The OFFICIAL Plustek 120 post your scans

Harry Lime said:
Can you make a scan at the highest Plutek dpi and then downscale it to the image resolution equivalent to a 4000 dpi scan from the 9000ED? I would be curious how the grain compares.

But yeah, the light on the 9000ED is pretty hard. I've seen comparisons between it and old Minolta Multipro, which used a florescent tube. It was like looking at the difference between a condenser and diffusion enlarger.

thx
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here you are:

http://files.berny.at/forum_kleinkram/plustek.jpg

This is 35mm FP4+ developed in DD-X. Not the best film to compare absolute sharpness, but it is what I use often.
I scanned it in Silverfast with the 16->8 setting and set the scanner at 5300dpi. I have to try the 10600 setting, maybe it works like with the older Plustek 7600, where you have to scan at 7600 dpi to get a real resolution of 3800.

I have a version of this scan made with a Coolscan and the latter shows sliiiightly more details and way sharper grain. But then, the Coolscan emphasizes grain with its hard light source which most likely also shows fine details a bit better. The Coolscans grain "problem", if you want to call it that way is definitely not there with the Plustek. Also, the Coolscan Version was scanned with VueScan which I am very familiar with, so not a fair comparison, as I just used Silverfast defaults (and turned USM off).
 
kanzlr said:
here you are:

http://files.berny.at/forum_kleinkram/plustek.jpg

I scanned it in Silverfast with the 16->8 setting and set the scanner at 5300dpi. I have to try the 10600 setting, maybe it works like with the older Plustek 7600, where you have to scan at 7600 dpi to get a real resolution of 3800.
.
Click to expand...

Do you already have a general inpression about the performance of the 120 vs the 7600 Plustek for scanning 35mm B&W film.
Is the 120 significant better at about 3800 dpi or is it similar??
 
I don't own the 7600 myself, so no comparison :)
Why would you want to scan the 120 at 3800dpi in the first place?

During the weekend I shot a roll of FP4 with the Rolleicord at around f11 on a tripod to have some quality negatives for doing a few test scans. I did not shoot much medium format before because handling with the betterscanning holder and the flatbed was such a hassle for me. Maybe I have some Velvia somewhere to try, but nothing done with a high end camera or with proper technique ;)

My impression compared to the Coolscan is that the Plustek is a bit softer, but not much so, and showing a lot less grain.
 
Thanks for the scan kanzlr.

Film flatness doesn't seem to be good, though. Left side is visibly softer than right side. Did you check with Plustek to determine that you don't have one of those defective 35mm holders?

I'd love to see a side by side color negative comparison. I know you use ColorPerfect and doing a raw scan in Silverfast is easy.
 
indeed brbo, I noticed that. According to Mark I have the new holder. But this particular FP4 was very curly, I wonder why...What I do not like about the 35mm holders is that the bridges are missing for the first frames (to scan panoramas I guess), thus the first frames of a strip are not held down as well as the others. I hope Plustek will release additional 35mm holders without this "panorama window". Maybe Mark can push this suggestion to the techies?

Film flatness affects a Coolscan in the same way. But autofocus means that you can chose which side of the film should be sharp ;)

Give me a few days for the color scan. Not much time on my hands currently.
 
kanzlr said:
at least my Coolscan 4000 + Vuescan also took two passes for visible and infrared.
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Well the 4000 is what, a 2000 model?
Nikon 8000 ED with Vuescan -> single pass (and 16x single pass m.s. too)
Same with 9000 ED, 5000 ED, LS-50, Minolta Dual Scan IV, 5400, 5400-II, Multi Pro, not exactly last-year model. :)
 
kanzlr said:
Film flatness affects a Coolscan in the same way. But autofocus means that you can chose which side of the film should be sharp ;)
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Not only that.
Focus adjustment allows to do focus-stacking and have everything sharp! For example with Helicon Focus. I do that all the time.
 
