At 08:42 PM 10/4/1999 -0600, Elvis wrote:
>Looks like I am about to take the plunge into digital hybridization.
>Looking into getting a scanner to scan negs from my OM (see Olympus
>content!!:).I see that Olympus has a scanner. Was wondering if anyone
>has used it and what the quality was like? Was thinking of the HP
>Photoscanner but would like to keep all things in the family. Any
>other recommendations?
Hi, I recently purchased a N*k*n LS-2000 - after waiting 3 months for
delivery. The only thing resolution helps with is the size of the print
you wish to make. The LS-2000 has 2700dpi resolution, which is finer
than the grain on most films. I have not seen too much difference
between a 1350dpi scan re-sampled up to 2700, versus sampling at 2700,
except when I blow up the picture to a very large size. In fact,
sometimes the higher dpi resolution makes the grain stand out more,
rather than averaging it to a smoother texture.
I would say that the density range is more important than the pixel
density. Being able to pull stuff out of the dark areas of a slide is
hard for a scanner. In fact, I am finding that negatives, rather than
slides, work better for some situations. When taking a picture, as in
regular photography, the contrast range should be kept in mind.
The most impressive thing with the LS-2000 has been the color accuracy.
I have not had to adjust the color, even though many different film
types have been put through the scanner. Also the digital ICE dust and
scratch removal works very well. As a side benefit, the multi-sampling
with the digital ICE seems to optically smooth over some of the grain
sampling effects in higher speed films. A simple scan seems to sample
the noise of the grain and make it more pronounced, simply because the
pixel aperture is small. That is, the small sampling aperture samples a
smaller area of the film and expands that sample to the full pixel
size.
I have yet to see any real difference between an 8-bit scan and a
12-bit. Maybe it's because most display monitors are limited to 8-bit??
Photoshop also has a limited number of features enabled for
16bit/channel, so working with the 12-bit depth is harder. I think the
grain noise of most film is less than 8-bits.
I have not seen the results from other scanners. If anyone wants a test
scan from the LS-2000 for comparison purposes, let me know. Maybe we
can post the scan of our own test slide put through several different
scanners and do our own comparison?
Wayne
Hopkinton, MA
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