Date sent: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 23:41:55 +0100 (BST) From: Ernst Dinkla Subject: New Kodak MF scanner? To: scan@leben.com Send reply to: scan@leben.com On comp.publish.prepress someone wrote the following message; , but today I had news that Kodak will preview at Photokina next month a new Film scanner that will handle 35mm to 6 x 9 and there will be a long film adaptor as well. Apparently it will have 6k CCD array so even if that is to cover the 9cm length of 6x9 it is worth a serious look but it is morer like to cover the 6cm width I think - so even better - it will also handle 500 scans per hour so I hate to hazard a guess as to the price - but I'm waiting for further news. end of quote Anyone else who knows something about that scanner? Must be expensive as the other Kodak models were not cheap either. Ernst -- Ernst Dinkla Serigrafie,Zeefdruk The point will never be metric Date sent: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 12:47:02 -0600 From: "Edward C. Rasmussen" Subject: $1300 Kodak 3600 ppi Scanner To: "'scan@leben.com'" Send reply to: scan@leben.com I just picked up this info from a digital list I subscribe to. This should give both Nikon and Polaroid some competition! Check the following url. http://www.robgalbraith.com/diginews/2000-08/2000_08_27_kodak.html Ed Rasmussen - Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions. Date sent: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 16:27:19 -0700 To: scan@leben.com From: Bob Shomler Subject: Re: $1300 Kodak 3600 ppi Scanner Send reply to: scan@leben.com >I just picked up this info from a digital list I subscribe to. This should >give both Nikon and Polaroid some competition! > >Check the following url. > >http://www.robgalbraith.com/diginews/2000-08/2000_08_27_kodak.html > >Ed Rasmussen I took a look at one today at Seybold SF. Biggest advantage is ability to scan all or selected frames from an up to 36-frame uncut 35mm film roll/strip. Manufacturer's dmax of 3.6 is right up there (will be interesting to see test results). They make quite a bit out of not requiring any physical film adapters. Brochure and salesman said it would deliver 12-bit (per channel) data. Selectable ICC profiles and having both SCSI and USB are a plus. Modest drawback vis Polaroid and Microtek is 10 percent lower scan sample rate (dpi). Bigger disadvantage vis Nikon (and one of the Minolta models) is no IR channel for dust removal. Also it appeared to have only TWAIN module, which requires calling app to be open -- a potential disadvantage memory-use-wise for capturing 48-bit mode files. Brochure has essentially the same data as the Kodak web pages. http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/products/scanners/rfs3600/3600Intro shtml -- Bob Shomler http://www.shomler.com/gallery.htm - Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions. From: "Dave Buyens" To: Subject: RE: $1300 Kodak 3600 ppi Scanner Date sent: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 06:58:06 -0400 Send reply to: scan@leben.com Bob Shomler wrote: > I took a look at one today at Seybold SF. Biggest advantage > is ability to scan all or selected frames from an up to > 36-frame uncut 35mm film roll/strip. http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/products/scanners/rfs3600/3600In tro.shtml This alone may make the difference for me--and I would use it for personal use only. I spend way too much time scanning all the pix I take. The automatic feature would allow me to start the scan and walk away while the machine scanned in the entire roll (at least that's my understanding). In addition, I believe this feature would really be an advantage for pro labs that scan in conjunction with film developing. Dave B. Florida Date sent: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 11:56:43 -0500 From: "Christopher P. Lindsey" To: scan@leben.com Subject: Re: $1300 Kodak 3600 ppi Scanner Send reply to: scan@leben.com > http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/products/scanners/rfs3600/3600In > tro.shtml > > This alone may make the difference for me--and I would use it for personal use > only. I spend way too much time scanning all the pix I take. The automatic > feature would allow me to start the scan and walk away while the machine > scanned in the entire roll (at least that's my understanding). In addition, I > believe this feature would really be an advantage for pro labs that scan in > conjunction with film developing. Anyone know how well