Iqsmart users! Are there any?

[mob81]

Dear all,
I'm purchasing refurbished iqsmart 2 from reputable seller, however, I can't find enough examples or real review of the thing with crops! How good is it....so on.

I'm buying base on some feedback mainly on this forum...and it costs a heck amount of money.

Can someone shed a light with some crops or comparisons or detailed opinion on both hardware and software.

Any info is much appreciated.

[Brian K]

I own an IQSmart 3. I've owned Imacon and the Nikon 9000 film scanner, and I've had many images drum scanned on various high end drum scanners.

I can state without hesitation that the IQsmart yields a superior scan to all but a drum scanner, and in the case of most negatives the difference between the IQ scan and the drum scan will not be visible in normal circumstances. Where a drum scanner is superior is with film and negatives with poor density, too much or too little.

Where the IQSmart suffers compared to the imacon and prosumer scanners is in the software. It is not software written for a novice, it is written for a pre press professional so is not easy to master. If you want to bang out decent film scans with little effort get and Imacon, if you want to wet mount and really pull out all the detail in a neg go with an IQsmart or a drum.

[mob81]

I really hope it's that good! What drew me to the IQSmart scanner is it's a flatbed so batch scanning is a major plus there. I heard the software is not that hard, plus there is training CDs included and I looked at the user guide and it seems learning curve not so steep! At least I hope so and I have some experience with photos's software (please pray for me :) )
Regarding wet mounting, I'm afraid for the time being I'm not welling to consider (messy and I heard its main advantage is with scratched film).

Thanks a lot Brian, your opinion is much appreciated. I was looking for comparison detailed review....seems hard with this kind of equipments.

Kind regards,
Mohammed

[eric t]

http://trichromie.free.fr/trichromie/index.php?post/2010/03/02/ScanC41

[mob81]

Thanks eric t. That's a great comparison with crops.
Really good stuff.

[SergeyT]

I heard the software is not that hard
It is not. And it is not Photoshop either when it comes to precision and flexibility.
Make sure your model is capable of saving scans in DT.


Regarding wet mounting, I'm afraid for the time being I'm not welling to consider (messy and I heard its main advantage is with scratched film).
It is not messy. And holds the film where it needs to be. How would you make the film holding in place otherwise, with tape?


I was looking for comparison detailed review....seems hard with this kind of equipments.


Please take a look at this: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/scan-comparison/

[Evanjoe610]

Sergey,

Nice website comparsion of scanners. Glad that I have Eversmart Pro II working under 2.5.5 software (16 Bit & DT files!)

Evan



It is not. And it is not Photoshop either when it comes to precision and flexibility.
Make sure your model is capable of saving scans in DT.


It is not messy. And holds the film where it needs to be. How would you make the film holding in place otherwise, with tape?




Please take a look at this: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/scan-comparison/

[mob81]

It is not. And it is not Photoshop either when it comes to precision and flexibility.
Make sure your model is capable of saving scans in DT.


It is not messy. And holds the film where it needs to be. How would you make the film holding in place otherwise, with tape?




Please take a look at this: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/scan-comparison/

I heard the iqsmart 2 doesn't support DT files! Only iqsmart 3 in the iqsmart models.
And from what I know you can mount the film dry easily (via masks or direct mount to the base glass) no wet mounting required, just an optional extra.

Thanks for the comparison link.

[8x10 user]

You don't need support for DT. As long it outputs in 16-bit then all you need to do is scan it with extra care as to not clip any shadows or highlights and then work on it later in photoshop. To improve your results you can follow the Hutchcolor scanning guide and produce an extended range ICC profile to start you off.

Turn off sharpening and make sure "descreening" is turned off when you scan. You can sharpen and smooth later in photoshop.

[8x10 user]

Buying a refurbished unit is good, there is a lot that can be wrong with a used scanner but a refurb is likely to perform as new.

[mob81]

I'm buying refurbished as mentioned in the first post. My concern was not the claimed dpi or spi numbers (I heard pro flatbeds get really close to the claimed #) but how the details are there and you really get better or more detail with higher scanning resolution!
From the link posted by eric t it gives me what I asked (I hope for more examples but it's ok)

Thanks to all

[SURF]

What critical parts have they changed to call it "refurbished"? Lamps?

Regards
Al

PS. Thank you eric t for the link:
http://trichromie.free.fr/trichromie/index.php?post/2010/03/02/ScanC41

If that IQSmart scans that way and costs "a heck amount of money" then I will never buy it.

[8x10 user]

I'm not sure exactly but I would think that a lot of times refurb units have actually been taking apart and cleaned. Work parts and scratched optics can and should be replaced. With creo scanners there are things that can be adjusted and re aligned in the calibration software.

