Digital BW, The Print

> What's the current vibe on the Nikon vs. the Polaroid for scanning 6x7 BW
> negs?  I remember seeing film holder issues discussed.  Who wins?  What's
> the best software for these...Vue Scan?

I had a look at both and chose the Nikon. It has the edge in sharpness, and
the ICE features are incredibly useful if you scan colour negs or slides.
The grain reduction feature can also be useful at times.

A lot of people are using the Polaroid and are quite happy with it. What
killed it for me was that the 120 filmholder cropped the edges, and there
was also some ghosting from the edge of the filmholder. I understand that
Polaroid has recently released a glass filmholder that will allow full frame
scans, and also is wide enough to accomodate 70mm film. With the Nikon I
need to trim 70mm film down to 120 width.

Vuescan works with the 8000, but for B&W I tend to prefer the look of
Nikon's software. Nikonscan has a tendency to clip the highlights at the
default settings. To get around this I simply set the gain to a value of
around -.3

I think you can get good results from either scanner. Personally, after
having used ICE, I would never buy a scanner that didn't have it. Whichever
scanner you choose, you'll also want to get a glass carrier.

Robert,

I have the Polaroid and it has been working just fine for my 35mm and 6x7
negs for the last 14 months. I just got the glass carrier and that solves
the cropping and edge ghosting problems I had with the standard medium
format carrier. The glass carrier and the standard carrier will accommodate
a strip with 3 - 6x7 negs. You can actually scan the entire area of the
glass holder so it will accommodate negs up to 25cm long which would be real
plus for panorama shooters or people with 6x12 view camera roll film backs.

There was a recent thread about the Nikon 8000 on the Hi-End Scanner group.
Several people were complaining of focus problems and poor support from
Nikon and others had good experiences.

The Polaroid software can get you a raw or adjusted 16-bit file. Nothing
fancy but for B&W seems fine. I use Silverfast since it came with the
scanner and I am used to working with it. I really don't do much image
adjustment with the scanning software except to set black and white points
in the scanner equivalent of Levels then do everything else in PS.

Martin



----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Morrison" <rmorrison@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2002 10:28 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] Nikon 8000 vs. Polaroid 120


> What's the current vibe on the Nikon vs. the Polaroid for scanning 6x7 BW
> negs?  I remember seeing film holder issues discussed.  Who wins?  What's
> the best software for these...Vue Scan?
>
>
> Robert
>
>
>
> Please visit the Group Homepage to check the Files, Bookmarks, Polls and
other resources as they are often being updated. The page is at:
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resources on the homepage.

>
>
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>
>
>

Hi,

I'm curious about your experience with the Nikon 8000 and the 
glass-covered holder.  I have heard conflicting reports.  It does 
solve the DOF problem, but some have said that the Newton-ring 
problem is bad and/or that the glass doesn't allow quite as 
sharp a scan.  I'm not concerned about dust.  I have been trying 
to track down some special anit-reflective glass (not etched!) to 
replace the glass in the Nikon holder.  Thanks!

Tom Andrews
http://www.wildlandart.com

> 
> I had a look at both and chose the Nikon. It has the edge in 
sharpness, and
> the ICE features are incredibly useful if you scan colour negs 
or slides.   . . . .  Whichever
> scanner you choose, you'll also want to get a glass carrier.

> I'm curious about your experience with the Nikon 8000 and the
> glass-covered holder.  I have heard conflicting reports.  It does
> solve the DOF problem, but some have said that the Newton-ring
> problem is bad and/or that the glass doesn't allow quite as
> sharp a scan.  I'm not concerned about dust.  I have been trying
> to track down some special anit-reflective glass (not etched!) to
> replace the glass in the Nikon holder.  Thanks!

I don't notice any practical difference in sharpness between the glass and
regular holders. The only Newton ring problem I've had was when I scanned
some colour film that was left in the holder for a day and a half. If Newton
rings do show up, Nikon provides some spacers that should help. That being
said, I've never had a need to use the spacers.

I scan mostly B&W negs, which means I can't use ICE and must spend a bit
more time cleaning dust off the negs and glass, but that's about the only
drawback I've come across.

On 7/22/02 11:13 AM, "Moreno Polloni" <mp@...> wrote:

>> I'm curious about your experience with the Nikon 8000 and the
>> glass-covered holder.  I have heard conflicting reports.  It does
>> solve the DOF problem, but some have said that the Newton-ring
>> problem is bad and/or that the glass doesn't allow quite as
>> sharp a scan.  I'm not concerned about dust.  I have been trying
>> to track down some special anit-reflective glass (not etched!) to
>> replace the glass in the Nikon holder.  Thanks!
> 
> I don't notice any practical difference in sharpness between the glass and
> regular holders. The only Newton ring problem I've had was when I scanned
> some colour film that was left in the holder for a day and a half. If Newton
> rings do show up, Nikon provides some spacers that should help. That being
> said, I've never had a need to use the spacers.
> 
> I scan mostly B&W negs, which means I can't use ICE and must spend a bit
> more time cleaning dust off the negs and glass, but that's about the only
> drawback I've come across.
> 
Why can't you use ICE with a BW neg?

