Bernhard Ess wrote: SNIP:
> BTW, I have re- studied the sample scans of the Minolta and the Nikon 8000 > on imaging- resource, and unfortunately I have come to the conclusion that > the Nikon ist the better scanner in almost every respect: Bernhard If you re-studied the article it disagrees with your statement. I quote (with recognition of the article copyright to Imaging-Resource): "Both the DSMP and 8000 ED produced scans with very low noise, and in fact were only slightly improved by using the 16x sampling option. It's a very close call, but we felt that the 8000 ED just slightly edged the DSMP in noise performance, but the Dimage held its own, and in fact won out in two areas. First, the Nikon 8000 ED has a special "one line scan" mode that you need to use on scans requiring extreme tonal adjustments, to prevent banding. The DSMP had no such requirement, and the scans were remarkably clean and uniform in this respect. Second, we were surprised to see that some of what we'd interpreted as lens flare on the film itself may in fact be flare in the scanner optics: Looking around the front truck on the locomotive, there are areas where brightly sunlit earth is juxtaposed to the pitch black of the underside of the locomotive. There's very visible flare in the Super Coolscan's image in these areas, and also in the shadows to the right of the front truck, obscuring details in the rails and ties of the train track. Looking at the same area on the scan from the Dimage Scan Multi Pro, we see much lower flare, and the details in the train track are much more visible. This looks to us like a significant advantage for the DSMP." The Nikon is definitely not the best scanner in almost every respect (better in a few areas, equal in most and worse in a few) and, given the price differential, the DSMP looks like a rerasonable choice. Simon
