LaserSoft Imaging

Can anyone give me an idea how long a "typical" prescan and scan (4000 dpi) for a single image can take on a Polaroid SprintScan 4000?

Even before my current issues with Ai 6.0, I thought that 5.5 was "slow" for a prescan (the slideholder moved in and out a lot it seemed like it was doing at least two passes before the prescan completed). The full scan at 4000 dpi did not take that much longer.

The overview function, on the other hand, seems very fast.

Thanks...ajv

Please go to the option dialog and select the general panel. See what is selected for the high resolution prescan. A value of "1x" makes the smallest (and fastest) prescan possible. Any other value, create prescans that contain more data, than actually needed for the prescan. The prescan will take longer time, but a zoom will be much faster then, because the zoom data can be calculated from this high resolution prescan.

Eric.

Yes, the high resolution prescan was set to 1x, which is why I thought my prescans were taking an inordinately long time to complete.

What are "reasonable" prescan and scan times?

Thanks...ajv

I hoped that the high resolution prescan would cause the problem

Well, I will try to find somebody at LaserSoft who can help.

Eric.

The slowness is common to both the Polaroid and Microtek scanners. When AutoFocus is active (default) the prescan can take upwards of 1.5 to 2 minutes. It's a lot less for AF Off but you need to remember to reactivate it at scan time otherwise you get c..p. Personally I just bite my tongue and pretend that time isn't important

Thanks for the tip. As it tuns out, it looks like the autofocus feature is what is causing my problems with 6.0.1r25 on OS 10.2.2. I need to investigate further, but when I did turn off Autofocus I got my first successful prescan on 6.0, which took about 90 seconds.

I confirm what Ian wrote. The autofocus is responsible for the delay before the scan. You can observe the same thing with the original software Polacolor Insight. Here are some coarse measurements:

Calibration: 20s
Autofocus: 40s
Prescan (1x): 10s
Scan (2000dpi): 20s

So the best thing you can do is to switch the autofocus off when you make a prescan (in the software from Polaroid one can only use the AF for the final scan).

Regards,

Thomas

Thanks for the data. The calibration time and autofocus were taking about a minute, which explains why I thought it was slow (Ai 5.5)

I posted a note in the Silverfast 6 forum noting that the Autofocus feature was causing Ai 6.0.1r25 on OS 10.2.2 to hang (I have a SS4000, SCSI). So I don't have any experience yet with how long Autofocus is taking on Ai 6 (other than infinite )