LS-9000 -- Have the Kodachrome Blues Been Fixed?
 

As with most other proprietary software imaging functions those in ICE4 (GEM™, ROC™, DEE™) operate opaquely like a black box.  Without a detailed description of the underlying algorithms the user must rely on the vendor's verbal descriptions or empirically test them to get an idea of their effect.  It doesn't help that the Nikon's descriptions of these functions are succinct, to say the least.  For example, the longest description of ROC I'd seen was in the promotional literature:

"Digital ROC (Reconstruction Of Color) recreates and restores faded color values for vivid, faithfully rendered images"

As I understood it the use of ROC is relevant to scanning images with degraded dye layers, something which might be useful in scanning old Kodacolor negatives perhaps but irrelevant to Kodachrome images, which contain dyes that are nearly archival.  Therefore having few faded negatives I've mostly ignored ROC.

ICE4 ROC on the LS-9000 has additional functionality with regard to Kodachrome, but to learn of it you have to stumble upon it in, of all places, Kodak's ICE page:

"Additionally, the Super Coolscan 9000 ED DIGITAL ICE⁴ Advanced Technology contains a special optimized version of DIGITAL ICE Technology called "DIGITAL ICE Professional Technology", which provides more robust compatibility to work with KODACHROME film types."

Therefore, with the hope that the Kodachrome blues problem now has a simple solution I tried some scans using ROC.

Example I

Settings -- film type: Kodachrome, ICE4 off, auto b-w points

Scanning with the Kodachrome option shows little effect in correcting the blue cast characteristic of Nikon scanners.

Settings -- same as above except ICE4 ROC: 1

Setting ROC to 1 corrects the blue cast.

Settings -- same as first except ICE4 ROC: 5

Increasing ROC to 5 shows little difference over the one setting.

Example II

Settings -- film type: Kodachrome, ICE4 off, auto b-w points

This underexposed image was always difficult to scan and correct.

Settings -- same as previous except ROC: 5

Increasing ROC to 5 gets rid of the blue cast visible in the paper.

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