Hi All,
I'm just getting started with an iQSmart 3. Michael Streeter was super helpful and spent a generous amount of time with me over the phone - great guy! I tried to buy a few things from him but he suggested I get going on the scanner first and then come back. So far so good - I've already cut up my own mask for 120 film strips with mostly 6x6 frames and the scanner is busy working away on now. I'm curious to hear from people who have experience using this machine on:
Do you ever use DT mode and then colorneg to invert the image - if so when and why? I tried this and got decent results for color and ok results for black and white but don't have a film profile in colorneg for b&w that I like.
I take it no one uses the sharpening in oXYgen software, but then what do you use for sharpening later? Most sharpening routines these days were developed for digital not film - I've tried the sharpening in LR, and NIK Define, and also just smart sharpen in photoshop. What's good for high res scans with film grain?
Michael told me a lot of users were taping their negs to the bottom of the mask emulsion facing down toward glass, and to experiment, but manual says to tape on top with emulsion down. I've just tried this twice but it seems that it's better on top. What do you all do? And what kind of tape do you use? I'm using a 1/4 inch thick blue removable masking tape right now - seems okay particularly for the mask but probably there's better option?
What res are you scanning different films - I just found that T-max 400 at 5000 had more detail than 4000dpi but Delta 400 did not have enough detail to scan at even 4000 dpi, and the machine is running a batch of Portra 400 now which looks like 4000 dpi is overkill. I will find out what works in due time but just curious if the collective users have some guidelines out there?
My machine is pretty slow - about 40 minutes per 6x6 frame at 5000dpi and 9 minutes per 6x6 frame at 2400 dpi with dedicated PowerMac 3,1 system so just wondering if that is about normal and if there is any way to help it go faster?
Anyone out there have the wet mount kit for this? Is it worth it?
Thanks,
Eric
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