Ideas what this is?

[swimwivsquid]

Hi Guys & Gals I'm trying to  resurect an old Nikon LS1000 scanner and trying Vuescan software I am getting a patterning in the image. I am not sure if this is the software or a fault with the scanner. I am using a scuzzy on Windows XP. The scanner works fine and produces a nice scan but this pattern is always present. Hope someone can point me in the right direction. Cheers!

[degrub]

Is that an old SCSI scanner ? If so, check the bus terminator and cable.

There were two versions of ASPI around. One would work ok with the NIKON drivers and the other sometimes had problems. That was under Win2K when i ran into it.  Some of the SCSI controllers were not fully compatible with NIKON drivers either.

Does it continue to do it after a few scans ? i don't remember if that scanner moved the head or the slide. Could be a lubrication issue.

You could also try contacting Ed (Vuescan) and see if he recognizes it. It may just be his watermark. Did you try the Nikon software ?

i'm not sure there is much or any  advantage with that scanner over an Epson V750 these days. Except as an interesting project, of course  

Frank

[swimwivsquid]

Thanks for the quick reply Degrub. Yes it is an old scsi scanner and I have updated the drivers etc for it as you suggested but still the same. I will email Ed at Vuescan and see if he can suggest anything. The old Nikon software was for a Mac and couldn't find a pc version anywhere so have tried vuescan and silverfast. Silverfast is OK but I am getting the same pattern, all be it, not as badly. My problem is that I have this scanner and I am on a Caribbean island and am trying to make do with what I have got.  To import another scanner is restrictive due to import duties etc which run at 87%. Nikon don't support this scanner past OS9 on a mac so I took the scsi board out of the mac and put it in an XP PC downloaded the drivers etc and the thing functions quite well except for these patterns. Once again thanks for your help. Will let you know how I get on.

[AFairley]

Why don't you give the old version of Nikon Scan a try?  Available on the Nikon website, may or may not work under XP.  http://support.nikonusa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/203/~/nikon-scan-1.6.3---windows

[swimwivsquid]

Thanks for the link AFairley......tried it but got a communication error. I think the old Nikon software is too old now. Thanks anyway.

[degrub]

The other thing to check is the optical path since it occurs in both VS and SF.
Does the scan head move on guides or does the film move ? IF the former, what you could be seeing is stiching from irregular movement of the head - dried out lubrication. If the latter, and not direct drive, it could be a rubber band like on the old tape players that is part of the drive.
Did you run ASPI CHK to make sure the ASPI layer install is correct ?
Other than a cable/terminator issue or the above, i'm out of ideas.

[pfigen]

Now that I think back, I remember seeing this same pattern when testing a friend's Nikon 8000 scanner. It's been quite a number of years, but I seem to remember there being a checkbox in NikonScan for a high quality or multi-pass option that fixed it, or something along those lines. I've never used Vuescan and don't know if it has all the features of NikonScan, but at least it's an idea.

[degrub]

i think that was the "banding" problem that was resolved by switching from the 3 line CCD to single line mode "high q" or by trading in for a CS9000  .

I remember running the NS 1.x software under Win2k or possibly W95/98.

What version of ASPI are you running ? 4.6 is recommended for XP if you are having issues.
Link here
http://www.silverfast.com/show/download/en.html
This may allow it to work under XP.

The other thing you can try is to move the scsi card to another slot on the motherboard. Long shot though.

You might get a boot loader that supports multiple operating systems and load a copy of Win95 in a partition.

[swimwivsquid]

Appreciate all your suggestions guys. The ASPI is 4.71.2 and the scanner gives a nice scan except for the patterning. Ed got back to me and suggested moving the scanner away from any possible electrical disturbance which I tried. Also I swapped the scsi lead for a shorter one but still the same result unfortunately. I will try swapping the scsi card into another slot tomorrow and see what happens. If I zoom in tight to the patterning it gives a rgb pattern

[degrub]

Is there a terminator on the scsi bus ? There were two types,  active and passive. If you have the scanner manual it should specify.

http://www.datapro.net/techinfo/scsi_doc.html

Are you using the Nikon provided terminator and cable ?