this will work with mounted slides? It says that it can do "3 to 36 frames without cumbersome film holder", but it also sounds like anything done in batch mode needs to be unmounted. Since I scan up to 50 slides/week for personal use, it would be great if I could just plop them all in at once before I head off to work, then come home to find them all finished... I'd also be curious how this deals with Velvia film (which is what I almost exclusively use now). I used to use a Kodak RFS 2035 and it massacred any film that wasn't made by Kodak... At the time, there were no third-party drivers available, so that wasn't an option. Chris - Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions. From: "gary" To: Subject: RE: $1300 Kodak 3600 ppi Scanner Date sent: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 10:13:20 -0700 Send reply to: scan@leben.com I don't think the automatic features will be all that great. First of all, if you are scanning negatives, the roller scratches will drive you nuts. If I scanned negatives routinely, I'd buy a Nikon and get ICE. If you are scanning slides, I bet the automatic scanning feature won't work. The human interface is pretty important when scanning images. You know the scene. If it nighttime, you don't want the automatic features to make it look like daytime. I consider setting the black/white points pretty important. If you have a number of scene that will be presented together (on a web site for instance), you don't want the color to shift from scene to scene. In that case, you pick limits that fit the set of images. Anyway, my point is I wouldn't buy anything on the merits of it being automatic, with the exception of ICE. [BTW, I own the Artixscan 4000, so I'm not plugging Nikon, it's just that ICE seems like the only automatic feature worth buying, and then only if you scan poorly handled images.] I have some Seybold passes sitting in the car. Maybe I should get off my duff and at least go to the expo... From: "Dave Buyens" To: Subject: RE: $1300 Kodak 3600 ppi Scanner Date sent: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 23:26:51 -0400 Send reply to: scan@leben.com Gordon.Cole@sce.com wrote: > So far, everything sounds good; but I've got a question. 36 exposures > times at least 25mb per image = 900mb of memory required just for the > images (not counting your operating system, imaging program, > etc.). How many of us have >1GB of memory? I would presume the images are saved to disk with incremental numbering. If you don't have 1 GB of free disk space, buy a new one. There's an 80 GB disk out there for less than $400 or so. Note also the PC requirements to run the scanner, a 300 MHz computer, 128MB ram, and Windows 98. On second thought, you might need the whole PC! The brochure I downloaded from the Kodak site says 50 MB images (that's 1.8 GB per roll). Personally, I'll probably be happy with images only 1% of that size for my photo database. When I get a keeper, I'll then scan those (fewer) at full resolution. Dave B. - Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions. Date sent: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 21:46:29 -0800 From: fred swegles Organization: @Home Network To: scan@leben.com Subject: Re: $1300 Kodak 3600 ppi Scanner Send reply to: scan@leben.com As a Mac user, I was hoping that Kodak (or Polaroid, Nikon, Minolta, etc.) would offer a slide/negative scanner in this price/quality range with a FireWire connector, not just SCSI and USB. FireWire is said to be hot-swappable like USB but much faster than USB. I wonder how long the Kodak 3600's scanning times will be using the USB connector compared to the SCSI connector. I didn't see any time estimate offered for a USB scan on Kodak's Web page. Also I wonder how fast comparable scans might be using FireWire. Does anyone know? Thanks. Fred - Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions. Date sent: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 06:50:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Greer Subject: RE: $1300 Kodak 3600 ppi Scanner To: scan@leben.com Send reply to: scan@leben.com --- gary wrote: > I don't think the automatic features will be all that great. First of all, if > you are scanning negatives, the roller scratches will drive you nuts. Don't assume that there will be scratches. Without knowing the roller design, it's not a fair assumption. > If I scanned negatives routinely, I'd buy a Nikon and get ICE. Dust on the film is not a huge problem for me on freshly