Digital ICE

Some of the discussions on scanners and camera scanning mention "Digital ICE" as an advantage of scanners over camera scanning (particularly for old photos).  However some people might not have seen what this looks like in practice, so this is an example.

Firstly a slide from the 1980s.  Shot on Ektachrome 400, Praktica SuperTL 1000, Regents Park, London. Scanned on a Reflecta ProScan 10T, Silverfast 9 (technically it's "MagicTouch" not "ICE" but it's the same idea) at 5000ppi.

The slide is pretty clean but I didn't do any extra cleaning before scanning.

Straight scan, no ICE

Straight scan, with ICE

It's obvious at this scale that it's removed the larger mark, but if you zoom into the sky you can see that it works at a much smaller level.

Straight scan, 100% crop, no ICE

Straight scan, 100% crop, with ICE

The downside is that the scan with ICE takes longer than without, however there is no extra effort involved, you just have to wait a little longer.

It's worth adding that ICE does not work with conventional black and white film (it does work with chromogenic films like XP2) and may or may not work with Kodachrome (it seems to depend upon the particular scanner/software).

davesurrey wrote:

Either those folk who are against ICE are extremely lucky or careful with their negs /slides or else they are happy to spend an inordinate amount of time in PP removing blemishes.

It isn't always applicable of course. If you process conventional B&W and scan at home you won't benefit.

I'm firmly in favour of ICE probably because of the time it's saved me in rescuing many old and poor quality slides in the past when I digitised my collection.

It is very nice to have, but I'd still advise cleaning slides or negatives before scanning, even if you have ICE or another IR dust and scratch removal option.

I wouldn't buy a scanner today without it. But one can always switch it off if a scan doesn't need it or it's causing problems.

If one is wanting to scan much colour stuff I'd agree, otherwise it is worth paying a little extra for if it is available.

cptrios wrote:

Hmm i assume the high quality of ICE here is down to Silverfast. I've tried it with Vuescan and it's really, really terrible. Worms everywhere! But these look good.

I think it might be scanner dependant too. I know the Plustek with Silverfast could give you worms. They are particularly noticeable on 110 film on people’s faces because even small “hairs” or dust are a large portion of the image. I’ll see if I can rescan the same slide over the next few days on a Plustek and a Canon FS4000 and see what the difference is.

cptrios wrote:

Hmm i assume the high quality of ICE here is down to Silverfast. I've tried it with Vuescan and it's really, really terrible. Worms everywhere! But these look good.

VueScan doesn't refer to ICE at all, although my scanner (Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3650u) carries the ICE logo. VueScan employs its own infrared cleaning, which has never produced 'worms' with any of my slides, including Kodachromes.

Also stated here: https://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/pie_primefilm_3650u.html#technical-information

This scanner has an infrared lamp for scanning film. VueScan's 'Filter | Infrared clean' option can be used to remove dust spots from film scans. This is similar to (and we think better than) the ICE and FARE algorithms.

It scans with both visible light and infrared light in a single pass.

Infrared cleaning works well with all types of color negative and color slide film, including Kodachrome.

cptrios wrote:

sybersitizen wrote:

cptrios wrote:

Hmm i assume the high quality of ICE here is down to Silverfast. I've tried it with Vuescan and it's really, really terrible. Worms everywhere! But these look good.

VueScan doesn't refer to ICE at all, although my scanner (Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3650u) carries the ICE logo. VueScan employs its own infrared cleaning, which has never produced 'worms' with any of my slides, including Kodachromes.

Also stated here: https://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/pie_primefilm_3650u.html#technical-information

This scanner has an infrared lamp for scanning film. VueScan's 'Filter | Infrared clean' option can be used to remove dust spots from film scans. This is similar to (and we think better than) the ICE and FARE algorithms.

It scans with both visible light and infrared light in a single pass.

Infrared cleaning works well with all types of color negative and color slide film, including Kodachrome.

Hah, that happens to be my scanner as well, and I get plenty of worms! Not always, funnily enough. I find they happen more often on slides than negatives.

That's very odd. Got an example or two?

