35mm scaners...which?

I'd be interested to see results from the 8800F. I had to return my friend's 4000 ED and I found more slides I need to scan. I wasn't happy with the 5500F, and I'm a little skeptical of a $101 scanner, but the proof is in the pudding. I'll reserve judgement until I see results.

Thanks in advance.

buy an cheapo (used) flat bed scanner that has the ability to scan film negative/slide film e.g.

http://www.pbase.com/plusiotis/image/95945595

... this pic would have been ever better if I had chosen to process it.

Plusiotis said:

buy an cheapo (used) flat bed scanner that has the ability to scan
film negative/slide film e.g.

http://www.pbase.com/plusiotis/image/95945595

... this pic would have been ever better if I had chosen to process it.

Click to expand...

--

A scanner like the Coolscan 5000, Minolta Scan Dual IV, Minolta 5400, will destroy every consumer flatbed for 35mm.

5x7 is about the limit for print size from these things. A used Scan Dual IV will be the same price as a half decent flatbed.....but only one will be able to pull a 16x24 out of 35mm film.....and it ain't the flatbed!

The Davinator said:

Plusiotis said:

buy an cheapo (used) flat bed scanner that has the ability to scan
film negative/slide film e.g.

http://www.pbase.com/plusiotis/image/95945595

... this pic would have been ever better if I had chosen to process it.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Dave Luttmann said:

A scanner like the Coolscan 5000, Minolta Scan Dual IV, Minolta 5400,
will destroy every consumer flatbed for 35mm.

5x7 is about the limit for print size from these things. A used Scan
Dual IV will be the same price as a half decent flatbed.....but only
one will be able to pull a 16x24 out of 35mm film.....and it ain't
the flatbed!

Click to expand...

I second that! Besides I can't tell anything about the scan because it's too washed out. Why post it if you can't be bothered to correct it? There might be a decent image under there but you can't tell.

Cheap flatbeds give cheap scans. You get what you pay for.

When I scan negatives at 6400 dpi optical my jpgs at best compression come out around 30 or so megabytes. Could I not enlarge that to 20x24 or larger print?

Here is an example of a $200 flatbed at 1024x642.



And here is the same pic at 4000x2409



I didn't put up the 8874x5567 original version because it was too big.

I don't believe dedicated scanners DESTROY good modern flatbeds. I can give you more examples in daylight with obviously better conditions for shutter speed and contrast etc. but this shot is expansive and was taken pretty far away. There are many objects and details for you to examine and then decide for yourself.

'The truth is rarely pure and never simple' Oscar Wilde

If you compare the green door on the building at the very bottom right, you can see very good definition in the higher resolution version. Now consider the distance and lighting, the scanner was able to resolve the handle and the locks pretty good IMO. I must emphasize that good modern flatbeds may not be QUITE as good as the best dedicated scanners but they are pretty damn close and have other than just negative "pun intended" benefits . Often you will get advice from people whose experience with certain equipment may be based on technology from a few years ago. But as we all know technology trucks on.
--
'The truth is rarely pure and never simple' Oscar Wilde

The real rez of a $200 scanner is likely to be less than 1600 ppi. That means you would have a real rez of less than 2400 pixels to work with. With a dedicated scanner, you'd have 4600 to 5700 real pixels to use....no to mention the limited Dmax of the flatbed.

The V500 at 2400/3200/6400dpi below.



http://www.fototime.com/79B19E8665665CB/orig.jpg

A fellow DPREVIEW volunteered to scan the same frame of Fuji Velvia on his Microtek M1 at 4800dpi and below is the result from it.



http://www.fototime.com/5F35BC62ED2D738/orig.jpg

Coolscan at 4000dpi below.



http://www.fototime.com/30EDF9A886B0B62/orig.jpg

springbock said:

If you compare the green door on the building at the very bottom
right, you can see very good definition in the higher resolution
version. Now consider the distance and lighting, the scanner was able
to resolve the handle and the locks pretty good IMO. I must emphasize
that good modern flatbeds may not be QUITE as good as the best
dedicated scanners but they are pretty damn close and have other than
just negative "pun intended" benefits . Often you will get advice
from people whose experience with certain equipment may be based on
technology from a few years ago. But as we all know technology trucks
on.
--
'The truth is rarely pure and never simple' Oscar Wilde

Click to expand...

Dave Luttmann said:

The real rez of a $200 scanner is likely to be less than 1600 ppi.
That means you would have a real rez of less than 2400 pixels to work
with. With a dedicated scanner, you'd have 4600 to 5700 real pixels
to use....no to mention the limited Dmax of the flatbed.

