and especially ROC. The results so far have enthralled me. The original frames are so faded that they project in a dull nearly monochromatic reddish tone. The Nikon literally makes them look as good as new. I'll post some samples on the Web in a few days for list members to check out. Getting back to the crash issue: NikonScan (NS) appears to have serious problems with both memory and disk management. I tried Vuescan on a few slides and noticed that it saved files nearly twice as fast as NS did. Photoshop also saves files much faster than NS does. And Vuescan didn't crash, btw. Vuescan's equivalents to ROC and ICE are also much faster than NS's routines. I'm running Windows 2000/SP1 on a Dell Precision Workstation 420 with dual 933 MHz Piii CPUs and 768 MB RDRAM. Processing times are about 10% faster than those listed in the Nikon manual. That's still pretty slow but an acceptable trade-off for the magic that it does with damaged and faded film. Oddly, after exiting NS and Photoshop the system has about 50 MB more available RAM than it had before starting those applications. Despite that interesting anomaly the system doesn't become unstable. However, this indicates that NS has some serious bugs. Some suggestions for Win98 users: place both the TEMP folder and the system swapfile on any partition except C: (for efficiency) and make it a fixed size to prevent fragmentation. You can find out how to do that on scores of Windows performance tweak sites. Defrag your partitions before attempting to do very large scans. Think about expanding RAM to 512 MB. That's the maximum that Win98 can use because of a Microsoft bug that has never been fixed. Create multiple Photoshop swap files on different partitions. Upgrade to Win2K if possible. A few initial impressions: Don't try Digital ICE with Kodachrome. NS adds halos around the darker shadow areas and is totally ineffective. Vuescan does a better job with Kodachrome and doesn't have the halo problem. Old Fujichrome slides appear slightly greenish when scanned but it's correctable in PS. Nikon should have provided a way to store the film adapters and not just fragile plastic baggies. Given the price that I paid for the scanner this is very tacky. They should provide a case for them plus a dust cover for the scanner. On all but Kodachromes ICE and ROC seem to work better in NS than in Vuescan. I've scanned about 40 slides so far all of which needed ICE. The FH3 strip film attachment holds even badly curved film flat and I'm not seeing any edge sharpness issues so far. More to come . . . Cary Enoch Reinstein aka Enoch's Vision, Inc., Peach County, Georgia http://www.enochsvision.com/ http://www.bahaivision.com/ -- Behind all these manifestations is the one radiance, which shines through all things. The function of art is to reveal this radiance through the created object. ~Joseph Campbell
Re: filmscanners: LS4000 slide removed from mount
All of the Nikon F series, the Canon F1, and the Topcon had 100% viewfinder coverage. One of the reason most SLR did not was because registration (viewfinder/film image coincidence) did not need to be as precise. Jim Sims Enoch's Vision, Inc. (Cary Enoch R...) wrote: At 23:40 02-06-01 -0700, Arthur Entlich wrote: As some may know, almost all viewfinders, except one Contax and a couple of older Nikons (F2, I think) and maybe one other camera which give 100% view of what ends up on the film) The vast majority of camera view finders show only 92-96% of the image which is recorded to the film frame. Just FYI, the Canon EOS1n and EOS-1v have this ability. I use the former for copy work and rely on the 100% viewfinder feature extensively. I never shoot images all the way to the edge but with the 100% viewfinder coverage I don't have to worry about it either. I believe the Nikon F4 and F5 have the same capability. Cary Enoch Reinstein aka Enoch's Vision, Inc., Peach County, Georgia http://www.enochsvision.com/ http://www.bahaivision.com/ -- Behind all these manifestations is the one radiance, which shines through all things. The function of art is to reveal this radiance through the created object. ~Joseph Campbell
Re: filmscanners: VueScan Question
Rob writes ... Walter Bushell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is it necessary to rescan with infrared every time, IOW, when doing multiple scans of the same film is it necessary to do an IR scan every time? If you want to have the cleaning features in Vuescan work, you need the IR channel. Bu there's no need to rescan a frame. Scan it once, produce a raw file then crop from the raw file. Unlike Nikons, doesn't this scanner insist the IR channel scan separately from the RGB scan ... ie, a 2nd pass. I thought the original post was stating, if he wanted 16x RGB passes, it also scanned the IR 16x. There would indeed be no need for this. shAf :o)
Re: filmscanners: open and control
In a message dated 3/6/01 1:50:27 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I thought I read long ago that there was a patent taken out in England a short time before the French government bought the rights to the process and it was the patent that stopped the English using the process. Was it the French who took out the patent to stop the English using the process and did the patent apply in Scotland? Bob Armstrong Dear Bob All my books are packed away pending a move but I vaguely remember that one businessman persuaded Daguerre to take out a British patent. This man then set up a Daguerrotype studio in Holborn in London and made a small fortune because he had bought the sole licence. I don't know about Scotland. Studios were widespread throughout France and made a quick fortune. 400 pounds a day was achieved which was a small fortune in the mid 1800s. Some photographers are not able to charge that now! Bob Croxford Cornwall England www.atmosphere.co.uk
Re: filmscanners: which scanner for slides ?
