{Bear in mind: I only scan negatives - I've never shot a slide film in my
life)I concur with Bob. I'm licensed for Vuescan, too. Originally I purchased it because there was strong support for the idea that "once mastered, its results are superior". I can't master it. I can't batch scan. I can't get consistent crops. When Vuescan doesn't know the film I'm scanning, it's a disaster. Also, I had an epiphany, some time ago. "Flat scans" of the type that Vuescan excels at producing are all very well in a technical sense, but I find that Levels/Curves cannot fix the vast majority of the "flat" images that Vuescan produces so that they have a comparable "vitality" to that shown by images produced by Nikon Scan. By vitality I don't merely mean contrast/black-point/white-point. I also mean the nature of the tonality of the image. Something related to the question of "gamma" and also the inherent S-shaped response that all films have (so far as I know). So, all the effort I put into obtaining the full tonal range in a negative (in the form of a flat scan) is wasted because I get distinctly more pleasing images from Nikon Scan. I honestly wish I hadn't chased the tail of "flat scans" for so long. They are not all they're cracked up to be. I realised that Nikon Scan was choosing, if it had to "clip", the clip I would have chosen to do. The vast majority of my images scanned from negatives don't, in fact, need to be clipped. So, nowadays I reserve Vuescan for occasional use to give me an alternative point of view on a "difficult" image. This happens once in, erm, a few hundred images. I have a shot of the moon which it rescued - terrible picture but of academic interest. I'm disappointed with Vuescan. Sometimes I give my opinion a reality check (e.g. with an upgrade of Vuescan) but I just can't get results I like. I think Vuescan is for the forensic photographers. I like that concept. Jawed > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Bob Kehl - > Kvernstoen, Kehl & Assoc. > Sent: 06 October 2001 15:46 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: filmscanners: Nikonscan and dual processors > > > NikonScan's GUI is amazingly simple, especially for full roll > scanning. It > gives a full roll prescan of thumbnails which allows you to select and > rotate frames you want to scan. It's much less hassle than > manually typing > in Vuescan frame numbers, frame offset, orientations, etc....all of which > need to be done while viewing your full roll of film on a > lightbox!?!. Not > all that practical. > > I'm a registered user of Vuescan, but I use NikonScan 3.1. Even > if I deduct > the crash and recovery time of NikonScan 3.1, it is faster and more hassle > free to use than Vuescan. > (sorry, Ed) > > Bob Kehl
