Post your drum scans (aka the first official Drum Scanners thread)

What sort of investment, both in time learning as well as monetary, am I looking at if I want a drum scanner? The scans in here are amazing, and make my v750 scans look terrible.
 
Hogarth Ferguson said:
What sort of investment, both in time learning as well as monetary, am I looking at if I want a drum scanner? The scans in here are amazing, and make my v750 scans look terrible.
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I agree with the above quote -- these drums scans are mind-blowing. Makes my Epson v700 scanner seem horrible by comparison.
 
Hogarth and Bobby, drum scanners are a huge commitment and these scanners require frequent calibration that can be extremely expensive if you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself. Margus, who started this thread, already commented on this question that I am linking to again. His post pretty much sums up my thoughts on your question. http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2169600&postcount=27

Here is a picture of one of my scanners going through it's tuning and maintenance.

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I would suggest the pro flatbed scanners (Creo, Scitex, Screen Cezeanne) that come really really close to drum quality with a great deal less headache. I have the Scitex Eversmart Pro scanner and you can see some of my scans to get an idea of the quality of these machines. Here is the flickr link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/palikalsi/albums/72157668490253410

Hope this helps.
 
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A quick comparison between the shadow performance of the Scanmate 5000 (on the left) and the Plustek 120 (on the right). The Scanmate looks very similar to what I'm seeing on the light table.

Besides being better at extracting detail from the shadows the Scanmate also dosen't suffer from grain aliasing to the same degree as the Plustek, neither does it exhibit "pepper grain" which might be due to the smaller DoF. All in all the Scanmate is, unsurprisingly, the most capable scanner of the two, though I must say that the Plustek is impressive for what it is.

Edit: The film was dry mounted on the Scanmate, if wetmounted the difference might be even more obvious. I really wish I had a mounting station.
 
Everything is fine but all these drum scanner will die soon. Now it's hard to find SM good shape. I had six Scanmates, four 11000 and two 5000.
 
jzagaja said:
Everything is fine but all these drum scanner will die soon. Now it's hard to find SM good shape. I had six Scanmates, four 11000 and two 5000.
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Not if you know how to keep them alive Jack :) I had two die and come back to life for me. With some love and care, these should be fine for many many years.

Nice to see the comparison Kamph!
 
The worst thing about dry mounting are those pesky newton rings! It's especially a problem when I'm scanning negatives - see the sky in the picture below.

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These are beautiful Kamph and I hear you on the newton rings being worse on negatives. Hope you find a mounting station.

Pali
 
Thanks Pali, it's such a joy working with the Scanmate. I envy the SM11k owners. It's not often that I come across a a negative that would really benefit from the increased resolution of the 11k, but the fact that 16bit RAW works on the 11k is a big deal IMO, especially when scanning negatives.
 
Kamph, the additional resolution is a blessing and a curse because though you can pull more detail, it's much harder to get everything balanced to really go beyond the 5000 DPI of a 5K scanner. 16 BIT raw is indeed a benefit but I tend to use the 16 BIT tiff setting because the calibrated scans are so much faster to process (1 or two clicks) after the scan. I shoot MF and LF and there is so much resolution that I don't mind the slight softening of the Tiff setting and I am pretty sure that sharpening in post likely recovers most of what is originally lost.

I have both and I really don't think you are missing much. Keep in mind a good 5K unit will likely do better than an out of tune 11K and the 11K is much more fine tuned machine.

What you do need is a mounting station. Hope you find one or figure out a way to make one - I can't imagine it would be too difficult if you are handy with basic tools.
 
It makes sense that the 11k would need more maintenance due to the increased precision in the machinery - that hadn't crossed my mind to be honest. I'm more than fine with the 5k and so far scanning in 8bit hasn't been a problem for the most part, however, I'm always left wondering if those extra 4 bits would have made a difference. I actually spoke to Michael at ABC-scan about the 16 bit raw problem, and he said they were aware of the problem and would investigate at an appropriate time.

I'm afraid university is taking up all of my time atm, so making a mounting station myself is out of the picture for the time being. I'm sure one will come up eventually, the real question is at what price? ;)
 
Scanmate 11000 8x10 Velvia 50 Scan


Early Fall on Velvia 50 by Pali K, on Flickr

This shows the amazing shadow performance of a drum scanner. Even after working with these scanners for a long time now, I was impressed with how much detail the drum pulled from the deep shadows on Velvia 50 which is about as dense as it gets.

Pali
 
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