[filmscanners] RE: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Geoff, The SS120 compares favorably with the Precision II. Ian Lyons did a comparison and posted on his web site. I have talked to several customers who have evaluated both . The consensus is the Precision II is better but only by a narrow margin and it is 2 or 3 times the price. Imacon's software is very good, on the same level as Silverfast but some find the film carrier a pain for 35mm. Personally I feel pretty good to be in the same ballpark as the Precision at 2 or 3 times the price. David -Original Message- From: geoff murray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2002 8:02 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK Hi David, That prompts the question, how does the Imacon compare to the Polaroid SS120? Bearing in mind that there is still a significant price difference and that you are allowed to be a fraction biased :-) Geoff - Original Message - From: Hemingway, David J [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 10:50 AM Subject: [filmscanners] RE: New price on Flextight Photo in UK I own a Flextight and called Imacon Tech support to find out if sharpening was shut of at 0. They told me it was not, I asked why and they told me the programmers thought everyone would want some sharpening. I confirmed this with Andrew Rodney. David Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
On Mon, 11 Mar 2002 17:35:31 +1100 geoff murray ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Is Ice in the future of the SS120? No, since scanners which don't have an IR channel cannot support ICE. However Polaroid have an interesting standalone dust removal prog in beta which works very well to locally repair minor gunge IME, with no loss of sharpness. It's an extra processing step and requires operator brain to contruct a mask so is not automatic, but is far faster and easier than spotting out a rash with the clone tool, and no IR is required. The cheeky monkeys have badged it Digital Fire ;) Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio exhibit; + film scanner info comparisons Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
On Sun, 10 Mar 2002 22:48:23 -0500 Hemingway, David J ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: The SS120 compares favorably with the Precision II. SS120 = ~2,200GBP Imacon Photo = 4,000GBP Citroen Saxo 1.4 = 6,000GBP Imacon Precision II = 10,000GBP Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio exhibit; + film scanner info comparisons Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
- Original Message - From: Simon Lamb [EMAIL PROTECTED] snip Now, given the recent price reductions, for another £1,000 more than the competition, I can't see any reason to consider any other scanner over the Flextight. I am always open to contrary views though, and if anyone can provide good reasons not to go the Flextight route (barring saving the money) then I would take all advice on board. snip While I agree that the Imacon scanner line is undoubtedly high quality, here's a couple of points to remember if you are working with 35mm: You have to unmount/remount each slide and position it in the curved film holder one at a time - this is a major hasle if you are scanning a lot of slides. Second, the Flextight Photo is only 3200 ppi - not REALLY sufficient 35mm resolution for double page spreads in magazines. So, I would have to splash out for the big brother, giving 5700 ppi - but now we are talking a lot more money. I have been very happy with Polaroid's SS4000 - scanned 11.000 slides so far - but there are, fairly frequently, moments where a polarized, dark blue sky on a Velvia comes out a mess - and I wish for an Imacon, somehow hoping that it could solve the problem. I tried the SS120, which I think is a very good scanner if you do medium format, but I did not see any improvement - worth the investment - of my 35 mm scans of troublesome slides. I would like to see the Minolta Multi Pro's 4800ppi and claimed high dynamic range compared with the Imacon Flextight II or is it now III? Preben Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] RE: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
I would like to see the Minolta Multi Pro's 4800ppi and claimed high dynamic range compared with the Imacon Flextight II or is it now III? Preben I have the Minolta, and would be happy to participate in such a comparison. But does not the price difference make comparison moot? And who will establish the protocol? M. Denis Hill Qualified Panoramic Photographer Proud Member of the International Association of Panoramic Photographers www.area360.com I have made this letter a rather long one, only because I didn't have the leisure to make it shorter. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.325 / Virus Database: 182 - Release Date: 2/19/2002 Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Now, given the recent price reductions, for another £1,000 more than the competition, I can't see any reason to consider any other scanner over the Flextight. I am always open to contrary views though, and if anyone can provide good reasons not to go the Flextight route (barring saving the money) then I would take all advice on board. With the current price reductions, the Flextight sounds pretty competitive. When I was doing my comparisons, the Flextight II was 4x the price of the Nikon/Polaroid scanners. The Flextight II was also slow, noisy in the shadows, and the PC software wasn't very good. The Photo seems to be a better all around scanner, and if I was in your position, given the new pricing, I'd certainly give it a serious look. It's not the scanner for everyone though. If you have a lot of 35mm slides, you'll need to remove them from their mounts. This may or may not be acceptable to you, if your scanning volume is high. Of course, you could always get your slide film returned unmounted and that would take care of the problem. Another potential issue is scanning long 120 negs (panoramas). I had difficulty with the film buckling towards the end of the scan. Film base varies quite a bit between type and brand, so this is another issue that may or may not be a problem for you. