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1. couple of times to get rid of recurring problems Update SilverFast fix Shortly after completing the above review LaserSoft Imaging released a fixed version of SilverFast to address the issues above which were widely reported online The new version 6 5 5r4a as confusingly distinct from the previous 6 5 5r4 does indeed seem to solve some if not all the issues tested the new version by activating the multisampling feature which earlier produced banding artifacts The results are clean and impressively low noise SilverFast 6 5 5r4a 4x Multisampling SilverFast 6 5 5r4 Single Pass Figure 11 Scan quality improvement with 4x multisampling Further it seems the memory leak issue had been resolved too left SilverFast running overnight and made another multi pass scan the following day It too completed successfully This is indeed excellent news So my final piece of advice if you purchase your scanner today chances are it comes with an older version of the software mine came with 6 5 5r1 Make sure you upgrade to the latest before you begin scanning Comments on NPN nature photography articles Send them to the editor Guy Tal lives and works in the scenic state of Utah His love for the canyons of the Colorado Plateau and the high peaks of the Wasatch and Uinta ranges is expressed through his catalog of landscape photographs and nature writing Guy offers fine art prints as well as photographic workshops in his home2. company s technical support which had been less than favorable have left me somewhat biased Still as they say the proof is in the pudding After multiple attempts at scanning the same chrome with both packages had to reluctantly admit that SilverFast produces visibly superior results To me that s where the proverbial rubber meets the road and thus the choice was made SilverFast warts and all http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 3 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM Nature Photography La SilverFast Detail ScanWizard Detail Figure 2 ScanWizard could not retain detail in extreme highlights Bugs My first scan completed with deceptively little fuss and turned out exactly as had hoped very detailed good dynamic range and accurate color It can t be that easy thought And was right It would be a couple more hours before got my next clean scan For my next scan picked an image with deep shadows to test the scanner s dynamic range and the software s ability to use multiple readings set SilverFast to 4x multiscan and that s when the much maligned banding bug reared its head http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 4 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM Nature Photography Figure 3 Irregular bands appear on some scans for no apparent reason Worse yet any scan from here on showed similar artifacts even with the original settings restored had to
3. state Guy s photographs and workshop offerings are available at his web site http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 12 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM Nature Photography http quytal com PRINT THIS PAGE f using Adobe Acrobate Reader Adobe Site Map NPN Membership Front Page Reader s Forum Links Gift Shoppe Terms of Use Copyright 2000 2008 Nature Photographers Online Magazine Inc All rights reserved http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 13 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM
4. whirl as well but finally decided against it for the reasons listed above which led me to purchase the M1 rather than the Epson in the first place Lessons learned and recommendations So to summarize if you purchased your M1 today you will get a flawed product and you are likely to run into frustrating bugs Still the hardware is very capable and it is my hope that the software bugs will be ironed out in the near future On the other hand when used carefully it produces excellent scans Don t expect it to rival a drum scan in every case but in many cases it will provide you with more than acceptable results that are sharp detailed and have sufficient quality for gallery prints Until the software issues are resolved a few recommendations for early adopters e Don t use SilverFast s power features HDR multiscan etc http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 11 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM Nature Photography e Carefully examine each individual scan Once the issues occur they persist so if you re not checking each scan you may find out too late that a whole series is impacted e Avoid batch scanning until software fix is available e For Large Format scanning stick with resolutions of 2400dpi or less Higher settings result in larger files but not necessarily in more image detail e lf issues persist in multiple scans go Microsoft and reboot your computer even if you re on a Mac had to do this a
5. Nature Photography ae tas N atur Ph jt Sra jh f osuss A Microtek M1 Pro Text and photography copyright Guy Tal All rights reserved At long last Microtek finally released the much anticipated M1 If you have not been among the anticipators well then you are likely not a large format photographer yearning for a sub 1000 high quality desktop scanner Still for the few of us who are this announcement had been a long time coming As Microtek began shipping the first units the large format community was abuzz with preliminary reviews The reports were decidedly mixed The usual experts quickly took to their high horses and well worn soapboxes Sample scans from operators who may or may not possess the requisite skills made the rounds on various web forums and the potential buyers became hopelessly confused In other words business as usual on the Internet Of all the confusion bitterness and general white noise on the net did manage to distill a couple of interesting facts 1 Many users experienced bugs related to the bundled SilverFast software 2 SilverFast is reportedly working on a fix due out in a few days and 3 When things do work scan quality is very good So decided to have the scanner reviewed by one of few people consider qualified to assess its performance in light of my own skill level and intended use me Note that this review is my personal hands on real world experience with this machine It is not i