I have seen eversmarts that are all over the board in terms of quality. This is due to possible hardware issues. A refurb unit should have been well checked to make sure everything is running optimally.

Anyway I've got a Creo scanner of my own as long as everything is running correctly you should be quite happy with an IQsmart 2. Additional resolution isn't required for large format, you might see an upgrade in 35mm when going up to the IQ 3 and supreme, but 4100 DPI is way higher then you can expect your large format lenses to produce at working apertures.

[8x10 user]

If that IQSmart scans that way and costs "a heck amount of money" then I will never buy it.

Whats wrong with the scans? Perhaps the color and tones could have been set better but thats the operator.

[Brian K]

Whats wrong with the scans? Perhaps the color and tones could have been set better but thats the operator.

Those IQSmart scans were way oversharpened, you're getting pepper grain.

[mob81]

I thought it was over sharpened (very noisy for LF film)! But there is work around while obtaining raw scan. Then use USM in ps.

[SURF]

Whats wrong with the scans? Perhaps the color and tones could have been set better but thats the operator.
I see the problem not in the color or oversharpening. It's in the other field and it is not small on my scale. I have not decided to tell or not about what it is but I see it. Sorry for that. May be it is not important to many but not for me.

[Evanjoe610]

Surf,

You have my attention and curiosity. Exactly what is it that you see,that you are not happy with? Please educate us if we should know something that disturb you. I want like to know.

Evan



I see the problem not in the color or oversharpening. It's in the other field and it is not small on my scale. I have not decided to tell or not about what it is but I see it. Sorry for that. May be it is not important to many but not for me.

[John Brady]

I have an IQ 2 and I think the scans are spectacular. I learned early on that you should apply a small amount of sharpening during the scan. I know that is contrary to the way you scan with a consumer grade scanner. I do final sharpening in PS prior to print.

I scan 8x10 transparency for the most part.

www.timeandlight.com

[SURF]

Surf,

You have my attention and curiosity. Exactly what is it that you see,that you are not happy with? Please educate us if we should know something that disturb you. I want like to know.

Evan
I have opened new thread about it.
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=79256

[The Deer Gunter]

Hi mob81,
It seems like I'm following your example, now 4 years later. I'll have permanent access to a virtually new iQsmart3 at home. I already have som experience with the device:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/thedeergunter/6250812458/
... but it's only now I will find the time to really study it.

Have you been successful mastering your iQsmart? How do you feel about it after 4 years?
Did you find any other sites/blogs where the iQsmart scanners are discussed? They are still not widely spread around this planet, it seems ;-)

Thanks for your time!

[philipus]

I'd be interested in the answers to these questions too.

There's very little online about the iQsmarts. Even Flickr doesn't have many images scanned with them. I'm currently using a Coolscan 9000 and while it delivers nice results (and great results when wet mounting using the Image Mechanics tray) I dislike the shadow noise I get particularly on C41. The post-processing steps necessary to counter that degrade the image too much sometimes.

So I'd be very interested in knowing how the iQsmart 2 and 3 compare to the 9000. I've been led to believe they will give much better results on 135 and 120 (which is what I shoot) but I have never seen any side-by-side comparisons. Perhaps there aren't any.

Br
Philip

[The Deer Gunter]

Dear Philip,

I think I understand why iQsmart scanners are not as popular as a Nikon CoolScan 9000, and it's also the reason why they're not regularly the subject of a scanner comparison. They are so called high end devices and on top of that they were not immediately the cheapest you could get. It means that the iQsmart series didn't end up with the average 'Nikon-Epson-Canon' consumer, but with companies in the pre-press who could afford a + 20K device, who could afford the high maintenace costs and software upgrade costs, and who made full use of the batch scanning features to eventually do justice to all these expenses. So no offence to the consumers among us (to whom I belong myself), but the iQsmart scanners simply belong to a different league, and it makes little use to compare them to a Nikon9000 and the alike. Although, on the 'Collaborative Large Format Scanner Comparison (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/scan-comparison/scanner-comparison.html)' you'll find both high end scanners (including iQsmart3) and consumer scanners (unfortunately not including the Nikon9000). But I think you'll get the idea looking at the comparisons.
I also believe that the companies who owned the iQsmart scanners at first were not very keen on sharing their knowledge on using these devices. They were after all quite an investment, and they preferred to keep that knowledge to themselves, for obvious reasons.
Today, we speak 2015, Kodak discontinued the iQsmart range and left the scanner business alltogether since 2008, and the support for the scanners ended 5 years later in 2013. If you acquire one of the iQsmart scanners, make sure it is in perfect order as it becomes more and more difficult every year to find proper support for them. But despite everything, they are truly wonderful pieces of technique, designed and developed by an extraordinary team formerly known as Creo.

