Basic question

["Tim Munro" <timmunro@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,
I've lurked here before but am likely to be a regular now as I have
purchased some equipment to get my digital printing up and running. I bought
a CanoScan FS4000US and an Epson 1290 photo printer. I am a professional
photographer and part of my work is as a motorsport trackside photographer
at Sydney's Eastern Creek circuit, among others. I sell a reasonable
quantity of 8 x 10 and 12 x 16 prints of people on the circuit with their
bikes or cars so the payback on this equipment looks good. But...........

I've been playing around with this gear for a couple of weeks now and my
major problem is in the colour management. I have arranged to have the
monitor/printer profiled in the near future but my biggest problem seems to
be the colours that the scanner interprets from the negative/positive. I
tried to scan a bushfire scene which came out as bluey/grey flames, then a
sunset which the scanner turned to blue sky - both from negatives. I spoke
to Canon who showed me how to change the various colour channels in the
scanner software to improve this. Over the last few days I have tried to
fill a few orders for trackside prints where I was getting very reddish
tracks, a totally wrong shade of blue, and an orange/red bike which is
actually a blood red colour. I was trying to correct this when a thought
occurred to me - why am I having to do this ?  I thought the scanner would
pull the accurate original colour information from the negative and I could
then adjust if I wanted to - not fight to find the right starting point.

I would be very grateful if someone to put me straight on this before I
waste too much more time, not to mention paper and ink. Have I got a poorly
calibrated or faulty scanner ? or is this the way it is ?

Thanks, Tim
www.timmunro.com.au


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