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hp s20 owners, some good news and bad news
If you are still messing with hp s20 film scanner, you should read this tip.
I don't know if it's original, but I haven't read it anywhere. I have been stuck with s20 for three years now. And I still think it's decent scanner for occasional non-perfectionist film scanning. Only problem which have really bugged me has been noise in darkest areas of slides and negatives. Especially those clusters of thin green stripes, which don't go away by calibrating or by cleaning the scanner. I have known dilemma between ccd's and heat for couple of years now, but of course I didn't grasp it until recently. S20 has an excessive and inherent heating problem. I guess the main culprit is internal power adapter. Good news is that it has a simple remedy. Get one of those big flat fans (mine is 15 cm), which are used e.g. in computer cases. Place it horizontally right below the scanner's metallic bottom and feed the fan with proper voltage. Don't forget to leave necessary gap for ventilation also underneath the fan. Then you can try to scan those troublesome nightshots once again with much cooler s20. Don't blame me if you did a unstable construction and dropped your scanner or something. Bad news is this: why didn't anybody tell this tip for you earlier, about 10000 slides ago. Of course it doesn't turn s20 to ice-4800dpi-dmaximus-scanner, but for me it really removed most of the noisy garbage in dark areas and let the scanner perform as it should. For getting the rest of the noise out, I guess all s20 owners could take a trip here in Finland during the wintertime and make some serious scanning outside at -25C. Or try those noise removing programs like Neat image, Grain surgery or Noise ninja. I haven't used any other film scanner than hewlett packard, so I don't know if this tip can be applied to other low-end film scanners, but you got the idea. |
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