Click to expand...

Are you saying flatbed manufacturers lie about their optical resolutions?

--
'The truth is rarely pure and never simple' Oscar Wilde

springbock said:

Dave Luttmann said:

The real rez of a $200 scanner is likely to be less than 1600 ppi.
That means you would have a real rez of less than 2400 pixels to work
with. With a dedicated scanner, you'd have 4600 to 5700 real pixels
to use....no to mention the limited Dmax of the flatbed.

Click to expand...

Are you saying flatbed manufacturers lie about their optical
resolutions?

Click to expand...

They don't quote their optical resolutions....they quote their sampling resolutions. That is why you can see quotes about 4800 and 6400 spi. That's "Samples per Inch." They can sample with the stepper motors as high as they like....but the real resolution is much lower.

For example, the Epson V700 is quoted at being able to handle 6400 samples per inch, but the real resolution of the system is limited to about 2200ppi.

Dedicated scanners like the Minolta or Nikons are much closer to their quoted rez. For example, the Nikon 9000 I had, while having a quoted resolution of 4000 ppi, was closer to 3800 ppi. But that's still way better than flatbeds with around 1/2 that rez.

It's not a lie.....just a slight failure to comply with the truth ;-)

springbock said:

--
'The truth is rarely pure and never simple' Oscar Wilde

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info Dave but I'm still a bit confused. This is from the Epson web site regarding the V500.

"Optical Resolution

• 6400 dpi (max)

Note: Optical resolution is the maximum scan resolution of the CCD elements, using the definition of ISO 14473"

"Hardware Resolution

• 6400 x 9600 dpi"

It says DPI not SPI... what am I missing?

--
'The truth is rarely pure and never simple' Oscar Wilde

In my post above I show you the differences between three modern desktop scanners - a Coolscan's 4000dpi vs a Microtek M1's 4800dpi and a V500's 6400dpi. It is true that stepper motor takes so many steps per DPI but they don't necessarilly get actual more detail out. For instance the V500 and I believe the Epson V7XX has a glass surface that may hinder this and their fixed focus may not be exact hence the recommendation for shims to lift the film holder up. The Microtec M1 has auto focus and no glass between the imager and the film which is marked improvement over the V500 but it's still not extracting as much detail as the Coolscan's 4000dpi. As Dave pointed out, the actual full resolving capability of the Coolscan's are closest to their advertized spec with auto focus and no glass surface in between - unless you use filmholders with glass.

springbock said:

Thanks for the info Dave but I'm still a bit confused. This is from
the Epson web site regarding the V500.

"Optical Resolution

• 6400 dpi (max)

Note: Optical resolution is the maximum scan resolution of the CCD
elements, using the definition of ISO 14473"

"Hardware Resolution

• 6400 x 9600 dpi"

It says DPI not SPI... what am I missing?

--
'The truth is rarely pure and never simple' Oscar Wilde

Click to expand...

Interesting thread, since i am considering a v700. It appears from the discussion so far, that for good scans of 35mm &120, one would have to:
Get a Coolscan 9000
or
A lesser Coolscan and a flatbed?

--
'Gosh, you've really got some nice toys here.'
Roy Batty

I get very good results from my 5400 elite. But because the resolution is so incredibly high, grain is always present and you have to be very careful about cleaning the negs or slides before scanning.

It is important to compare like with like. In simple theory the 5400 produces very high resolution of around 40MP (5232x7800) so you are really looking at your scan in immense detail, far more than the best current DSLRS, so it is not surprising that a film may not appear perfect at that 'magnification'. At this level, grain is very clear to see! Of course the simple MP count doesn't mean that it gives the equivalent of a 40MP camera as, for one (of many) things, grain becomes the limiting factor.

I use the Hammrick software by the way and find it excellent.

To see if your focus is correct look at the grain - is it reasonably sharp? - if so it should be focusing OK. Also, if you haven't done so already, try the manual focusing option as it can give an improvement over the auto facility.

Also note that it is important apparently to get the film emulsion the right way round - see the manual.

Hope this is of some use

Phil

morninglight said:

Interesting thread, since i am considering a v700. It appears from
the discussion so far, that for good scans of 35mm &120, one would
have to:
Get a Coolscan 9000
or
A lesser Coolscan and a flatbed?

--
'Gosh, you've really got some nice toys here.'
Roy Batty

Click to expand...

