A small test - Coolscan V vs Plustek 7200i for b/w.

[Bumse]

I want to share a comparison between two old scanner for b/w scan. The Plustek 7200i is new to me and I bought it to see if it show little less grain then my Coolscan V. I'm not trying to strictly compare then, that is no point. The Coolscan has a higher "real" resolution and better sharpness. My point is to show that the Plustek can produce a decently sharp image with high enough resolution for the most applications - and with a little smoother grain.

The negative is a Ilford Fp4+ developed i Tmax Dev. Scanning through Vuescan as rawfile in native resolution (4000 dpi for Coolscan and 7200 dpi for 7200i). Extract gray from blue in both cases.

High Pass sharpening is added to the Plustek, radius 3.3 and blending mode set to Soft Light.

Plustek to the left, Coolscan to the right.

[/url]plustek_vs_coolscan2 by Björn Järhult, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[gavinlg]

They look close enough in this example to be within the same sort of league.

I've been using the plustek for years and really like it - I'm curious of your overall impression of it compared to the coolscan?

 

[Bumse]

I've been using the plustek for years and really like it - I'm curious of your overall impression of it compared to the coolscan?

Well, as I wrote the Plustek 7200i is new to me and I have only scan b/w. But my impressions so far:

- Coolscan V is a lot more noisy when scanning.
- For my workflow I see no disadvantages with the more manual handling of Plustek 7200i. My workflow is to first do a contact sheet with my Epson V800, simply a two file scan with the negs in acetate sleeves using Epson Scan and added them to one file in Photoshop. Only the "worthy" negs gets to my filmscanner so i have no need for batch-scanning ability, autofeed etc.
- Coolscan V is a faster, but time is added to Plustek 7200i as i always scan in optical resolution (in the Plustek case 7200 dpi vs Coolscan 4000 dpi). I know there is different approaches to this, but I found it give me a little bit of an edge to IQ this way. I do PP while scanning, a bit less speed is no issue.
- As I wrote, the Coolscan V has an edge in sharpness.
- Coolscan V grain could sometimes be a bit to harsh.
- Plustek film holder is better for curved negativs than Coolscan SA-21.
- Plustek lack of autofocus is not a problem for negativs, may be for slides with different thickness?
- Plustek scan in 7200 dpi is bigger, but disk space is not that costly.

My workflow is mainly focused in Photoshop. The scanning software is just to control the scanner and give me a clean unmanipulated file raw file in gamma 1.0. For the most file I use Colorperfect to do the inversion, with the only goal to get a good starting point for some fine tuning with curves. Some files works better with a c-log inverse curve to spread out the densitys in the shadows (which in fact are the highlights in the inverted image).

So, will I keep both? Yes, and probably use the Coolscan V as my goto-scanner and the Plustek if I want to have a little softer grain or have negatives that are not flat enough for the SA-21 holder.

What if my Coolscan V dies, would I try to replace it? No, I'm probably perfectly fine with the Plustek and if I'm i some rare cases need to print big would have my negative drum-scanned.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

- As I wrote, the Coolscan V has an edge in sharpness.
- Coolscan V grain could sometimes be a bit to harsh.

I have seen Nikon to Plustek comparison test some years ago and it looks like Nikon was slightly over sharpening.

 

[Bumse]

I have seen Nikon to Plustek comparison test some years ago and it looks like Nikon was slightly over sharpening.

I agree with you on that. Coolscan files dosen't take much sharpening. I mostly skip both the initial sharpening and the output sharpening stage when printing these files on my inkjet. That in comparison to Epson flatbed scans that need a lot of sharpening. If I want to have a smaller file for digital use I skip initial sharpening and only do the output sharpening stage. I actually resize using Bicubic resample (not Bicubic sharper).

My experience with the Coolscan is that a good exposed negative dosen't show overly harsh grain. The problem occurs when you do extensive tweaking.

Anyway. The Coolscan V is a great scanner! But the Plustek-series is not a bad alternative and have advantages. Price/performance ratio is one parameter...

 

[Ko.Fe.]

To be honest, I'm fine with Epson V550. Without extra sharpening. I could see every hair on the portraits on 8x10 print from 135 negative.