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Moreno Polloni wrote: Now, given the recent price reductions, for another £1,000 more than the competition, I can't see any reason to consider any other scanner over the Flextight. I am always open to contrary views though, and if anyone can provide good reasons not to go the Flextight route (barring saving the money) then I would take all advice on board. With the current price reductions, the Flextight sounds pretty competitive. When I was doing my comparisons, the Flextight II was 4x the price of the Nikon/Polaroid scanners. The Flextight II was also slow, noisy in the shadows, and the PC software wasn't very good. The Photo seems to be a better all around scanner, and if I was in your position, given the new pricing, I'd certainly give it a serious look. It's not the scanner for everyone though. If you have a lot of 35mm slides, you'll need to remove them from their mounts. This may or may not be acceptable to you, if your scanning volume is high. Of course, you could always get your slide film returned unmounted and that would take care of the problem. Another potential issue is scanning long 120 negs (panoramas). I had difficulty with the film buckling towards the end of the scan. Film base varies quite a bit between type and brand, so this is another issue that may or may not be a problem for you. Good points you raise. I always get my 35mm slides unmounted and I mount the ones that I wish to file, so that is not problem. The panoramas would not be a problem either as I don't really do any. As for film base, there are about fifty profiles for various film types in the scanning software. How good they all are remains ot be seen. Simon Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
It sounds like you're confusing chrome and neg scan capability using CCD scanners. Seeing all the dynamic range in color neg shadows is cake for nearly any scanner, as this is the part of the film with least density above film base plus fog. I will disagree with your assessment of the LS-30 and Vuescan after owning that scanner for a few years. With color negs particularly Vuescan blows away what you can get with concurrent versions of NikonScan in terms of tone scale accuracy (in the shadows particularly), and in the absence of NikonScan's famous jaggies. In terms of real world results, particularly if looking at resulting prints, I would put the lowly LS-30 up against better scanners with inferior software if one stays within the resolution limits imposed by the LS-30, and expect better results. More than once I've heard knowledgeable folks say the software is more important than the scanner (within reasonable limits). Apparently Flextight has sharpening at the default settings. Regarding edge to edge sharpness, there are less expensive ways to get film flat for scanning than buying a Flextight. Please note I'm not saying there is anything wrong with Flextight scanners beyond the disadvantageous price/performance ratios. Dave - Original Message - From: Simon Lamb [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 6:20 PM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK Dave I accept that the software can assist in pulling more information out of a negative but if the scanner does not have the capability in the hardware to read it then it isn't going to materialise in the output scan file. I doubt that Vuescan will ever get my lowly LS30 to perform better than it does now, and it will never meet the level of the Flextight, SS120, MDSMP or Nikon 8000. I have seen the review of the MDSMP where a scan showed a lot of noise in a particularly dark part of the scan. 16x multisampling erradicated most of it although there was visible banding. Simon Dave King wrote: I didn't say edge to edge sharpness is a software issue, but shadow detail and noise in color negs scans certainly is. That is the part of the neg that is the easiest for the hardware to deal with. Dave - Original Message - From: Simon Lamb [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 6:08 AM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK That is not so Dave. Edge to edge sharpness is not a software issue, it is a film flatness issue in the scaner, and an area where the curving of the film in the Flextight helps greatly. Shadow detail, and particularly noise in teh shadow detail, is not a software issue, it is an issue of how the scanning light source and hardware create the noise and accentuate grain. The depth of detail extracted from the shadow areas is not a software issue (altough software can help) but also to do with the Dmax of the scanner. Colour and clarity can also be assisted using Vuwscan, but the scanner has to be able to record them reasonably accurately in the first place. I am confident that Vuescan will not help to resolve some of these issue, particularly edge to edge sharpness. I use Vuescan all the time and will try and re-do my comparison using it with the SS120 and MSMP. Simon Dave King wrpte: When you're scanning color negs software is the determining factor in all the parameters you mention except detail resolution. I don't know how much the price of the Flextight has fallen, but those using the other scanners you mention can take heart in the fact that Vuescan exists. David Lewiston wrote: Simon To answer my own question about 'how much scanner?'