LaserSoft Imaging

Hello everyone:

I just purchased a Minolta Dimage 5400 II scanner from ebay to replace my Minolta Dimage 5400 I. I have been using the Ektachrome Professional target slide that came with my copy of Silverfast with my 5400 I scanner on Kodachrome. The results seem to be very good. There is no bluish cast and the colors seem accurate (The slides do look more vivid, but I previously assumed that was because no scan can have the vibrancy of a back-lit slide). Would I get even better results by switching to a Kodachrome Q-60K3 IT-8 calibration slide? It seems to me that the medium of the calibration slide shouldn't matter, since the calibration file takes the film characteristics into account. Once the scanner is calibrated, it should scan with any 35mm print or slide accurately. Which calibration slide should I use? What if I want to scan Kodak Gold prints and Ilford PanF b&w prints, too? Reviews of the Kodachrome target slide at B&H say the greyscale portion of the target look greenish. Is that a problem?

Dear User,

It is better to use a Q-60K3 IT8 calibration slide to create a calibrated profile for your Kodachrome slides, you can then switch the profile for Kodachromes and for the rest of slides you should use other profile created with the other target.

The main reason for this is that Kodachromes have a blue cast, this is also probably the reason why the target has a cast. I would test the Kodachrome target to compare the results between the normal IT8 target and the Kodachrome target.

Thanks for your interest and contribution

In the meantime LaserSoft Imaging has started its own Kodachrome target production:
https://www.silverfast.com/show/kodachrome-targets/en.html

The answer wether to use a LaserSoft Imaging target or a Kodak K3 target is given in this great Shutterbug article:
http://shutterbug.com/techniques/pro_techniques/0609scanning/index.html