LaserSoft Imaging

Hello All!

I've got a Canon 9950F flatbed scanner ona Windows XP system that I'm trying to batch scan film with, both slides and negs. I've actually purchased both Silverfast Ai and v**s**n and have been experimenting with Canonscan, v**s**n and Silverfast Ai to see which one will yield the best results colorwise and detail.
I've invested in both reflective and a 35mm transmissive IT8 targets to generate profiles for the scanner.

My big main problem that I can't seem to find a simple solution to is:

How can I SIMPLY scan EXACTLY what is on my color slides? I.e. I've spent a lot of time setting up my photos with the camera, film, lighting etc. and I don't need to "corrrect" anything when scanning. I just want my scans to be an EXACT clone without any contrast enhancement, color correction, midtone-shadow-highlight adjustment.

I've scanned the same slide in Canoscan, Silverfast, and v**s**n and even with IT8 calibration profiles in place, I get three COMPLETELY different scans.

While I appreciate all the thought and effort with the correction and augmenting tools available in all these programs... I just want to scan what is EXACTLY on my film?

Anyone know how to set Silverfast to simply scan what is there without automatic adjustments?

I know there are checkboxes in the prefs menu, which I've deselected. Any other places I need to look to set color curves or motifs to get them to be precisely NEUTRAL?

Thanks for your help.

Dan

Nobody from SilverFast is able to answer this?

This is an important question

Have you tried "for HDR output " option ? no processing whatsoever. Gamma can be embeded if you want otherwise it is 1.0

Hi All!

Degrub... thanks for the idea on the "HDR Output Enabled." It seems though, the processing is still affecting when I check this box. However, if I select in the color settings 48 Bit HDR, then there is no processing regardless of the "HDR Output Enabled" button set or not. AND, I can visually see that I'm much closer to the film colors this way. However, is there some way to get this result by using the 48>24Bit color option? In having a 48Bit file, I can no longer create a simple JPEG, apparently it's 12 bit JPEG which isn't readable by a lot of things.

Really, what I'd like to be able to do in the end is to be able to insert a strip of negatives, or slides and be able to accurately reproduce the colors as they are, already on the film without ANY processing other than resizing, and saving/compressing to a simple JPEG. And, I'm just having quite a task doing that. The preset profiles in the negafix certainly do some dynamic changes, but for some reason, it really is substancially different than what the film has on it. With the positives, I've got an IT8 slide made with Fuji Provia, and I'm able to come close to the colors I want when using provia slides, but if I use a Velvia slide, there are some subtle differences.

I'm just getting frustrated in simply trying to scan what is EXACTLY on a slide or film, without any processing. As I had stated in my earlier post, I think these processing options are wonderful, dealing with old faded or over/underexposed images. But, I'm scanning new film, just shot. I get fantastic slides and when I use my slide projector(old school) the images are on my screen as I saw them when I took the shots. But, when I go to scan to share some of these images with friends via e-mail and such, the images are NOT the same.

Using Canonscan gives me one color result, v**s**n another, and Silverfast, yet another. And you know what's really strange is that I used the same calibration file for all three when doing positive slides, and they all three come out different.

Silverfast seems to be the clear winner with getting me closer to good results. But I'm still not quite there. Any other things I should be looking for with regards to my task at hand here?

Thanks all for looking. I see that there have been people reading the post, so perhaps there are ideas a churning out there.

Dan

Short answer : no.

Bottom line is your eyes see things differently than scanners do. No way to get around this.

You won't get there with a CCD scanner (or even a cmos ) . To do what you are asking requires a PMT based drum scanner. Period.

Otherwise , invest some time developing the curves for your scanner and the film type. You can get closer.

You MAY get closer with a Hutch target, but you are asking for more than the scanner can deliver IMHO.

Projecting with a lamp and scanning with a light source and ccd/cmos sensor are very different animals. Your eye and brain integrated into the former. YOU WILL NOT GET THE SAME RESULT. Fact o' physics. BTW, the slides and projector are optimized for your eye + brain combo. CCDs see things differently ;-))



best regards,