processed rolls. My bigger dust issues are with film I've had for a while, or dust in my scanner. > If you are scanning slides, I bet the automatic scanning feature won't work. You are correct. They state it on their web site. This scanner doesn't have a slide feeder module like the LS-2000 or Minolta Scan Multi. > The human interface is pretty important when scanning images. You know the > scene. If it nighttime, you don't want the automatic features to make it look > like daytime. I consider setting the black/white points pretty important. But Gary, all of these adjustments don't have to take place at the scan stage. They can be post processed in an image editor. The docs say it will return full bit data to the host application. > If you have a number of scene that will be presented together (on > a web site for instance), you don't want the color to shift from scene to > scene. In that case, you pick limits that fit the set of images. If you shoot at the same time, you might not have a wide variation in camera settings. Therefore, you can set the scan software's adjustments prior to batch scanning, or you can batch scan, then apply batch adjustments in the image editor. > Anyway, my > point is I wouldn't buy anything on the merits of it being automatic, with the > exception of ICE. [BTW, I own the Artixscan 4000, so I'm not plugging Nikon, > it's just that ICE seems like the only automatic feature worth buying, and > then only if you scan poorly handled images.] But you're missing a huge application that many of us have. If I were to buy this scanner for its automatic features, it wouldn't be for full res batch scanning. It would be for lower res batch scanning for cataloging purposes in my image database. Currently, I pay $6-$10 per roll for Picture CDs for cataloging so I don't have to go through the pain of scanning entire rolls myself. I tried it once I got through about 3 rolls before I quit. So the automatic features are very appealing to me. FWIW, I do believe I would do final (i.e. high res) scans one at a time. ===== Visit my digital photography web site along with a lot of other interesting stuff at http://greer.simplenet.com. Also, Greer and Associates (http://www.greeraa.com) offers studio photography, digital imaging services, web site design/construction, and training. Mike Greer __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/ - Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions. Date sent: Sun, 03 Sep 2000 02:41:42 -0700 From: Arthur Entlich To: scan@leben.com Subject: Re: $1300 Kodak 3600 ppi Scanner Send reply to: scan@leben.com gary wrote: > > Not that I lead a boring life or anything (heh heh), but I've watched the 1 > hour lab people do their work and I see nothing that these people do to cause > scratches. It has to be the machines. If you are doing print film at one of > these 1 hour places and don't want the prints, let the lab know. Most will > charge less, which is good, but the real advantage is there is one less > machine to handle your negatives. I've done more than watch one-hour labs at work, I managed one for a while. There are a number of areas where scratches can occur which will not when a "dip and dunk" process is used lab (mainly found in pro labs). One hour labs use roller transport machines or similar models which use a system to drag the film through the various chemical baths. The most common use a plastic card with a series of sprockets in them. The beginning of the film is taped to this card and the card is dragged through the baths with the film dragging after it. The first problem is that unlike at pro labs using dip and dunk systems, the film is dragged out of the same film canister you brought the film in. This means that if the lips of the canister has any grit on it, the film gets scratched. In a pro lab, the canister is opened and the film removed from it, and unrolled. Some one hour systems use a roller system to guide the film, these almost always end up with small defects in the rollers which can lead to film damage. The other units with the plastic card, in theory do not allow the film to get in direct contact with rollers, but when the film goes from one bath to the next, it is often dragged over some sort of dam or roller. Then, in the drying process there is often a roller or support system which has the potential for damaging the film. Next, the film is usually dumped unceremoniously into a hopper with numerous other films. There are fished out every so often and hung on racks with