Digital BW, The Print

Frank,

I've used the Sprintscan 120 and SF before I got my Howtek. I would not have
bothered to move up to the Howtek except I needed a way to get top quality
scans of 4x5 negs. I would have to give the Howtek the edge in sharpness at
the scan level but, as Antonis pointed out, it is the print sharpness that
really matters and the difference is minor. I think you would be hard
pressed to look at two prints and say one was from a Howtek scan and one was
from a SS120 scan.

A year or more back Tim Spragens and I compared the output of the SS120 and
the equivalent Minolta unit. The scans were not precisely the same but we
concluded there was no difference in quality.

Silverfast has often been a pain though. When the scanner came out, there
was a bug involving SF, Window 2000 and Firewire connections. For a
considerable time I did raw scans using Polaroid Insight. I then opened the
raw file either with the Silverfast HDR module, which you should have, or
directly into Photoshop.

This is a very good workflow and essentially how I use SF with my Howtek. I
do a raw scan to a TIFF file and then "scan" the data using SF HDR making
first overall adjustments and outputting a 16-bit file to PS. The has the
advantage of being able to make different corrected "scans" very quickly.

The other thing to watch with Silverfast is that they will get around to
fixing the problem. (I actually thought they had corrected this particular
one.) They also occasionally lose fixes when releasing upgrades. The trick
is to check their site often and stay on top of the often frequent upgrades
and save all the versions. In the meantime just use Insight. As far as I can
tell it's a fine okay program for B&W work.

I also do all my sharpening in PS and not during scanning since I find the
amount needed is print size dependent.

Martin Wesley

http://www.borderless-photos.de/guests.html



----- Original Message -----
From: "frankg_photo" <fh.gross@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2003 2:10 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: Sprintscan120/Silverfast6 (& Glass holder) scan
sharpness problem


>
> Thank you for the offer to test scan a couple of frames - maybe I'll
> take you up on this.
>
> Yes I have been in email contact with SF tech support all day - it
> seems that the Focus button which you refer to that greys out or is
> col (off/on) is not effective with the glass holder!
>
> In other words there is effectively no scanner focusing when the
> glass carrier is used. It is just focused on wherever the
> default/manual setting is - which is pretty close but probably the
> thickness of the glass away from being optimum.
>
> Try a few transparencies or negs in this usual mode and then try them
> with Polaroid Insight (f you have it installed - if not it's free
> from the polaroid>support>download site) - you may be very surprised
> at what you thought was in focus. I was - suddenly there is detail
> and texture that i never saw before !
> Frank
>
>
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Shilesh Jani"
> <shilesh.jani@s...> wrote:
> > Yes it is.  Have you confirmed this with people at Silverfast? I
> know
> > SF 6 cannot manually focus the SS120.  But there is a tab for this
> > function - must be in all versions of SF.  It toggles between being
> > grayed out and showing an "A".  I have assumed that "A" stands for
> > autofocus - hey how about the SF documentation, eh ;-(.
> >
> > Quite frankly, I have not encountered "soft" scans when scanning
> > transparencies (which is mostly what I use).  But, I am going to
> > explore this further.  For me, at least, it may be a lesser problem
> > because I don't scan too many negatives, and in fact have recently
> > decided NEVER to shoot them any more.  I like the grain I get from
> > Fujichrome Provia 400 when pushed 1 or 2 stops.  And, it is so much
> > easier to scan than Tri-X or Ilford Delta 3200.  I like some
> features
> > of SF 6, but I can live without them.
> >
> > Is it possible that the problem is in your scanner?  If you like, I
> > would gladly scan a couple of your negatives  to test it out.
> > Contact me off-list.
> >
> > If all esle fails, time to be rid of the scanner, and go with a
> > Minolta or Nikon (argh  $$$$).
> >
> > Regards.
> >
> > Shilesh