Your scanner is in very good shape. Since you scan with borders exposed you will notice mirror dust when it becomes a problem. It will start showing as increased density near the borders.
Cleaning is the easiest job on this scanners, but save it for when it's needed on your scanner.
All I can tell you is that you maybe don't want to do it yourself
If I remember correctly, I've tried contacting a company in Germany (might as well been the same) and got no reply. I'll see if I can find whom I contacted back then...
edit: According to my mails I got one positive response from EURECA Messtechnik GmbH 10 years ago and their quote was (in hindsight) more than reasonable (125 EUR (VAT included)). My "problem" stemmed from the fact that I thought that doing it myself will be money and time saved easyily. I tested the procedure on a CCD sensor from Canon 9000F flatbed that I had no use for and the cover peeled right off in a second. Encouraged by that...
Did it turn out that bad when you tried by yourself ?
But as you probably know Eureca will get the cover off but there is no guaranty that the stress on the CCD during removal will not cause damage to it.
I wonder if maybe they use a solvent to remove the glass. Or perhaps they just heat the chip then pull off the glass.
Your scanner is in very good shape. Since you scan with borders exposed you will notice mirror dust when it becomes a problem. It will start showing as increased density near the borders.
Cleaning is the easiest job on this scanners, but save it for when it's needed on your scanner.
Do you mean the negative will seem denser than it really is when I'm trying to scan it?
Yes.
Consider this scan:
It's a scan of two half frame shots on Adoc Color Mission 200 (that folm builds density pretty quickly). The high density areas on both shots are close to the unexposed edges of the negative. If you scan such negatives on a scanner that is susceptible to flare and don't shield the unexposed edges of the film, you will get increased density (increased on the positive, diminished on the negative). As you can see, there is light creeping into the left edge of the second frame while the first frame is unaffected because the unexposed part of the negative is shielded by the vertical bar of the negative holder.
This is an extreme case on a scanner that is vulnerable to this problem (CanoScan FS4000US) and I'm not sure when it was last cleaned.
Compare this to the scan made with Microtek 4000tf :
You can do a similar test on your scanner to see what you might get in extreme conditions. And, as said before, Vuescan treats negatives differently than Nikon Scan. More exposure with not totally linear response of the sensor will mean that the unexposed areas will produce more visible light bleeding...
Frank Phillips replied that what I'm seeing is caused by dirty mirror. Also said amount of contrast in image can affect what he called this "bleeding" of image outside black border. When I told him it's been seven years since Gleb Shtengel repaired and cleaned my LS9000, he felt sure mirror was dirty.
Then I went to Gleb's site where he had posted instructions for cleaning mirror. He mentioned that if your scanner has over 10,000 scans, you need to clean mirror. Also, focusing problems or degraded scans are symptoms of dirty mirror.
There is no way I've come anywhere near that many scans since Gleb repaired and cleaned my scanner in 2018. I've probably scanned less than 1,000 images since then. And I always keep the scanner enclosed in plastic when not in use. I have not had focusing problems or degraded scans.
Stephen Scharf also suggested dirty mirror. Also said to mask out edges of neg around image, which I don't want to do, as I like having the black border around images.
This morning I posed a question to them: If the ghost image is from a hardware problem such as dirty mirror, why doesn't this happen in scans from Nikon Scan? Only happens in Vuescan. Maybe it's some interaction between the hardware and the Vuescan software. Maybe Vuescan reacts differently to the reflections on the glass.
I do have the holder without the glass which I could try in Vuescan.
So you are saying Vuescan's default settings give a negative more exposure than Nikon Scan?
If I have a dense negative, Vuescan's default settings for exposure would produce better scan than Nikon Scan's default settings?
In Nikon Scan in the past, I have added analog gain for dense b&w negs. (I was using a lab for a while who was over-developing my film.)
Also don't know what you mean by Vuescan "not having totally linear response."
I don't think you've given them sufficient means to diagnose your issue. You have not posted the magnified details you've posted here in your Facebook post. Most people will very likely be browsing that page on their phone, and your issue is invisible from your full size samples as seen from a phone.
Having said that, the dust explanation cannot be discarded. I keep my 8000ED covered with a custom made thick protection at all times when not in use. I have no pets and don't smoke. I found I'm having to clean the mirror every 3 years or so. Dust on the mirror on these machines has two well known effects: it creates visible flare at high contrast boundaries and when scanning with Nikon scan, it imparts a noticeable magenta cast to your scans.
I wouldn't exclude the dust option but you'll need to share more data with people to reach a likely diagnosis.
Also can you experiment a little. How often does this issue manifest itself?
-black and white material yes/no
-colour negatives yes/no
-slides yes/no
-another version of vuescan yes/no
-another holder yes/no
- turn the image around in the holder. Where is the issue appearing? Same position or other dimension?
-mask the border of your holder with gaffer tape. Issue still there yes or no?
Nothing is obvious or stupid. And in fact, the explanation is often the simplest.
Yes, Vuescan and Nikon Scan (both at default settings) will get different raw data (I did apply the same gamma correction to all of them otherwise it would much harder for us humans to see the difference) from the negative (for scanners with independent RGB exposure). I don't have any Nikon scanner anymore so I can't demonstrate that, but I can show you the difference in raw data between Vuescan's 'Color Negative film' and 'Slide film' input type:
Slide film:
Color negative film:
As you can see, when in 'Color negative film' mode Vuescan will slightly lower the exposure for R channel, increase exposure for G and even more for B channel. That somewhat aligns R, G and B channels and in effect removes some of the orange mask which in theory could benefit scanners with lower dynamic range.
Now, Nikon Scan would do something like this:
In theory, yes. But sensor dynamic range and 16bit signal processing in Nikon CS 9000 should make that advantage negligible. Personally, I avoid scanning in Color negative mode since longer exposure means that film will get more heat and curl more. This is not a concern if you scan in glass holder, or course.
Yes, Vuescan's equivalent is RGB exposure setting (plus individual R, G and B) which is automatically set by Vuescan depending on the preview scan analysis and film type mode. The difference between Nikon Scan and Vuescan with this settings is that by default Vuescan will change exposure and Nikon Scan will not and you have to do it yourself.
Not Vuescan response. CCD sensor response. At least that is my explanation for why the effects is more visible with scanning in Vuescan. Since scanners do not get higher/lower exposure by altering light source brightness, but by the time the sensor's shutter is open there should not be a case when more light means more reflections. It's either that or there is some post-processing for that problem in Nikon Scan, but I doubt that is the case.
When I scanned the same color neg in both Nikon Scan and Vuescan, so I could compare them, the Vuescan scan looked a bit sharper overall. I focused on same point in neg (a person's eye) and scans were done one right after the other, with neg in glass holder. I thought maybe there was a default sharpening set in Vuescan. But when I checked "Sharpen" in Filter tab, it was at "none." Do you know if there is a default sharpening happening underneath, even if "Sharpen" is at none?
I never noticed that. Or heard people saying that Vuescan would sharpen scans when sharpening is turned off.
Also, how exposure works in scanners is interesting -- that it's not brightness of light but time the sensor's shutter is open.
Yes, although no actual shutter as such is present. The technical term usually used is 'integration time'. You can compare the sensor to a bucket, and the integration time is the time we allow the bucket to fill itself with water (=light or photons if you will). Ultimately, the bucket will contain an amount of water (electrical charge) and that amount is then measured. The shutter analogy works for all intents and purposes though; it's fine to use as a manner of speech.
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