many other films, which often sway in the breeze, rubbing against each other. The big bad machine, however, is the printer. The film is threaded into a special film holder which allows for a full roll to be slid through. Usually by automation, the film is advanced from one frame to the next and printed. It comes out the other end again often going into a hopper with other rolls of film. These are then again fished out and go to the cutter and sleever. The first time we used our brand new cutter sleever, it destroyed numerous rolls by scratching the emulsion side due to an exposed metal edge. These sleevers either use a roller or air pressure to shoot the cut film into the sleeving material. Now, at a pro lab, the film is removed in the dark from the canister, and it is unrolled and hung over a rack. The beginning and end of the film end up together with a weight attached. These racks are then placed on a chain transport which only touches the very ends of the top rod of the rack. The rack is then dipped into the chemical bath which is deeper than the length of the film folded once. When ready for the next bath, the rack with the film is lifted out of the bath, advanced to the next bath and again dipped into it, and so one down the line. Drying is done with the film on the same rack in a drying chamber. In theory, no moving parts should every touch the film during this process. Of course, removal of the film once dry, printing and then cut and sleeving are still potential perils. With E-6 the most common places for damage are during handling of the processed roll and mainly during the mounting process, as these machines and the mounts themselves are notorious for damaging film. In general, dip and dunk, as it is called, is the safer method of getting film processed, and the one I would recommend. In theory, one hour labs can give you your film back unscratched, but between the machinery, the rush to get things done, and the minimum wage employees who are turned over once a week, it is harder to be assured of quality workmanship. Art - Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions. FROM: Eric Crowder SUBJECT: Re: KODAK RFS 3600 Film Scanner DATE: Wed, 08 Nov 2000 08:06:45 GMT ORGANIZATION: EC Action Photography NEWSGROUPS: comp.periphs.scanners,alt.comp.periphs.scanner "Carsten J. Arnholm(sr)" wrote: > Has anybody used the: > KODAK PROFESSIONAL RFS 3600 Film Scanner > > What is the general opinion? > > Regards > Carsten J. Arnholm(sr) > Oslo, Norway. carnholm@online.no > http://home.online.no/~carnholm/ I got ahold of the RFS 3600 today, my initial impressions are very poor! I'm compairing the RFS 3600 to a 4 year old Polaroid Sprintscan 35Plus. The image quality of the Kodak at 3600 dpi has LESS detail than my Polaroid at 2700 dpi when scanning the same peice of film. The image from the Kodak looks very blury, like someone used a blur filter on the image. If I downsample the 3600 dpi (5000x 4000 something) to the same file size from my Polaroid, the Polaroid still has more detail. Also the Kodak is much slower than the Polaroid. The Kodak does not seem to be able to save the files with 12 bits per channel, something the Nikon LS-2000 does. I also do not care for the photoshop plugin software. For example after I preview an image, I use the color picker to set a white point and a black point. I uasually set black to 15-15-15, and white to 245-245-245. This is to prevent the scanner from clipping the shadows and highlights. When I set the plugin to 15 and 245 for white and black, it always reverts to 0 and 255. I am very interested to hear other peoples reviews. If I can not get better results, I'm sending it back! -Eric From: "Murray Zaharia" To: Subject: Kodak RFS 3600 Scanner Date sent: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 11:53:09 -0800 Send reply to: scan@leben.com I found the following post on another list about the Kodak scanner. Thought others here might be interested in it. Regards, M.Zaharia **************************************************************************** ********** So, after a couple of weeks wait, I finally got a Kodak RFS 3600 from Adorama. These are my first impressions, after just one night of playing around with it. The thing installed without much problem. I was afraid, since my new Dell came with WinMe, and someone at photo.net had said the drivers were not compatible. I just ignored the new device dialog when I booted, (since it said it couldn't find one file in the cd) and run the setup program