--

You can get decent results from the V700 and 6x7 MF out to about 11x14. With careful work, you can get a respectable 16x20. The general opinion out there, and I agree with it, is that the V700 (I use a fluid mount) can achieve superb results in the area of a 4 to 6 times enlargement. For 4x5, that means perfect results to 16x20....and in many cases 24x30. For medium format, it means 8x10 to 11x14....and sometimes 16x20.

For 35mm, find a used Minolta Scan Dual IV. It's close to its 3200ppi spec...with the 16x multisampling, noise is very low and Dmax is good. They can still be found on Ebay for around the $300 mark. I use mine for a fair bit of conventional silver B&W and achieve good results from 35mm out to 16x24....grainy yes, but good shadows and detail.

Comments as follows:

Dave Luttmann said:

morninglight said:

Interesting thread, since i am considering a v700. It appears from
the discussion so far, that for good scans of 35mm &120, one would
have to:
Get a Coolscan 9000
or
A lesser Coolscan and a flatbed?

Click to expand...

You can get decent results from the V700 and 6x7 MF out to about
11x14. With careful work, you can get a respectable 16x20. The
general opinion out there, and I agree with it, is that the V700 (I
use a fluid mount) can achieve superb results in the area of a 4 to 6
times enlargement. For 4x5, that means perfect results to
16x20....and in many cases 24x30. For medium format, it means 8x10
to 11x14....and sometimes 16x20.

For 35mm, find a used Minolta Scan Dual IV. It's close to its
3200ppi spec...with the 16x multisampling, noise is very low and Dmax
is good. They can still be found on Ebay for around the $300 mark.
I use mine for a fair bit of conventional silver B&W and achieve good
results from 35mm out to 16x24....grainy yes, but good shadows and
detail.

Click to expand...

I generally agree with Dave as above although his standards for acceptability may be higher than mine in that I think one can get reasonably acceptable scans of 35mm. slide film up to 12 X 18 inch print sizes and with some careful work you might even be happy with even bigger scans from the Epson V700 as per the following review:

http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%20V700/page_8.htm

Note that the satisfaction with the Epsons is quite dependent on fiddling with the height adjusters to get a sharp focus. I bought the V700 based on the above review and generally confirmed what he says about 35 mm. scans. I, too, question the quality of 6400 dpi scans as compared to 4800 dpi. I just use dry (non-fluid) scans and believe that the Epson V700/V750 scanners are quite a bit better than the V500.

I think that one of the main reasons one might choose a dedicated film scanner like the Nikon or Minolta models is to avoid having to do the fiddling to get the best results. I was willing to do the fiddling (which generally is done only once for each type of film holder) for the cost of the scanner vs. the very "adequate" results I obtain from it.

Regards, GordonBGood

The technical characteristics of Nikon 5000(24x36mm) and 9000(60x90mm) are simply best of all, by far. Nikon's software just excellent. We replaced our ICG drum scanner in 2001 and replaced it with Nikon 4000, results excellent and I may say better than the ICG 350i. The only problem is that you see all the problems of film and lenses that we were using at that time and when I say problems I mean that you see the noise of the film you see the aberration of the lenses we had at these days etc. Don't forget that the film is a frozen image, the post processing was done in the lab and that's it, u don't have any more information to fix it after scanning, u can't turn time back. And since from 2003 DSLRS, at lest some of them, exceeded the quality ever a film could reproduce, now u feel that noise etc are very unpleasant. But that was what you shoot in those days, and don't forget that u could not see so much detail in through loop or in prints. Software will not do any good, the only thing various sw provide is better GUI (some times they do).

If you print some of your minolta scans in a descent printer u'll find that this may be better than your original prints.
A14

While the V700 is good....I use it with the fluid mount.....there is no denying the true rez tops out around 2200 ppi. This can give decent results, but is still well behind the Minolta or Nikon scanners.

I love my V700 for 4x5 though!

I have an Epson V750 Pro and a Konica/Minolta 5400/II, and the latter is MUCH better. It's not just sharpness; the colours on the K/M look way superior - cleaner and more varied, with a brilliant vibrancy that makes the Epson's colour look dull and flat. Since getting the K/M a year or so back, I've gone back and re-scanned all the negs I scanned with the Epson - the difference is THAT big.
Here's a couple of comparison scans - the first is from the V750



And the one below is from the KM-5400



The KM 5400/II produces good results faster and more easily than the Epson - you don't need to tweak the image nearly as much.

I actually find scans from 35mm negs via the 5400/II beat the results I get from medium format via the V750. The poorer D-Max and soggy colour of the Epson are serious limiting factors. To get top-quality MF scans you need to go to something like the Nikon Coolscan 9000 - but that costs £2500...

J M Hughes