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Last November, I bought a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400-2 to
scan 35 mm slides and negatives and have been very happy with it. To my
surprise, i outshines three professional services I tried during that
time. In two of those three cases, one area it is head and shoulders
above the pros' scans is digital ICE removal of scratches and other
surface blemishes. (The third pro scan did just as well on that score.)

Has digital ICE improved that much over the last few years (that's when
I know one of the pros bought his scanner), or is something else going
on? If ICE has improved that much then anyone with a few year old
scanner might want to look into getting a new one. The difference is
astounding -- making almost unusable pictures (they are 65 years old!)
look almost new. Incidentally, I am amazed at how well Kodachrome
colors held up over those years, though some PSE tweaking did perk
things up. And this was for slides my father kept in his basement --
far from climate controlled conditions.

I've found GEM and ROC much less useful and don't use them in general.
Any comments there? Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

One other thing that I know has been mentioned here but is relevant:
Don't believe the statement (as in my K-M manual) that ICE doesn't work
with Kodachrome. It might not with some, but in my case you can tell
it's been a life saver.

Martin

<> wrote:
> Last November, I bought a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400-2 to
> scan 35 mm slides and negatives and have been very happy with it. To my
> surprise, i outshines three professional services I tried during that
> time. In two of those three cases, one area it is head and shoulders
> above the pros' scans is digital ICE removal of scratches and other
> surface blemishes. (The third pro scan did just as well on that score.)

Professional scanning has the problem that anyone who is smart enough to do
a good job scanning is smart enough to make a decent living doing something
else; to get a good professional scan, you have to pay a competent
professional competent professional wages. And that gets very expensive.
Fast.

You've got exactly the right idea, though, and that is to try the
professional services, find which is the best, and then figure out how to do
better yourself.

If you are still shooting film, try the new Fuji Pro 160 C (I think that's
what it's called); it's a color negative version of Velvia with saturated
colors, fine grain, and great sharpness.

> Has digital ICE improved that much over the last few years (that's when
> I know one of the pros bought his scanner), or is something else going
> on? If ICE has improved that much then anyone with a few year old
> scanner might want to look into getting a new one. The difference is
> astounding -- making almost unusable pictures (they are 65 years old!)
> look almost new. Incidentally, I am amazed at how well Kodachrome
> colors held up over those years, though some PSE tweaking did perk
> things up. And this was for slides my father kept in his basement --
> far from climate controlled conditions.

Yep. ICE is amazing. But you are _WAY_ behind the times: ICE is pretty old
news by now. (It was already old when I bought my scanner (Nikon 8000) in
early 2002.)

> I've found GEM and ROC much less useful and don't use them in general.
> Any comments there? Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

You aren't doing anything wrong. GEM is essentially noise reduction, and
NeatImage and Noise Ninja will do a better job. And ROC tries to
automagically correct faded colors. It might work on some cases, but in
general, I find that automagic color correction really doesn't work.

> One other thing that I know has been mentioned here but is relevant:
> Don't believe the statement (as in my K-M manual) that ICE doesn't work
> with Kodachrome. It might not with some, but in my case you can tell
> it's been a life saver.

Apparently there's a lot of variability in "Kodachrome", and I've heard it
claimed that some Kodachrome doesn't have all the silver removed. I've never
shot Kodachrome, but I hear a lot of teeth gnashing and agony from people
who have had trouble scanning it. (Nikon scanners are notorious here:
apparently the Nikon LED light sources are extremely narrow band, and thus
only "see" part of the dye response, resulting in some dizzy color shifts,
and (if memory serves) prior to the 4000/8000 (or maybe the model before
that) Nikon simply didn't support scanning Kodachrome.)

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

I purchased an hp scanjet 3970 flatbed scanner w/negative and slide
scanning and wow what a major disappointment that was. I thought my
slides were permanently damaged, the scans looked like someone had
taken a wire brush to the slides. My ambition was to digitize about
approximately 4000 of my Grandfathers slides and to create a DVD for
family members. I ended up getting a slide to video transfer unit
carousel device and transferring to DV tape. Definitely not the image
quality you guys are talking about, but definitely good enough for what
I was doing. Cheaper, faster, more efficient.
I pity the families who have one or two dog earred, yellow prints to
document an entire history of family life. Those of us who have rich
photographic histories of our families owe it to posterity to preserve
them and to make them presentable to future generations.
My grandparents golden years where the goldest golden years I have ever
seen. They went everywhere. It's sad that working class guys probably
won't have that kind of reward for longevity of service in this country
anymore.
wrote:
> Last November, I bought a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400-2 to
> scan 35 mm slides and negatives and have been very happy with it. To my
> surprise, i outshines three professional services I tried during that
> time. In two of those three cases, one area it is head and shoulders
> above the pros' scans is digital ICE removal of scratches and other
> surface blemishes. (The third pro scan did just as well on that score.)
>
> Has digital ICE improved that much over the last few years (that's when
> I know one of the pros bought his scanner), or is something else going
> on? If ICE has improved that much then anyone with a few year old
> scanner might want to look into getting a new one. The difference is
> astounding -- making almost unusable pictures (they are 65 years old!)
> look almost new. Incidentally, I am amazed at how well Kodachrome
> colors held up over those years, though some PSE tweaking did perk
> things up. And this was for slides my father kept in his basement --
> far from climate controlled conditions.
>
> I've found GEM and ROC much less useful and don't use them in general.
> Any comments there? Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
>
> One other thing that I know has been mentioned here but is relevant:
> Don't believe the statement (as in my K-M manual) that ICE doesn't work
> with Kodachrome. It might not with some, but in my case you can tell
> it's been a life saver.
>
> Martin