... Just did another websearch on Imacon. At the Luminous Landscape site I found the following entry for Oct 24, 2001: At the beginning of this month Imacon announced that they had reduced the price of the Imacon Flextight Photo to US$6,495 from its original price of $9,995. I have just been informed that Imacon is currently offering a limited-time US$1,500 mail-in rebate which effectively reduces the net cost to the end-user to $4,995. It seems to be the Flextight 1, which does 35mm only at a resolution of 3,200 dpi, about half the resolution of its big brother. David It is indeed the Flextight Photo. I used this in the dealer to scan a 35mm and 6x6 neg on a Sprintscan 120, Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro and the Flextight Photo. At 3200 dpi and with a Dmax of 4.1 the Flextight blew the others away with far superior scans in detail (shadow and highlight), clarity, colour, edge to edge sharpness etc. etc. I will be getting my one on Monday :-) Simon Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Good points you raise. I always get my 35mm slides unmounted and I mount the ones that I wish to file, so that is not problem. The panoramas would not be a problem either as I don't really do any. As for film base, there are about fifty profiles for various film types in the scanning software. How good they all are remains ot be seen. What I was referring to about film bases was that they vary in rigidity and thickness, and this may affect how well they travel through the Imacon transport. Some 6x9's and 6x12's were problematic. 4x5 films went throught the Flextight II flawlessly; same with 35mm slides or negs. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
From: Austin Franklin [EMAIL PROTECTED] I accept that the software can assist in pulling more information out of a negative Simon Boy, do I disagree with that... How on earth can software pull more information out of a negative, aside from the control of the light source and the analog gain stage prior to the A/D? Those aren't software issues, but operator or firmware/calibration issues. Austin The problem is calibration settings may appear to be available in many of the prosumer sofware packages, but irreversable clipping and tone scale truncations still occur. Dave Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Austin Franklin wrote: Personally, I wouldn't give too much weight to film profile availability...once you get the hang of setting black and white points, and curves, you'll probably forget all about them. Could you say more on this subject, please, for a newcomer who is just beginning to learn to use a brand new Polaroid SprintScan 4000 Plus. Thanks. Rodger Kingston Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Preben wrote: --- I have been very happy with Polaroid's SS4000 - scanned 11.000 slides so far - but there are, fairly frequently, moments where a polarized, dark blue sky on a Velvia comes out a mess - and I wish for an Imacon, somehow hoping that it could solve the problem. I tried the SS120, which I think is a very good scanner if you do medium format, but I did not see any improvement - worth the investment - of my 35 mm scans of troublesome slides. --- Don't mean to beat the horse too much, but isn't this also a pretty typical software/color management issue? I would guess Vuescan and well sorted CM would solve this problem. Dave Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Dave King wrote: SNIP: I will disagree with your assessment of the LS-30 and Vuescan after owning that scanner for a few years. With color negs particularly Vuescan blows away what you can get with concurrent versions of NikonScan in terms of tone scale accuracy (in the shadows particularly), and in the absence of NikonScan's famous jaggies. In terms of real world results, particularly if looking at resulting prints, I would put the lowly LS-30 up against better scanners with inferior software if one stays within the resolution limits imposed by the LS-30, and expect better results. More than once I've heard knowledgeable folks say the software is more important than the scanner (within reasonable limits). Dave I have had the LS30 for years too and have used Vuescan since it was first developed. What I meant was that I do not see any future version of Vuescan that will enable me to get more out of my LS30 than Vuescan does today. I just worded it badly ;-) Simon Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
- Original Message - From: Austin Franklin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2002 8:35 PM Subject: [filmscanners] RE: New price on Flextight Photo in UK Hi Dave, Calibration settings is the wrong term. What I meant is the software interface leads one to think there is enough control over tone range that clipping and compressions that can't be reversed are avoidable, and is really not a hardware issue at all AFAIK. If I understand what it is you are talking about, that is neither a software OR a hardware issue. It is a bit depth issue, as well as an operator understanding issue. You should NOT be doing tonal moves with grayscale in 8 bits, but you can get away with doing moves in an 8 bit space with color, since 8 bit color is really 24 bits ALL tonal moves in grayscale must be done in high bit mode, or you will drop codes (get combing in your histogram, and possibly get posterization). Is that what you were talking about? Regards, Austin - Close to what I'm talking about. What I'm saying is even though many scan drivers let you think you have the ability to set end points they still clip. And even though they are presumably doing hi-bit raw file processing, there are still compression tragedies occurring in shadow tonalities, resulting in the sort of posterized and crummy looking shadows that Simon Lamb was seeing and talking about at the very beginning of this thread. Color crossovers are also a fairly common problem IME. One solution is to edit raw scans, or easier, use a software driver that allows lower contrast results, and uses good enough film terms. Part of VueScan's quality secret may be use of the color neg film terms developed by Kodak for Pro Photo CD. Pro Photo CD scans of color negs are among the best I've seen, particularly in conjunction with PS 6's improvements to Photo CD handling. Dave Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
