Deciding on a scanner to buy

I have had experience with a couple of scanners. My first film scanner was a Minolta
Dimage Scan Elite, which gave me 2900 dpi. It was quite sharp and color management with chromes was very good. It had digital ICE. The downside was the color management for negs was dicey at best. B+W was tough as well. Also it only had a dynamic range of 3.6. Then the Epson 4870 flatbed came along, which I still have. I think it was one of the first affordable flatbeds with such a high DMax. I got it because the dynamic range was better (3.8) and I could scan my 6x6's on it. I got a lot of mileage out of it and still use it for the 6x6's. It manages color better for the negs, but color on the chromes was not quite as good, but could be easily tweaked in PS. B+W was considerably better. Downside was that it is not quite as sharp as the Minolta for 35mm. It has ICE, but takes FOREVER and is very RAM hungry. Also the ICE on the Epson was not as effective as on the Minolta. I would always have to go back and check and spot things on my scan. Sharpness for the 6x6's was quite good and it gave them quite a bit of depth. After I got a Rollei 35 RF with a couple of good lenses, I thought I'd like to get something a little sharper to take advantage of the new Zeiss glass. I got a Nikon Coolscan V. It has ICE4 and does pretty much everything I want it to. There are those who complain about the Nikon software. The only downside I've found in the software is that the preview image is too small. Other than that, all of the adjustments are quite easy. I'm very happy with it and don't think I'll need anything else for some time. I like to say that I'm immune to GAS, but that wouldn't hold up in court. Good luck with your choice.

BH
 
I use an Epson 4990 and a Minolta DiMage Scan Elite 5400. The Minolta has quite a good reputation and people talk down flat beds for scanning. My experience with both is that I actually like the scans from the 4990 flat bed better most of the time, but not all of the time. Go figure.

/T
 
foto_fool said:
I have one of these that I use for 35mm B/W negs. I upgraded the Silverfast SE software that came with it to the 6 Ai version and am mostly happy with it. OP will not be, as there are no Mac drivers for the Plustek.

Just yesterday I set up an Epson V500 for scanning MF. The OP will be happy to know that the unit comes with software for both Mac and PC. Setup was easier than with the Plustek.

So far - half a dozen scans or so - I am not all that impressed with the software. The learning curve is shallower than for Silverfast so I hope to find its limits soon. Also the software chokes and hangs on scanning a 6 x 9 at anything over 1200 dpi but I think I just need to add some memory to the box - 512MB is recommended so maybe 1 GB.

- John
Click to expand...
I use the Plustek 7200 & Silverfast on my Mac to scan B&W. I simply run an XP virtual machine in Fusion and it works flawlessly!
 
You can add those kind of borders in photoshop in like two seconds. No need to damage your negative holder.
 
I want to do the real thing. I just need to know if the Minolta Scanners are made to where it only scans the section of the negative that has the picture on it, or if it scana the entire width of the negative carrier area.
 
All film scanners scan the image area of the neg, no more. There is no need in designing an optical system that covers more than it needs to.

Now a Medium Format film scanner will obviously cover much more than the area of a 35mm neg. But you previously said that cost was a significant factor. That rules out all MF film scanners.
 
Well you never mentioned what your exact budget was for a scanner....

If you can afford it, a dedicated film scanner will probably be better in most situations.

However, carefull attention to focus distance and software tweaking will yield very good results from a flatbed.

If you decide a flatbed is best for your needs and budget, then please take the time to find the optimum focus point. In most cases, the standard film holder does not hold the negative at the exact point of best focus. Time taken upfront to experiment will pay multiple dividends down the road.

Epson has refurbished 4490 and 4990 models available for very good prices.

Best,

Ross
 
Bob Michaels said:
Ampguy: I don't think any of the Epson flatbeds come anywhere close to actually resolving 2700 dpi. I keep hearing true resolution numbers like 1000 or 1200 for the very best Epsons.

The optics and focusing mechanisms are the bottleneck in resolution. While they can make a file as big as 2700 dpi or higher, that does no good if every three pixels in a row are the same because the optics couldn't resolve any better than that.

I have a Minolta MultiPro film scanner that resolves 4800 dpi for 35mm. I also have an Epson flatbed that Epson says is 9600 dpi. The difference in performance is just about the same as the difference in price ($1,950 for the Minolta vs. $199 for the Epson)
Click to expand...

Yes I have a German link here (some of the text also in English)

http://www.filmscanner.info/EpsonPerfectionV700Photo.html

They have tested some scanners with USAF1951 (the most used testchart some years ago...today they are more complex)

2300dpi on V700 and 3900dpi on Nikon Coolscan (50,5000 and 9000)
 
B&W without silver

B&W without silver

ChrisN said:
Keep in mind that ICE will not work with conventional (silver-based) B&W negs. It's great with dye-based films and colour negs, though.
Click to expand...

So this could be one reason to start with the alternative way to make B&W with the colour process development.
Anyone allready using this alternative (Ilford XP2 or Kodak BW400 CN)?
How does it look compared to classic B&W?
 
Pelle-48 said:
Anyone allready using this alternative (Ilford XP2 or Kodak BW400 CN)? How does it look compared to classic B&W?
Click to expand...

I shot XP2 for a few years. It's good, no doubt about it.

The downside is you get what Ilford or Kodak give you. There are no variables. Now I've been shooting Neopan 400 for the last four years. I have a great deal of discretion about how I want to expose and develop it. I can make it look many different ways, tailoring it to whatever the subject needs.

I also found developing C-41 b&w to be very inconvenient. I had to take it someplace to be developed, then go back and pick it up. With conventional b&w, I can develop in less than 1/2 hour at home, any time I want, any day I want. Plus there is the any way I want.
 
My dad has just order an Epson V500. He bought it because he has a bunch of really old square brownie negatives of family that he wants so scan.

I am going to try it out with my 35mm color negs and see what I think. If I like it, than I can use it anytime I want (I live at home) for free. I think that I might end up liking it because all I really want to do is get them on the internet with the bigger size being 600 pixels at the most. Im hoping that the extra detail of a dedicated 35mm scanner would be unnoticable once I resize it anyways. Does this sound like it might be true?

But one definite drawback is that I can't really get any prints. How much would it cost to get a high resolution scan somewhere? Do most photo lab places offer this? Can they scan it and then email it to you or do you scan it and get it printed there?
 
My DiMAGE IV won't even cover the full horizontal width of the negative, so I have little hope that it will cover more than the 24mm height. But a good way to find out would be to put a superslide in the slide holder, and see what happens.
 
Okay, here's a color neg done on a V500. The high res version scanned on the V500 prints just fine! Why don't you wait until you've tried the scanner and then judge if it scans color negs to your satisfaction for printing.
weather.jpg
 
wray said:
Okay, here's a color neg done on a V500. The high res version scanned on the V500 prints just fine! Why don't you wait until you've tried the scanner and then judge if it scans color negs to your satisfaction for printing.
weather.jpg
Click to expand...


Thats what Im going to do. Im just asking questions because I havn't ever printed anything before and so I don't want to settle for a print that isn't near as good as it would be if I had a high-res scan first.

But I must admit, that picture you have looks very good. Did you do anything to get the right focus point on the negs?
 
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