"Simple" question about slides

[il barbi]

The question is: is it possible when scanning a slide, say
35 mm, to obtain a result comparable to what I get when I
see it by a slide viewer i.e. by a "hot" lamp instead of the
cold one in the scanner?
My experience till now is I can't, even after reading a
large amount of theory, but I admit I'm using a
non-dedicated scanner such Epson Perfection Photo 2400 and
I'm still looking for a correct profile for it - I usually
get less detail and dark scans with respect to the slide
viewer.
Is it possible that with a dedicated scanner such as Nikon
Coolscan V and a more appropriate sw I can get what I want?
il barbi

 

[Lyle P. Ecbian]

Hi il Barbi,
The simple answer to your question is no. The realities of scanning is
that at best it is a deterioration of the original. That said however,
you can obtain great results from original to scanned to printed piece.
Our eyes deceive us, which in this case is good. For example, do you
have a coffee table book with beautiful photo after beautiful photo?
Well if you compare these to the originals, the printed pieces stink.
Our eyes however realize the the dots of offset printing and adjust
themselves. The same with scans vs original. Really if you think about
it, the slide probably doesn't come close to what was shot live and how
it was really seen!

My suggestion, go for greatness, not perfection. Being pragmatic will
help you immensely. A sense of humor doesn't hurt either! Your scanner
can grab amazing amount of detail, but you need to get it out of the
lack of detail and oversaturation that desktop scanners are pretty much
known for (I should know, I own one!) Drum scanners grab much more
detail, but the colors need to be tweaked (I own one too!) Dan
Margulis has great books on photoshop, and if you don't want to buy the
books he also has a column every other month is electronic publishing.
Don't trust your monitor either!

Hope this helps,
Lyle P. Ecbian

 

[bmoag]

A dedicated film scanner will yield much better results than your flat bed
but a film scanner is only part of the equation.
I presume you realize that viewing a slide with light transmitted through it
will yield the greatest apparent range of color and light values.
With a high quality scan the image on your monitor can be a close match to
what you see viewing the transparency directly but will never match it
exactly.
When you make a print the color and lighting values will be compressed even
further because a print, which is viewed by reflected light, cannot
reproduce the same range of light values as light passing directly through a
slide.
Added to this is the problem of matching the colors produced by the scanner,
the monitor and printer all of which see colors slightly differently.
If you want to get the best results possible and are willing to invest the
time and money in scanners, monitor calibration hardware/software and
learning color management with a program that allows color management (think
Adobe) you will be amazed at the quality you can achieve. It is really not
that difficult, but it is costly and time consuming. The reward is prints
that are far better than almost anything that is commercially available.

 

[Charlie]

The question is: is it possible when scanning a slide, say
35 mm, to obtain a result comparable to what I get when I
see it by a slide viewer i.e. by a "hot" lamp instead of the
cold one in the scanner?
My experience till now is I can't, even after reading a
large amount of theory, but I admit I'm using a
non-dedicated scanner such Epson Perfection Photo 2400 and
I'm still looking for a correct profile for it - I usually
get less detail and dark scans with respect to the slide
viewer.
Is it possible that with a dedicated scanner such as Nikon
Coolscan V and a more appropriate sw I can get what I want?
il barbi

In my opinion, if you have a "great" slide, you can't come really
close to capturing it with a scanner and software. But if you have an
average, or perhaps even poor slide (say underexposed), with a good
film scanner and good software, you can recover a good image, far
better than simply viewing the slide with a projector or on a light
box.
Charlie Hoffpauir
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/