VueScan Newsletter - October 2017
Welcome to our ‘new’ newsletter! This is the first newsletter that we have sent out after posting on Facebook asking what YOU wanted to read about!
We received numerous requests for more detailed help and tips, so every month we will select a different subject and drill down more than before.
If you have a topic you would like to ask about, please contact us. If we receive a lot of requests we will bump it up the topic schedule – as simple as that. If you have a very specific question we will also try and include it in ‘From our users’ so please do contact us. Thanks for all the feedback and for being a customer.
Tips & Techniques - Practical help for you!
Scanning with multiple images
Often, people scan pages with multiple images on them – scrapbooks with photos taped down, photos placed on the glass, multiple slides placed on the glass with a lamp in the scanner lid, multiple negatives on the glass – and many others.
VueScan’s “Crop | Multi crop” option can be configured to do many complicated things to scan multiple images, but sometimes a simpler approach works best.
1) Set “Input | Preview resolution” to the same value as “Input | Scan resolution”
2) For transparencies, turn off “Input | Auto exposure”
3) Press the “Preview” button
4) Draw a box around an image with the mouse
5) Press the “Save” button
6) Repeat steps 4) & 5) for each additional image on the page
7) Go back to step 3) for each additional page
That’s all there is to it. You spend a bit of extra time up-front doing the higher resolution preview, but then you save time by not needing to rescan these images.
One tip – if you find that your multiple images don’t fill the whole preview area, reduce the size of the preview with the “Crop | Preview area” option – this will save time with each preview. (Use the Manual option in this command, and change the Y size to 6 so that it only does the preview on half of the flatbed, thus taking about half the time.)
Take a look at our tutorials, they cover a range of popular tasks - all of them are listed on the Support page: https://www.hamrick.com/support/how-to-guides/
Nikon Coolscan Scanners – Help and Support
Many people, including ourselves, consider Nikon scanners to be the best scanners ever made for film scanning. The quality is good, they are reliable, have a wide range of adaptors and are easy to repair. Nikon stopped making these scanners some years ago, but they are still very popular and widely used, and as a result their value on eBay keeps on going up and many people ask us for help about them.
To help you, we would like to introduce you to some experts in this area. Alex Ketzner, Gleb Shtengel and Frank Phillips have been working with and fixing Nikon scanners for years.
Alex Ketzner
Alex Ketzner has been servicing and repairing Nikon Scanners, and only Nikon Scanners, for over 5 years. Since 2011 he has repaired well over 1000 Nikon Scanners. Alex is based in Florida, USA but ships all over the world - and many of his customers are from outside the USA, Alex just charges a surcharge for International Shipping. For more information on Servicing and Repairs please email Alex directly at: abstudios@live.com
A quick internet search (abstudios Nikon Scanner Repair Service) reveals many excellent reviews and recommendations for Alex’s Nikon Scanner Repair Services, from some of his many happy customers.
Gleb Shtengel
Gleb has been servicing and repairing Nikon Coolscan scanners (LS-40, LS-50, LS-4000, LS-5000, LS-8000, and LS-9000) since about 2006 (which was the first time that Nikon refused to service his LS-8000) and has repaired about 200 of them (Gleb does not do this as full-time job). Gleb repairs scanners from all over the world, with shipping costs dependent on where the customer is.
Gleb has compiled some very useful information pages over the years. Take a look at: http://shtengel.com/gleb/Scanners.htm
For optimising Nikon Scan 4.0 Performance look at: http://shtengel.com/gleb/optimizing_nikon_scan_4_performance.htm
Gleb has recently added a troubleshooting guide on small Nikon scanners:
http://www.shtengel.com/gleb/Nikon_4000_5000_diagnostics_troubleshooting.htm
And a troubleshooting guide for the LS-8000 and LS-9000:
http://www.shtengel.com/gleb/Nikon_8000_9000_diagnostics_troubleshooting.htm
Frank Phillips
Frank has been repairing and servicing Coolscans for 5 years, (estimated to be over 1000 to date.) Frank can repair 95% of anything that goes wrong. He has a good stock of parts for all the machines and also a source to quickly repair the motherboards, which on the firewire machines goes bad suddenly (the TI chip has a 20 year life expectancy). Frank thinks that the most common problem is the mirrors that get dusty and hazy which lowers the scan quality. Frank also buys and sells Coolscans (and only Coolscans). Frank has two adverts on eBay, one for the small machines ($79) and one for the large machines ($155) - this includes cleaning, inspecting, lubricating, and return USPS Priority shipping. Frank ships internationally with an additional charge. If you search on eBay for Nikon Coolscan repair you will find excellent reviews of his service.
Frank Phillips
Phone: 202-573-0296
email: sforza746@yahoo.com
Technical Support
The majority of the questions we receive are covered on our Support page so please visit this first: https://www.hamrick.com/support/