UPDATE, July 8 2010

In the past month I’ve been using Silverfast multi-exposure almost every day, in a re-archiving project, and it has worked flawlessly.  I also have to admit that my sometimes harsh comments about Lasersoft I always regret later. Sometimes they can be infuriating, but often as not I suspect that it is mainly language issues. They’re actually a great bunch of people doing a great job of keeping film scanning alive for mere mortals who can’t afford Hasselblad’s luxury good price tags.  Oh, and my comments about excessive pricing ? I’m wrong.

So for the sake of consistency, I’ll leave this article up, but take it with a VERY large pinch of salt

Lasersoft’s Silverfast has long been considered the best scanning software around, although fans of Ed Hamrick’s VueScan would disagree. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with it for about a decade. I love the results it is able to deliver (once you’ve got over the learning curve) but I really dislike the user interface, and I have little time for the company itself, with its cranky staff and very exaggerated prices. I don’t believe I’m alone in this.On the positive side I have to recognise their continued support for a large range of scanners, many obsolete and/or orphaned by their makers. They play an important role in keeping film alive. I also realise that it must be getting harder and harder to maintain their business, especially sales of their higher range products such as Silverfast AI Studio. Which leads me to the point of this article, revisiting a topic discussed some time back.Around about version 6.0 Silverfast was pretty much complete. There wasn’t really much to add, which is a problem for a software company. Nevertheless things were added, often hyped to the heavens but actually delivering very little. For example, the “Studio” version of 6.5 added things with clever sounding acronyms (e.g AACO, Auto Adaptive Contrast Optimisation) which actually didn’t seem to do anything useful, although they spent a long time doing it. Ever desperate for upgrade revenue, a more recent attempt was Multi Exposure. As opposed to Auto Adaptive Contrast Optimisation, Multi Exposure is supposed to, er, optimise contrast, auto-adaptively. It does this by making two scans, the first at normal exposure, and the second deliberately over exposing to pull out shadow detail. It then combines the two into a final image. Initially I seem to recall there was an option to make 4 exposures, but this seems to have been quietly dropped.

Some film scanners, like my Minolta Scan Dual Pro, have the ability to multisample, taking a number (between 2 and 16 in the Minolta’s case) of samples at each point and averaging them out to improve the signal to noise ratio, especially in the shadows. Many Silverfast users were puzzled about the difference between “Multi Exposure” and “Multi Sampling”, especially as they are mutually exclusive in Silverfast, even for scanners like the Minolta where the film doesn’t move. An interesting discussion took place here. The drawback of Multi Sampling is that scan times are increased by the same factor as the sample count. Lasersoft promised that Multi Exposure would not only be faster, but would deliver better results.

Well, Multi Exposure went through a few iterations, and the 4x option vanished.  My experience is that it does not offer any significant dynamic range advantage over multi-sampling, at least as far as scanning slides is concerned. It is quicker, slightly faster than 4x multisampling. However, it has a serious flaw, which others have noted: the results are considerably softer than standard or multi-sampling. This may be due to misalignment, or due to flare or bloom in the over-exposed scan. The result can clearly be seen in the 100% crops below:

Top: 4x Multi Sampling - Bottom: Multi Exposure

Sometimes Multi Exposure works fine, but it is just too unreliable to use routinely. In most cases I find that 4x multisampling gives excellent results, with diminishing improvements (if any) at 8x and 16x. And in extreme cases, you can make two multisample scans and different exposures and blend them in Photoshop. So, in conclusion, another pointless feature.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if Lasersoft really feel there is a future in this product, then they should concentrate on repackaging the technology in a completely new, modern user interface. Unfortunately, I would guess that the codebase is ancient, and I’ve never seen any evidence that Lasersoft have any interest in genuinely improving the Silverfast user experience. Since the competition is at best no better, and in general considerably worse, I suppose there’s little commercial incentive in doing anything.