That is not so Dave. Edge to edge sharpness is not a software issue, it is a film flatness issue in the scaner, and an area where the curving of the film in the Flextight helps greatly. Shadow detail, and particularly noise in teh shadow detail, is not a software issue, it is an issue of how the scanning light source and hardware create the noise and accentuate grain. The depth of detail extracted from the shadow areas is not a software issue (altough software can help) but also to do with the Dmax of the scanner. Colour and clarity can also be assisted using Vuwscan, but the scanner has to be able to record them reasonably accurately in the first place. I am confident that Vuescan will not help to resolve some of these issue, particularly edge to edge sharpness. I use Vuescan all the time and will try and re-do my comparison using it with the SS120 and MSMP. Simon Dave King wrpte: When you're scanning color negs software is the determining factor in all the parameters you mention except detail resolution. I don't know how much the price of the Flextight has fallen, but those using the other scanners you mention can take heart in the fact that Vuescan exists. Dave - Original Message - From: Simon Lamb [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 5:39 PM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK David Lewiston wrote: Simon To answer my own question about 'how much scanner?'... Just did another websearch on Imacon. At the Luminous Landscape site I found the following entry for Oct 24, 2001: At the beginning of this month Imacon announced that they had reduced the price of the Imacon Flextight Photo to US$6,495 from its original price of $9,995. I have just been informed that Imacon is currently offering a limited-time US$1,500 mail-in rebate which effectively reduces the net cost to the end-user to $4,995. It seems to be the Flextight 1, which does 35mm only at a resolution of 3,200 dpi, about half the resolution of its big brother. David It is indeed the Flextight Photo. I used this in the dealer to scan a 35mm and 6x6 neg on a Sprintscan 120, Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro and the Flextight Photo. At 3200 dpi and with a Dmax of 4.1 the Flextight blew the others away with far superior scans in detail (shadow and highlight), clarity, colour, edge to edge sharpness etc. etc. I will be getting my one on Monday :-) Simon -- -- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
From: Simon Lamb [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 11:08:16 - Simon! I think you have done a good conclusion here. If you go back in the mailing list you found what I have been written about film flatness problems . I did last summer a test with my own 3 scanners LS2000. LS4000 and Polaroid 35+ against Imacon Photo. None of them could match the Imacon scanner in sharpness and Dmax. Comparing a picture from LS4000 and Imacon Photo , the Nikon LS 4000 picture are so inferior to the Imacon that I recommend Nikon to rebuild and improve the scanner before they are selling this crap. Last week I did a new scanner test who shows that also a Minolta Elite 2 scanner at 2800ppi outperformed my LS4000 regarding over all sharpness. The Minolta scanner cost about the half price of a Nikon LS 4000 scanner. , Nikonscan , Silverfast and now Vuescan allows us to decide focus point manually. This helps a little bit against curved film problem but not 100% The depth of field are still to short in the LS4000 and LS 2000 scanner construction. Some people believes that Vuescan are doing something else that Nikonscan or Silverfast or other scanner software's not are capable to do. All software's are working in a similar way regarding calculation of a picture. The Imacons software and scanners are outstanding regarding all parameters and counts to the semi or high end destop scanners leuge.The rest are still mid end scanners. Mikael Risedal That is not so Dave. Edge to edge sharpness is not a software issue, it is a film flatness issue in the scaner, and an area where the curving of the film in the Flextight helps greatly. Shadow detail, and particularly noise in teh shadow detail, is not a software issue, it is an issue of how the scanning light source and hardware create the noise and accentuate grain. The depth of detail extracted from the shadow areas is not a software issue (altough software can help) but also to do with the Dmax of the scanner. Colour and clarity can also be assisted using Vuwscan, but the scanner has to be able to record them reasonably accurately in the first place. I am confident that Vuescan will not help to resolve some of these issue, particularly edge to edge sharpness. I use Vuescan all the time and will try and re-do my comparison using it with the SS120 and MSMP. Simon Dave King wrpte: When you're scanning color negs software is the determining factor in all the parameters you mention except detail resolution. I don't know how much the price of the Flextight has fallen, but those using the other scanners you mention can take heart in the fact that Vuescan exists. Dave - Original Message - From: Simon Lamb [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 5:39 PM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK David Lewiston wrote: Simon To answer my own question about 'how much scanner?'... Just did another websearch on Imacon. At the Luminous Landscape site I found the following entry for Oct 24, 2001: At the beginning of this month Imacon announced that they had reduced the price of the Imacon Flextight Photo to US$6,495 from its original price of $9,995. I have just been informed that Imacon is currently offering a limited-time US$1,500 mail-in rebate which effectively reduces the net cost to the end-user to $4,995. It seems to be the Flextight 1, which does 35mm only at a resolution of 3,200 dpi, about half the resolution of its big brother. David It is indeed the Flextight Photo. I used this in the dealer to scan a 35mm and 6x6 neg on a Sprintscan 120, Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro and the Flextight Photo. At 3200 dpi and with a Dmax of 4.1 the Flextight blew the others away with far superior scans in detail (shadow and highlight), clarity, colour, edge to edge sharpness etc. etc. I will be getting my one on Monday :-) Simon -- -- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Mikael Risedal Photographer _ Kom med i världens största e-posttjänst; MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com/sv Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest
[filmscanners] RE: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
I think you have done a good conclusion here. If you go back in the mailing list you found what I have been written about film flatness problems . I did last summer a test with my own 3 scanners LS2000. LS4000 and Polaroid 35+ against Imacon Photo. None of them could match the Imacon scanner in sharpness and Dmax. How do you know that any of the scanners weren't doing some sharpening on their own? I'm asking if you confirmed that they weren't... I would specifically suspect the Imacon did some sharpening...I don't know about the others. Austin Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
From: Austin Franklin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [filmscanners] RE: New price on Flextight Photo in UK Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 10:17:14 -0500 Imacon has a build in USM equal to about 60%.. radius 1+ tresh. 1 in the sofware Even if I try to increase sharpness a lot in PS with other scanners pictures they are not good as Imacon in sharpness. Mikael Risedal I think you have done a good conclusion here. If you go back in the mailing list you found what I have been written about film flatness problems . I did last summer a test with my own 3 scanners LS2000. LS4000 and Polaroid 35+ against Imacon Photo. None of them could match the Imacon scanner in sharpness and Dmax. How do you know that any of the scanners weren't doing some sharpening on their own? I'm asking if you confirmed that they weren't... I would specifically suspect the Imacon did some sharpening...I don't know about the others. Austin Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Mikael Risedal Photographer _ Chatta med vänner online, prova MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.se Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Austin Franklin wrote: I think you have done a good conclusion here. If you go back in the mailing list you found what I have been written about film flatness problems . I did last summer a test with my own 3 scanners LS2000. LS4000 and Polaroid 35+ against Imacon Photo. None of them could match the Imacon scanner in sharpness and Dmax. How do you know that any of the scanners weren't doing some sharpening on their own? I'm asking if you confirmed that they weren't... I would specifically suspect the Imacon did some sharpening...I don't know about the others. Austin All sharpening was off, we double checked it to ensure an even test. We also turned it on to see the difference and, to be honest, the Flextight was as sharp with sharpening turned off as the other two were with it turned on. Turning sharpening on in the Flextight did produce absolutely stunning scans, the best I have seen I think. I have sent an email to Imacon to check that there is no hardware sharpening being done without the being aware of it. Simon Simon Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
I think you have done a good conclusion here. If you go back in the mailing list you found what I have been written about film flatness problems . I did last summer a test with my own 3 scanners LS2000. LS4000 and Polaroid 35+ against Imacon Photo. None of them could match the Imacon scanner in sharpness and Dmax. How do you know that any of the scanners weren't doing some sharpening on their own? I'm asking if you confirmed that they weren't... I would specifically suspect the Imacon did some sharpening...I don't know about the others. I tested a Flextight II last year, and later found out that even with software sharpening set at 0, there's still a significant amount of sharpening applied. To turn off software sharpening, a fairly large negative value has to be entered, something like -100 or -200. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
I didn't say edge to edge sharpness is a software issue, but shadow detail and noise in color negs scans certainly is. That is the part of the neg that is the easiest for the hardware to deal with. Dave - Original Message - From: Simon Lamb [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 6:08 AM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK That is not so Dave. Edge to edge sharpness is not a software issue, it is a film flatness issue in the scaner, and an area where the curving of the film in the Flextight helps greatly. Shadow detail, and particularly noise in teh shadow detail, is not a software issue, it is an issue of how the scanning light source and hardware create the noise and accentuate grain. The depth of detail extracted from the shadow areas is not a software issue (altough software can help) but also to do with the Dmax of the scanner. Colour and clarity can also be assisted using Vuwscan, but the scanner has to be able to record them reasonably accurately in the first place. I am confident that Vuescan will not help to resolve some of these issue, particularly edge to edge sharpness. I use Vuescan all the time and will try and re-do my comparison using it with the SS120 and MSMP. Simon Dave King wrpte: When you're scanning color negs software is the determining factor in all the parameters you mention except detail resolution. I don't know how much the price of the Flextight has fallen, but those using the other scanners you mention can take heart in the fact that Vuescan exists. Dave - Original Message - From: Simon Lamb [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 5:39 PM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK David Lewiston wrote: Simon To answer my own question about 'how much scanner?'