6. and can give drum scanners some stiff competition Still these creme de la creme of flatbeds are often beyond the reach of casual photographers This created a niche for affordable flatbeds of good quality a niche where two manufacturers quickly emerged as the primary players Microtek and Epson Fast forward The M1 is Microtek s flagship flatoed photo scanner having discontinued the much acclaimed 1800F and 2500F to the chagrin of many photographers who appreciated their fine qualities On the Epson side of the ring the recent introduction of the V700 and V750 models raised the bar from the previously successful 4990 and 3200 There are several differences between the M1 and V7x0 which won t spend too much time on On paper specs rarely tell the whole story so for me this was more of an emotional choice than anything else have had good luck with Microtek scanners in the past http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 1 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM Nature Photography Still in particular a couple of things stood out to me Microtek s E D I T technology which scans the film directly rather than through the flatbed s glass platen auto focus which find a critical feature in scanners given the shallow depth of field of their lenses and hefty film holders that despite their plasticky feel still seem superior to the flimsy ones have seen from Epson One feature conspicuously absent on the M1 is ICE a techno
7. ative as a color positive then invert the scan in Photoshop While my test had not been exhaustive did try to get the best possible scan using a home developed Kodak T Max neg My testing showed better results with the inverted color scan compared to NegaFix http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 9 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM Nature Photography F P ws Grayscale scan with NegaFix Inverted positive color scan Figure 9 B amp W scans using grayscale and color methods 4800dpi truth or fiction Many modern scanners list eye popping resolutions on their spec sheets and the M1 is no different The manufacturer claims a resolution of 4800x9600dpi It would serve one to keep in mind that film has its own characteristics that limit just how much detail it can record Even the finest films will likely not yield additional image detail beyond 3000 4000dpi so any number above that is academic at best Further film grain begins to show at around 2000dpi even with the finest slide film so anything above that is a compromise more image detail at the cost of more visible grain Thankfully with 4x5 originals there is sufficient film area for very large prints even when scanned at 2000 2400dpi which allows for good clean scans without distracting grain Normally would not go much above that but for the sake of this review tried the scanner at its rated optical resolution of 4800dpi At this r
8. close the application and restart it to resolve the issue Next some scans showed pronounced banding On some occasions SilverFast would hang and required a force quit and when attempting to batch scan the second scan only completed partially before SilverFast stopped mid scan After about 2 hours of this in great frustration did what every Mac user dreads and rebooted the computer Problems gone After the restart scanning carefully one chrome at a time and only using the basic controls histogram contrast brightness etc was able to make multiple scans with no problem After several scans the problems resurfaced this time resolved again by a restart of the application All this leads me to believe that more than one bug is at play here and that at least one is related to a memory leak and only manifests itself after the software had been running for a while So how good is it When it s good it s very good That is on the clean scans detail is excellent and dynamic range is very good with the caveat that this is a consumer model Some difficult images will always require the best hardware to scan and these will still look far better when scanned with an expensive professional machine but for a large proportion of my work this scanner delivers results good enough for very large prints Sharpness At its default settings SilverFast applies an Autosharpen filter The results for the most part look excellent but in ar
9. eas of extreme detail some image information is lost When sharpening is set to None more detail is captured http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 5 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM Nature Photography Sharpening set to Autosharpen Sharpening set to None Figure 4 Sharpening setting differences Shadow highlight detail and noise While I did not have the tools to measure the scanner s dynamic range did want to evaluate its performance on especially bright and dark images Noise or over exposure are common problems with consumer scanners The M1 with SilverFast did remarkably well with extreme highlights http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 6 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM Nature Photography Figure 5 High Key Detail Deep shadows did exhibit quite a bit of chroma noise Chroma noise can be effectively cleaned up using various software packages used Noise Ninja from PictureCode with good results Before Noise Minja After Noise Ninja Figure 6 Shadow detail and noise http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 7 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM Nature Photography Scanning artifacts banding fringing On rare occasions did come across some banding artifacts This did not however seem to be a recurring issue and a repeat scan eliminated the problem In some areas of high contrast minor fringing chromatic aberration a
10. esolution 16 bit scanning is not an option since the resulting file is larger than the TIFF format limitation of 2GB Below is a comparison of a 16 bit scan at 2400dpi upsampled to 4800dpi and an 8 bit scan at 4800dpi It is quite evident that the higher setting does not actually resolve more detail and in fact the 2400dpi high bit scan shows significantly more detail http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 10 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM Nature Photography 2400dpi 16bit upsampled to 4800dpi 4B00dpi amp bit Figure 10 Scanning resolution comparison To keep or not to keep After spending a long day scanning working through issues at times frustrated at times impressed had to make up my mind whether to send the scanner back or keep it After much thought decided on the latter Someone on a web forum forwarded a message from LaserSoft promising a fix for SilverFast in the next few days If the new version indeed solves the problems above most if not all of my frustrations will be gone Even if some issues still persist it is clear that the hardware is capable of excellent results and even with some SilverFast features not working properly can still use it for a lot of my work Considering the 700 price tag and comparing to the cost of drum scans this is a no brainer If it will save me as little as 10 15 drum scans it will have paid for itself Admittedly was tempted to give the Epson V750 a
