Some of you might have noticed that I haven't been complaining much about my film scanner lately. Those same people probably know I'm not easy to please...
So, did my Minolta Dual II suddenly get fixed, or was it replaced with a new one that worked "like butter"? No such luck. What did happen is that over the last few months I have had what I can honestly call "the pleasure" of testing the new Polaroid SS4000+ scanner. In spite of the "storm", Polaroid has been pretty busy working on new projects like the SS4000+. new versions of Insight, and other goodies, ignoring any "doom and gloom" being reported about their future. I was under non-disclosure until now to discuss the unit while Polaroid was busy working out a few minor bugs in the software and firmware, which, as far as I can determine, are now eradicated. Since I have never had a SS4000 I cannot directly compare it. But I can compare it to the other film scanner I have owned, so here's the rundown. The SS4000+ I had, came in what appears to be the same shell as the SS4000. I don't know yet if the production units will look like that or not, since I've yet to see them on "the street". As anyone who has been reading this forum knows, the SCSI interfacing is gone from the SS4000+. This unit has both USB and firewire. My pre-production unit came with a firewire card included, but I don't know if that is standard packaging. Unfortunately, since my computer is running WIN 98SE, I was told I should use USB v1.1, which is slower than the firewire. The first thing I noticed, is the unit is pretty large and substantial. I guess I'd call it "solid". After seeing and feeling the heft of the SS4000+, the HP S-10, S-20 and Minolta Dual II I've used previously seem somewhat like toys. Installation: My computer system subscribes to the concept of the "if anything can possibly go wrong during installation, it will" theory, so I was expecting problems on installation of the unit and the software (Insight). I have very rarely installed new software, let alone a hardware peripheral without some disaster, be it a lock-up and partial install leading up to 3 days of hair pulling while my computer lay in pieces on the floor while I'm on the phone with tech support. So, I was nervous about this, especially since I already had another film scanner on the other USB port and this was a "beta" unit. Well, I was in for a pleasant surprise. The SS4000+ installed without any glitches at all. It just installed the software, and became one of the TWAIN devices available to me in Photoshop, Insight worked as stand alone software as well, and the scanner hardware was recognized by the computer OS. Time to scan... Insight came with sketchy help files, being in beta at the time, and I have to admit I was scratching my head a couple of times, but that's been improved upon in newer versions. My policy with film scanner drivers has always been to only use them to capture the image and then send it on to Photoshop for the real work. And indeed, that's how I started my workflow with the SS4000+. But, as I let my hair down, I began to appreciate the easy layout of Insight, and let the natural flow take over, and I found myself using more of the features in it before sending the file over to Photoshop. Now, Insight is "no Photoshop" but it is actually amazing how many features it does have built in. In fact, if you only need to get a good scan off the film, and don't need to do cut and paste, or compositing or design, you can get a perfectly good result with just Insight. It has many of the same image adjusting options that are in Photoshop, like brightness, contrast, color balance, curves (with a histogram), sharpening, and even resampling options for the output file. The trickiest part of using Insight is its reliance on film profiles. You could avoid this by sending a "raw" scan to something like Photoshop and playing with color balance and curves, but I found it easier to use the profiles within Insight, which provide a starting point to adjust from. Transparencies were relatively simple because you aren't dealing with dye coupler masks that make negative color film orange, so you have a few basic profiles for transparencies; Slide, Kodachrome, and underexposed slide. With negatives its a bit more tricky because you have to select a profile, and Polaroid doesn't have one for every film made. Sometimes you have to guess at what film profile will work best for your film type. The good thing is that this function is a software matter done after the pre-scan, so you can quickly see what affect the profile has on the image, and you can run through them until you find the best one for the film you are working with. The hardware is basically a large shoebox shaped case. It has only one button, a big orange one that turns the scanner on, and two LEDS that tell you its status. There is a good sized panel in the front that has a slot to allow the carriers in, and which "floats" independently from the rest of the front, so that the carrier position can be raised or lowered for focusing. There is also a slot in the back of the unit