Pills 'n' thrills and bellyaches.

[reddragdiva]

• OpenOffice user survey — please help.

• Why Ubuntu 9.04 is the best thing you could do. Update: Applies to any Linux in the past three years. Original LJ post.

• Sunlight causes suicide (courtesy hellsop).

• NotN: Disks full of porn "sold to military".

It's been a busy day with a severely active Freda, who has been lovely and charming and beautiful IN HUGE QUANTITIES. Took her out for a walk on a leash in the morning then in the pram in the afternoon. Lots of playing out back on the trike. Lots of telly. It's been a lovely day with the most demanding and wonderful girlfriend ever in the world. So there.

A question: what's the state of the art in cheap film scanners? My use case is two boxes of twenty years' 35mm negatives. I know not to touch anything flatbed. I was tempted by the cheap Ion one (the turntable is cheap but cheerful), but the Amazon reviews put me right off. I can live with colours being off as long as the highlights aren't blown and the images are sharp. I can even live with Windows-only. Anyone bought a film scanner recently?

Fantastically useful DreamWidth feature: when you edit a crossposted article on DW, it automatically edits the copy on LJ as well. This level of attention to detail augurs well.

Comments

[ideological_cuddle]

I'm rather looking forward to the bit where it starts slurping across posts from people I usually read on LJ -- it's already got my account details for the crossposter so that's the next logical step.

[reddragdiva]

You can already add those to your read list, can't you? Locked ones too.

[ideological_cuddle]

You can add the OpenID accounts to your reading list, yes, but they don't appear on your reading page -- or at least they aren't doing so for me. If you look at their profile and then click through to their journal you're sent to LiveJournal.

But I believe it's something they plan to add.

[tcpip]

I remember Emile Durkheim commenting on the decline of suicides during winter in his classic study on the matter. It confused him a little at first, until he came to the conclusion that all physical activity declines somewhat during winter.

Too bloody cold to top yourself.

But a visit to Palmerston North should do the trick.

I've got the Epson 4490 Photo

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you want. Flatbeds aren't great, but they're way cheaper than the Nikon Coolscans.

Basically, it's the Epsons from $100 (whatever in pounds) to $750, then the big jump to Nikon 9000 or the 35 mm only one that's $1200 or so. If you're just shooting slides, look at the various Coolscans from Nikon. If you want to get away cheaper and aren't blowing things up beyond 8x10, the Epsons flatbeds for photographs seem to do the job well enough for the web. I've got some scanned with that on my photo.net site.

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I'm not sure what you want. Flatbeds aren't great, but they're way cheaper than the Nikon Coolscans.

Basically, it's the Epsons from $100 (whatever in pounds) to $750, then the big jump to Nikon 9000 or the 35 mm only one that's $1200 or so. If you're just shooting slides, look at the various Coolscans from Nikon. If you want to get away cheaper and aren't blowing things up beyond 8x10, the Epsons flatbeds for photographs seem to do the job well enough for the web. I've got some scanned with that on my photo.net site. <a "href=http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6104783" This rose</a> is a 100% crop from a scanned 35 mm transparency. The flatbed scanners do transparencies better than they do negatives.

If you have friends, go together on the Nikon dedicated film scanner if money is an object. It will do a better job, but the Epsons seem to be the most recommended among the online film folks, as flatbeds go.

I recommend VueScan as software on the Mac; don't know what the equivalent is for Windows.

Re: I've got the Epson 4490 Photo

[reddragdiva]

My use case is two boxes of twenty years' 35mm negatives. (Edited to clarify.) Flatbeds with a light in the lid are apparently fine; ones without are laughably inadequate.

The annoying thing about the Ion is that it appears the horrible software is the weak point - the hardware is as cheap as could be expected, but would be fine if the software weren't shit.

Re: I've got the Epson 4490 Photo

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

See if VueScan supports it.

If I were in your position, I'd consider seeing about getting a used Coolscan new enough to be a USB beastie, feeding it your slides and then selling it. A fair number of people appear to work this way because they show up fairly frequently on the auction sites.

If I had money and was in your position, I'd hire it done.

Re: I've got the Epson 4490 Photo

[reddragdiva]

I'm eyeing up the Coolscans on eBay. The USB ones are a few hundred quid, the ancient SCSI ones are frequently cheaper. If arkady's machine will take the SCSI card! Remember when scanners always came with a SCSI card? /me makes sign of cross

Re: I've got the Epson 4490 Photo

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

If you're just scanning for the web and can install a scsi card in something, and if the software works on your machine, the ancient ones will probably be fine.

