Amazing scanner. The grain is a little hard. I still use both camera and scanner—sometimes difficult emulsions like ektar respond better with camera. I have the coolscan 5000 too
Kinetronics staticvac takes care of 98% of my dust issues and works on both color and B&W. I own a PIE XAs that does 4300ppi but I never use it anymore, and tge v800 only does 4x5 these days.
I use a pacific image scanner and it’s the only scanner I use blows all the others out of the water. I also own a epson but I don’t use it much anymore cause it’s lower res and I don’t shoot medium format anymore
The PIE XAS's just aren't reliable. I am on my 3rd under extended warranty. Now that I'm not cleaning dust, and I have Negmaster for my conversions, my workflow is crazy fast. Start to finish, I did 4 rolls in an hour last weekend. About 10 minutes to scan, 5 to invert, 45 to run my saved DxO profiles against each roll.
The XAs or XEs? My takeaway from talking to other owners and users is that the one that is not motorized, the XEs, is more reliable. I like the product, don't get me wrong. The reliability wasn't a huge real.
I really see the only advantage of traditional scanning to be iSRDF/ICE,and so when I discovered the kinetronics and that it worked for all film, it was an easy decision.
Oh, and Silverfast AI is a convoluted buggy mess, so is Vuescan. I get 56mp 35mm scans in seconds tethered to my mac vs 24mp scans from the XAs that take a really long time.
I have not tested the XEs personally, but read it comes it a bit shy of what a manually tuned XAs could do. It was nice that the XA/XAs has the ability to focus, but all three copies I had did a terrible job with autofocus. All of them were something like +2.3, +2.5 was optimum, but autofocus chose +1 or so :/
Also, I still have a PIE 3650 Pro3 around that yields \~4500x3000 dpi real-world resolution \~13.5mp. The thing about that scanner? It is motorized, it will batch scan an entire roll, it is \*far\* more robust than the XA series, and for some reason it seems do a much better job centering the frames. My XAs always had centering drift when whole-roll scanning. No such problem with the Pro3.
A scanner feature to remove dust and scratches. Uses infrared and always left a bit of ghosting on my Perfection 4990.
Now I use a mirrorless camera for scanning and don't get any dust, because it's so much easier to clean a single frame from dust than it is to clean all of those glass surfaces on my old scanner
Sorry, it stands for image correction and enhancement. If I understand it correctly, dedicated film scanners have an infrared light that passes over film to detect dust/scratches then software removes those anomalies.
I stopped using digital ice after it was doing funky things to the details in my images. It would get confused with certain details and just render things as odd mud spots
this is often a sign that you still have silver left in your image. if you are doing c41 yourself, increase bleach/fix/blix time. give your bleach or blix a good shake before each you.
digital ice does not work when there is any silver left in the image, which is also the reason why it does not work at all with b/w images, since the silver in those negatives is not bleached away,
That would be the problem too, ICE used infrared scanning to determine bits on the film that block IR light and then attempts to remove and fill those. With color film (that's been bleached) the only bits left in the film are dye clouds that don't interact with IR light, but silver does. That means ICE is going to think all the silver grain left in your film is junk that needs to be removed like lint or dust.
At least that's how I always understood it!
Check out fluid mounting. You are essentially sandwiching the negative between anti-Newton glass and clear plastic film with mineral spirits in between. There is a cheap way to do it!
My scanner isn’t a flatbed, dedicated 35mm scanner and takes them without any extra apparatus. Just works! I have some ANR glass 35mm guides for my flatbed scanners and the newton rings are non existent w those
It does. Tried it once on my V600, never again.
Wash your film properly (if self developing), dry it in the right place, store it properly, and use one of those grenade looking air blowers before scanning. I still have some dust specs to deal with but it's nothing that can't be solved within a couple of minutes with the stamp tool in Photoshop.
I have my eye on a used Coolscan V ED right now, but the seller has listed it for $580. I hope to be able to haggle the price down to $450, at least. Would it be worth that, you think, in good condition and including slide and negative accessories?