Marketing really puzzles me sometimes. I’ve just received an email from PhaseOne, telling me that since I did not respond to their emails (from back in Dec 2008) they’re going to delete my user account.

Leaving aside the fact that I have actually accessed my user account since December, to download CaptureOne 4.5 Pro, which doesn’t work correctly on my G5 Mac, what possible benefit can they derive by deleting my user account ? I may not be a big-bucks, buy a new camera every 5 minutes, the more expensive the better customer as far as they can tell, but I have been a registered user of CaptureOne Pro since 2004, and it wasn’t particularly cheap.

I guess they sent their marketing team to the same shoot-yourself-in-the-foot school as Lasersoft...

This post is mainly intended for my compadres (and compardresses) on Flickr. And it’s a rant (for a change).

A couple of days ago, a kind and certainly well-meaning person left a comment on one of my photos, and added an invitation, adorned with the usual eye-watering graphic (above), to add my photo to a group. Now, I wasn’t a member of this group, and to post a photo, you need to be. So I had a quick look at what was required in this particular instance. Well, quite a lot. First of all, there’s the standard “post 1, award 3”.  Fair enough I suppose, sort of, except of course (a) what is really meant is “post 1, heap glib, meaningless gushing praise on 3 others”, and (b) well, most of the photos posted the day I looked were toe curlingly bad.

Honestly, there’s a lot of good stuff on Flickr - there’s a lot of stuff way beyond what I could aspire to. But there’s also a lot of total dross- For example, was this a “classique” before it was butchered mercilessly with that horrific frame and the ridiculous watermark ? Or was it a poor snapshot of what looks like an open sewer ? Is this really the Isle of Wight ?  I’m sorry to pick out an individual like this - especially as she has actually got some far better shots, but I needed an example, and this one stuck to the insides of my eyelids.  (and I’m already feeling guilty. I’m a bad person)

Anyway, back to the main rant. Apart from the forced commenting, one is also required to vote on the current competition. Well sorry, but WARNING NAUGHTY WORDS APPROACHING please do fuck off. Honestly. First, I don’t do photo competitions. Photography is not a competitive sport in my opinion. Second, why the hell do the group admins think that their members are in any shape or form qualified to judge a photo competition ? Ok, ok, ok, lighten up, it’s just for fun. Fine - so why is it OBLIGATORY (is this group based in Zürich by any chance ?), and why are they so fucking (I did warn you) pompous about it ?

Guess what ? I didn’t join.

So what are these groups for ? Does anybody actually monitor them to look out for good photography - or even interesting stuff ? I doubt it. It’s all about getting comments. Empty, vapid, pointless comments. Once an obligatory “award” is given, the member giving will probably never visit the photographer’s stream - unless the avatar or name indicates a likely Hot FlickrPhotoBabe(tm) of course.  No, they’re just circling around looking for somewhere to get rid of their obligatory award drops asap, then getting the hell outta Dodge. I always wanted to write that in a blog post.

Well, I don’t want “awards”, thanks.  I like getting comments, when they’re actually meaningful, even if they’re negative, just so long as they’re accurate and funny. I, in turn, may not comment as often as I should, but when I do, I try to avoid being vapid. And if I say I like a photo, I mean it.

I like getting views even more, which is a bit tragic, as after close to 3 years on Flickr I’ve only chalked up 19,000, which I have a sneaking suspicion is not very impressive.  This website, when the photo galleries were up, got around than many views every couple of months…

So I’m leaving all the “award” groups, and I kindly ask you not to give me awards. A few words are much more appreciated. I’m not going to go nuclear (like some) if I do get awards, I’m just not going to act on them.

This means I can focus on the groups that actually interest me, including, at random Deep North, Lightness of Being, Tuscany in Tuxedo, Darkest Dreaming, and of course XPan and E-System Community.

These actually give me pleasure and inspiration (and jealous rage), rather than bemusement and irritation.

