Minolta 5400 and Canon 4000

I

imagemonger

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I am looking to replace my old Minolta Scan Dual II with a Nikon, Minolta or Canon. The recurring theme in reviews of the Minolta 5400 v1 and Canon is that image quality matches the Nikons, but usage is hampered by the crawling pace of scans. As most reviews I have found were based on now old computers and software, I wonder whether scan times have improved with current hardware/software?

Is anyone able to enlighten me on how long it takes to scan an image on a Minolta or Canon in 2010?

Thanks
 
I have the Minolta 5400 v2, which should be noticeable faster than it's predecessor. Good image quality with standard software, great with SilverFast. Some say, the v1 is better suitable for b/w films.

According to a German website, a finescan of 4 negatives at 2700dpi without ICE needs 6 min. But when you activate ICE, the same scan needs 48:47 min! They used a 3 GHZ Pentium with 2 GB RAM and USB 2.0.
 
Thanks lukaz85

That is one of the reviews I read. It (and other reviews for these scanners) was written in 2003 or thereabouts. What I was wondering was whether improvements in computer hardware and software have speeded things up since then. Maybe speeds remain much the same (the scanners are the same now and then), but some reviews mention faster scan speeds on faster computers.
 
I would be curious too to see if a newer PC could run a Minolta 5400 any faster. My Min 5400 V1 takes about 10 minutes to do a scan of one frame at 5400 with ICE on and about 1.5 minutes for the same scan with ICE off. That is on a P4 3.0 GHz PC with 2 GB of RAM. That is with MIn software.

Bob
 
Thanks Bob

That's just the sort of info I'm looking for. If ICE is what slows it down, I wonder if it would be quicker in Vuescan? In any case, I'm likely to spend more than eight minutes spotting a frame in PS and so maybe a 10-minute scan is not so bad.

Equivalent figures for the Canon FS4000 would be great if someone can provide them. The Canon seems far cheaper than the Minolta. I have read that it is close to the same quality but slower.

John
 
John

You are welcome. Don't forget that was at max rez which would give you a 16x24 inch print at 300 dpi. Besides ICE slowing things down, I think it also depends on how dense a neg is too. That density thing is only a guess though.

Bob
 
It would be interesting to see if dust removal worked faster with Vuescan, since it uses an unique algorithm.

I've heard that Minolta 5400 exaggerates grain less than for example Nikon's Coolscans, but it's hard to find any decent samples from Internet.

The only reason I recommend Minolta is that my friend once had one years ago before he upgraded to Coolscan 8000, and he says he liked very much the results the scanner provided. Never heard anything about the Canon.
 
I had a 5400II and I sold it like a moron.

Very sharp scanner. Perfect for bluefire film and returns a true 40MP equivalent
with films like bluefire microfilm.

Huge amount of detail.
 
My 5400 ran much more quickly with Vuescan than with the Minolta software.

Great scanner, I just don't shoot film anymore.
 
With my current setup, which ain't state-of-the-art (Power Mac G4 MDD/1.25GhZ DP/2GB RAM/500GB HD x 3), my Minolta 5400 v1 manages a max-resolution color-neg scan, ICE engaged, in about 6-8 minutes via VueScan. Since I only use Minolta's driver sporadically, I don't recall scan times using it, but I recall scans taking a bit longer, but not much longer than ten minutes.

I find ICE well worth the (relatively) small hit in scan times. It does help to have a computer with both muscle and adequate overhead. (RAM and big, fast hard drives...and a scratch drive just for PS doesn't hurt, either.) My G4 setup proves you don't have to have last week's hot computer to scan fast, just one with plentiful resources.


- Barrett
 
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Thank you all. This is very helpful and encouraging. I'm getting the impression that nearly 10 years on the Minolta does not seem as much a slowcoach as its reputation suggests. Some detail on the Canon would be nice as it does not attract the same price premium as the Minolta.
 
I got a Minolta 5400 v1 and scanned my first image. Using a 2009 MacBook Pro with 2.8 GHz processor with 4 GB memory a full-res scan of a negative using Vuescan with light dust removal took 4 minutes. I think that is PDQ for a 230Mb file.
 
I used a Canon FS4000 for a few years and found it to provide great scans, but at a very slow pace. Using Vuescan and a fast computer didn't materially effect scan times. From what I read, I believe the biggest impact is obtained by using a SCSI interface rather than USB. The FS4000 is equiped with both SCSI and USB, but uses the original USB interface rather than USB 2. I never used SCSI, but others noted much faster scans.

Overall, if you scan only a few images per roll, the FS4000 is great; but it you scan entire rolls it's probably not the right scanner for you.
 
5400 ver 1 scans at max rez in around 3 minutes per frame.

Ask for multisampling, ICE, GEM, curves, or any Photoshop work, the time get as long as 15 min. Firewire connection.

IMac computer from 2006, nothing special. Old windows machine was about the same. I run the Minolta Software furnished. Basically I get color and density correct, save everything else for Photoshop.

Every grain is sharp center to corner if I flatten the negs. I don`t see how anything could be better.

I wish I bought 3 of these.
 
jj: That sounds about right, based on my ongoing (six years-plus) use of this scanner with an assortment of Macs, including my current late-model G4 (see earlier post). It does help that Minolta was forward-thinking enough to equip it with both FireWire and USB 2.0 for fast throughput.

(Note: my scanning rates are based on full 16-bit scans.)


- Barrett
 
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