LaserSoft Imaging

Does anyone know what to make of the terrible, magenta shift I'm getting with these chrome scans? I've updated to the newest drivers, but still get intermittent magenta scans. I'm concerned that the Green Channel in the actual Nikon Scanner is out, but perhaps I'm missing something.

all on the same type of image ? you could try setting the white point manually.

Actually, now that i think about it there is a color cast slider with the histogram that could be giving you a problem - just set it to 0.

Yeah..if you look at the histogram, the cast is already at zero. I also removed any cast from the slider in Levels. No, this is way more than a cast. This is a missing channel issue. I'm just not sure if it's hardware or software.

Many thanks for looking out, though.

DN

Try NikonScan or v**s**n demo and see if it continues. THe advantage of v**s**n is that it does not use the Nikon drivers at all.
You could also try swapping out the USB/FW cable or checking the power supply.

Thanks,

Downloaded v**s**n Demo & there were no problems. Then went back to Silverfast and got the same issue all over again. Very strange. No idea what's up...?

The only time i have seen that behavior i was able to clear it by deleting the preferences folder and letting SF rebuild it.

IIRC, there was a bug at one time, but that was fixed - i don't think it was Nikon though.

One other thing to narrow it down. Does Nikonscan have the same issue ? SF uses the Nikon Maid drivers so if you can get it repeat reliably on SF but not on NS, then tech support will have something to work with.

You might be able to install on another machine and see if the behavior follows.

At least with v**s**n ok, it is not likely to be a hardware issue.

Nils-

I hooked up my friend's Nikon 5000 Super Coolscan and SF worked fine. Apparently, there's a problem with SF Ai Studio and my Nikon 4000.

v**s**n worked fine, as did SF with the Nikon 5000.

Strange, yes?

I have no idea what to do at this point. As you can tell from my response time, I have been working on this day and night and can't sort it out.

David

Same version of SF with the 4000 as well as the 5000 ? Maybe the download on the website was for the wrong scanner ?

They are slightly different animals (16 bit vs 14 bit padded for one) - don't know how SF is working with the Maids, i suspect a parameter pass to get the correct driver for the scanner. But why would it work for some of your slides and not for others ? Weird.

Yes, I downloaded the demo for the Nikon 5000 and it worked.

I definitely have the correct driver for the 4000, but, as we see, there's a ghost in the machine.

With the Nikon 4000 driver, it fails with every chrome and also fails to focus on negatives.

Vexing.

You're a good man for giving a damn.

David

What OS, CPU and machine are you using ?
Are you using the firewire board that Nikon provided ?

I'm running Mac 0S X 10.4.11

CPU: PowerPC G5 (2.2)

If by "firewire board" you mean Nikon's cable, then yes.

Just to be clear, I've been using this same, Nikon 4000 SuperCoolscan with SF software since they came out...about 6 years. I've also been using SF software with my Epson Scanners. I currently have the Epson 4990 and hav no issues.

Basically, I've been using the same system for ages. I started having the troubles described (magenta shift from Green Channel failure and inability to focus when scanning negatives) and so I upgraded to 6.5.5r4.

And here we are...same issues.

For what it's worth, I've tried to get help repeatedly from the 'Online Support Forum" and they keep asking the same stupid question, "Did you throw out old SF preferences". !!!!

i wonder if Nikon is using the green channel for focusing since it is an edge contrast alg. Looking at the histogram, it looks like the green channel is compressed - not empty - and certainly with no contrast ! So what happens if you set the right (white) input point to the right edge of the green channel data and expand the base data ? It's almost as if the analog gain for the green channel is all the way negative in NS terms.

v**s**n talks directly to the scanner hardware. Ed had to reverse engineer the driver. So it is bypassing what ever bit has gotten flipped in the Nikon Maid drivers. i don't know OSX well enough to comment, but i would start rooting out all of the Nikon Maid or twain interface files related to Nikon or SF. The install package might give enough info to start. SF (Nils) might be able to give you some detailed guidance on where to look in OSX. i have had to manually remove Nikon items in the registry before on my windows boxes before it would work.

THe firmware version of the scanner is 1.10 i assume ? i do know the newer MAID drivers will have issues with the old 1.x firmware.

What SF version were you on before the upgrade to 6.5.03 when this started happening ?

Just rumbling some more ideas.....

hmm....

Here's the image with the green channel expanded.

A lot of what you're talking about is over my head, but my gut says you're onto something. Not quite sure how to act on any of this, however.

If you can list off a few actions, I'll run through them and see where I get.

I just went through this procedure with Online Support:

1) Deleted all Nikon Application Support Folders
2) Deleted all Silverfast Applications
3) Deleted all SF preferences
4) Downloaded new SF files
5) Ran SF & scanned same image
6) Got the same bad Magenta image.
7) Sent results back to SF

Am standing by.....

David

What SF version were you on before the upgrade to 6.5.03 when this started happening ?

Confirm that your scanner is at firmware 1.10 Maybe OSX will tell you on a properties screen for the scanner when it is hooked up ?

Otherwise, download the firmware updater from here

http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/ni ... YXJl&p_li=

You can run it and it will tell you the version and just cancel out if you don't want to proceed.

The reason i ask this is that, as i understand from Nikon website, the latest version of the MAIDs required this version (1.10) on the scanner. SF should be able to confirm that for you if you are reluctant to update the firmware . From Nikon's website

http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/ni ... _topview=1

i don't remember which version of SF switched to the new MAID modules, but it might be a source of the issue.