And finally, I don't understand why you complain about the shadow rendering of the CoolScan 9000. It should not be a problem in my opinion. Are you sure the white calibration of the scanner is still clean?

Gunter.

[philipus]

Hello Gunter, thank you very much for replying, I hoped you would reply actually.

I should say that I had seen the collaborative comparison, which is instructive but as you say doesn't contain a Coolscan for comparison. I know the iQsmarts are very different from consumer scanners. I would happily spend the money (within reason of course) on such a scanner if I knew it could handle, in particular, 135 film (esp C41) well. I have not seen any examples of this unfortunately.

I realise this is a LF forum so I very much hope I am not violating any rules here, but this is what I mean by poor shadow performance of the 9000 when it comes to C41.
137417 Full frame
137418 Crop wet-mounted 4000dpi scan
137419 Crop wet-mounted 4000>2000dpi downrez
137420 Crop wet-mounted 2000dpi

Dry mounted versions in the next post.

[philipus]

137421 Crop dry-mounted 4000dpi
137422 Crop dry-mounted 4000>2000dpi downrez
137423 Crop dry-mounted 2000dpi

I include downrez'd files because I've read that this would reduce the impression of the noise. Btw, this is a frame from a 135 neg (Fuji Pro 160S).

I must admit I feel like a bit of an idiot, even though I've used Coolscans for over 10 years - what do you mean by the "white calibration"? A few months ago I cleaned the mirror and the lens of the scanner (easily done) so that's in good shape.

Thanks in advance for any insight/help
Philip

[The Deer Gunter]

Hi Philip,

No worries! You should not feel like an idiot. Trouble shooting scanner problems is not always easy to do. But in this case I honestly don't think you're dealing with a scanner problem. This looks more like underdeveloped film to me. The funny (or sad) thing is that I've been dealing with the same problem for some time now. I'm currently looking around for another lab, which isn't an obvious move to make these days. Anyway, back to your case. Typical for an underdeveloped film is that the shadow areas are still showing some detail, but the overall contrast of the negative is very low. If you put the film on a light table, I bet you'll see a rather faint image with shadow areas that show hardly any difference with the film base fog.
Another thing which showed up a couple of times in my case, is that the film base fog is not constant from the beginning to the end of the film. I was shocked when I found out about it. One of my films goes from a dense grayisch orange to a clear orange, and this on a length of only one 120 roll.
I posted a couple of these shots anyway, because luckily even when something goes wrong with a film exposure/development, it still produces something useable, something surprisingly charming at times. You may recognize the symptoms ...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/thedeergunter/18620818020/in/dateposted-public/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/thedeergunter/18957382942/in/dateposted-public/

When you switch on a scanner, it always does a white calibration. If the white calibration plate is dirty, due to dust, the shadow areas will easily be affected by noise but also lines running through your image, mainly visible in the shadow areas. This is very often seen on a lot of scans posted on the internet. But in your case, I don't see one line, so I expect your white calibration plate is clean. I don't know where the white calibration plate is located in the Nikon CS9000.

The iQsmarts are very well suitable for 135 mm scanning! They come with dedicated masks for both mounted slides and unmounted/uncut film. And believe me, both the iQsmart2 and iQsmart3 will suck every last bit of detail from your shots! Mounting is really easy, and thanks to the autofocus system of the scan head you never have to worry about the positioning. My previous scanner was an Agfa T2500 which was giving me headaches on this.

Hope this will help. Good luck!

Gunter.

[mob81]

I actually found the iQsmart deliver smoother image (still sharp) than the other scanners I used (Coolscan 4000, Minolta 5400 and plustek 120)
I did small comparison with the Plustek 120 on Provia 400x Slide
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7294/10689464214_05d069256f_c.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/hhAii9)Scanners Comparison 2 (https://flic.kr/p/hhAii9) by Mohammed Basamh (https://www.flickr.com/photos/m_o_b81/), on Flickr

on my flickr there is an album called Creo iQsmart2 with over 400 images if you want to check it.

I use my plustek 120 for 35mm and iQsmart for larger film.

[philipus]

Gunter, Mohammed, thank you very much for your very helpful replies.

I must admit I don't know where the calibration plate is on the 9000, but I normally don't have any problems with scans so hopefully it's not too dirty at least. I did clean the mirror and lens assembly during the spring (quite dusty actually). I realise that the key thing to achieve for a good scan is an accurate exposure and the photo I posted is not well exposed and is a bit of an extreme case, but it shows the multi-coloured noise well so that's why I picked it.