11. logy that uses infrared light to correct for dust and scratches Strangely Microtek has a similar scanner selling in Europe under the name F1 which does have this feature One review read claimed this has to do with licensing though Microtek sells other scanners in the US which do offer ICE so I m not entirely sure what the real reason is While there s no doubt that dust and scratches are a painful issue for film scanning ICE s usefulness with Large Format scans is questionable On other scanner models that offer it it is not unheard of for an ICE enabled scan of 4x5 film to take upwards of two hours decided could live without it First impressions Figure 1 M1 dwarfed by rare Rocky Mountain Ringtail Tiger captive http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 2 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM Nature Photography The first thing you ll note as you take delivery of your new M1 is mild soreness in your arms and lower back The box with all components weighs in at 42lbs This it not your typical desktop scanner so make sure you have sufficient desk space to accommodate it Setup is pretty straightforward There s an easy to follow Start Here guide and for those attempting to install the scanner while intoxicated there are bright yellow numbered stickers on the machine to guide you through the unpacking and setup There are multiple pieces of software to install prior to connecting the scanner These include Micr
12. ntended to replace the owner s manual or to recite technical specs or the manufacturer s marketing material These can be found in any number of other places What I ll cover here is my current experience living and working with this scanner as a large format photographer in need of a home scanning solution A little bit of background In recent years several vendors added the ability to scan film to various flatbed scanner models These devices primarily intended to scan reflective material usually include an additional overhead light source allowing the scanner s CCD to read light projected through the translucent emulsion When implemented in a consumer model scanner results are generally inferior to those of dedicated film scanners Flatbed lenses and sensors are not usually optimized for the high resolution and precision required to capture the degree of detail and dynamic range film is capable of recording While dedicated film scanners at reasonable prices are widely available for 35mm and medium format films very few were ever made for 4x5 or larger formats Of these few practically all affordable models were since discontinued and many photographers found themselves searching for used unsupported models or paying for expensive drum scans To these users affordable flatbed scanners were a bright ray of hope Manufacturers like Scitex Creo and Heidelberg have shown that high end flatbed scanners are capable of professional grade results
13. otek s ScanWizard software and drivers IT8 calibration profiles and the bundled edition of SilverFast from LaserSoft Imaging opted for the pro model for the benefit of getting the full Ai Studio version of the software Calibration of both SilverFast and ScanWizard was pretty straightforward with the included IT8 targets and everything was up and ready to scan within 15 20 minutes or so SilverFast or ScanWizard ScanWizard is Microtek s own scanning software It is full featured and powerful and has a reasonably intuitive user interface It is geared towards batch scanning but does very well for individual scans as well A detailed user manual is included with the package SilverFast is a ubiquitous scanning package made by LaserSoft that s bundled with a wide variety of scanners both consumer models and high end While it is packed with great features its user interface is a bit quirky and takes some getting used to SilverFast only has rudimentary documentation Instead there are little video clips explaining individual functions very entertaining but not terribly useful or easy to follow Fortunately for me have had years of SilverFast play time and am reasonably adept at using it A new user may require some trial and error and friendly advice to make the most of it though At this point it is worth mentioning that the most severe issues reported with the M1 have to do with bugs in SilverFast Also my own past experience with the
14. rtifacts could be found Fringing is fairly easily mitigated using a variety of software tools e g the Lens Correction filter in Photoshop PTLens from ePaperPress or LensFix Cl from Kekus Banding artifacts Chromatic aberration fringing Figure 7 Scanning artifacts encountered in some images Both artifacts were pretty subtle and once identified easy to correct Compared to drum scan So can a 700 flatbed scanner match the performance of a drum scanner Well no and it would be foolish to think it will In most cases the M1 will produce very good scans capable of making very detailed prints A drum scanner however will likely produce better detail and significantly better dynamic range The real question is will these advantages come into play in the final print In many cases no but in some absolutely http www naturephotographers net articles articles0308 gt0308 1 html 8 of 13 3 1 08 6 43 PM Nature Photography Mi scan 2000dpi Heidelberg Tango scan 2000dpi Figure 8 Shadow detail comparison M1 vs drum scan Black and white Most scanners and particularly consumer models are optimized to scan color work While grayscale is supported it is often of lesser quality compared to color scans SilverFast offers a unique feature called NegaFix which optimizes the scanning algorithm to a variety or film profiles decided to put it to the test and to compare against a common scanning trick scan the B amp W neg
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