Re: 35mm Film Scanners

[Ben Kreunen <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 06:43 PM 12/9/99 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi--
>
>Has anyone used either the Nikon LS2000 or the Polaroid Sprintscan 4000
>to scan HIE with much success.  I've tried both on a couple of
>negatives, but did not obtain good results.  Actually, they were okay to
>terrible.  No amount of Photoshop work could save these scans as they
>were.
>
>Unfortunately, I did not have a lot of time to work with either scanner,
>so I was wondering if anyone has had more experience, specifically with
>HIE.

While I haven't scanned HIE directly yet using an LS2000 (I will be on 
Sunday when I do my first serious calibration test in a loooong time).. I 
find the scanner gives me comparable detail with my other BW to what I can 
print. Firstly have a look at my scanning guide 
<http://www.bigbenpublishing.com.au/gallery/photography/bwscan.html> as 
this will tell you whether you are having trouble with out of range 
densities on you negatives or not.

Secondly... if your negatives have a lot of light areas (eg. lots of black 
sky) try scanning it in as a BW POSITIVE and then inverting it. There is a 
difference between the two methods as the software appears to calculate an 
exposure to maintain either high density detail or low density detail 
depending on whether it is scanning as a positive or negative. I found 
scanning BW fluorescence microscopy negatives have to be scanned this way 
in order to maintain highlight detail.

>I have a lot of photos I would like to put up, but would prefer to scan
>the negatives (I've got an Epson 1200 I want to take for a spin as well)
>instead of the print, so for those of you who've been before, the pics
>are still the same.

You'll love the Epson 1200 prints (as long as you can get good scans), it's 
a very nice printer although photographic prints do have a higher density 
range.

Cheers

Ben

===================================
http://www.bigbenpublishing.com.au/
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