... Just did another websearch on Imacon. At the Luminous Landscape site I found the following entry for Oct 24, 2001: At the beginning of this month Imacon announced that they had reduced the price of the Imacon Flextight Photo to US$6,495 from its original price of $9,995. I have just been informed that Imacon is currently offering a limited-time US$1,500 mail-in rebate which effectively reduces the net cost to the end-user to $4,995. It seems to be the Flextight 1, which does 35mm only at a resolution of 3,200 dpi, about half the resolution of its big brother. David It is indeed the Flextight Photo. I used this in the dealer to scan a 35mm and 6x6 neg on a Sprintscan 120, Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro and the Flextight Photo. At 3200 dpi and with a Dmax of 4.1 the Flextight blew the others away with far superior scans in detail (shadow and highlight), clarity, colour, edge to edge sharpness etc. etc. I will be getting my one on Monday :-) Simon -- -- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Vuescans advantages over most software (haven't used Flextight's, but hear it's superb) has to do with the fact you can bring a scan into photoshop somewhere between raw and final, enabling difficult shadow transition edits that are far superior to most other software I've tried. It combines the qualities of editing raw files with the convenience of CM and good film terms Dave - Original Message - From: Mikael Risedal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 9:35 AM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK From: Simon Lamb [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 11:08:16 - Simon! I think you have done a good conclusion here. If you go back in the mailing list you found what I have been written about film flatness problems . I did last summer a test with my own 3 scanners LS2000. LS4000 and Polaroid 35+ against Imacon Photo. None of them could match the Imacon scanner in sharpness and Dmax. Comparing a picture from LS4000 and Imacon Photo , the Nikon LS 4000 picture are so inferior to the Imacon that I recommend Nikon to rebuild and improve the scanner before they are selling this crap. Last week I did a new scanner test who shows that also a Minolta Elite 2 scanner at 2800ppi outperformed my LS4000 regarding over all sharpness. The Minolta scanner cost about the half price of a Nikon LS 4000 scanner. , Nikonscan , Silverfast and now Vuescan allows us to decide focus point manually. This helps a little bit against curved film problem but not 100% The depth of field are still to short in the LS4000 and LS 2000 scanner construction. Some people believes that Vuescan are doing something else that Nikonscan or Silverfast or other scanner software's not are capable to do. All software's are working in a similar way regarding calculation of a picture. The Imacons software and scanners are outstanding regarding all parameters and counts to the semi or high end destop scanners leuge.The rest are still mid end scanners. Mikael Risedal That is not so Dave. Edge to edge sharpness is not a software issue, it is a film flatness issue in the scaner, and an area where the curving of the film in the Flextight helps greatly. Shadow detail, and particularly noise in teh shadow detail, is not a software issue, it is an issue of how the scanning light source and hardware create the noise and accentuate grain. The depth of detail extracted from the shadow areas is not a software issue (altough software can help) but also to do with the Dmax of the scanner. Colour and clarity can also be assisted using Vuwscan, but the scanner has to be able to record them reasonably accurately in the first place. I am confident that Vuescan will not help to resolve some of these issue, particularly edge to edge sharpness. I use Vuescan all the time and will try and re-do my comparison using it with the SS120 and MSMP. Simon Dave King wrpte: When you're scanning color negs software is the determining factor in all the parameters you mention except detail resolution. I don't know how much the price of the Flextight has fallen, but those using the other scanners you mention can take heart in the fact that Vuescan exists. Dave - Original Message - From: Simon Lamb [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 5:39 PM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK David Lewiston wrote: Simon To answer my own question about 'how much scanner?'... Just did another websearch on Imacon. At the Luminous Landscape site I found the following entry for Oct 24, 2001: At the beginning of this month Imacon announced that they had reduced the price of the Imacon Flextight Photo to US$6,495 from its original price of $9,995. I have just been informed that Imacon is currently offering a limited-time US$1,500 mail-in rebate which effectively reduces the net cost to the end-user to $4,995. It seems to be the Flextight 1, which does 35mm only at a resolution of 3,200 dpi, about half the resolution of its big brother. David It is indeed the Flextight Photo. I used this in the dealer to scan a 35mm and 6x6 neg on a Sprintscan 120, Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro and the Flextight Photo. At 3200 dpi and with a Dmax of 4.1 the Flextight blew the others away with far superior scans in detail (shadow and highlight), clarity, colour, edge to edge sharpness etc. etc. I will be getting my one on Monday :-) Simon -- -- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] RE: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Austin