Scitex Eversmart Calibration Slide

[Ari]

Yes, the lock is indicated on the bed.
Bring both flat and Philips screwdrivers to remove the glass and possibly anything else you see before transport.
Bring lots of padding and make sure the scanners are well-protected.

[calebarchie]

I will be collecting one soon, they are bigger than my Scanmates! Will be going in the boot - is it really necessary to remove the glass beds though? Will padding or bubble wrap between the bed and lid be suffice?
I feel the glass panels are more prone to breaking by themselves if its only 3mm thick or so given the limited space I have to transport.

[SURF]

Those scanners were shipped with the glasses in place and sheet of thick paper between them. All over the world BTW. Make sure that the upper part will not open while transporting.

And for future: do not clean zipper line on a glass. It goes off easily. Scanner calibrates stitching on it.

[The Austrian Dude]

So I finally got the scanners, but I only did the lockdown thing. I left the glass in the scanners and it was okay, although like SURF said, putting some sort of padding between the two glass plates is a good idea (which I obviously didn't do, because I read this too late) since the top glass plate is attached to a spring or something similar.

I also managed to transfer my first scan via TFP. I have to say, it was easier than I expected, but it took me long enough to figure it out.

Now I have three questions regarding the scanner. What's the best way to clean the glass plates? Mine have fingerprints and quite a lot of dust on them. Since these glass plate apparently have coating on them, I don't want to damage them.

What is the best way to scan B&W negs? I noticed that my tiff files are rather small. I'm guessing it has something to do with the negs not being scanned with 16 bits, but 8. I think there was a discussion about the Screen Cezanne scanners doing that with B&W scans. If my memory serves me right, scanning the B&W negs as positives solves that problem.

Now my last issue is that the scanner completely overexposes the scans. I found a test scan from the previous owner on the G3, and it was completely fine. Do I have to change something in preview mode? I remember seeing several settings, but I'm completely new to the software so I didn't want to ruin anything. Here is a sample scan and below that is the edited scan.




So, the scanner does seem to pick up a lot of info, but it's obviously overexposed.

One thing that i find somewhat strange is, that when start up the scanner software I get about 6 error messages about the parameters not being optimal. Those seem to be caused by the scanner not being calibrated. Somehow, the scans still seem sharp. Should I post a 100% crop?

[Jim Andrada]

I think first step should be to calibrate the scanner. I'd do that before trying to scan anything.

[SergeyT]

Calibration or luck of it is unlikely to affect sharpness as scanner performs auto focus with each pre-scan and fine-scan. EversmartScan wont allow to save 16 bit files in any format (applies to all Eversmart scanners that don't support DT format). The scanner - Mac path is 16 bit and all adjustments in the EversmartScan are done in 16 bit mode. So you will want to make your image as good looking on a pre-scan as you can in the scanner software before fine-scanning\saving it. That includes converting from scanner RGB to let's say Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB.
The DAC is very good and there is never a banding , unless the input profile is defective . So don't worry about 8-bit per channel files. For an extra assurance scan B&W in color mode and then strip the color info off as a final step in image processing. If you expect to apply heavy edits to your 8-bit per channel files - convert them into 16-bpc files as first step.

In my opinion scanning Negatives as Positives on an Eversmart with no DT support in a no-go due to the above limitations.

Treat your base glass the same way as you treat your coated lenses. Pay special attention to the cloth that you use . Ideally buy lint free scanner wipes like Aztec AZ-Wipes or similar. PEC-Pads should be fine too. But they are more "hard" on surfaces than Aztec ones. Anything that is safe on lenses will do on scanner base glass. The top galss is just a glass. You can use a non‑ammonia glass cleaner on it.

[MOW]

Software automatically analyses cropped area and has set dark point to outside of negative. That is why there is overexposure.

You need to either crop it and/or set end points manually. Usually both. White end point tend to clip highlight in negatives too aggressively so you need to compensate it with sliders in histogram.

Also by default there is sharpening turned on. You need to turn it off and save this sharpening setup and use it for best result.

Clean the base glass and upper glass first and then calibrate the scanner. That is right order.

I suggest you should also open the lid and clean upper side of lid glass. Open those lid 4 screws. You can move the light unit by hand gently to get glass cleaned below it (where calibration area is) and leave the light unit somewhere in middle of glass. It will automatically move to right position as scanning software is started (same applies to all moving parts). When putting lid cover back be very careful and only very lightly tighten lid screws. Plastic breaks up easily.

Use previous messages hints for base glass what comes to soft cloth and mild lens cleaning subtances and avoiding touching zig zag pattern (butting target). To get all the dust specks removed from bottom side of base glass you can use following method. Clean upper side of base glass, open the locks that keep base glass in place. Turn on the scanner, open software and turn on the light table by pressing right one of the green lights. When light table turns on look where the specks are and then take dry antistatic cloth meant for removing dust to your right hand and and with left hand rise the base glass up enough that you can wipe the specks away with right hand (when you rise the base glass while scanner is on light table will turn off and right side light will turn to red, it will go back to green when you put glass back). Lower the base glass back to its place and turn again light table on and check if there is more specks to remove. Repeat this as many times as necessary to get rid of all specks on bottom side of base glass. Be careful.

Fred Turro has lot of information about Eversmart Pro on his web page. Google translate helps on french. There are guides to all maintenance procedures what you can do at home to keep scanner running near original specifications. I would suggest at least cleaning the front mirror (this is having face up and collects dust), maybe ccd and check the ccd fan if bearings making noise and need to be replaced.

[Ari]

Great information above, I'd only add that I use scanner wipes with distilled water to clean all surfaces.
Whatever solution you use, make sure it has no ammonia, as Michael Streeter emphasized to me once.

[The Austrian Dude]

Thank you so much for all of the input, guys! I never thought I would get so much help!

I will be quite busy the coming few weeks, so I'm not going to have much time to experiment around. However, once I invest a few hours into learning the program, I'm sure that I will have a few questions.

[The Austrian Dude]

Hey everyone!
So, I finally got around to do a few more test scans. I scanned a few color pictures, and I noticed something interesting.





These are just crops from the 35mm scans. Any idea what those white spots in the first scan are? And why do they only appear on the first scan, but not on the second one? At first I thought it was dust, but there is just as much dust on the second scan. A dirty sensor is theoretically a possibility, but as you can see, the B&W scan I posted a few weeks ago doesn't show any of that (but maybe I'm missing something). So far I only "cleaned" the glass plates with a brush, because I still don't have any microfibre towels (the ones that are also used for cleaning glasses) and the right cleaning solution. I also scanned them with CMYK instead of RGB.

As you can clearly see, I still haven't figured out how to make a good scan. Seems like I still got a long way to go before I can master the art of scanning.