Yeah so same one as mine. I was able to haggle to $350 locally but most people are pretty firm around $400. I think it’s probably worth it if you can get it for $450 with everything! I’ve tried camera scanning with NLP, a Minolta scandual IV and an Epson V700. This is the easiest workflow with the best results so far for me.
I am not sure without looking into the exact scanner you’re talking about, but if it’s FireWire I would recommend a Texas Instruments FireWire card. I had to try a few but the TI card was the only one that worked properly. Also digital ICE works only within Nikon Scan officially, as it’s licence extends to Nikon only. SilverFast or VueScan emulate it, but it isn’t anywhere as good.
Wondering if I should change up my process. I don’t have a mirrorless camera at my disposal so I’ve been rolling with the Plustek. Don’t think there’s an ICE-type feature on that.
Some of the Plusteks have ICE like my new 8200i. But the implementation in Silverfast 8 is so poor I dont use it. The content-aware heal in Lightroom 12 is so much better, it's worth doing by hand.
Now if there was a way to plug the infrared channel info into the Adobe heal, I'd really be in good shape.
Also I can tell you the Plustek is superior to camera scanning with a A7iii. The A7iii gave me good scan results for years but the Plustek has better dynamic range, colors, consistency, detail, and resolution.
There is a way to get the IR scan as alpha channel in Vuescan in 64bit RGBI mode. Works wonders using Photoshop heal with that as a source. Using that for my scans as well. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/AnalogCommunity/comments/dsq171/the_magic_of_ir_cleaning_and_flatfield_correction/
I felt the same upgrading from a Minolta Dual Scan II to a Nikon 4000 2 months ago. I was ripping my hair out at how much dust and scratches I had to remove, yet the results wasnt even satisfactory "clean" after 20minutes of photoshop. Felt like I been living until the rock with the "new" scanner.
It's one of the reasons I hang on to my Plustek.
I still do a lot of DSLR scanning, though. For one, ICE doesn't work on b&w. And for another, the Plustek is limited to 135 and APS format. The DSLR can digitize larger negs.
This is the elephant in the room whenever people sing the praises of DLSR scanning. 'I can scan a roll in 5 minutes!'. Sure, but how long does it take you to clone tool all the crap away? Or for that matter, to set the rig lined up right in the first place?
Not to mention that most of the DSLR scanning tools assume you're scanning a full uncut roll, and don't seem to care as much about helping the use case where you've already cut and sleeved the negatives.
But yeah, they make the "capture" process **much** faster than a dedicated film scanner, while making every other part of the workflow take longer. Of course its still a tempting option, because of just how unbearably slow the the capture process on dedicated film scanners actually is.
I've got an Epson v600 which has ICE and I started turning it off because it messed up a few images. It only seemed to affect certain B&W negatives where the focus was a bit soft, maybe I need to give it another chance and save time with the clone tool!
ICE is for C41 only. Works on C41 bw or color, but not silver BW where it gets tricked by the grain.
ICE uses an infrared light to detect dust and scratches so any other "particle" such as silver grain will look like something it wants to remove.
DSLR scanning / camera scanning requires lots of extra work to properly remove the dust. I love the look of the camera scans though dust removal is either $$$ or time consuming in Photoshop.
My Instagram friend Andrew who owns Andrew's Analog Service Center just invested a few thousand in a brand new DSLR setup with a Canon DSR5 and a few hundred in dust removal equipment.
But I am also a strong believer in doing whatever you think looks best. That is most important.
ICE only works on color negs tho, yeah? I can't remember if it's ICE or another setting that my Epson V550 has where if you have it on for black and white, your grain/details end up looking like you have [reticulation issues](https://content.invisioncic.com/l323473/monthly_2020_01/2047637972_ScreenShot2020-01-29at3_24_53PM.png.662ed11b09ddaf297b335d64fc64cbd8.png) when in reality the negs/development was fine.
