Hello to everyone that's still participating here. I purchased the Screen Cezanne Elite i that was in the Chicago area and listed on craigslist and ebay earlier this year. After a trip across the country and months in storage I finally got it up and running last month. I opened it up and cleaned everything, including the very dirty mirror, and I just got around to reopening it to oil the rails the camera travels on, as there seemed to be some sticking. It came with a Power Mac G4 running OS X 10.2.8, and the ColorGenius 2 software. I cloned the HDD(3 times) in case the current one gives up the ghost, so I should be able to keep operating it as long as the scanner itself is operable. I'm also lucky enough to have CDs with ColorGenius 1 and 2, with registration codes still intact.

Thanks to all of the great info here I was able to get right to scanning, and was shocked at how great the quality of the scans seemed to be at first glance. I have primarily scanned 4x5 positives, as that is what I've mostly been shooting lately. I use an OEM optical glass platen for wet mounting and scanning, and do 2 roughly 2 inch strips at a resolution of 4000. I use Aztek wet mounting supplies, and put a homemade black plastic mask around the film, on top of the mylar, to prevent blooming. I always scan with the empty right side box in the scanning menu, and always scan in 16bit positive, to get files as close to untouched by the scanning software as possible.

Upon closer inspection of the scans I've noticed some issues. The main issue is that many of the 30 or so scans I've done have light(er) streaks that occur parallel to the direction of motion(i.e. they are parallel to the longer dimension of the bed), in dark portions of the scans. I had been mounting the slides in the middle of the bed, and it appears the white calibration strip has some minor scratching in the middle, so I assume this was the cause of at least the worst of the streaks. Some preliminary test scans seem to bear that out. I cleaned the mirror again last night, and did a scan from the side of the platen, which seems to have mostly solved the problem for now. It's kind of disconcerting though, and I'm interested in finding a means of returning the full bed to a usable condition. The scanner came with an extra, old calibration strip covered with blemishes, and I'd like to refurbish it if possible. I'm considering just sanding down the old strip, and reapplying some new white paint as uniformly as possible. I imagine that any matte white paint with consistent color would be fine, but since there are many more knowledgable folks than myself here I wanted to see if there were any ideas of how to best go about it. Has anybody attempted this already? Any ideas of how I should go about the whole process? Any paint recommendations? Should I try to match the shade of white as closely as possible, or will a slightly different shade of white just require color correction in post?

My next issue is occasional disparities in the color/exposure between the 2 strips from the same 4x5 frame of film. I always let the bulb warm up for well over 30 minutes, but have still had problems with inconsistencies. Has anyone else experienced this? If so, did you solve it? How?

My last problem at the moment is the computer going unresponsive in the middle of long scans, and having to shut it down by holding the power button while the scanning is stalled. If one of the strips has already completed scanning, it will be saved on the HDD when I restart the computer, but the strip that the stall occurred during will be lost, understandably. I assume this is just a sign that I need to to get an updated computer, but if there is another method of preventing the problem I would love to know. My current tower is the Power Mac G4 with a 533mhz processor, Ram maxed to 1.5 gb, a 40gb HDD that I use as the boot drive, and a 160gb HDD that the scans get saved to. The G4 can only recognize up to 128gb on a HDD, and I've partitioned this 128gb into a 40gb partition which contains one of the previously mentioned bootable clones, with the remaining portion in a single partition for storage. Should I try an SSD? Seems like it would be more stable, and perhaps allow for faster saves, but I wonder if this would have any appreciable impact on the actual speed or reliability of scanning/saving on such an old machine. I'm currently looking around for a pre PCI-x/PCI-e G5 to use instead, since I could easily move the PCI SCSI card from the G4, but will have to wait until I get some more expendable cash. Any ideas or recommendations would be great.

My last question is about support from Screen. I haven't attempted to contact them for any reason, but does anyone know if there is any support remaining for the Cezanne? I remember reading that the legal obligation to support it ended in August of 2016, but has anyone contacted them since? I am mostly interested in potentially acquiring a new calibration strip, and perhaps some new bulbs. The bulb I am currently using is one of 2 that was installed for reflective scans, which I removed during my first cleaning of the scanner. I also have the other reflective bulb that was installed upon purchase, and a still in the package new bulb that came with the scanner. If I can get the scanner operating at an acceptable quality level, without the problems I've previously experienced, I would love to get at least a couple more bulbs so I can insure that I can continue using the scanner until it experiences some non-repairable fatal problem.

Anyway, thanks for all of the info already in the thread, and thanks in advance for any help!