Here's my reply and his question is below.
Hey Marc:
I don't have experience with the software you've mentioned
but I have run into the same problem with my older Nikon scanners not working
on newer computers. I've not used
my old Nikon scanner in several years.
The below may or may not be a worthy suggestion. I've not tested my scans using this
method much at all. I can say that
I've had clients tell me that they did not like my office's Nikon scans from my
LS4000 from many years ago, and preferred my agents' scans from drum
scanners. Drum scanning every
image is, of course, cost-prohibitive.
I pulled out my old slide-duplicating setup a few years ago
and mounted a full-frame Canon 5D Mark II on it. I shot some original 35mm transparencies with it and sent it
to a couple of my agents to see if they liked the quality. I did tweak the shots a bit in
Photoshop but I am not a Photoshop expert either. The verdict was that the shots were nearly -- if not just as
good -- as drum scans!
This was probably 3-4 years ago. I imagine that if you get a good bellows unit (I had a
machinist connect two Nikon rails and used a bellows unit with an enlarger lens
for the best quality for my slide dupes), a good lens (I had a Rodenstock APO
75/f4 lens), and mount a good full-frame digital camera on the duplicating
setup like a Nikon D800 or Canon 5D Mark III, then you could take digital shots
of your 35mm transparencies and tweak them in Photoshop, and they'd look as
good or better than scans from present scanners. I think that the speed of doing this would be faster
also. There were commercial slide
duplicators out there that were not custom-modified units like I had -- like
the Bowens Illumitran and Beseler.
My duplicating setup was like this one on Ebay now:
NIKON PB5 BELLOWS PS5 SLIDE DUPLICATOR:
Nikon PB5
bellows with a Nikon PS5 slide duplicator. Also included are BR2 and BR3 reversing rings. Also a 62 to 52 mm adapter. It was only used twice many years ago
so is virtually new! Kept in
original box. I have read that you
need a BR2A ring if you want to use auto-focusing lenses.
except I put a second rail on it and used the
above-mentioned Rodenstock lens as opposed to a Nikon macro lens (which should
give fine results too). My office,
in its heyday, would duplicate hundreds of originals every week. I am still working through our old
filing cabinets and throwing away the old pages of duplicates. It was astonishing how much work the
good folks in my office spent on creating and labelling these great dupes. Thanks to them all. Sorry I was such a hot-headed
boss.
I get a headache and backache now when I try to edit my
slide collection. I have about
250,000 slides that I have been proposing to edit down to only the best shots,
then scan. I doubt that will ever
happen, but when it does, I think I will be using the above setup for its
speed.
Perhaps others on this list can chime in on whether this
makes sense or not.
Norb Wu
On 3/5/14 10:52 AM, Marc Shargel wrote:
Following up last month’s discussion about scanning with an
old Nikon scanner, I’m wondering if anyone has used an LS4000 (or 5000, I think
the software is the same) with a Mac using modern software? I’m on OSX
10.9/Mavericks, but I’ve been keeping an old machine in service just to run the
scanner, using the now-unsupported Nikon software. I think Nikon recommended
Silverfast at one point.
…OK, so I did a web search rather than pick the collective
brains of list members for my first-level research. There are two options:
SilverFast Ai Studio (Version 8) at $449.00 (!)
VueScan Professional at $80.00
VueScan offers a $40 “Standard” Edition with no ICC
profiling, so to me that’s not even an option. They seem oriented to document
scanning, so I’m concerned about the quality of photographic scans their
software can produce. Their website claims a lot of users doing photography,
though.
Does anyone have experience with these, especially VueScan
Pro? For $449, I could keep my very old Mac running my scanner (free) on
antiquated Nikon software. It works, it’s paid for. But if the VueScan pro can
produce results as good or better than the old setup, I’d be happy for the huge
speed improvement I’m sure I’d see.
I gratefully welcome your feedback.
Thanks,
Marc Shargel,
Sea Life Photographer,
Author of Wonders of the Sea: North Central California's
Living Marine Riches
and Wonders of the Sea Volume Two: Marine Jewels of Southern
California's Coast and Islands
and Wonders of the Sea Volume Three: Hidden Treasures of
California’s Far North Coast
and Yesterday’s Ocean: A History of Marine Life on
California’s Central Coast