directly. At first the twain driver said that it couldn't connect with the scanner. Turning it off and on fixed that. The software doesn't seem too mature, and it made me nervous to see "version 1.0". The main panel has a "settings" part that includes profiles for types of film, divided in negative, reversal and black&white. Each type lets you select among a variety of films, all by Kodak. The only exception is the "negative" type, that has "Agfa", "Fuji" and "Konica" types, next to all the types of Supra, Portra, Royal, Gold, VPS, PJ, etc. It looks like the people at Kodak think that if the box is not yellow, there are only three other types of film. The black and white section has only TCN400, TMX, TMY and TX. No TMZ, or Plus-X, let alone anything from Ilford, or Fuji. I assume it would be easy to find among these setups one that works well with some not included kind of film. The rest of the interface seems clean, and will probably be nice to work with. I did a few test scans, and have mixed feelings about it. The documentation says that the scanner autofocuses, and compensates for film that is curved (which is typically the case) Now, my first scan, of a frame that wasn't particularly curved, shows a big difference in sharpness. The grain is clearly visible in the edges, but becomes blurry in the center of the frame. This was consistent and happened again if I rescanned the same frame. Another test scan, of a strip of film that was visibly curved (the center is about 1mm higher than the edges when placed on a flat table) yielded great results, with grain that was sharp across the frame. Take a look at this image: http://home.dsp.net/~jbuhler/rfs3600_1.jpg It is a thin vertical slice of a frame, scanned at full res. Pay attention at how sharp the grain is at the top and bottom, and how it muddies up in the center. This is I think unacceptable results. If anyone has suggestions on how to deal with this, I'd love to her them. But I think it is a problem with the basic design of the film transport. Not having a film holder seems convenient, but it also allows for film that is not as flat as it could be. The interface does provide a "focus" button, but it only works with slides. A test scan of a slide gave sharp results too. The soft has a few bugs and inconsistencies, for example: - There is a selection for "color depth". It lets you select between 8 and 12 bits. Regardless of this setting, all the files transfered into Photoshop are 8 bits per channel. - The "resolution" setting goes up to 7200dpi. If you select anything higher than 3600, it says: "The resolution must be between 15 and 7200 dpi. The value you selected is too high, and will be reset to 3600 dpi" OK, whatever. I am going to sit on it for a few days, and run a few more tests. If it proves impossible to get sharp consistent results, I'll probably ship it back and get either the Sprintscan 4000 (too much $$$) or the Minolta Dimage Elite (too litle dpi). We'll see. Anyone else had experiences with this scanner? j -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Juan J. Buhler | FX Animator @ PDI | http://www.crosswinds.net/~jbuhler ------------------------------------------------------------------------- FROM: ken@dsldesigns.net SUBJECT: Kodak RFS 3600 Final Report DATE: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 23:09:03 GMT ORGANIZATION: Deja.com NEWSGROUPS: rec.photo.digital,comp.periphs.scanners Chose the scanner because it has good resolution, high dynamic range, easy to load film, and will scan entire roll in one operation (2 actually, since must do prescan first). Summation I've worked with this scanner for three weeks now. Scanned about 30 rolls of film, about 80% B/W. My reference point is two years of work with the Nikon Coolscan III, scanning perhaps 5,000 images, mostly color slide. From a workflow perspective, the Kodak RFS 3600 software seems too buggy to get anything done without experiencing a great deal of frustration. A "finished" product should not have this many problems, and I feel that the product testing was woefully deficient, for whatever reason. I have been intensively involved in numerous forms of software development for more than 30 years. I do not believe this product is ready to ship to customers for other that beta test. Today, I returned the scanner to the camera store. I'm unhappy to do so. I thought that the RFS 3600 was the scanner with the greatest potential of satisfying my needs. In its current state, it does not. These are my observations, and apply to the type of work I do and the way I do it. I shall not comment on what others might perceive or experience. Details of my three weeks of experience are below: WEEK ONE Have had for less than a week, but have processed 2 dozen rolls of film with it. 90% of it has been B/W at max res. Scanned only a handful of slides. These are my observations. Items 1-16 have been reported to Kodak. 