Vuescan vs Silverfast vs Nikon Scan

[TomT]

Hello,

I have used Silverfast Ai 6.6 with my EPSON V750pro (for medium and large format) and Minolta Dual Scan IV (for 135). It worked pretty well, Recently I did upgrade my Mac to 10.7 Lion OS with result that SF 6.6 didn't work on Lion. Because license terms of Silverfast (upgrade form SF6.6. to SF8 is €199 for each scanner, €398 for both) I switched Vuescan professional for both scanners for US$79.95. Vuescan does the job as good as Silverfast. I am happy with Vuescan now.

Regards,
Tom

[renes]

You can try Vuescan for free. you got your answer--they all work fine, but there are some differences that may or may not be important to you. People have turned out quality work using each one. Since two of them are free to try, try them. The key is not which one you select, but the effort you put into making it work for you.

I will try them, but wanted to hear from more experienced in scanning what are their preferences.

[ericpmoss]

That's good to know. I have a 2006 iMac, limited to 2GB RAM. The new Silverfast (6.6r5 and 8) uses double the RAM for any given job, so I can't use it on any format above 35mm. When doing 6x7 film, the old version (6.6r4a) is a DISASTER. It hangs on every other save to file, and messes up every 3rd scan on average (skips to the 2nd pass before completing the first). The results, when one can get them, are great, but sheesh. Oh, and if you have Firewire external drives and the scanner is Firewire (e.g. Coolscan 9000ED), it will lock the entire system (hard reboot with all peripherals unplugged, and sticking the film in the scanner) if you don't turn on the external drive BEFORE you try to start the scan. Really really shoddy coding in there somewhere. Oh, and while the normal scan size on my 6x7 is about 580MB, sometimes it makes a file of 1.73GB using the same settings. Try again and the file will be 580MB. It's like some buffer is never being cleared. Bleah. I'm hoping that when I upgrade my iMac that Silverfast 8, which I already paid for, isn't as shoddy.

[Ivan J. Eberle]

Sounds like RAM cram, to me. Nothing runs well when page-outs to disk are required to view the image, let alone to crunch and process it as would happen with Digital ICE.
With regard to the file sizes scanning with Silverfast, does it offer an adjustment layer for ICE (or whatever they're calling the infrared layer-reading dust-and-scratch repair)? Such a feature would be sufficiently useful to offset the inconvenience of an increase in file size, (at least in current hardware, as adding several gigs more RAM is fairly trivial.

[ericpmoss]

Yes, the IR layer is really really nice, and I don't mind the space it uses at all. I *highly* recommend it when scanning old, kinda dusty Kodachromes I don't want to touch with solvents of any kind. You bring up a good point, that if I have clean slides, I need not add that extra layer to the file.

RAM cram (a good name, btw) is an issue to a point, but what SF 6.6.2r4a has is a set of actual bugs that crash the system long before any swapping starts. It behaves as though there are a lot of global variables controlling the expected scan size, target file buffer and so forth, and that they aren't being properly cleaned up between screen sweeps that detect settings. Without source-level debugging (this appears to be optimized C++ running in Rosetta), I can't tell for sure. In any case, I plan on being a good American by throwing money at the problem: December will bring me either a new iMac or Mini Server.