LaserSoft Imaging

Silverfast AI produces very out-of-focus results when scanning both slides and film-strips on my V500. By comparison, the bundled Epson Scan produces (barely) acceptable results which are, however, much more "in focus".

Does anyone have a better experience with a V500? Can anyone please explain what I am am doing wrong with Silverfast?

I have tried scanning at each of 2400, 3200 and 6400 dpi. The closest I can get to an acceptable slide scan is doing the following:

(1) scan slide at 6400 dpi
(2) Use Photoshop to scale the image to 50%
(3) Use extreme amounts of sharpening (Nik Sharpener pro works best)

I have to scan at 6400 because 3200 dpi produces visible "staircase" artifacts.

Any suggestions please? Thanks in advance.

Dear MJSanders,
can you try to switch the mode of the transparency unit from full area to the smaller transparency area ??
In my understanding the focus in the smaller-area-setting is approx. 2mm above the glass plate while the focus point is directly at the surface when using the full area...

best regards,

Nils Heidorn

Thanks Nils. I'm sure you are correct about the 2mm focus difference. I am not sure how to "force" the scanner to use this "film mode" focus though.

I tried the following:

1) Mount a single transparency in the holder.
2) Go through the Silverfast "pilot" to set the scan area, resolution, etc (I use a "Q" of 1.0 and a DPI of 3200)

The resulting scan still seems out of focus (I have attached a screen capture of the settings used, as well as a 200% fragment from the Kodachrome scan.

Thanks and best regards.

Dear MJSanders,

have you tried Nils suggestion swithcing the Transparency mode from "full area" to the smaller transparency mode.
As this mode is the correct one when scanning with a slide holder.

Hello Thomas,

I confess I don't know how to switch the Transparency mode from "full area" to the smaller area (I thought that following the "pilot" might be the way to do this).

How may I explicitly do this in Silverfast? The limited Epson documentation doesn't appear to offer any instructions for this.

Thanks and best regards.

Dear all,
i am so very sorry but i confused the transparency with the one from the V700, so please forget about the different focus positions, it does not apply to the V500 !!!!

So i am reasonably sure that we are talking about a sharpness difference that are only caused by the amount of Software sharpening applied to the somewhat blurry image AFTER the image is scanned.

SF has a very conservative approach to do this while the manufacturers Software is much more agressive...

@LSI_Luebker:
could you contact MJSanders via regular Mail to have him send 2 images to you, done at the same res, once by SF, once by EPSON Scan.

Lets discuss the images once you got them.

@MJSanders:
LSI_Luebker should contact you soon :-)

Greetings & sorry for my hickup before !

Nils Heidorn

Dear Nils and Thomas,

Thanks both for your prompt help. I would be most pleased to send you 2 comparative scans.

Perhaps it is not relevant, but just now I tried scanning at 2400 dpi using Silverfast. The images obtained are noticeably better quality than those done at 3200 dpi (for example, when comparing 100% enlargements).

Best regards.

Dear MJSanders,
even if there is no Bug or malfunction, this is what i would expect.
The lower you get with the scan resolution, the less you "stretch" the limit of the optics quality...

Thomas should contact you for getting those two 32000 crops...

Greetings,

Nils Heidorn