1) Install book says Win2K is supported, but also requires Linksys EZ SCSI 5.0. Linksys does not support this on Win2K. Am running on Win2K with default SCSI drivers. Have encountered some SCSI problems that may or may not be related. 2) I'm set to scan in slides after prescan. Choose 5, 12, 19, 26, 32. Actually scans 5 & 12, identifies them as 26 & 32, then stops. Other times, all works fine. 3) When using incremental forward to position the film (I have 1/4" lead with roll number in it), software sometimes loses the SCSI connection to the device, and must restart appl. Why can't it do a better job of centering anyway? My solution to the SCSI drop is to hit the positioning key as follows: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, wait, wait, wait,...... 4) Will not focus properly on some slides. (underwater shots in color) My Coolscan III image is crisp. The Kodak image is fuzzy. 5) Sometimes scan hangs, if I try to cancel, that hangs. Must reboot system. 6) Haven't figured out how to scan in an entire roll without the prescan operation. Slows down process and drags film back & forth too much. 7) Because roll is fed from back, not front, frame sequence is inverted. 1 becomes 36, 2 becomes 35, etc. Must be renumbered to correlate back to frame info logged in by camera. (I use Fileman S/W to renumber.) I feed from front of roll, would like to be able to auto select that each frame rotated for proper view perspective. 8) Software will number sequence images, great for scanning roll, but defaults to 3 digits, and must be reset for each scan. Default should be 2 digits. What percentage of users will scan more than 99 images on a single pass? Better, remember the change I make and use that as the default. 9) Something seems to deplete space on C drive, though it has 700 MB free when I start, the Appls are on a second (larger) drive, and the images are scanned to a (much larger) third. Must quit appl and start over. Nothing is run on this system but the scanning operation. May be swap space, but that seems like a lot. Verification, is a huge swap file. Odd, as Photoshop is used only to access the scanner, and files are saved directly to disk. No other appls run. Reboot to elim swap file. Sys config is 320 mb. 10) Noisy little box 11) Previews of B/W images are sometimes tinted green for no reason. Although scan is also in B/W, 30 will have green tint, next 6 won't. This is the prescan, not actual scan output. However this makes it difficult to assess the images prior to scanning. I'm working with Illford XP2 Chromogenic. 12) Following the load of a fresh roll of film, have seen scanner attempt to read min density and never complete, grinding away like a broken blender. 13) On one batch roll scan, images 15 & 17 did not completely scan, cropping off the bottom 15%, leaving a black bar on the top. On a second roll, 7 scattered images are incomplete, but here it looks like the bar is inserted into the actual image scan, as there is a thin strip of image above it, contiguous with the image on the other side of the bar. The image piece varies in size, from 5 to 10 percent of full image height. A third roll exhibited both of these problems. 14) On batch scans, images do not always retain proper centering. Though the first image is properly centered, the very last image on the roll may be off 5 percent. Oddly, the film doesn't seem to slide, but creeps instead, and images shift right of center, not left. 15) In one entire roll that was scanned, there are two thick gray Vertical bars across every image. Not end-to-end, but top to bottom. Both bars are image overlay, and not solid black. By rotating the images, one can see that the alignment is identical across frames. 16) Will load a new roll. Prescan will stop at 87% on the first slide. Reboot to recover. ==> Kodak just posted new software and driver, downloaded. Reset troblem tracking and record incidents from scratch. 3) Positioning now seems good. This seems fixed, but see #20 below 4) My "problem" slide that was so fuzzy now scans clearly. 9) Still exists as problem. Happened after scanning in less than 20 slides. 