Franklin wrote: I think you have done a good conclusion here. If you go back in the mailing list you found what I have been written about film flatness problems . I did last summer a test with my own 3 scanners LS2000. LS4000 and Polaroid 35+ against Imacon Photo. None of them could match the Imacon scanner in sharpness and Dmax. How do you know that any of the scanners weren't doing some sharpening on their own? I'm asking if you confirmed that they weren't... I would specifically suspect the Imacon did some sharpening...I don't know about the others. Austin All sharpening was off, we double checked it to ensure an even test. We also turned it on to see the difference and, to be honest, the Flextight was as sharp with sharpening turned off as the other two were with it turned on. Turning sharpening on in the Flextight did produce absolutely stunning scans, the best I have seen I think. I have sent an email to Imacon to check that there is no hardware sharpening being done without the being aware of it. Hi Simon, How do you know sharpening was off? See Moreno's post...point is, it's not so easy to know what the hardware is actually doing! Regards, Austin Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Vuescans advantages over most software (haven't used Flextight's, but hear it's superb) has to do with the fact you can bring a scan into photoshop somewhere between raw and final, enabling difficult shadow transition edits that are far superior to most other software I've tried. It combines the qualities of editing raw files with the convenience of CM and good film terms I hear the Mac Imacon software is pretty good, but the PC version I tried last year was pretty bad. Easily the buggiest and most unstable scanner software I've ever come across. They didn't put a whole lot of effort into it. Hopefully they've improved on that. Otherwise, anyone serious about the Imacon scanner should also be considering a Mac to run the software on. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Dave I accept that the software can assist in pulling more information out of a negative but if the scanner does not have the capability in the hardware to read it then it isn't going to materialise in the output scan file. I doubt that Vuescan will ever get my lowly LS30 to perform better than it does now, and it will never meet the level of the Flextight, SS120, MDSMP or Nikon 8000. I have seen the review of the MDSMP where a scan showed a lot of noise in a particularly dark part of the scan. 16x multisampling erradicated most of it although there was visible banding. Simon Dave King wrote: I didn't say edge to edge sharpness is a software issue, but shadow detail and noise in color negs scans certainly is. That is the part of the neg that is the easiest for the hardware to deal with. Dave - Original Message - From: Simon Lamb [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 6:08 AM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK That is not so Dave. Edge to edge sharpness is not a software issue, it is a film flatness issue in the scaner, and an area where the curving of the film in the Flextight helps greatly. Shadow detail, and particularly noise in teh shadow detail, is not a software issue, it is an issue of how the scanning light source and hardware create the noise and accentuate grain. The depth of detail extracted from the shadow areas is not a software issue (altough software can help) but also to do with the Dmax of the scanner. Colour and clarity can also be assisted using Vuwscan, but the scanner has to be able to record them reasonably accurately in the first place. I am confident that Vuescan will not help to resolve some of these issue, particularly edge to edge sharpness. I use Vuescan all the time and will try and re-do my comparison using it with the SS120 and MSMP. Simon Dave King wrpte: When you're scanning color negs software is the determining factor in all the parameters you mention except detail resolution. I don't know how much the price of the Flextight has fallen, but those using the other scanners you mention can take heart in the fact that Vuescan exists. David Lewiston wrote: Simon To answer my own question about 'how much scanner?'... Just did another websearch on Imacon. At the Luminous Landscape site I found the following entry for Oct 24, 2001: At the beginning of this month Imacon announced that they had reduced the price of the Imacon Flextight Photo to US$6,495 from its original price of $9,995. I have just been informed that Imacon is currently offering a limited-time US$1,500 mail-in rebate which effectively reduces the net cost to the end-user to $4,995. It seems to be the Flextight 1, which does 35mm only at a resolution of 3,200 dpi, about half the resolution of its big brother. David It is indeed the Flextight Photo. I used this in the dealer to scan a 35mm and 6x6 neg on a Sprintscan 120, Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro and the Flextight Photo. At 3200 dpi and with a Dmax of 4.1 the Flextight blew the others away with far superior scans in detail (shadow and highlight), clarity, colour, edge to edge sharpness etc. etc. I will be getting my one on Monday :-) Simon Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Austin Franklin wrote: Austin All sharpening was off, we double checked it to ensure an even test. We also turned it on to see the difference and, to be honest, the Flextight was as sharp with sharpening turned off as the other two were with it turned on. Turning sharpening on in the Flextight did produce absolutely stunning scans, the best I have seen I think. I have sent an email to Imacon to check that there is no hardware sharpening being done without the being aware of it. Hi Simon, How do you know sharpening was off? See Moreno's post...point is, it's not so easy to know what the hardware is actually doing! Regards, Austin Good point and I saw that post and am waiting