The shadow details on the previous page were all taken from the same Kodachrome transparency shown below. It's a holiday snap taken in northern Spain, September 1972, using a low-priced Zenith SLR. I chose this slide for its strong shadow areas and tonal range, which proved so difficult for the LS20 to handle. The two versions reproduced here have been slightly cropped and scanned without any additional correction, other than the automatic adjustment of dynamic range.

Since the 4000t now comes packaged with SilverFast Ai 5 as well as Microtek's ScanWizard Pro, I have been able to make a few simple comparisons. Just as with the IT8 target scans, the Ai 5 image has yielded fairly neutral greys, but overall the colours are not as warm as the ScanWizard version. On balance, I prefer the warmer tones obtained by SW Pro, which are, in fact, more in keeping with the original slide. Both sets of software make use of an ICC profile, based on the Kodak Q-60 Ektachrome. However, each has its own profile, which in the case of SW Pro, is created with Microtek's own profiling software. To what extent apparent differences are down to software, or my lack of expertise, I'm not sure, but the excellent colour correction facilities in both packages would make it very easy to compensate for most shortcomings. Personally, I prefer to keep manual colour correction to a minimum, as this can be a most laborious, if not tedious process.

Scanning Negatives
I think I'm correct in saying that the calibration profiles mentioned earlier are only used for scanning positives. Once negative film is loaded it is necessary to select an appropriate film type, whichever software is being used. In this respect SW Pro provides the widest choice, although it is by no means comprehensive. These include:

Since writing this, LaserSoft has brought out Silverfast Ai 5.5 with NegaFix. Haven't tried it yet, but it does appear to support considerably more negative types.