My first point of call in Flickr is always my contacts page. I look at least 2 or 3 times a day. That’s what is all about really, finding out what people you have some tenuous link to are photographing, all over the world.  For the others it’s the ego trip of getting hundreds of “awards” and being in “Explore”. Well, fair enough, they’re not hurting anybody. But it has f-all to do with photography, and I’m opting out.

Last week I was in San Francisco. I took my XPan with me, and expected to be able to buy some decent film in situ - surely film is still alive in the heartland of f64 et al ?

Well it appears not. The only place I could find which even admitted to stocking film, Discount Camera (which seems like an ok place) only had some old Sensia. I wanted my favourite Velvia 100F. They suggested I visit Adolph Gasser’s (that’s A-Dolf, of course). Beautiful website by the way, so retro, so 1995.

So I did.  I found my way to the film section, and encountered an overweight, grumpy soap dodger who seemed to resent having to deal with a customer.

I asked if they have Velvia 100F, and was treated to a condescending lecture which informed me that Merkins didn’t like Velvia 100F, and it had been replaced with Velvia 100S (which I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist in the US of A or anywhere else). I was also informed that 100F has been out for “over 15 years” and was no longer available.

Having had quite enough of this blatantly untrue and / or pig-ignorant bullshit, I decided to cut my losses, buy some Provia 100F, and get out in the fresh air.

Well, imagine my surprise when I saw this ad, this evening, on the American photo.net website…

So, in the hope that this might get Googled by somebody somewhere, Do Not Visit Adolph Gassers in San Francisco. And forget any idea you might have that all Americans are service oriented….

This really is the final straw for my relationship as a customer with Germany’s worst software house, LaserSoft. 

I few days ago, I submitted a topic to the user forum, asking for shared experiences on scanning Portra 160NC with Silverfast. I did not criticise any aspect of Silverfast, or Lasersoft, in fact as far as I remember I was complimentary. I was just a novice negative user looking for advice with the famous NegaFix miracle solution.

So, today, I was a bit surprised to receive this:

Hello drm,

You are receiving this notification because your topic “Scanning Portra
160NC” at “LaserSoft Imaging” was disapproved by a moderator or
administrator.

The following reason was given for the disapproval:

Dear Customer,

our(sic) SilverFast forum is not intended for individual techsupport as this
would make the forum hard to read for users that seek certain help or
information. Also our Support staff can not hadle (sic) “everyday” support over
the forum efficently (sic), therefore please use our support assistent (sic) to get
individual support. If there is no answer in the support assistent (sic) that
solves your problem you will automatically be redirected to our Support
request form where you can create a support ticket.

—
Yours Truely (sic),
The Site Admin

One can only applaud them from keeping upsetting information like my post from their nervous users.

My answer, also verbatim, after I edited out some possibly inappropriate references to the teutonic character (especially when reflecting on the excellent support I have received from NIK software’s team in Germany):

This is really so bloody stupid. I take the time to participate in your forum, asking a general question to the community about scanning a particular film stock which I’m not familiar with. This is not “tech support” - even if I did also ask tech support - it is actually a topic I have no experience in and am seeking other’s advice. In general this is what a user forum is for (Adobe, Apple, PhaseOne, Microsoft, etc etc)

Your site COULD be the destination for everybody still interested in scanning. It could become a huge resource for the community which in turn benefit you by increasing attention on your products (this is called “marketing”- I suggest you research it)

Fine, I will no longer waste my time on your forum, or your software. Actually, thanks to other resources in the web, I have discovered the wonderful ColorNeg & ColorPos plugins from C F Systems, which demonstrate what a piece of crap “NegaFix"is in particular, and in fact how bad the rest of your terrible, expensive software actually is.

The emperor has no clothes. SilverFast is complete sh*t. There is no magic bullet (VueScan hasn’t got one either). Scan in raw mode and sort it out in Photoshop, or invest in ColorNeg.