Not really off topic.. almost... Have any of you used/have a Jenoptik js21 film scanner. I brought one recently here in the uk for £200 ($350) and im not too pleased with the way it renders my negatives. I have some wonderful photographs and the negatives scanned with this equipment really do not do the printed photographs any justice at all. I use Photoshop LE and no-matter how must I play in photoshop I just cannot get an image as good as the printed picture. Ive not heard a lot of good reports about this scanner (after I brought it I may add) so I wondered if any of you good folk have had any experance with this film scanner.

cheers

jason london, uk

-- Jason Vicinanza (jvicinanza@yahoo.co.uk), April 04, 2001

Answers

I also have at home a 'cheap' scanner: The original HP Photosmart. I could not get good scans especially from BW negatives and hopeless ones for color slides. I downloaded vuescan (see http://www.hamrick.com/vsm.html). I now get good to very good BW negative scans. Slides are still hopeless.

Apparently vuescan does not support Jenoptics scanners. I wouldn't be surprised though that the Jenoptics is a repackaged scanner from another cheap manufacturer (Acer?).

Anyway, you can download vuescan for free and try to make it work by selecting different scanners.

The downloaded version is fully functional. It puts a kind of grid on your images. Annoying, but it let's you fully evaluate the product. If you can make vuescan work with your scanner, the functional version without the grid will cost you 40 USD.

Personally after playing with vuescan for about 30 minutes, I decided to buy it. After paying through the Internet with a credit card, I got a key to get rid of the grid a few minutes after having paid.

Xavier

-- Xavier Colmant (xcolmant@powerir.com), April 05, 2001.

Don't give up too soon if you're not previously experienced with digital photography. The learning curve is quite steep, and problems which initially appear to be equipment defects are often user defects :-)

-- Michael Darnton (mdarnton@hotmail.com), April 05, 2001.

See;

"http://www.scantips.com"

A lot of information in a relatively easy format.

-- Gene Crumpler (nikonguy@att.net), April 11, 2001.