Some other examples of ICE (or equivalent) on different scanners/software

Plustex 8200i with Silverfast v8

Plustek 8200i, Silverfast Ai, 3600ppi, no ICE, 100% Crop

Plustek 8200i, Silverfast Ai, 3600ppi, with ICE, 100% Crop

Canon FS4000

These are scanned with Vuescan. There is a colour difference because the scanner wasn't calibrated

Canon FS4000, VueScan, 4000ppi, no ICE, 100% Crop

Canon FS4000, VueScan, 4000ppi, with ICE, 100% Crop

Epson V550

These were scanned with EpsonScan

Epson V550, EpsonScan, 3600ppi, No ICE, 100%

Epson V550, EpsonScan, 3600ppi, With ICE, 100%

just Tony wrote:

Overrank wrote:

Some of the discussions on scanners and camera scanning mention "Digital ICE" as an advantage of scanners over camera scanning (particularly for old photos).

Speaking only for myself I'm not negative on the subject of ICE because I don't own a dedicated film scanner. If I was to buy one then for sure I would insist on it.

The slide is pretty clean but I didn't do any extra cleaning before scanning.

Straight scan, no ICE

I would classify that as inadequate prep. I give my negs and slides about 10 seconds of attention with the extremely soft Kinetronics "StaticWisk" brush and 5 seconds of Rocket blower which might leave the result above about 3% of the time - a second pass clears it.

I normally use a Rocket Blower - I avoided that with these as the purpose was to demonstrate what ICE does

It's obvious at this scale that it's removed the larger mark, but if you zoom into the sky you can see that it works at a much smaller level.

Straight scan, 100% crop, no ICE

Straight scan, 100% crop, with ICE

The latter view is impressive.

If my frames had the look of the former image then for sure I would have bought a dedicated film scanner with ICE by now. However the cleaning I described as prep for my camera scanning gives me from 10-20X the total amount of those micro specks axcross the entire frame. I've never seen those thread-like defects until now. Is that reticulation?

My new film is nothing like this bad.  I suspect that the thread like defects are from being in the attic for 15-20 years

I clean up my Z7 "scans" at 100% viewing scale when a large final presentation is warranted, about 2-6 minutes of work. For images that won't be printed large I'd need 1-2 minutes at 25% viewing scale. Maybe that's slower than ICE, I don't know.

ICE takes zero user time as you just have it set for each image. It does take quite a bit of scanner time but that doesn't matter as I'm not involved. With a scanner with an automatic film loader you can set it running and then come back half an hour, and hour, four hours later (depending on the speed of the scanner and the number of frames). I do this with my FS4000 and APS film - just load the cassette and come back 6 hours later with all 40 frames scanned.  With the Reflecta and Plustek you need to move the film holder forward, so you just have to be aware of it (but those scanners are faster anyway).

What I do know is that I gave away my flat bed scanner when I found that I couldn't get controllable color with the OEM software no matter how much time it squandered.

It's worth adding that ICE ... may or may not work with Kodachrome

What's the mode of failure there, does it fail to detect the specks?

I have scanned Kodachrome successfully in the past, but there is a standard disclaimer that some versions of ICE don't work with Kodachome.  I think the failure is the same as for black and white film, so you don't really get anything out.

My K64 slides don't have only micro dust, there are emulsion pinholes and patches that look like lifted flaps of emulsion.

Thanks for posting.

just Tony wrote:

It's worth adding that ICE ... may or may not work with Kodachrome

What's the mode of failure there, does it fail to detect the specks?

At worst, Digital ICE badly mangles actual image detail in Kodachrome, thinking it's dust. VueScan's version doesn't have that problem.

My K64 slides don't have only micro dust, there are emulsion pinholes and patches that look like lifted flaps of emulsion.

I don't know if ICE or VueScan would help much with that. I could sacrifice a redundant Kodachrome to test with, if I have one.

Hmm, looks like I have one. Not a lot of detail, but it will have to suffice. I left some dust on it and made some pin scratches in it. These are small crops from 3600PPI scans:

PF 3650u, VueScan, no IR cleaning

PF 3650u, VueScan, with IR cleaning

Epson V500, Epson Scan, no ICE

Epson V500, Epson Scan, with ICE

The usable resolution of the V500 hardly even shows the extent of the dust and scratches when ICE is turned off, so there's not much of a test to be done.

