Problems with Minolta 5400, Magenta cast, Dull scan, Lines in dark areas

[Patrick P.]

Hello everyone. I was wondering if someone could help me. I'm unhappy
with the scan results of my Minolta 5400. I'm getting rather flat
looking scans. The colors are dull, there is a massive magenta cast,
there are streaks (lines) in the shadows and many of the scans aren't
focused correctly. I use Velvia 100F Provia 100 and Kodak 100VS.

I'm using the Minolta software with autofocus on, autoexposure on, 16
bit and no color profile assigned (at scan). Before I scan I crop and
resize the exposure frame (by holding down shift on the prescan
image). I don't do any image adjustments in the Minolta software.

When the scans are out of focus (which happens a little too often for
my liking) I try using the auto focus pointer or manual focus. I
haven't been able to find any good help on the correct way to use the
manual focus. Matching the black and white bars seems totally
ridiculous to me. What do these bars represent? If the software is
able to produce these 2 bars why can't it match them automatically?

In Photoshop I convert the image to the Minolta 5400 ICC profile. Then
I adjust the curves and color balance. The magenta or red cast can be
sometimes as much as 30%! I also need to add about 30% to yellow
across the shadows, midtones and highlights. I feel like I spending my
life balancing colors and playing with curves and at the end it still
isn't as good as the original slide. Not that I'm kidding myself it
will ever have the same brilliance as a slide. Surely the Minolta
software isn't this bad. My friend has the coolscan 4000 and most of
his scans come out fine with no manipulation. I've got about 200
slides I want to scan. I've worked out it will take me around 33 hours
(not including scan time) to get them all done! Arghhh!! :-|

Does anyone have similar problems? Does anyone have any suggestions?
I'm trying to avoid buying Silverfast or Vuescan as I don't know if it
will guarantee the results I want and I'm a bit tight with cash these
days (saving for an Epson R800 ;-) ). What do people recommend?

Oh, and there are lines in the shadows. They are only visible when I
turn the gamma up. I've seen from other threads that this is a common
problem. Has anyone come up with a solution or reason for this? I
think it is unacceptable.

Thanks for your help,
Patrick

 

[Ken]

Suggestions (I don't have a 5400 so can't be certain) and I'm not an
expert:

- make sure you're using the correct ICC profile for the bit depth and
slides. Try using the 8-bit color and definitely don't use 16-bit
linear. Only the more recent photoshops make full use of 16-bit color.

- try reinitialising to get a recalibration to remove lines in shadows -
of course maybe faulty scanner

- I have used a Minolta and a couple of Nikon scanners and never had
focussing problems - maybe your scanner is faulty. How badly out of
focus are they, 5400 dpi exceeds the limits of film and camera so you
can't expect to have everything perfectly sharp

- If your scans are consistently out in color then set up the Minolta
software to define a Job with color correction setup, this will be faster

- try Vuescan, it will cost you nothing to demo, if it works then you
know the scanner is not the problem

Ken

 

[Robert Feinman]

Hello everyone. I was wondering if someone could help me. I'm unhappy
with the scan results of my Minolta 5400. I'm getting rather flat
looking scans. The colors are dull, there is a massive magenta cast,
there are streaks (lines) in the shadows and many of the scans aren't
focused correctly. I use Velvia 100F Provia 100 and Kodak 100VS.

I'm using the Minolta software with autofocus on, autoexposure on, 16
bit and no color profile assigned (at scan). Before I scan I crop and
resize the exposure frame (by holding down shift on the prescan
image). I don't do any image adjustments in the Minolta software.

When the scans are out of focus (which happens a little too often for
my liking) I try using the auto focus pointer or manual focus. I
haven't been able to find any good help on the correct way to use the
manual focus. Matching the black and white bars seems totally
ridiculous to me. What do these bars represent? If the software is
able to produce these 2 bars why can't it match them automatically?

In Photoshop I convert the image to the Minolta 5400 ICC profile. Then
I adjust the curves and color balance. The magenta or red cast can be
sometimes as much as 30%! I also need to add about 30% to yellow
across the shadows, midtones and highlights. I feel like I spending my
life balancing colors and playing with curves and at the end it still
isn't as good as the original slide. Not that I'm kidding myself it
will ever have the same brilliance as a slide. Surely the Minolta
software isn't this bad. My friend has the coolscan 4000 and most of
his scans come out fine with no manipulation. I've got about 200
slides I want to scan. I've worked out it will take me around 33 hours
(not including scan time) to get them all done! Arghhh!! :-|

Does anyone have similar problems? Does anyone have any suggestions?
I'm trying to avoid buying Silverfast or Vuescan as I don't know if it
will guarantee the results I want and I'm a bit tight with cash these
days (saving for an Epson R800 ;-) ). What do people recommend?

Oh, and there are lines in the shadows. They are only visible when I
turn the gamma up. I've seen from other threads that this is a common
problem. Has anyone come up with a solution or reason for this? I
think it is unacceptable.

Thanks for your help,
Patrick

Try turning autoexposure with slide off. Don't make any adjustments
in the Dimage scanning software. Don't use 16 bit linear.
The magenta cast is caused by your not having a good profile for the
scanner, the supplied one seems not to be a good match. Getting a
profiling package such as Monaco's may help you make a better profile.
After scanning set profile to that of the scanner and then convert to
Adobe RGB.
I find that a simple adjustment of the white point in the curves dialog
is a good first step and expanding the tonal range. You can also try the
"auto" setting in curves which can be set to fix gray balance as well by
setting the "options".