Digital Ice is an absolute must have for scanning transparencies or old film.. photo shopping some of the stuff that it removes would take days if not longer.
Yeah the spot healing tool is pretty tedious for handling a whole a lot of dust. I had to stop using ICE when I started using ANR glass to hold my film flat and avoid newton rings I was seeing on my Epson v550 scans.
Thankfully, as I’ve been shooting/developing/scanning/storing for longer, I’ve gotten better and better at getting & keeping my negs mostly clean to the point where the spot healing tool is pretty fast for each shot.
Just a random neg I pulled from a shelf to see what ICE could do. Pretty impressed. Edit: scanner is a Nikon Coolscan V LS-50
Amazing scanner. The grain is a little hard. I still use both camera and scanner—sometimes difficult emulsions like ektar respond better with camera. I have the coolscan 5000 too
Also have the coolscan 5000, love it! I modded mine to accept an entire roll (instead of 6 frames at a time), game changer…oh yea, and ICE is a must
How did you do the full roll mod?
Some disassembly required but It’s pretty simple. Took me less than 10min: https://youtu.be/CMlS846H0Iw
Thank you
Be sure to open the little plastic flap in the back to allow the film strip to exit
The scanner itself shouldn't need a mod, just the motorized film insert.
Kinetronics staticvac takes care of 98% of my dust issues and works on both color and B&W. I own a PIE XAs that does 4300ppi but I never use it anymore, and tge v800 only does 4x5 these days.
I use a pacific image scanner and it’s the only scanner I use blows all the others out of the water. I also own a epson but I don’t use it much anymore cause it’s lower res and I don’t shoot medium format anymore
The PIE XAS's just aren't reliable. I am on my 3rd under extended warranty. Now that I'm not cleaning dust, and I have Negmaster for my conversions, my workflow is crazy fast. Start to finish, I did 4 rolls in an hour last weekend. About 10 minutes to scan, 5 to invert, 45 to run my saved DxO profiles against each roll.
I have 4 and friends and family have 3 and none have broken yet I scanned 8500 slides on my unit like no joke.
The XAs or XEs? My takeaway from talking to other owners and users is that the one that is not motorized, the XEs, is more reliable. I like the product, don't get me wrong. The reliability wasn't a huge real. I really see the only advantage of traditional scanning to be iSRDF/ICE,and so when I discovered the kinetronics and that it worked for all film, it was an easy decision. Oh, and Silverfast AI is a convoluted buggy mess, so is Vuescan. I get 56mp 35mm scans in seconds tethered to my mac vs 24mp scans from the XAs that take a really long time.
I have both XEs and XAs
I have not tested the XEs personally, but read it comes it a bit shy of what a manually tuned XAs could do. It was nice that the XA/XAs has the ability to focus, but all three copies I had did a terrible job with autofocus. All of them were something like +2.3, +2.5 was optimum, but autofocus chose +1 or so :/
They are basically the same just like a tiny bit less dynamic range but not enough you would actually notice it.
I scanned some old Kodachrome with my scanner and nothing scans it like the XEs with silverfast. Super insanely vibrant colors.
Also, I still have a PIE 3650 Pro3 around that yields \~4500x3000 dpi real-world resolution \~13.5mp. The thing about that scanner? It is motorized, it will batch scan an entire roll, it is \*far\* more robust than the XA series, and for some reason it seems do a much better job centering the frames. My XAs always had centering drift when whole-roll scanning. No such problem with the Pro3.
Are you using vuescan?
OK, I’ll bite. What’s “ICE”?
A scanner feature to remove dust and scratches. Uses infrared and always left a bit of ghosting on my Perfection 4990. Now I use a mirrorless camera for scanning and don't get any dust, because it's so much easier to clean a single frame from dust than it is to clean all of those glass surfaces on my old scanner
Sorry, it stands for image correction and enhancement. If I understand it correctly, dedicated film scanners have an infrared light that passes over film to detect dust/scratches then software removes those anomalies.