for a reply from Imacon. However, even if sharpening is applied (and if it is it is done very well indeed) the quality of the output was what I was concerned with and that was superb. I have read many reviews now on the SS120, Minolta Dimage Multi Pro, Nikon 8000 etc. and the only reviews I have read that do not state any real negatives are the one regarding the Flextight (and the real negative for many is the price). The scanning software is reputedly the best available (barring the obvious benefits that Vuescan brings to other scanners), there is no talk of banding (as can be seen on Nikon and Dimage scans with the three CCD lines (Vuescan resolving this by using only one line as per the Nikon recommended fix for the problem), edge to edge sharpness is as good as it gets without a real drum scanner and the Flextight is generally regarded as a reference scanner. Now, given the recent price reductions, for another £1,000 more than the competition, I can't see any reason to consider any other scanner over the Flextight. I am always open to contrary views though, and if anyone can provide good reasons not to go the Flextight route (barring saving the money) then I would take all advice on board. As you know Austin, I have been wanting to upgrade my scanner for a while and have seriouslky considered the Leaf 45 in the past. However, getting hold of a good one in the UK is nigh on impossible and I can't seem to get satisfactory enough answers from eBay sellers to make me comfortable paying to import one from abroad. I do a lot of black and white and the Leaf, as you have stated, excels at real bw as opposed to averaged out RGB scans. The film profiles in the Flextight software gave me the opportunity to see a Delta 100 scan like I have never seen before emerge from the scanner. As with my other photographic purchases, I want the best quality in all parts of the process, from taking the image through to piezo printing the output. Right now, I believe the Felxtight provides another strong link in that quality chain, without the negatives I consistently read about with others scanners, and at a reasonably comparitive price. Simon Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Although I agree that hardware sharpening, or even non-disclosed software sharpening, is problematic in testing for non-sharpened images in analyzing sharpness, I question the value of looking at a non-sharpened image in terms of determining which scanner has higher resolution, unless there is an absolute way to determine that all sharpening has been removed and you are seeing the raw CCD result after just A/D conversion has occurred. Since each scanner may use different hardware filtering, which is built into the processing, and may not be fully removable, perhaps a better test of a scanner is to simply attempt to produce the BEST scan possible even if that requires using after scan secondary unsharp masking. I mean, at the end of the day (and I do realize the need for an unsharpened image for submission before final correction or use of the image is determined) the idea should be to have a result that provides the sharpest image without adding distracting artifacts from the sharpening process. For instance, if a scanner used hardware or firmware sharpening, would it be possible to accurately remove that via software during or after the scanning process? Can using negative sharpness, accurately remove the sharpness created via electronics, to bring the image back to its raw (unsharpened) state or is it more like switching a TIF to JPEG and back to TIFF and expecting to end up with the same image one started with? So perhaps the best comparison of scans is to have all the images sharpened to the maximum amount they can handle without objectionable artifacting, using whatever methods and parameters of sharpening is required to do that, and compare those results. Art Moreno Polloni wrote: I think you have done a good conclusion here. If you go back in the mailing list you found what I have been written about film flatness problems . I did last summer a test with my own 3 scanners LS2000. LS4000 and Polaroid 35+ against Imacon Photo. None of them could match the Imacon scanner in sharpness and Dmax. How do you know that any of the scanners weren't doing some sharpening on their own? I'm asking if you confirmed that they weren't... I would specifically suspect the Imacon did some sharpening...I don't know about the others. I tested a Flextight II last year, and later found out that even with software sharpening set at 0, there's still a significant amount of sharpening applied. To turn off software sharpening, a fairly large negative value has to be entered, something like -100 or -200. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] RE: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Although I agree that hardware sharpening, or even non-disclosed software sharpening, is problematic in testing for non-sharpened images in analyzing sharpness, I question the value of looking at a non-sharpened image in terms of determining which scanner has higher resolution, Hi Art, We weren't talking about resolution, but sharpness...as the statement was: None of them could match the Imacon scanner in sharpness... Though I don't believe what you said above was relevant to the issue being discussed, your point is correct. Sharpening won't increase resolution, just sharpness ;-) Regards, Austin Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] RE: New price on Flextight Photo in UK
Simon, I accept that the software can assist in pulling more information out of a negative Boy, do I disagree with that... How on earth can software pull more information out of a negative, aside from the control of the light source and the analog gain stage prior to the A/D? Those aren't software issues, but operator or firmware/calibration issues. Austin Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