16) Still exists as problem, cement mixer sound on scan. Status light drops on scanner, must power scanner off & on. This problem happens repeatedly. Can no longer scan anything at all. Dead. 18) Accidentally hit scan button on scanner. Get Msg "A preview scan has not been done, do you want to continue with the final scan?" I select "NO". This message sequence repeats itself over and over, and I finally cancel. ==> Will return tomorrow for replacement ==> New Kodak scanner from the camera store WEEK TWO 16) Still problem, 600 mb free space. In one case, status light stayed on. Restarted Photoshop, tried again, same problem, but status light off. Reboot to get around. 19) Selected 5 slides for full scan. Scanned in the first 4 and stopped, no apparent reason. Reselected fifth slide, scanned ok. 20) For some strips (no blank leader), feeding in film positions frame about 20% too far to the right. Can incrementally shift left (back), but sometimes system drops SCSI connection doing this. 21) While roll scanning, get runtime errors in Photoshop, about halfway into the roll. This has happened a few times. Get out of space condition on "C" drive at the same time, has created 600 mb swap space. Seems impossible to scan an entire roll. "D" drive where appl is has multiple GB, but not "C". How can I target swap to work around? (but why should I have to?) 22) General comment. I'm doing far more work with much less output than with my Nikon Coolscan III. 23) New message. Little box, windows icon in Left corner. Says "Kfilm", then line below it is all special characters. Cascades about 7-8 of them. Try rescan, cannot connect with scanner. System too messed up now to do anything but reboot. 24) Scanning strip of 3 images, loses connection to scanner (SCSI) in the midst for the first image scan (which follows prescan) Have my current backlog of images scanned. Using less than first week. In initial editing, I'm beginning to see the differences of not having digital ice, in terms of light scratches and dust. Photoshop 6 has filters, but my results don't seem as good. Not able to comment on effects of differences in dynamic range and resolution, but my Coolscan III is not set up for some comparisons. WEEK THREE Primary focus this week is on editing images, no bulk scanning. Rescan a handful of images that seem bad for one reason or another (usually me, not the scanner). 25) New problem I did not notice before. Decided to do some comparisons. In the process I scanned in the same image twice on the RFS 3600, two separate loads. Changes none of the camera settings. Image was B/W. Second scan was much darker than the first. Values were 20 points higher. Correcting the darker image to match the "correct" one required setting levels to 22, 3.03, 212. I say "correct" because the Nikon scan also created an image of similar values. 26) Talked to Kodak support about the fact that profiles exist for only Kodak film. I'm unsympathetic to the fact that it's a Kodak product. Kodak should actively solicit input from other film makers. I see this as a distinct negative, unique to Kodak's position of being, I believe, the only manufacturer who sells film as well as scanners. 27) Curious about the effect of the higher resolution and the greater density range over the CoolScan III. Resolution difference is visible, but only when zooming in the 10x range (on 1200x1600, default view is about 20% for a vertical, I would zoom to 200%). As for density range, in both slides and B/W, I felt that the Nikon was preserving significant detail that was lost in the Kodak scans (again, B/W). With respect to finer detail, the Nikon seemed to provide sharper detail, despite its lower resolution. I experimented some with the different sharpness options for the two scanners, but find that I prefer to leave these off. I do not view the Kodak RFS 3600 as a "better" scanner that the Nikon Coolscan III, in terms of image quality. In terms of the ability to get work done, the Kodak scanner is terrible, and highly unreliable. Kodak at 1-800-CD-KODAK (1-800-235-6325) Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ FROM: Dan Kimble SUBJECT: Re: Kodak RFS 3600 Final Report DATE: Tue, 02 Jan 2001 03:07:37 GMT ORGANIZATION: Road Runner - Texas NEWSGROUPS: rec.photo.digital,comp.periphs.scanners Steve, I own a RFS3600 I have had mine for two months or more and I have not had any problems at all with the hard ware, I think the hardware is fine. I did have a few minor problems with the original version of the