Mohammed, the iQsmart 2 album is very exciting for me to look at, not only because of the very nice photographs but because I've seen so few iQsmart scans. I agree with you that it seems based on the test you made that the Plustek gives sharper, or perhaps more defined, scans than the iQsmart 2. How do the iQsmart scans hold up when post-processed, is there any difference between the two scanners in this respect? That's a pretty important factor, I think. At least for me, images are never "done" when they leave the scanner.

135 film is tricky because of the smaller image areas - in 120 the noise is much less intrusive (I even pushed an expired roll of Provia 400X two stops, shot in a very dark room, and had less intrusive noise than I get at box speed with Fuji Superia 400 in 135). One thing I've seen people do with C41 is to overexpose the film by a stop or even two to lighten the shadows. This works because the highlights can be recovered so well. I've never shot my C41 that way so I'll have to try it out and see if it makes a difference. I hope it does.

I am still intrigued by the iQsmarts (I'd probably pick a 2 or a 3 given the chance). From the scans I've seen in Muhammed's album, shadow areas in 135 film are rendered much more smoothly; true there is grain (as there should be imho) but there's no noise. Looks really nice.

Gunter, I hope you find a lab that gives satisfactory (to you) results. I can relate to how frustrating it is when a lab fails to deliver.

Best and thank you both again very much for your help
philip

[mob81]

I noticed the Plustek 120 (Like my previous Coolscan and Minolta 5400 before) scans are sharpened and it introduce noise (Digital noise) by default. Plus, the Plustek was down-scaled by PS to meet the iQsmart2 scan size which further sharpen the image :)
The plustek is good scanner but the iQsmart is much cleaner and smoother tone image (Color or B&W) and once post processed it can give great prints. I'm not good at testing scanner but I can do another one next week and down-Scale the plustek without sharpening if you are interested. Both 120 and 35mm

[mob81]

the reason I don't use 35mm with the iQsmart is because it's time consuming to prepare and mount the negatives on the masks (it takes full roll if you like). the plustek is much faster in that regards. 120 film or 4x5 I just lay down the negative in glass and scan away (Easy and beautiful scans) :)

[philipus]

Thank you for the replies Mohammed. I would be very interested in seeing a comparison of 120 and 135, even without downscaling of the Plustek so I can try various settings in CS6.

When I wet mount with the 9000 it does take extra time and so far I haven't decided if it makes a big enough difference to do this. But I'll do some testing in the near future and post results online in case it is of interest of other users.

Do I understand you correctly that, if it were not as time-consuming to mount 135 film on the iQsmart, you would use it for such film?

Best
philip


I noticed the Plustek 120 (Like my previous Coolscan and Minolta 5400 before) scans are sharpened and it introduce noise (Digital noise) by default. Plus, the Plustek was down-scaled by PS to meet the iQsmart2 scan size which further sharpen the image :)
The plustek is good scanner but the iQsmart is much cleaner and smoother tone image (Color or B&W) and once post processed it can give great prints. I'm not good at testing scanner but I can do another one next week and down-Scale the plustek without sharpening if you are interested. Both 120 and 35mm


the reason I don't use 35mm with the iQsmart is because it's time consuming to prepare and mount the negatives on the masks (it takes full roll if you like). the plustek is much faster in that regards. 120 film or 4x5 I just lay down the negative in glass and scan away (Easy and beautiful scans) :)

[mob81]

Thank you for the replies Mohammed. I would be very interested in seeing a comparison of 120 and 135, even without downscaling of the Plustek so I can try various settings in CS6.

When I wet mount with the 9000 it does take extra time and so far I haven't decided if it makes a big enough difference to do this. But I'll do some testing in the near future and post results online in case it is of interest of other users.

Do I understand you correctly that, if it were not as time-consuming to mount 135 film on the iQsmart, you would use it for such film?

Best
philip

I actually used it for 35mm on many occasion until I got the Plustek which is faster and easier with that type of film.

Here is a photo to show how to use the 35mm Mask (then wait for the preview and then adjust! Finally scan) But it takes full roll.

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5517/11476633395_4eb103a5b6_c.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/iu9Kgz)IMG_2071 (https://flic.kr/p/iu9Kgz) by Mohammed Basamh (https://www.flickr.com/photos/m_o_b81/), on Flickr

Here is a crop of ilford delta 100 the original photo is posted in the description

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8352/8374997642_151bedb1d5_c.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/dL5425)Fuji GW690III (https://flic.kr/p/dL5425) by Mohammed Basamh (https://www.flickr.com/photos/m_o_b81/), on Flickr