It would not be the first time that a third party wrote better software
than the manufacturer. For instance there are better printer drivers
than Epson's own and even Epson's Mac versions lack capabilities of the
Windows versions sometimes for years before they reach parity.
Winsor
Long Beach, California
USA
On May 29, 2004, at 3:44 AM, Chris Barker wrote:
>
> Dear All
>
> I was a little distressed when Walt W came out with the information
> that manual focus was much better than the autofocus on his Minolta
> Dimage Scan Elite 5400. I envisaged hours and hours of re-scanning all
> my wonderful images (well someone has to think that they're wonderful
> ;-)) to get the best from them.
>
> I had a go with Vuescan's manual focus facility, but there was no
> indication how I was doing without rescanning every time I tweaked the
> control; this looked like doubling the time it would take me to re-scan
> each image. So I wound up the Minolta software with Import in
> Photoshop (7.1 on a Mac in OSX). Sure enough, there was a better
> system for manual focus: a bar extends further for better focus. And I
> tried it yesterday as a comparison with the autofocus ... it was
> certainly noticeably better with manual focus.
>
> So I compared 2 scans of the same slide (Provia 400F, OM4 with 50/1.8
> MIJ). Aside from the different colour balance, the focus looks about
> the same. So, does Vuescan do a better job of autofocus than Minolta's
> software? Why does the Minolta software, if it can indicate varying
> degrees of focus with a little bar, not improve its own focus
> automatically?
>
> To allow you to make your own judgement, I have put the 2 scans on a
> website:
>
> http://www.threeshoes.co.uk/temp_pics.htm
>
> It's all marked to show you which is which. The thumbnails on this
> page are 350 pixels wide, the larger files linked to these are 700
> wide. The photo is of my brother, a woodsman in Mountshannon, Co Clare
> fooling about with bunch of lfowers. The exposure was 1/250 at ƒ4, and
> I am prepared to accept that it is a bit soft, either through inept
> focusing on my part or perhaps through movement. But I do not believe
> that either image is better than the other because of the scanning
> focus system.
>
> Comments on the html (use of Dreamweaver) or anything else would be
> welcome. I can make the pages smaller if anyone really wants me to. I
> use a Mac with the monitor's gamma set to 2.2, but I should be
> interested to hear from Windoze users if the display is dark.
>
> Cheers
>
> Chris
> <|_:-)_|>
>
> C M I Barker
> Cambridgeshire, Great Britain.
>
> +44 (0)7092 251126
> ftog at threeshoes.co.uk
> http://www.threeshoes.co.uk
> http://homepage.mac.com/zuiko
> ... a nascent photo library.
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> List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
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