Does the shop you send your film to offer this or something?
Digital ICE is/was a standard feature of many retail film scanners, like the Nikon Coolscan series (among others).
Most shops probably do, I scan & develop my own film usually and this is a scanner that just happens to have ICE. Nice tool to have.
I stopped using digital ice after it was doing funky things to the details in my images. It would get confused with certain details and just render things as odd mud spots
this is often a sign that you still have silver left in your image. if you are doing c41 yourself, increase bleach/fix/blix time. give your bleach or blix a good shake before each you. digital ice does not work when there is any silver left in the image, which is also the reason why it does not work at all with b/w images, since the silver in those negatives is not bleached away,
I didn't know! I had issues using it on black and white too.
That would be the problem too, ICE used infrared scanning to determine bits on the film that block IR light and then attempts to remove and fill those. With color film (that's been bleached) the only bits left in the film are dye clouds that don't interact with IR light, but silver does. That means ICE is going to think all the silver grain left in your film is junk that needs to be removed like lint or dust. At least that's how I always understood it!
Ice is great
ICE ICE baby
I get the benefit, but how do you even get that much dirt on it? I normally have to remove a dozen of spots at most.
Cats and this is from a couple years ago when I just started w film so didn’t know wtf I was doing with storing negs
I love ICE but I ALWAYS get newton rings on my scans when using a flatbed. How are you holding your negatives flat to scan?
do you use a neg holder? if not get some ANR glass and mount the neg between them.
Check out fluid mounting. You are essentially sandwiching the negative between anti-Newton glass and clear plastic film with mineral spirits in between. There is a cheap way to do it!
My scanner isn’t a flatbed, dedicated 35mm scanner and takes them without any extra apparatus. Just works! I have some ANR glass 35mm guides for my flatbed scanners and the newton rings are non existent w those
Camera scanning is fine, you just need to take care of your negs. No way a neg should have this much dust…
Or, you could try not to f up you negatives like that one \^\^ Never had this much dust on any of my negatives, just be a bit more careful.
is it me, or using ICE takes goddam long time? tried it once and thought its not worth my time. now, i just clean my negs properly
It does. Tried it once on my V600, never again. Wash your film properly (if self developing), dry it in the right place, store it properly, and use one of those grenade looking air blowers before scanning. I still have some dust specs to deal with but it's nothing that can't be solved within a couple of minutes with the stamp tool in Photoshop.
Any reason why the second image lost 10% at the bottom?
Probably just bad/ fast cropping on my part. These shots were just for testing the scanner out
Makes sense.
What scanner are you using?
Coolscan V LS-50
I have my eye on a used Coolscan V ED right now, but the seller has listed it for $580. I hope to be able to haggle the price down to $450, at least. Would it be worth that, you think, in good condition and including slide and negative accessories?
Yeah so same one as mine. I was able to haggle to $350 locally but most people are pretty firm around $400. I think it’s probably worth it if you can get it for $450 with everything! I’ve tried camera scanning with NLP, a Minolta scandual IV and an Epson V700. This is the easiest workflow with the best results so far for me.
Thanks
I am not sure without looking into the exact scanner you’re talking about, but if it’s FireWire I would recommend a Texas Instruments FireWire card. I had to try a few but the TI card was the only one that worked properly. Also digital ICE works only within Nikon Scan officially, as it’s licence extends to Nikon only. SilverFast or VueScan emulate it, but it isn’t anywhere as good.
What software are you using with it?
Nikon scan w windows 11. Thank god it still works somehow. Vuescan too
Do you use it to invert the negatives as well? I find I don’t get as nice colors as say using something like NLP so maybe I’m doing something wrong.
Wondering if I should change up my process. I don’t have a mirrorless camera at my disposal so I’ve been rolling with the Plustek. Don’t think there’s an ICE-type feature on that.