Kodachrome slide from 1983 - neither of the scanners actually have "ICE" but they are Infrared cleaning.

Reflecta Proscan 10T and SilverFast

Kodachrome, Reflecta 10T, Silverfast 9 @ 5000 ppi, no ICE

Kodachrome, Reflecta 10T, Silverfast 9 @ 5000 ppi, with ICE

Kodachrome, Reflecta 10T, Silverfast 9 @ 5000 ppi, no ICE, 100%

Kodachrome, Reflecta 10T, Silverfast 9 @ 5000 ppi, with ICE, 100%

Canon CanoScan FS4000US + VueScan

Kodachrome, Canon CanoScan FS4000US, VueScan, no ICE @ 4000ppi

Kodachrome, Canon CanoScan FS4000US, VueScan, with ICE @ 4000ppi

Kodachrome, Canon CanoScan FS4000US, VueScan, no ICE @ 4000ppi, 100%

Kodachrome, Canon CanoScan FS4000US, VueScan, with ICE @ 4000ppi, 100%

just Tony wrote:

Overrank wrote:

ICE takes zero user time as you just have it set for each image. It does take quite a bit of scanner time but that doesn't matter as I'm not involved. With a scanner with an automatic film loader you can set it running and then come back half an hour, and hour, four hours later (depending on the speed of the scanner and the number of frames). I do this with my FS4000 and APS film - just load the cassette and come back 6 hours later with all 40 frames scanned.

That sounds perfect if these two conditions are met: my rolls are uncut and the majority of frames are still interesting.

The FS4000 also does 6 negatives or 4 slides at a time, because it uses USB1 it's so slow that you can usefully do some ironing waiting for the 6 images

Therefore, not a fit here. Still in babysitting land.

With the Reflecta and Plustek you need to move the film holder forward, so you just have to be aware of it (but those scanners are faster anyway).

The vast majority of the frames of interest here are in the form of mounted slides. However an automated batch scanner that can handle only that format doesn't quite entice me. The Plustek 82001 AI with it's bundled IT8 calibration target seems to deserve a place on my short list. The first time (a long time ago) that I looked into doing true color management with scanning I was repelled when the only solutions I was able to find then happened to be with software that cost hundred$. Presumably that's totally different with the 8200i AI.

The FS4000 can handle 4 mounted slides or 6 negatives at a time. With VueScan you can do IT8 callibration (I didn't on these because it wasn't really necessary for the demo, and I can't remember how to do it on VueScan). You can get IT8 callibration slides from Wolf Faust ( http://www.targets.coloraid.de/ ) and LaserSoft ( https://www.silverfast.com/show/it8-targets/en.html ) among others.

The 8200Ai comes with a target and SilverFast Ai. When I bought it a few years ago the scanner + software + IT8 was much less than buying them seperately, but the Plusteks have increased in price recently.

I have 6x7 chromes in strips but not enough of them to lead me toward a 120 scanner. I have Widelux 24x56mm frames but nobody appears to have built any products to handle them. Using 24x36mm holder windows doubles the babysitting workload and includes a damage risk, so everything in this paragraph is well suited to my camera scanning. i still have the Widelux negative carrier I made for my enlarger in the 1980's.

You can get carriers without the 36mm bars for flatbeds from Negative Solutions ( https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/35-mm-film-holder-adapter-made-for-select-Canon-Epson-HP-Film-Scanners/282504381785?hash=item41c692c559:g:NwcAAOSwEeFVFT-x ) . But that would only be for negatives (or unmounted slides).

cptrios wrote:

Hmm i assume the high quality of ICE here is down to Silverfast. I've tried it with Vuescan and it's really, really terrible. Worms everywhere! But these look good.

In my experience Silve fast shows the same artefacts that Epson scan does, usually at light dark boundaries and is problematic with films that have not been sufficiently bleached. It is still using the same hardware.