Why I selected Silverfast 9 over Scanvue (Nikon 5000 ED)

[SchwinnParamount]

Vuescan supports (or "supports") hundreds of scanners. All of them for the same lifetime licence of a whooping $79. And here we are, bitching that Vuescan doesn't FULLY support EVERY scanner produced from day one. And doesn't test every device for regressions or bugs with every new version they release. Report the bugs or just spend 5x the money for every scanner you own and use/suffer with Silverfast.

Btw, MS didn't get any worse at some point when they presumably fired all testers. It was always horrible.

Why would I use Silverfast when Vuescan supports hundreds of scanners? Because I only have 1 scanner and Silverfast supports it for a lower price than Vuescan. Not to mention Silverfast is significantly better software. I'd have to have a hole in my head to pay more for inferior software that has a feature I am in absolutely no need of.

 

[MattKing]

There's something to be said for obsolescence.

That would be a good signature line for some of us here on Photrio.

 

[MattKing]

Why would I use Silverfast when Vuescan supports hundreds of scanners? Because I only have 1 scanner and Silverfast supports it for a lower price than Vuescan. Not to mention Silverfast is significantly better software. I'd have to have a hole in my head to pay more for inferior software that has a feature I am in absolutely no need of.

You only have one scanner?
You are unusual .
I think I'm on my 5th - 6th if you include the multifunction unit that I use as a printer and sometimes use to scan prints.
Vuescan works quite well for me, and the $40 I spent originally for the license has allowed me to use the same software for all of them.
The Silverfast licensing is the pits - get a new scanner and you need to pay for a new license, which means you can't try out Craigslist scanner finds without switching software or spending money for a new license.

 

[SchwinnParamount]

You only have one scanner?
You are unusual .
I think I'm on my 5th - 6th if you include the multifunction unit that I use as a printer and sometimes use to scan prints.
Vuescan works quite well for me, and the $40 I spent originally for the license has allowed me to use the same software for all of them.
The Silverfast licensing is the pits - get a new scanner and you need to pay for a new license, which means you can't try out Craigslist scanner finds without switching software or spending money for a new license.

Good point! I hadn't gone dumpster diving for scanners yet and who knows, maybe I will

 

[nickandre]

Oh man, I loved my Coolscan V... until the USB port on the back (not properly supported and allowed to flex at the solder joint... grrr!) broke. The scanner is otherwise fine. I wonder if I can find someone to re solder the port?

Yeah that should be doable those ports are like $1.

Lovely image! It's not often one has the actual film that far back.

Thankfully I come from a long line of photo nerds, and my grandmother knew to keep all her negatives My great grandfather worked at Ansco.

 

[PhilBurton]

Yeah that should be doable those ports are like $1.


Thankfully I come from a long line of photo nerds, and my grandmother knew to keep all her negatives My great grandfather worked at Ansco.

I'm impressed.

 

[Wallendo]

Is there any major difference between SilverFast 8.8 and SilverFast 9? I generally prefer SilverFast for color negative work and prefer VueScan for B&W negative and color slide.

Apparently LaserSoft deactivated one of the features in SE Plus 8.8 (I can no longer free rotate the selection box), and I was interested in upgrading. The LaserSoft website, however, contains no information about the upgrade other than "100's of improvements".

 

[bernard_L]

So I selected Silverfast on the basis of doing a better job with Kodachrome than Scanvue. Specifically:

• Multi-scanning Kodachrome produced much more shadow detail with Silverfast. With Scanvue, there was no perceptible increase in shadow details.

No offense meant, but are you sure you did not confuse (as concerns Vuescan) these 2 options in the Input tab:

• Number of samples or Number of passes that just make repeated, identical, measurements of each pixel, with the intent to average out (and decrease) the electronic readout noise.
  
• Multi exposure, that combines a normal exposure with one aimed at high density areas, and is more effective than the above mentioned for sources with a large range of densities (i.e. slides).

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

No offense meant, but are you sure you did not confuse (as concerns Vuescan) these 2 options in the Input tab:

• Number of samples or Number of passes that just make repeated, identical, measurements of each pixel, with the intent to average out (and decrease) the electronic readout noise.
  
• Multi exposure, that combines a normal exposure with one aimed at high density areas, and is more effective than the above mentioned for sources with a large range of densities (i.e. slides).

How do multi-exposure work on both Silverfast and Vuescan? Do they extend the time of the scan or change the light intensity, both, or other? Does the process itself create additional noise over the scanner's normal speed and lamp brightness?

 

[bernard_L]

How do multi-exposure work on both Silverfast and Vuescan? Do they extend the time of the scan or change the light intensity, both, or other?

IIRC, the second pass takes noticeably longer. Light intensity is not an option. Electronic analogue gain might be one, but sub-optimal IMHO: the dynamic range of a CCD is ultimately determined by the number of electrons that can be stored in one site, so increasing exposure time until the electron wells are almost full is a better option.

This said I have no way to know what actually happens behind the vuescan buttons; if anyone knows they are welcome.

 

[bernard_L]

Just to be clear. First exposure is limited by sensor saturation in clear regions of the film, but dark regions register only a few of the least significant bits of the digital output, and suffer from electronic and/or quantization noise. Second exposure aimed at opaque zones of film; transparent zones will saturate, resulting in useless data, but have already been measured in the first exposure. Software combines the outputs of both exposures into a high dynamic range measurement, effectively increasing the number of bits of the A/D conversion.

 

[grat]

Silverfast extends scan time.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Just to be clear. First exposure is limited by sensor saturation in clear regions of the film, but dark regions register only a few of the least significant bits of the digital output, and suffer from electronic and/or quantization noise. Second exposure aimed at opaque zones of film; transparent zones will saturate, resulting in useless data, but have already been measured in the first exposure. Software combines the outputs of both exposures into a high dynamic range measurement, effectively increasing the number of bits of the A/D conversion.

This assumes there are no distortions in the shadow areas of the second longer scan adding noise plus additional issues caused by combining two scans. I've yet to see a comparison that didn't increase the shadow areas similarly just by moving the shadow slider in post and getting the same effect. This just seems to be one of those things that appears better on paper than in actual execution.

 

[bernard_L]

I've yet to see a comparison that didn't increase the shadow areas similarly just by moving the shadow slider in post and getting the same effect. This just seems to be one of those things that appears better on paper than in actual execution.

Not my experience. Scanning B&W negatives (LS-2000, 12-bit A/D), I sometimes find the highlight areas posterized in single-pass scan, and they become smooth using multi-exposure; No time to dig for A-vs-B example, regrettably.
The improvement may be less obvious with a more modern scanner featuring 14- or 16-bit conversion. Maybe I should upgrade.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Not my experience. Scanning B&W negatives (LS-2000, 12-bit A/D), I sometimes find the highlight areas posterized in single-pass scan, and they become smooth using multi-exposure; No time to dig for A-vs-B example, regrettably.
The improvement may be less obvious with a more modern scanner featuring 14- or 16-bit conversion. Maybe I should upgrade.

You said that was multi-scan to smooth things out. But that's not multi-exposure to get details out of shadows. Aren't you mixing things up?

Regarding posterization, I've never seen that in a scan. With my Epson V600 and V850, I always scan in 48 bit color for color film or 16 bit grayscale for BW film.