How to focus a Quickscan 35 with vuescan?

[Ralf C. Kohlrausch]

Hi everybody, hi Ed ;-)

I've recently purchased a Minolta Quickscan 35 scanner, and the seller
indicated, it was supported by Vuescan. I have since been playing around
with Vuescan 7, 8beta and 8, but the focus-option is not highlighted in
the options. As the scanner is a manual focus one, I can't really use it
without focussing.

Googling seems to indicate that nobody else has had this problem and
that Ed knows this very sample of the Quickscan 35s ;-)

Focusing is fine with the Minolta-software, so I don't think there is a
hardwareproblem.

Can anybody help?

Thanks in advance,
regards
Ralf C.

 

[Ed Hamrick]

I've recently purchased a Minolta Quickscan 35 scanner, and the seller
indicated, it was supported by Vuescan. I have since been playing around
with Vuescan 7, 8beta and 8, but the focus-option is not highlighted in
the options. As the scanner is a manual focus one, I can't really use it
without focussing.

It turns out that there's no way for software to turn the focus
knob - it can only be turned by hand.

The Minolta software displays a bar graph of the focus accuracy
(i.e. the contrast) while you manually turn the focus knob. However,
since no other scanners that VueScan supports have this knob, I
haven't implemented this functionality (very few people still use
the QuickScan 35).

You can sort-of simulate this by turning the knob and scanning a
small section of film, turning the knob, etc. It's a kludge, but
it will work, and most films probably have roughly the same focus
position.

Regards,
Ed Hamrick

 

[Bart van der Wolf]

SNIP

The Minolta software displays a bar graph of the focus accuracy
(i.e. the contrast) while you manually turn the focus knob. However,
since no other scanners that VueScan supports have this knob, I
haven't implemented this functionality (very few people still use
the QuickScan 35).

Actually the DSE-5400 has such a knob (maybe it's different from the QS35).
The auto/manual focus as implemented for the DSE-5400 works fine (eventhough
the shortcut key CTRL-U is no longer available).

You can sort-of simulate this by turning the knob and scanning a
small section of film, turning the knob, etc. It's a kludge, but
it will work, and most films probably have roughly the same focus
position.

Maybe it is possible to visualize the focus 'quality' with a peak hold meter
or better a small graph (also avoids copyright issues). It would also
indicate how critical the focus is, and whether there is more depth of focus
behind the focal plane or equal amounts in front and in the back. Not
essential, but interesting feed back not found on most other scanner
drivers.

I sometimes find myself trying several different manual input values with
such small steps that it is hard to see whether the result is better or
worse (making the step irrelevant) or whether I just probed on two sides of
the maximum. I wouldn't mind that kind of future improvement, but the
priority is not as high for me as other pending issues... I'd rather have a
decent Dmax fix ;-).

Bart