software. I haven't any problems at all with the latest revision of the software. There was another RFS3600 owner on one of these list that thought the scanner was problematic, but after connecting the same scanner to another computer all of his problems went away. So...what does that tell you??? Any time you introduce a new peripheral to any computer, there must be adjustments made, and sometimes getting everything to work together can be a challenge. Especially if your system is maxed out. just my $.02, Dan FROM: therealkilili@my-deja.com SUBJECT: Re: Kodak RFS 3600 Final Report DATE: Wed, 03 Jan 2001 02:39:34 GMT ORGANIZATION: Deja.com NEWSGROUPS: rec.photo.digital,comp.periphs.scanners I'm well acquainted with the issues you reference. I do this stuff all the time. My systems are not "maxed out", so to say. Part of my approach, when dealing with problems like this,is to switch operating systems, computers, whatever it takes. Very current levels, for software, drivers, etc. Little chance of conflicting software, almost nothing else installed on the system. This computer's only mission in life is to scan film. Editing is done elsewhere. Certainly didn't bother testing with back-level operating systems, nor did I bother with USB (which seems more problematic than SCSI). Could make a difference, but do I care? Not any more. It's also unlikely that my configuration caused the first scanner to fail completely at the end of the first week. As for your experience, I only wish it had gone that way for me. The photo store ordered about 80 of these systems. They cannot get it to work properly in-house. They claim numerous people have had similar experiences. Certainly were not surprised when I returned it. They also say some users seem to have no problems at all. For me, this scanner simply does not deliver what it claims and what I need. The Nikon Coolscan has proven to be a real workhorse for me. The RFS 3600 seems to be one tired little puppy. FROM: "Ed Hamrick" SUBJECT: Kodak RFS 3600 Information DATE: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 09:06:59 -0700 ORGANIZATION: Customer of Energis Squared NEWSGROUPS: comp.periphs.scanners I've been doing a bit of research on the Kodak RFS 3600 film scanner, and found out a few interesting things. It's actually made by Pacific Image Electronics, the same company that makes the PrimeFilm 1800u film scanner. The RFS 3600 is apparently just the next generation of the PrimeFilm 1800u (note that 2 x 1800 is 3600 dpi). If you compare the physical dimensions of these two scanners as well as the film feeding, you'll see the similarities (Kodak apparently added more plastic to the case to make it look fancier). When I first learned of the RFS 3600 I wondered why it was a 3600 dpi scanner and not a 4000 dpi scanner. It turns out that most film scanners use CCD chips that were originally designed for flatbed scanners (which is a much bigger market than film scanners), and most flatbed scanners are 8.5 inches wide. A 300 dpi flatbed scanner needs a 2550 pixel CCD, a 600 dpi flatbed needs a 5100 pixel CCD, and a 1200 dpi flatbed needs a 10200 pixel CCD. Most 2700 dpi film scanners use the 2550 pixel CCD's, since this lets you scan 24mm wide film. The Polaroid 4000 dpi scanner uses a 5100 pixel CCD (they could have designed it to go up to 5400 dpi, but I suspect they didn't because they didn't want to build a 5400 dpi stepper motor). It appears that the Polaroid SprintScan 120 uses a 10200 pixel CCD (10200 pixels over 60 mm is about 4000 dpi). It appears that the PrimeFilm 1800u uses a 2550 pixel CCD, but this has to scan a 36mm width (because of the way the film is fed from left to right) but the scan head travels in the 24mm direction. This means that the maximum dpi of the 2550 pixel CCD over a 36mm width is 1800 dpi. Similarly, the 5100 pixel CCD in the Kodak RFS 3600 spread over a 36mm width results in 3600 dpi. (5100 * 25.4 / 36 = 3598 dpi). The PrimeFilm 1800 uses parallel-port scanner firmware internally, and converts USB to parallel port commands internally (it's a huge kludge). I suspect (but don't know for sure) that the Kodak RFS 3600 uses the same internal firmware as one of the PIE SCSI flatbed scanners, with an optional USB->SCSI converter chip. In summary, there appear to be mainly 3 sizes of CCD chips in use in film scanners today. Most use 2550 pixel CCD's, the SprintScan 4000 uses a 5100 pixel CCD, and the SprintScan 120 uses a 10200 pixel CCD. Regards, Ed Hamrick http://www.hamrick.com/vsm.html