Drum scanning, any good books or websites:

[LF_rookie_to_be]

I have a scanmate 11000 also. The problem is that the scanmate only allows scan lines of 22500 pixels(or there about) in 8 bit(half that in 16bit). When scanning in higher resolution, you either need to stitch, or scan in 8 bit. Either way, the work arounds aren't too bad. The scanner is magical for 35mm - I don't know how it is able to resolve detail so well while keeping grain in check.

What about RAW 16-bit scans? Do you manage getting a non-garbled RAW scan, and if so, using which version of ColorQuartet? I know about holding "alt" while selecting "16-bit" option in CQ, but the scan I get is still garbled. I have a Scamate 3000.

[Ed Bray]

Thank you all for your help so far. Off to find 'ScanHi-End'

[Lenny Eiger]

Take a look at my drum mounting demo on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APSzB0nX5Vo

It should help a bit...

Good luck,

Lenny

[Ed Bray]

Thanks Lenny, I watched your video and another I hadn't seen before, looking forward to tomorrow now.

[Peter York]

Scan Hi-end, a local operator, here, and Youtube are probably the best resources. Aztek is probably great for certain questions.

The funniest advice I remember was to be very careful with static electricity and flammable fluids: "scuff scuff, BOOM, no more eyebrows"

[cdavis324]

Im assuming that by garbled you mean colored lines in the direction the drum travels? If so, try scanning at a lower resolution. I'm not sure about the 3000, but the max pixels per line I mentioned are for the 11k.

My scanmate is currently out of commission and has been sitting in its shipping crate for the past 8 months, but I would use 16 bit rgb, or 8 bit lab in cq4. I did raw scans, but found that selecting raw as the file format didn't ever work properly. In cq4, selecting 16 bit generates a raw file anyways - it never acknowledges any settings you make outside resolution and aperture. I concur with what the other guys said about the scan hi end group - its a pain to go through the archives, but there's a ton of info about scanmates... Especially the max file size issue.

[Ed Bray]

Thanks again, I joined the ScanHi-End group and have already found some useful information.

[Adam Long]

Ed, I'm in a similar situation but a couple of weeks ahead of you - I picked up a Scanmate 5000 on ebay UK a few weeks back. It didn't come with a computer so I spent a fair while reading around whilst waiting to get the various bits together.

Impressions so far - its a lot easier than I'd been led to believe. Seems like there are a lot of horror stories on the net. I guess folk like to vent somewhere when things go wrong! A lot of the problems seem to be related to getting the SCSI interface working properly - I failed on Win 7 64-bit but it worked no problems on Win XP 32-bit. No idea how much life there is in it, but the way I look at is if, with commercial scans costing £15-25+, if I get that value out before it dies then no bother. I daresay it will go a lot longer - they are solidly built machines and I'm not hammering it like a commercial user would.

When I picked it up from a commercial print shop, I was surprised by the owner telling me he had never bothered with wet mounting. He gave me a roll of Tesa tape and suggested I try just taping the sheets on individually. So that's what I did - and the results at 2000dpi blew my previous Epson 750 scans away. Really impressive - after ten years using a Nikon 8000 these are still the best scans I've seen by some margin. I guess wet mounting improves things even further whilst reducing dust and scratches too. Looking forward to trying it, I think a DIY mounting station may be the next project...

The latest software and manuals are available here: http://www.abc-scan.dk/International...s/download.htm
You can get fresh scanning supplies here (not many places in the UK): http://www.haynes-graphic-arts.co.uk/kami.html

I have all the original V5 software, boxed with manuals, but used the stuff from the links above as it is newer and the manual is better. I ended up with a spare Mac dongle for V5 too, so if you decide to upgrade let me know - no idea what its worth tbh!

Brief experiments with colourspaces suggest you might get better shadow detail from 8-bit LAB colour than 16-bit RGB, but I haven't really figured out what the best settings are yet. There doesn't seem to be anyway to control the physical exposure when scanning, and the output is a bit on the dark side (always plenty of room for highlights though), so shadows seem to be trickier than highlights.

Good luck anyway, let me know if you find any good tricks!

[Ed Bray]

Thanks for the post Adam, hopefully we can assist each other.

I picked the scanner and items up today, a lot bigger (and heavier) than I expected, and at the moment it is in its flight case in the hallway blocking the doorway as I don't have anywhere to put it yet. I thought it would fit on the windowsill as it is about 4ft long, I didn't realise it was going to be so deep, i'll have to add an extension to the sill to allow it to sit there.

It came with a lot of chemicals and 100 sheets of Mylar and the mounting station is the genuine Scanmate one and looks in great condition. I'm looking forward to setting it up and trying it out later this week.

[Adam Long]

I'd be interested to hear about any other folk's workflows when scanning when using ColorQuartet/ Colortrio and Scanmate scanners.

I'm running a Scanmate 5000 via ColorQuartet 5 on Windows XP. I've run an IT8 calibration which seemed to work fine.

Everything I've learned prior would suggest saving in 16 bit tiff with the widest colour profile available - most of the scans I've made I've followed this, saving in Prophoto RGB and they look good, though fairly dark (histogram rarely reaches across to the right). I brighten them in Lightroom, opening up the shadows, but the darkest areas are fairly muddy with colour noise. There are a bunch of other colour spaces available which I haven't experimented with yet. Trying to scan to 16-bit RAW files seems to crash the scanner - any ideas?What format does RAW save in?

However the CQ manual recommends saving in LAB format tiff for the best results with IT8 calibration. I've experimented with this and it seems to gives better, cleaner shadow detail, but the files are only 8-bit. Lightroom has no problems working on the files, and they are half the size, but I have this nagging knowledge that 8 bit is throwing away information.

Anyone got any knowledge or experience to share?