This page was written by Christopher Spry. The Guide is designed for those who are considering buying, or have just bought, a Polaroid SprintScan CS-4000 to use for scanning photographic slides, to make computer graphics file. I installed one recently on my PC. I provide my experience of this here, in the hope that it may be of use to others, to avoid the serious pitfalls I fell into. The hardware and software work well for me, now that I have discovered how to install and use it. Most of the problems are avoidable but not documented in the literature that comes with the scanner, or on the Polaroid support web site.
Polaroid provide a FAQ, a Users Guide and technical support on-line, for this scanner and the Insight software. There is good telephone support in the U.K. at +44-1582-632244. Information and discussion on the Polaroid scanner and its software is available at the public Usenet newsgroup alt.comp.periphs.scanner.
Description: The 'SprintScan CS-4000' is claimed by Polaroid to be the world's first 4000 dpi slide scanner, scanning slides in less than one minute. It is a high-end device, making professional and high quality scans from 35mm slides, conventional negatives or the Advanced Photo System (APS). It accepts 35mm positive and negative photographs, film strips and APS-Films. It can be used in 12 bit per colour mode with a 3,4 optical density range which is suited for magnification of detail. The maximal resolution is 4,000 x 4,000 dpi. It provides new possibilities for inkjet prints in large formats. The scan time for single photographs is about 1 minute. It is provided with software to control the scanner, called PolaColor Insight Pro. It uses a SCSI-interface and can be used on a Mac and on a PC running Windows, including Windows 98 and NT v 4.
The product: I am in the U.K. I received the hardware on 24/12/1999. I was provided with a CD containing software (PolaColor Insight Pro v 3.5) to run the scanner, but I advise users not to install this version of the software, but to download and install the newer version 4, see below. There is a 'User's Guide' manual in PDF format on the CD. This is out of date, but has some useful information on how to use the scanner. An 'Installation Quickstart' manual was provided but this should only be followed for information on how to set up the SCSI connection.
I received the APS adapter in January 2000. This was a Microtek APS cartridge holder model 'MTS-4000 APS' for the Polaroid film scanner model CS-4000. It was provided with a diagram of how to insert, but not how to remove it from the scanner. This has to be done by switching the scanner off then on, or in software. There was no additional software with it.
SCSI connection: The
SCSI connection is as described in the 'Installation QuickStart' manual. An additional
requirement, that is not documented there, is that the BIOS has to be set so
that the SCSI device is limited to a speed of < 20-MB/sec. I had to alter
the SCSI functions of SCSI 4, which was the setting of the Polaroid
scanner as follows:
|
Setting |
Initial |
Changed
to |
|
Initiate Sync negotiation |
yes |
no |
|
Maximum transfer rate |
80.0 |
20.0 |
|
Send start init command |
no |
yes |
Note that SCSI negotiates the maximum speed between any two SCSI devices. These are normally the host adapter and a single device being used. The speed of the SCSI bus is not the speed of the slowest device. If you had a slow device on your SCSI bus, the device would take a long time compared to a faster devices. It could delay, in that way, a faster device which was using the SCSI bus at the same time. When a SCSI device is not being used, its setting has no effect on the speed of other SCSI devices.
If you have installed PolaColor v 3.5, you will not be able to uninstalling it completely, because the uninstall functions are defective. It does not remove several registry settings that will interfere with the installation of PolaColor version 4. I did install v 3.5 and had to manually replace the registry with a saved version of the registry, before I could install version 4. You have been warned! Polaroid have been told about this defect in the software. Unfortunately, this defect is also present in version 4 and they have been notified of this, as well. If you are advised by Polaroid technical support to delete all entries in the registry that deal with PolaColor Insight v 3.5, including 'IQA', do not delete registry entries for 'IQAHook', or you will be unable to install software again!
David Hemingway of Polaroid Corp. announced release candidate v 2 of PolaColor Insight v 4 on 6 December 1999. He stated:
"PolaColor Insight v 4.0 is a significant upgrade from the 3.x series New features and improvements are:
1. Histograms with a twist. When the histogram option is dynamic in as it shows any change made in any other of the color correction options. Additionally the "histogram" function is linked to the curves function . For example when "curves" is selected you can set the white and black points directly from the histogram using eyedroppers. That change is immediately transferred to the "curves" display.
2. You can select any peak point on the "histogram" and a point will appear on the curve in the "curves" dialog.
3. You can select a gray area with the bounding box and balance that gray with the color wheel by watching the changes in the "histogram" until they overlap.
4. Batching with thump nails has been added. You can now batch 40 images with the APS adapter or batch a film or slide strip . You can even assign different parameters to each slide.
5. You can now attach a profile to a raw scan. This save a ton of hand work in Photoshop.
6. The handling of profiles in general has been improved particularly on the Mac.
A word about twain. I have been referring to this version of Insight as Insight 4.0 "better than Twain" for the following reasons. 1. Although a standalone application, Insight preserves the "scan into the application " functionality of Twain. In the "scan" dialog just select the application into which you want the scanned image placed. If the application is running the scanned image will be placed into a window of that application. If the application is not running Insight will start the application.
2. You can have Twain functionality in applications that are not twain compliant. Scan into Word if you like.
3. Twain is not effective in supporting batching.
4. With Insight you be working the initial images of a batch while the batch continues to scan.
5. You can scan with having to load any other application.
6. With Insight you can have Insight and the application such as Photoshop running simultaneously. No so with Twain."
I downloaded PolaColor Insight v.4.0 (English) from http://www.polaroid.com/service/software/sprintscan/pci_v4.0_rc2.exe. The use of 'pci' in the name of the file is confusing. It refers to 'Polaroid colour install' but could be confused with 'pci' used for the 'pci bus'. I installed the software successfully. However, as I installed it, it stated 'Uninstall failed to initialize. You may be unable to uninstall this product'. Polaroid have been notified of this deficiency in this version of the software, which is still being developed.
Error messages in Italian: I found that error messages, when the scanner had problems, were in Italian, even though the software was installed for English users. This problem is known to Polaroid and it is discussed at http://polaroid.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/polaroid?solution&11-991208-0002&130-944672003&14-2&2715-18&15-0&2716-0&57-faq&58-console. Following the advice there, I renamed, with an underscore at the start of the file C:\PROGRAM FILES\COMMON FILES\POLAROID IMAGING\SCANNER DROPINS\TKSCAN.DLL and C:\PROGRAM FILES\COMMON FILES\POLAROID IMAGING\PLSCAMR.DLL. I restarted the computer. This appeared to solve the problem, as later error messages were in English.
Please let me know if there are errors here, or additions that might be of use to new users of this capable scanner.
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© cspry@sghms.ac.uk. Department of Biochemistry & Immunology, St. George's Hospital Medical School, London SW17 0RE, UK. Phone +44 20-8725 5819; fax +44 20-8725 5821. This page was updated on 10 December 2001 11:27:08.