XFer said:
Not only that.
Focus adjustment allows to do focus-stacking and have everything sharp! For example with Helicon Focus. I do that all the time.
Click to expand...

never thought about that :)

but putting a heavy book for two days on a negative works, usually ;)
 
kanzlr said:
I don't own the 7600 myself, so no comparison :)
Why would you want to scan the 120 at 3800dpi in the first place?
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Because i thougt that was the resolution you could compare it to the 7600.
I scan 35mm with my plustek 7600 at 3600 standard. And that is plenty for good a4 prints. I want the 120 to top it at that resolution. If not i might stick with my 7600/ v700 combo for now.
 
Harry Lime said:
Thanks. I agree that the grain doesn't have quite the bite that the 9000ED has (I own one). The Plustek really does remind me of the minolta I used about a million years ago.
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Is that a "bad" or a "good" thing?

I have the 9000ED currently and, at one time, had the old Minolta DiMage (the 2850 version).

This scan doesn't look half bad though... hmmm... might be nice.. now if only the scanner would be in stock..

CHeers,
Dave
 
dcsang said:
Is that a "bad" or a "good" thing?

I have the 9000ED currently and, at one time, had the old Minolta DiMage (the 2850 version).

This scan doesn't look half bad though... hmmm... might be nice.. now if only the scanner would be in stock..

CHeers,
Dave
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It's not a bad thing. The Minolta was a good scanner. The quality of light and it's effects on grain are different for every scanner. There are even differences between the various Imacon models.
 
XFer said:
There are jaggies (staircase artifacts) in that scan.
Let's hope scanning at 10600 get rid of them. :(

Fer
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I can see the very slight artifacts - but they are really minimal. Would they be significant in printing - or even online viewing anything other than 100%?

Feels like people are giving this scanner a very hard ride (and I say this as a 9000 owner).
 
XFer said:
There are jaggies (staircase artifacts) in that scan.
Let's hope scanning at 10600 get rid of them. :(

Fer
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thats because of how I resized it.
To make a comparison with the Coolscan easier, I downscaled the image to approx. 3800 dpi and used the nearest neighbour method in Photoshop. This introduces slight jaggies, but has a bit higher perceived sharpness than normal bicubic resizing.
 
mani said:
I can see the very slight artifacts - but they are really minimal. Would they be significant in printing - or even online viewing anything other than 100%?

Feels like people are giving this scanner a very hard ride (and I say this as a 9000 owner).
Click to expand...

There are some slight artifacts, but for me the most visible issue with this scan is that the right side is in focus, not the left one.

Regards,

S.
 
sny said:
There are some slight artifacts, but for me the most visible issue with this scan is that the right side is in focus, not the left one.

Regards,

S.
Click to expand...

indeed, that's true. Grain in the top right part is sharper than left of the tower.
I have to try with a flatter negative to see if it is an issue with scanner adjustment or just a problem of keeping the film flat (as, to my surprise, it curled a lot when I took it out of the file).
 
kanzlr said:
thats because of how I resized it.
To make a comparison with the Coolscan easier, I downscaled the image to approx. 3800 dpi and used the nearest neighbour method
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks, that explains the jaggies. :)
Not to push anything on you, anyway usually when confronting scanners I use this approach:

1. First comparison with both scans at maximum nominal resolution (4000 vs 5300 in this case). Users then judge themselves if a picture is only larger or if it also captures more details

2. Second comparison with a fixed target size (each scan, originally captured at maximum native resolution, will be bicubic-resampled to match the target size); for example, an A3+ print at 300 ppi from 35mm. This is a nice approximation of a real-world scenario

This is what I do in my reviews, and over the years I found that users like this approach; but it's only my suggestion of course!

Fernando
 
Hi Fernando,

currently I do not have much time for it, but I will try to do that in the upcoming days! For now, it seems to be a film flatness issue in the holder. Let's hope Plustek brings a glass holder later on :)
 
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