Digital BW, The Print

Martin,
Thanks for this - all good points.

My issue with SF is that film in the glass holder will not be 
focused - although the focus icon is "on" in the SF interface it does 
not actually focus the hardware (on the film plane) !

Maybe someone else with the Sprintscan, Silverfast and the Glass 
Holder can jump in here and tell what their focus experience has 
been ?

Since trying Insight I have had better focus - but there are 2 things 
that I miss already compared to SF:
1. the Histogram with the little sliders to bring the scan into the 
high & low range.
2. For the occasional col transparency there is no 'calibration' like 
the IT8 supplied with SF

To clarify your workflow described below; you choose the 16 bit Raw 
scan option in Insight, save it as a Tif. Then open SF HDR and import 
it. Make global adjustments, then export to PS. ?

Frank


DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Martin Wesley" 
<mwesley250@e...> wrote:
> 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@s...>
> 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