I received several replies with helpful information from my original email. My choices seem to be Acer 2740 Canon FS2710 Minolta Scan Dual The Acer and Canon are SCSI connections and the Minolta is USB. I think I remember reading that slide scanners with USB sometimes cause problems. There have also been some problems with the Minolta that I have been reading on this group. If this is correct, I can limit my choices to the Acer or the Canon. The Acer appears to be very large and the slide holder can be difficult to load with plastic springs that are fragile. The Canon loads the slides vertically. The Acer comes with digital ICE. So far, I have not decided. Maybe another round of replies will help me decide. Thanks, This is my original email I have many color slides that I want to scan and make prints. Most of the prints will be 4x6 or 5x7 with an occasional 8x10. The scanner that falls in my price range of $400+ is the Minolta Scan Dual, but a friend of mine recommended a Nikon Coolscan, but the prices of the Nikon scanners seem to start at $800. Recently, I have seen messages about the Canon FS2710 and the Acer is also in this price range. Photography is my hobby and I have slides going back many years. I also take slides when I travel. What are your suggestions for a scanner to meet my needs? Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: filmscanners: open and control
B.Rumary [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: big snip Ansco managed to hold out the longest, but is gone now except for the name. I think Ansco were killed by the fiasco of Anscochrome colour film. As I understand it this was brought out in the fifties. Photographers thought it was wonderful, as it had a much higher speed than Kodachrome, which at that time was only about 10ASA. They saw that they could no take colour slides of fast moving subjects, or in lower light conditions - great!! However it was not so great a few years later when they found all the colours were fading from their Ansco slides! Anscochrome was not chemically stable, while Kodachrome has always been famous for its stability. I have some Ansco Color slides from the mid-1940s, and their color has become wonderously bizarre. However, they are of important family events and are still highly valued. We owe a big debt of gratitude to Ed Hamrick for the faded color correction capabilities in VueScan. The results on the Ansco slides is still pretty aweful, but so much better than without the corrections! --Dana
RE: filmscanners: which scanner for slides ?
I bought the Minolta Dual Scan II (note not Dual Scan...but the newer version) about two weeks ago (it is around the same price range as the Canon FS2710) and I haven't had any problems. Unfortunately nobody in my area sold the Acer, so for me it was choice between the Minolta vs. Canon. If you have a lot of old dirty slides, then I guess Acer with Digital ICE will be the one for you. For me I chose the Minolta: 1. better software control than the Canon. Canon's aquiring program sucks and is not as natural to use. Of course with both scanners you'll probably use Vuescan, but I still seem to can better scans with negatives with the Minolta OEM software... I dunno maybe i need to fiddle more. 2. Canon, you must scan one slide at a time. even with negatives, you need to move slider on the holder when you want to scan another. Minolta uses a tray system (which can be loud/noisy) but it can allow 4 slides at a time and 6 negatives. also sales person said that Minolta's tray system allows for straighter scans. sometimes the Canon scans are slightly crooked. 3. Minolta may be USB, but USB devices has the advantage of being hot-swappable which means they can be turned on after the computer has been booted, and it will be detected. If I remember correctly, SCSI devices need to be turned on before you boot the system, in order for the SCSI controller to detect it. I live out in Vancouver, Canada and there is a Minolta factory service depot nearby so I'm not too worried about servicing...I can drop it off myself if necessary (whereas the Canon scanner needs to mailed out to a service depot in the next province...). I know that we have seen several people complain about banding on the Minoltas, but again i haven't seen anything wrong with mine so far... you can read more at this thread: http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=001OVc Just my 2 CDN cents... -Dave. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jerry Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 12:59 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: which scanner for slides ? I received several replies with helpful information from my original email. My choices seem to be Acer 2740 Canon FS2710 Minolta Scan Dual snip
Re: filmscanners: which scanner for slides ?
