Bart... how about your SE5400 with this Beta?

[Fernando]

Bart,

did you find any improvements with Vuescan 8 Beta for your ScanElite
5400?
Banding in dense shadows, low dynamic range, IR cleaning
misalignments, inconsistencies with/without grain dissolver: still
there?

Thanks!!

Fernando

 

[Bart van der Wolf]

Bart,

did you find any improvements with Vuescan 8 Beta for your ScanElite
5400?
Banding in dense shadows, low dynamic range, IR cleaning
misalignments, inconsistencies with/without grain dissolver: still
there?

The Dmax issue is still there. Slides have very dull and featureless
shadows/blacks, and post-processing it will increase the other issues
(calibration irregularities and noise).
Color Negatives thus will suffer from lifeless highlights and e.g. noise in
clouds.

That all forces me to use the Minolta software for better looking images,
but with less control over colormanagement, less effective focus, clipped
negative scans,etc.

Unfortunately the individual channel exposure/gain control is only
implemented for Nikon scanners, so I have yet to try it on my older scanner.

I'm not going to bother with testing IR cleaning, because the images already
kinda suck from a quality point of view, and the Minolta software can also
clean defects with ICE (but with lower quality than VS potentially can).
Good thing is that the Grain Dissolver already reduces some scratches and
such.

Guess I'll have another go at formally bringing it under Ed Hamrick's
attention via his support mail address.

It's a pity, because the scanner's resolution continues to amaze me. I just
did a scan and discovered a scratch in the film. It was a 1 pixel (!) 'wide'
scratch (that's only 4.7 micron).
Never thought I'd enjoy seeing a scratch that much ;-)

Bart

 

[Wilfred]

The Dmax issue is still there. Slides have very dull and featureless
shadows/blacks, and post-processing it will increase the other issues
(calibration irregularities and noise).
Color Negatives thus will suffer from lifeless highlights and e.g. noise in
clouds.

To me, in most scans, this is hardly visible - espeially with negs.
However, since the firmware update, the shadows in slide scans made with
the Minolta software seem to be very tolerant to drastic curves
manipulations (i.e., hardly any noise and no scan lines at all). Vuescan
scans seem to produce more noise in this case, indeed.

That all forces me to use the Minolta software for better looking images,
but with less control over colormanagement, less effective focus, clipped
negative scans,etc.

For me, the clipped negatives are still a reason to use VueScan in some
cases. I wonder if a particular setting in the Minolta software could
prevent this from happening.

Unfortunately the individual channel exposure/gain control is only
implemented for Nikon scanners, so I have yet to try it on my older scanner.

I'm not going to bother with testing IR cleaning,

The problems I reported with IR cleaning still persist: VueScan seems
not to be able to distinguish defects from the darkest areas on the
film. The IR channel that VueScan produces, however, can be used to
create a selection mask for the defects so that they can be removed in
Photoshop.

Guess I'll have another go at formally bringing it under Ed Hamrick's
attention via his support mail address.

Do you think Ed considers formally filed problems more urgent?

 

[Fernando]

The Dmax issue is still there. Slides have very dull and featureless
shadows/blacks, and post-processing it will increase the other issues
(calibration irregularities and noise).
Color Negatives thus will suffer from lifeless highlights and e.g. noise in
clouds.

That all forces me to use the Minolta software for better looking images,
but with less control over colormanagement, less effective focus, clipped
negative scans,etc.

That's quite disturbing.
What about SilverFast, then? Could it be a solution?
I was considering the SE5400 precisely for the incredible resolving
power... with the latest slide films, grain is becoming less
intrusive, and lots of details can be recorded with good glass.
But latest slides also sport very high densities... so it's important
to squeeze all that the scanner can potentially read.

I'm not going to bother with testing IR cleaning, because the images already
kinda suck from a quality point of view, and the Minolta software can also
clean defects with ICE (but with lower quality than VS potentially can).

Sigh!!!

I'll keep an eye on your posts, hoping that Ed Hamrick can bring some
enhancements to future versions. I love the way Vuescan drives my
SS120 and 2450...

Thanks Bart! Helpful as always. ;-)

Fernando