Wondering if anyone else has a similar workflow, but I recently started using the HDR program in addition to SF 9SE.
My original problem was that scanning 16 frames (4 strips of 4 frames on 35mm) was taking a ridiculously long time to set up and a ridiculously long time to scan. In order to get the cropping right so that Negafix works properly, I had to zoom in to each frame to fine tune the crop, but SF insists on doing a pre-scan each and every time. It takes about 45 seconds per frame to do this, then the actual scan at 2400 dpi takes about 135 seconds per frame. To scan 3 rolls of film would take almost five and a half hours of being more or less actively engaged in the process of scanning. (45+135)*36*3/60/60
When I got my first half-frame camera I knew something had to change. I was not going to wait around for silverfast to muck around with previews and cropping on a 72 frame roll.
The system I have now seems to work ok, but I don't have all the kinks worked out so if someone out there has been down this road before, I'm interested to hear what you've seen. Note: I use an Epson v750
Step 1: Load the scanner like normal, in my case I load 16 frames or sometime less depending on remainders etc.
Step 2: Put Silver fast into 64bit HDRi mode. Prescan, move the scan frame to cover all the frames at once.
Step 3: Fire off the scan, in my tests this took only 50s per frame at 2400dpi!! I'll come back to this, but during this time, I work on the cropping and negative conversion in HDR.
Step 4: Reload the holder with the next 4 strips and fire off another scan
Step 5: While the next scan is running, open the last one in HDR. Make frames, set up negafix, set up iSRD, etc.
Step 6: Run Batch process in HDR, which outputs the final scans.
Issues:
tl:dr: I got my scanning time down from 175s per frame, down to 50s per frame at 2400dpi on an Epson v750
My original problem was that scanning 16 frames (4 strips of 4 frames on 35mm) was taking a ridiculously long time to set up and a ridiculously long time to scan. In order to get the cropping right so that Negafix works properly, I had to zoom in to each frame to fine tune the crop, but SF insists on doing a pre-scan each and every time. It takes about 45 seconds per frame to do this, then the actual scan at 2400 dpi takes about 135 seconds per frame. To scan 3 rolls of film would take almost five and a half hours of being more or less actively engaged in the process of scanning. (45+135)*36*3/60/60
When I got my first half-frame camera I knew something had to change. I was not going to wait around for silverfast to muck around with previews and cropping on a 72 frame roll.
The system I have now seems to work ok, but I don't have all the kinks worked out so if someone out there has been down this road before, I'm interested to hear what you've seen. Note: I use an Epson v750
Step 1: Load the scanner like normal, in my case I load 16 frames or sometime less depending on remainders etc.
Step 2: Put Silver fast into 64bit HDRi mode. Prescan, move the scan frame to cover all the frames at once.
Step 3: Fire off the scan, in my tests this took only 50s per frame at 2400dpi!! I'll come back to this, but during this time, I work on the cropping and negative conversion in HDR.
Step 4: Reload the holder with the next 4 strips and fire off another scan
Step 5: While the next scan is running, open the last one in HDR. Make frames, set up negafix, set up iSRD, etc.
Step 6: Run Batch process in HDR, which outputs the final scans.
Issues:
- iSRD seems less effective, some of the bigger dust spots have a clearly visible halo around them, I'm wondering if the registration of the infrared layer could have more opportunity for misalignment than with the slower, smaller individual scans
- Silverfast is a buggy piece of s*&$. Sometimes SF 9 will spend the full time scanning, then output a completley garbage file. I haven't been doing this too long now, but usually happens once in a scanning session or so. This is especially painful because there are a few minutes of processing after the scan finishes and I'd like to use this time to swap negatives. But if the output file is trash I have to make a note which strips have to be re-scanned all over again and just move on.
- Silverfast HDR is a buggy piece of s*$%. If you don't completley close the program between batch processing's, it will just output garbage and the interface will soft-lock. I nearly lost it when I'd just spent a good 10 solid minutes lining up frames for 32 half frame photos when this happened. Had to re-do the whole thing.
tl:dr: I got my scanning time down from 175s per frame, down to 50s per frame at 2400dpi on an Epson v750