I remember when people in Philly gave each other small sub-gig SCSI drives to sweeten trades and get the damned things out of ones own house. They never worked.

Re: I've got the Epson 4490 Photo

[reddragdiva]

I'd actually like some quality too - for http://commons.wikimedia.org and suchlike.

There's a reason for the jokes about SCSI and black candles and sacrificing goats.

Re: I've got the Epson 4490 Photo

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

That one looked a bit sharpened, but if you want first rate quality from film scans, you might want to go for the Nikon or get a couple of drum scans of the very best shots.

Most of those old 500 mg drives were just dead and no amount of goats was going to bring them back.

I did have two SCSI external drives in a case for my news server. You're bringing back memories.

Re: I've got the Epson 4490 Photo

[baljemmett.livejournal.com]

VueScan rings a bell as available for Windows too -- think I tried it out when trying to improve the colour balance on some old negatives I was scanning on one of Canon's flatbeds a while back.

Re: I've got the Epson 4490 Photo

[reddragdiva]

That 100% cop looks very nice. What was the DPI?

Re: I've got the Epson 4490 Photo

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

2400 is the default. 1400 DPI is probably the max real DPI on that scanner. Anything more than 2400 DPI bloats the file without improving anything (tried that today with a medium format trannie).

My favorite is the drummer, but I can't remember whether I scanned that from the medium format negative or from a print (it is out of the Epson). I'll be doing some test 35 mm scans of negative film after the negatives dry.

sunny suicides

[vicki-t-veg.livejournal.com]

from someone who suffers s.a.d in the summer this doesn't surprise me. I've not suffered too bad so far this year thankfully, just weird sleeping *touch wood*

[blackgrrr.livejournal.com]

That's actually no reason for me to upgrade to 9.04 (Silly Nickname here), but I have been eyeing the upgrade in my updates box all week.

About a decade of Windows updates (I was a DOS man until 1995 or when I made the switch to Windows 3.1) I'm inherently distrusting of any updates on a perfectly well working machine.

Of course, if I install the update and it doesn't quite a re-start I shall probably cry like a baby with glee.

Summer suicides? Huh. Wierd. I wonder if there's a corresponding increase here in Sunsetland. Apparently we're not going to see any autumn weather until the end of May at least.

[reddragdiva]

Your attitude to upgrades is entirely sensible - if it's working, don't fuck with it.

In the case of Ubuntu, keep it while security updates are being produced for the version you're running. When those stop, back up your documents, cross your fingers and upgrade.

[norikos-author.livejournal.com]

And make sure you have a wired internet connection for when the upgrade removes your perfectly good wicd package and replaces it with a (newly broken!) version of network-manager that doesn't support WPA.

Yes.

When 9.04 was released (and possibly still -- I wouldn't know), the wireless networking tool it insisted you use did not support WPA.

I am not impressed with Ubuntu.

[reddragdiva]

I'm impressed by the way they consistently break the wifi EVERY RELEASE.

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

Bleh. How many years are we off from the point where wireless Just Works, in the way wired connections Just Work?

[reddragdiva]

About when Linux audio Just Works.

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha. There have been days it's easier to coax sound out of an eight-track.

[reddragdiva]

I was particularly impressed with the way wired connections were also broken in alphas of 9.04. That takes particular talent.

[mjg59.livejournal.com]

That feature being implemented by someone on the Red Hat payroll some three years ago. I can't think of any reason it would show up on an upgrade and not previously, other than more serial numbers being added to the blakclist.

[reddragdiva]

Cool! So where's it get its data? Is there a writeup on this anywhere?

[mjg59.livejournal.com]

http://hughsient.livejournal.com/4240.html was the start of the implementation - the data is kept in fdi files under /usr/share/hal

[reddragdiva]

This is ridiculously way cool and good for Linux advocacy in general. What an excellent idea.

[richgoth.livejournal.com]

I was told if I was going to scan negs to get an epson over$1000, or try and hire a pro machine (RRP$3500 up) for a week

[davefish.livejournal.com]

There used to be quite a good churn on e-bay of the mid-range film scanners. I've no idea how good a place it is to pick them up now.

Takes bloody ages to do all the scanning though!