If Ed is suggesting electrical interference, there are several possibilities - on the power leads, electrical fields, and scsi cable issues. It could be in the PC case, hence changing the location of the SCSI card might make a difference. Is the safety ground good through the electrical feed to earth good ? This is what the shielding on the scsi cable is tied to. Are you plugged into a power conditioner or ups that provides filtering of noise on the leads ? Are the PC and the scanner plugged into the same outlet ? Fluorescent lights are notorious bad actors. A/C Motors or generator based power also. PC power supplies may tolerate more noise than the scanner power supply. There are several cases i have read of people having issues with flatbeds that went away when the power was cleaned up. If the scsi cable has termination problems (wrong type, missing) or broken shielding - that could cause pickup of noise from external sources since the cable acts as a radio antenna. Poor grounding could cause it to "float" and change change reference signal levels. The internal power supply in the scanner could also be having issues or internal shielding has failed.

Without an oscilloscope  and scsi breakout box it would be difficult to  pin it down if it is in the scsi.

Does it have this issue on the Mac ?

What was the scan orientation   - L to R or Top to Bottom ? Is that at scanner optical of 2700 PPI ? Does the same pattern occur at lower multiples of two resolution ? Is it there on a monochrome scan ?

Try ASPI 4.6 just for grins (above link). Some drivers had compatibility issues with more recent versions.  The SF software did make use of the Nikon drivers in the past so would be dependent on the ASPI layer. It is interesting that you say the pattern is not as bad with SF. Hopefully that is not just coincidence. You should have had to load the Nikon driver library to run SF unless they included the maid modules in Ai6.6. i know they did not for my CS4000 and old LS-20. There may have been some low level noise reduction being done in the Nikon drivers, but that is just speculation. Tech support at Lasersoft could tell you.


Frank

[swimwivsquid]

Frank, thanks for hanging in there with this problem. First I re loaded the Aptec drivers back to 4.6.... No difference. Tried a B&W as you suggested and interestingly enough the preview is covered with noise but goes when it settles down to B&W however looking carefully it is still there in greyscales and not as obvious. I hunted out some old scans that I had done some while back using the same setup and they are fine so this is obviously something that has happened over the last year while the scanner has been idle. The only thing left seems to be to try moving the scsi card into another slot and see what happens. Was leaving that to last as it means unhooking everything. The scan that I put up last was left to right.This is part of one of my earlier ok scans.

[degrub]

We can try to narrow down the the issue a bit.
Try scanning the Blue channel only, then the Red, then Green.
If the pattern follows one of the channels, it may be with that Led circuit.
If it is all of the channels, it can be in the power supply, or the transfer to the PC, or something related to the CCD.
You could also try a dark slide and a clear slide to see if it is in the sensing circuit or the transfer.

[swimwivsquid]

Thanks for replying...have been tied up this week so haven't been able to address this much. Ed seems to think that its probably an electrical breakdown within the scanner itself so I am going to try Franks idea of selectively scanning each channel. I guess thats what you mean? by scanning a red,blue and green tran if I can find something that will work.Hopefully try and isolate the malfunctioning component.  As I have mentioned before I am on an island in the Caribbean and although that is fab its difficult getting stuff like this sorted. Cheers guys.

[degrub]

Do  you have an IT8 calibration slide or something similar ? you could scan only a red patch, blue patch, green patch, and just pull the other channel curves to 0 to eliminate the input from those channels. Otherwise, you could come close with slides that have close to saturated RGB areas. For the dark slide, the room will have to be as dark as possible during the scan. Aluminum foil might work to block off a slide mounted between the cardboard/plastic mount, maybe even just mounted in the carrier. Some have used it for measuring MTF of their scanners - a quick search ought to turn up a method for attaching.

Frank

[VidJa]

if its the software, try installing Linux on an old box and use 'sane' to scan.
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man5/sane-coolscan.5.html