3. Minolta may be USB, but USB devices has the advantage of being hot-swappable which means they can be turned on after the computer has been booted, and it will be detected. If I remember correctly, SCSI devices need to be turned on before you boot the system, in order for the SCSI controller to detect it. Generally in Win 9x/ME you can turn any device on and go to device manager of system properties and click on refresh and the device will work. Remember with USB you can take your scanner anywhere and plug it into any modern machine - you'll probably need to install some drivers as well. The downside is speed and some USB devices don't like some USB controllers. My USB controller on a Via KT133 motherboard is a complete PITA. Steve
RE: filmscanners: open and control
A lot of people who talk about evading patents are confusing them with copyright, which is another thing entirely. While many people do confuse the two, one must be careful not to assume that the distinctions and uses of the two which exist in one country hold for another. I made that mistake once by assuming that because copyright, trademark, and patent have given uses and meanings in the US they had the same meanings and uses in other places like the UK. Until recently, copyrights in the US were valid for a specific limited length of time and could be renewed multiple times by the original owner or those who had be assigned the copyright; currently copyrights in the US are valid for the life of the originator even if assigned to someone else, I believe, and are renewable for a limited length of time only once. Moreover, I believe that in the UK copyrights have a broader use than in the US. In the UK, I believe you can obtain a separate copyright for the design, design idea, and design concept of a patentable invention along with the patent for the actual invention; whereas, I do not think this is the case n the US where the patenting of an invention includes protection for the design, design idea, and design concept which is not a separable transaction. Tangible designs, design concepts, and design ideas or plans as abstract entities not tied to a particular concrete invention can be copyrighted, but not patented without being tied to a concrete invention. This, however, does nothing to undermine the main points which you have made. I just thought it was proper to suggest that the concepts being used should be regarded in terms of shades of gray across international borders and not in terms of black and white. :-) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of B.Rumary Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 11:15 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: open and control In 382693518.991527991110.JavaMail.root@web595-ec, Lynn Allen wrote: It seems to me that George Eastman circumvented Talbot's and other patents very successfully vis-a-vis sensitized-paper and celuloid negatives--and then proceded to take over or eliminate almost every other film and camera-maker in the USA within a short span of time. This probably relates more to the variations of the nations' laws than to the hypotheses at hand, viz control vs. open, IMO. Eastman did _not_ evade Talbot's patents, as they had expired by the time he got into the photo business. At that time British patents lasted 16 years and I believe that Talbot invented his Calotype paper negative process about 1849. By Eastman's time paper negs had long been replaced by glass plates. A lot of people who talk about evading patents are confusing them with copyright, which is another thing entirely. Patents cover the basic principles of an invention but only last 16-20 years. Copyright covers the exact design of a particular product, and last virtually for ever. However when something is out of patent, you can sell something that *looks* different, even if it conforms to the same basic principles. For instance if Henry Ford had patented the motor car, then no one could have sold another motor car until his patent ran out. After that they could have sold other designs of cars, but *not* an exact copy of the Model T, as to do so would have infringed his copyright on that design. Ansco managed to hold out the longest, but is gone now except for the name. I think Ansco were killed by the fiasco of Anscochrome colour film. As I understand it this was brought out in the fifties. Photographers thought it was wonderful, as it had a much higher speed than Kodachrome, which at that time was only about 10ASA. They saw that they could no take colour slides of fast moving subjects, or in lower light conditions - great!! However it was not so great a few years later when they found all the colours were fading from their Ansco slides! Anscochrome was not chemically stable, while Kodachrome has always been famous for its stability. As for US-made cameras being killed off by Kodak, I think it is much more a case of them being wiped out first by the Germans and then the Japanese. Brian Rumary, England http://freespace.virgin.net/brian.rumary/homepage.htm
Re: filmscanners: open and control
Bob Croxford wrote: All my books are packed away pending a move but I vaguely remember that one businessman persuaded Daguerre to take out a British patent. This man then set up a Daguerrotype studio in Holborn in London and made a small fortune because he had bought the sole licence. I don't know about Scotland. Studios were widespread throughout France and made a quick fortune. 400 pounds a day was achieved which was a small fortune in the mid 1800s. Some photographers are not able to charge that now! Pah! I sneeze on your 400 pounds a day! hee, hee, hee (wiz a frensh aczent). Hope the move goes well. I would love to read further about the history of this; perhaps you would mail me with details of your relevant books when you have a spare minute. Regards Bob Armstrong
