On 12/3/01 6:05 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, wrote: >I understand what you (and others) are asking for. I'd probably >implement this if someone could show (with actual scans) >that specifying a focus point manually works better than what >VueScan 7.2.11 already implements.
Here are two sample scans (one from VueScan, one from Nikon Scan) that show the benefit of a manually selected focus point: <http://julianv.home.mindspring.com/focus_test/focus_test.html> Just another indictment of the limited DOF in the Nikon scanners, which is why this feature is valuable. Note that this was just the first slide I grabbed, and not one which is unusually bowed. I could probably come up with more pathological samples. There is a difference in contrast between the Nikon Scan and VueScan images, and I did not try to equalize them. But I think you can still see that the NS image is sharper, and that is because I was able to set focus on the spot in the enlargement. Doug Segar's earlier comment was important. If VueScan has a fixed focus point, and that point happens to be in a featureless low-contrast area of the image, you might get a bad result from the autofocus system. Maybe you could get a better result by physically rotating the film, hoping that the focus point is now over a more suitable part of the image. But these Nikons need all the help they can get. When using Nikon Scan, I set focus on the most important part of the image, or I look for a point somewhere between the corners and the center, and also containing high contrast detail. That's another reason why a grapical UI (click to set) for focus point is preferable to x and y offsets entered as numbers. -- Julian Vrieslander <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>