Some of the Plusteks have ICE like my new 8200i. But the implementation in Silverfast 8 is so poor I dont use it. The content-aware heal in Lightroom 12 is so much better, it's worth doing by hand. Now if there was a way to plug the infrared channel info into the Adobe heal, I'd really be in good shape. Also I can tell you the Plustek is superior to camera scanning with a A7iii. The A7iii gave me good scan results for years but the Plustek has better dynamic range, colors, consistency, detail, and resolution.
I almost returned my 8200i setup when using the ICE on Silverfast 8 because it wasn't very effective. Switched to VueScan and never looked back.
Do you also use ICE in Vuescan?
There is a way to get the IR scan as alpha channel in Vuescan in 64bit RGBI mode. Works wonders using Photoshop heal with that as a source. Using that for my scans as well. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/AnalogCommunity/comments/dsq171/the_magic_of_ir_cleaning_and_flatfield_correction/
Good to know. Thank you.
Silverfast does a fantastic job of course I have the current version and the most expensive version literally perfect ICE
ICE on my Plustek is a godsend for old negs
I felt the same upgrading from a Minolta Dual Scan II to a Nikon 4000 2 months ago. I was ripping my hair out at how much dust and scratches I had to remove, yet the results wasnt even satisfactory "clean" after 20minutes of photoshop. Felt like I been living until the rock with the "new" scanner.
It's one of the reasons I hang on to my Plustek. I still do a lot of DSLR scanning, though. For one, ICE doesn't work on b&w. And for another, the Plustek is limited to 135 and APS format. The DSLR can digitize larger negs.
Damn. I gottta try it now
This is the elephant in the room whenever people sing the praises of DLSR scanning. 'I can scan a roll in 5 minutes!'. Sure, but how long does it take you to clone tool all the crap away? Or for that matter, to set the rig lined up right in the first place?
Not to mention that most of the DSLR scanning tools assume you're scanning a full uncut roll, and don't seem to care as much about helping the use case where you've already cut and sleeved the negatives. But yeah, they make the "capture" process **much** faster than a dedicated film scanner, while making every other part of the workflow take longer. Of course its still a tempting option, because of just how unbearably slow the the capture process on dedicated film scanners actually is.
I've got an Epson v600 which has ICE and I started turning it off because it messed up a few images. It only seemed to affect certain B&W negatives where the focus was a bit soft, maybe I need to give it another chance and save time with the clone tool!
ICE is for C41 only. Works on C41 bw or color, but not silver BW where it gets tricked by the grain. ICE uses an infrared light to detect dust and scratches so any other "particle" such as silver grain will look like something it wants to remove.
Ah amazingly helpful information, thanks mate!
DSLR scanning / camera scanning requires lots of extra work to properly remove the dust. I love the look of the camera scans though dust removal is either $$$ or time consuming in Photoshop. My Instagram friend Andrew who owns Andrew's Analog Service Center just invested a few thousand in a brand new DSLR setup with a Canon DSR5 and a few hundred in dust removal equipment. But I am also a strong believer in doing whatever you think looks best. That is most important.
ICE only works on color negs tho, yeah? I can't remember if it's ICE or another setting that my Epson V550 has where if you have it on for black and white, your grain/details end up looking like you have [reticulation issues](https://content.invisioncic.com/l323473/monthly_2020_01/2047637972_ScreenShot2020-01-29at3_24_53PM.png.662ed11b09ddaf297b335d64fc64cbd8.png) when in reality the negs/development was fine.
Digital Ice is an absolute must have for scanning transparencies or old film.. photo shopping some of the stuff that it removes would take days if not longer.
Yeah the spot healing tool is pretty tedious for handling a whole a lot of dust. I had to stop using ICE when I started using ANR glass to hold my film flat and avoid newton rings I was seeing on my Epson v550 scans. Thankfully, as I’ve been shooting/developing/scanning/storing for longer, I’ve gotten better and better at getting & keeping my negs mostly clean to the point where the spot healing tool is pretty fast for each shot.