Railfan Technology > Scanning 'dark slides' ( night shots ) with HP4890

I'm having trouble getting the scanner to read these images . . which are
some of my best. Any tricks here . . ?? E.g. increasing scan light . . or am
I just out of luck with this equipment ?? Thanks. 'Dogh

Use VueScan software (http://www.hamrick.com costs around $45)and change the color setting to night. From there you will have to do some playing. The attached smal image is from a slide using this software and Dimage Scan Dual IV.

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Very dense film is hard to get a good scan from. Often the best you can achieve is a noisy thing that looks horrible. I have managed to get a decent image in the end by using a technique astrophotographers use. Make multiple scans of the same slide, but change the frame registration a little each time so that different pixels from the scan head read the same spot on the film each time. You can then combine the scans as layers in Photoshop by pasting each scan image into a separate layer, moving the images around on each layer until they are in good registration, and then adjusting the opacity of the top layers to fit. What that does is get rid of both the noise from a low signal-to-noise ration scan, as well as the rectilinear grid that gets superimposed on dark scans. If nothing else works, give that a try. It takes a while to make work, but it does work. Several of the images used in my presentation at this past Winterail were given that treatment.

- Kit