LaserSoft Imaging

Hi,
I have a Microtek i900 and Silverfast Ai, which I'm attempting to use to make electronic "contact sheets," laying strips of negatives on the transparency glass insert. The prescans are inevitably washed out, as the auto exposure adjustment compensates for all the black space around the film strips.

When I bring the cropping frame into one of the images on the film, the exposure immediately falls into place, but of course when I then pull the cropping frame back out to encompass all the strips on the glass the exposure pops right back out, too.

Believe it or not, I've had some some success scanning contact sheets with this i900 and Silverfast Ai, though obviously only from dumb luck. I can't figure out just what it was that I did differently when everything worked.

Is there some way to lock the exposure in when it looks good, so that it will remain that way when I attempt to scan all the strips together? There must be. I've made it happen before, somehow.

Thanks much in advance,

John
An analog man struggling every damn day in a digital world

Dear John,

everything is easy - if you know how to do:

choose transparency negative and make a prescan of your film strips - draw a frame correct around one image and make your settings: NegFix film profile, Histogram, Gradiation curves etc. - choose the NegFix windows and open the expewrt dialog >> Expansion. Below you will see left of the " Auto" button the checkbox for the automatical detection of the film mask. Please switch it off !! After all corrections choose at the SilverFast main panel " Frame " >>> "Settings" >>> "Save" and save this special frame. Afterwards you can pull the image frame all over the film strip and the colours will be correct and not washed out. If you use always the same kind of film, you can always use these special saved framesettings for any other film strip or you save for different kind of films ( Agfa - Kodak - Fuji ) your special frame settings and choose the right one at the Settings check box.

Hope I could help you

regards

Christoph

Sorry for not responding to your reply sooner, but I've been traveling and haven't had access to my scanner to try out your suggestion. Unfortunately, I have to say that I can't find the film mask auto detect box you told me to uncheck. Is it inside the Expert Dialog panel, as I understood it to be from your instructions?

Thanks,
John

John, you have to go to the Negafix tool, and you will find another expert mode icon. This is where the auto checkbox is found. I couldn't find it either, but I was looking in the main menu expert mode.

I had the exact same application. Thanks LSI_Spirling for the neat solution. As you say, easy if you know how!

Duncan