LaserSoft Imaging

The Nikon 9000 has a Yellow Lamp Button that says it is for "Set Automatic exposure(Lamp Brightness)". It is below the Job Manager button and above the Focus settings button on the window that contains the preview and final image. I cannot find any manual that describes what this button does. It seems like this feature is normally on. Can you tell what it does and why I would want to use it. I have included a picture with a gold outline, highlighting the button in question.

Dear Jstar,
Dear SilverFast users

First of all, thanks for your question. As the name of the button says, it is an "Automatic exposure", Nikon has built into the scanner an option to correct the exposure of your pictures automatically, normally scanners use an average exposure for all scans, where as Nikon makes an individual exposure to every picture you scan. Using this butto to deactivate this option will allow you to scan using this average exposure.

Best regards

I have been reading the forums for a long time but registered only recently after buying a Nikon 9000

I am using a Nikon 9000 with Silverfast Ai Studio 6.6.0r3a

Where is the Lamp Brightness menu? I went to the Options -> Special area and see "Limit gamma" and the other items
mentioned on page 66 of the manual But now Lamp control.

I have slides that can much too dark - almost no detail is visible even though the slide looks fine on a light table.

There is a huge difference between turning up the brightness via the Exposure slider and increasing the actual exposure! I think
of it as "using a curves layer on an underexposed photo" compared to "changing the exposure in the camera". In the first case
increasing the brightness of an unexposed image only increases the noise, in the second case the exposure is actually changed.

I guess my question is: am I looking in the right place (Options->Special) for the Lamp Control. Does Lamp Brightness still exist?
If not, can we have it back?

Thanks!

Dear stevens,

from version 6.6.0r1 SilverFast for Nikon has completly changeed as Nikon did not support OSX 10.5 with its driver.
So we sat down and die our own native Nikon implemantation. Sadly we do not support the Lamp Brightness anymore.
If the Scans have Shadows that are dark please use our Mulit-Exposure to increase the Dynamic Range.

best regards,

Thomas Luebker,
LaserSoft Imaging AG

Thank you for the reply. My question was answered - now I know why I could not find the Lamp Brightness menu.

Unfortunately some of the slides that I have are essentially all shadow - perhaps the scene was not metered correctly, the flash
did not fire, etc. MultiExposure will perhaps bring out some detail in the darkest shadows but the overall scene remains too dark
and I think increasing exposure slightly would help.

I do have a PPC system that the NikonScan software will run on - maybe I'll try that for the troublesome slides.

Thanks again - I'll be filing a "Feature Request" shortly :)