Robert

> Why can't you use ICE with a BW neg?

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is how I understand it to
work:

The use of ICE involves a separate infrared scan. The base and dye clouds in
colour film (and chromogenic B&W) pass infrared light, dust particles block
it. ICE uses the difference between the infrared scan and the colour scan to
automatically "spot" out the dust particles and surface defects. With colour
films this works very well; the images are free of dust and often show a
subtle smoothness from the removal of surface defects. Previous versions of
ICE softened the images slightly, but with the 8000 there's no loss of
sharpness.

Conventional B&W film is to varying degrees opaque under the infrared scan,
and ICE'd B&W negs tend to turn out very contrasty, almost like lith film.

My colour printer has decided to stop feeding paper through (at least 
half of the time) but doesn't trap failures with a paper error light, and 
so prints onto the innards of the printer.

Does anyone have any suggestion as to what might be wrong, and how to fix 
it, please?

thanks,
mike

The GEM grain reduction part of ICE works fine with silver negatives.  You
ought to see the grainless skies medium format Tech Pan, Xtol, and GEM can
produce.  4x5 folks would be envious.

I also always use the (non-rotating) glass carrier with silver film.  I did
notice some "popping" with the glassless carrier.  On the other hand, with
T400CN I use the glassless carrier because there were some Newton rings even
with the masks.

Paul
______________________

  -----Original Message-----
  From: Robert Morrison [mailto:rmorrison@...]
  Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 11:42 AM
  To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
  Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Nikon 8000 vs. Polaroid 120


  On 7/22/02 11:13 AM, "Moreno Polloni" <mp@...> wrote:

  >> I'm curious about your experience with the Nikon 8000 and the
  >> glass-covered holder.  I have heard conflicting reports.  It does
  >> solve the DOF problem, but some have said that the Newton-ring
  >> problem is bad and/or that the glass doesn't allow quite as
  >> sharp a scan.  I'm not concerned about dust.  I have been trying
  >> to track down some special anit-reflective glass (not etched!) to
  >> replace the glass in the Nikon holder.  Thanks!
  >
  > I don't notice any practical difference in sharpness between the glass
and
  > regular holders. The only Newton ring problem I've had was when I
scanned
  > some colour film that was left in the holder for a day and a half. If
Newton
  > rings do show up, Nikon provides some spacers that should help. That
being
  > said, I've never had a need to use the spacers.
  >
  > I scan mostly B&W negs, which means I can't use ICE and must spend a bit
  > more time cleaning dust off the negs and glass, but that's about the
only
  > drawback I've come across.
  >
  Why can't you use ICE with a BW neg?

  Robert


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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

> My colour printer has decided to stop feeding paper through (at least
> half of the time) but doesn't trap failures with a paper error light,
> and so prints onto the innards of the printer.
> 
> Does anyone have any suggestion as to what might be wrong, and how to
> fix it, please?

Which printer? My 1520 used to have me mopping ink out of the trench 
regularly, but the 1160 does much better about knowing when paper is 
in place.

Tim


-- 
Tim Spragens

http://www.borderless-photos.de
http://www.borderless-photos.com

photo 1200

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Spragens [mailto:t.spragens@...]
Sent: 22 July 2002 23:44
To: digitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Repairing Epson Stylus Photo 1200


> My colour printer has decided to stop feeding paper through (at least
> half of the time) but doesn't trap failures with a paper error light,
> and so prints onto the innards of the printer.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestion as to what might be wrong, and how to
> fix it, please?

Which printer? My 1520 used to have me mopping ink out of the trench
regularly, but the 1160 does much better about knowing when paper is
in place.

Tim


--
Tim Spragens

http://www.borderless-photos.de
http://www.borderless-photos.com




Please visit the Group Homepage to check the Files, Bookmarks, Polls and
other resources as they are often being updated. The page is at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint

Please follow these basic guidelines:
- Include your full name with your message.
- Include the address of your website, if you have one.
- As threads develop, trim off excess portions of earlier messages to keep
them short.
- As the topic of a thread changes remember to change the subject header.
- Good manners are required at all time. No personal attacks or
"flames."
- Complete your Yahoo profile.
- Before posting a question, search the message archives and the various
resources on the homepage.




Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/