[Darkroom] photo scanners

[Rubin Abdi]

I went through this issue about a year ago, where I wanted the most perfect scan, to get all the colors right. I became extremely frustrated with different scanners and scanning softwares, couldn't get the same results that the photolab I was previosuly using would get. Eventually I emailed them and asked what their magic was, and their response to me came out to basically saying that scanning is another part of the photo process, just like picking the right exposure settings or filters on the day of, temp and developement times, etc, and that I shouldn't go crazy with getting the perfect scan.

It all comes down to what looks good to you and running with that.

--
Rubin Abdi
rubin at starset.net

"M.J.S" <mjs94080 at gmail.com> wrote:

Im really concerned with scanning color slides and I want them to come out true.

The best for color slide is the Nikon Coolscan, but I cant find a driver for my Vista O/S...

On Sun, Aug 21, 2011 at 3:19 AM, Rubin Abdi <rubin at starset.net> wrote:

M.J.S wrote, On 2011-08-20 19:25:

>  Im tryin to get all my old projects in digital.
> Doesnt seem like any of the scanners in the darkroom work.
> Theres no driver online for the Nikon Coolscan, the Minolta has no
> cartridge, and theres something
>  wrong with the flatbed.

The G4010 in the Darkroom works fine, though I kind of destroyed the
35mm strip holder long ago and the replacement hopper doesn't seem to be
for that model (as much as HP told me over the phone that it was). If
you're scanning slides then no hopper is needed, just slide them into
the lid. There should be a nice wordless picture of how that works on
there somewhere.

Here's some old stuff I scanned with it...

http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=98601772@N00&q=g4010

There's a wiki page for it.

https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Darkroom/Resources/HP_Scanjet_G4010

Which contains links to Windows and Mac drivers. The think should work
under VueScan (though I hate that pile of software now), I'm happy to
give you access to a working copy of that if you want to give it a try.
Also works under Sane if you're into free like speech.

If you're still having trouble trying to get it to work email back here
and I'll see if I can remember any details, but for the most part I
plugged the scanner in, installed some drivers, and the thing started
working.


> Has anyone used an Epson V500 before?

After seeing the results that the V700 provided I decided to just burn
the extra cash and go with that plus some 3rd party 120 loader that
flattens out negatives better. Here's a nice review of the V700 and some
text about what extra comes with the V750...

http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/V700/V700.HTM

One of the nicer things about the V700 compared to the V500 is there's
more of an area to lay down negatives at once (24 total frames), which
reduces down the number of times you need to swap out strips. I think
the V700 also does ICE better but I could be wrong. It also supports
firewire if that's your kink (kind of wish it was USB3 now).

After futsing with it for a few months, I've decided that VueScan's
shortcomings in UI and remarkably horribly customer interaction makes
Epson's own scanning software far more superior, especially when you
have tons of stuff to scan.

The scanner is huge and sort of sucks for transport, otherwise I'd bring
it to Noisebridge to scan.

--
Rubin Abdi
rubin at starset.net


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