to allow the carrier to pass through partially during scans. The unit makes a series of different sounds depending upon the function activated. Overall, it is both quieter and faster than the other scanners I have owned. The slide carrier takes 4 mounted 35mm slides, the film carrier takes up to six frames of unmounted 35mm film. The slide carrier is very easy to work with, the film carrier was, at least for me, awkward. It could be made quicker to use, in my opinion. If you are doing "production scans" best to have at least two carriers at hand so you can load one while scanning the other. Prescans are very quick, and are large so you can really see what you are looking at. Some prescans on other film scanners I've had are very small or such low resolution that they are difficult to determine what one is looking at. Scan Quality: Well, this is what its really all about, I suppose. No matter how nice the software is, or how pretty the box the scanner comes in, if the scans are no good, what's the point? The scan quality from the SS4000+ was amazing. Since the SS4000+ seems to recalibrate before each scan, I didn't see any streaking, or "lazy sensors", and believe me, after the problems I had with other scanners, I was looking for problems. I looked for color fringing, or images out of registration, but there was none. Then I looked for the usual party of "noisemakers" in the shadows of slides. Nope. I tried playing with levels in Photoshop to force some stuff hidden in the shadows to show itself. It wasn't until I ended up with an image that was beyond recognition that I was able to make anything approaching "noise" show up. Basically, this scanner does not create noise in shadows, under any normal scanning conditions. The next thing I looked at was the gradients and grain. Now, I know that many claim that scanners in the 2400 to 2700 dpi range amplify grain, and that may explain what I'm about to write. I think the thing that most amazed me was how grainless most scans from the SS4000+ of my slides were, compared to the other scanners I have used. As a result of the exaggerated grain my others scanners have exhibited, I got into the habit of being very judicious with using unsharp masking, because it usually made the grain that much more apparent. Well, with the SS4000+ at 4000 dpi, my scans could handle pretty much any level of unsharp masking I threw at them without showing grain. At first, I suspected Polaroid had defocused the unit to reduce grain, but this isn't the case. The sharpness of the image was certainly there. I think it has something to do with the lighting design. Both dust/dirt/defects and grain get suppressed without sacrificing sharpness (the unit has auto focus, by the way, and it seems to do a good job of it). My Minolta Dual II is sharper than my previous HP S-10 and S-20, BUT, I've had to put up with pretty serious increases in the amount of grain, dust and dirt that shows up on the scans. Again, I suspect it is the lighting used. The SS4000+ seems to take advantage of the lighting design to maintain the image sharpness while leaving behind the parts that don't really add to the image. And while the scans do require some unsharp masking, as do all scans, getting them up to the original definition, adds no noise or defects. In fact, I was able to push the USM (unsharp masking) to the point where the image was looking sharper than the original and still didn't exhibit noise or distracting artifacts. Since depth of field issues often come up in regard to film scanners, I can tell you I saw no softness on the edges of any slides I scanned unless it was there on the source slide to begin with. You need to have a goodly amount of hard drive or other storage space available because the scans are about 56 megs (in 8 bit color) or 112 megs (in 16 bit color), depending on how you wish to capture them. Although I did not get a chance to use Silverfast with the SS4000+ (I had a beta version available, but didn't have the time) it should be available for the SS4000+ now or in the near future. I believe it allows for multipass scanning, although I don't know if you'd see much advantage since the scanner is already so noiseless. Since the SS4000+ has a higher bit depth than the SS4000, it should, in theory, have a better dynamic range than the later. Others have mentioned that the SS4000 is pretty much noiseless in shadows, so I guess the SS4000+ is just quieter still. Lastly, the one sent to me didn't come with a cleaning brush, so I assume the problem with dust getting in the carrier positioning sensor has been resolved, as well. Is the SS4000+ "magic"? No. I still struggled somewhat to get decent scans from my older negatives which are grainy or fading, and although it is considerably faster than the other scanners I've worked with, for production use, it would be nice to have an automated slide feeder. But, it is the best film scanner I have used, by quite a distance. If it is in your price range, it will certainly save you some headaches that other scanners serve up. Art ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
