On Jun 23, 2005, at 2:15 AM, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote:
Ah, never mind. I found it. Looks good! :-)
For the benefit of others, the website is http://www.scanhancer.com/
The difference this thing made for me was astounding. The "pepper-
grain" effect of some films completely vanishes along with most of
the normal grain. Detail appears to be unaffected once you look
closely. The initial impression is that the image is softened but
that's an illusion - the grain pattern makes the picture look sharper
even though there's no more actual detail.
It does affect the colour slightly, and because the scanner ejects
the carrier to calibrate itself, you can't profile around it without
buying calibration software and a reference slide. Vuescan can
apparently do it but the free trial version doesn't have the
calibration feature. I wasn't willing to pay for it just to see if
it was any good.
In the end I got around that by doing two scans of my slides - one
low-res without the scanhancer and the other high-res with it, then
using the "Match Colours" feature of Photoshop CS. I just make sure
that both scans are about the same brightness, using the exposure
control in the driver. My latest PAW was done using this technique
and I am really impressed.
Oh and the other down-side is that it does lose some light. My
estimate is that it costs about 1 bit. FWIW I was getting pretty
darn good shadow detail without using multi-sampling. I have
recently started using 4x sampling but have yet to examine the
results in detail.
The MF one needs the glass film holder but I've experienced no
problems so far. Because of the film holder design there two
positions in the 35mm filmstrip holder that it can't be used in.
Nothing a pair of scissors won't fix, or maybe a Dremel if you want
to go the other way and write a big red "VOID" on your warranty.
Scan times vary a lot with settings and of course the size of the
original. It's pretty quick at doing a straight scan. Multi-
sampling slows it down a lot. 6x7 @ 3200ppi with 4x sampling took
about 15 minutes I think, but I wasn't keeping track of time. Next
time I'll put dICE on as well because I spent a couple of hours
cleaning the dust. That's one annoying thing about using the glass
holder...
Cheers,
- Dave
http://www.digistar.com/~dmann/
