Hello, I've been using a Minolta Scan Dual II to scan my films for the past year. However, I had the unit on loan and recently had to return it. Therefore I'm in the market for a new scanner. Based on my experience with the DS2, it should
1) have an IR channel. With the DS2 I have noticed that dust spotting is not my idea of fun... 2) deal better with grain in images. The DS2 scans often came out horribly noisy (much more than prints or other scans). Probably due to grain aliasing with my ISO 800 films? The demand of an IR channel essentially narrows down my choice to two models: the Minolta 5400 and the Nikon LS-50 (the canon fs-4000 being older, scsi and with less than wonderful software). Based on some research on the net and in magazines, I came up with the following shortlist of strong and weak points of each of these units: Minolta 5400 + resolution (maybe less grain aliasing ?) + grain diffuser - sloooow - lamp drift over time Nikon LS-50 + recommended over the Minolta by Ed Hamrick, author of Vuescan, for having better colours and channel separation - shallow DOF - worse Dmax for B&W (according to test in ColorFoto 3/2004) + light stability because of LED lightsource Of course which scanner is best will greatly depend on my usage of the machine. I shoot negative film almost exclusively, the majority of rolls being high ISO colour film (400-1600). In addition I have a decent amount of older B&W material, most of it also in the ISO 400-3200 region. Slides are less important. I regularly shoot one or more rolls in bars and on parties and would like to be able to batch-scan most of the images with reasonable results. Of course I don't mind spending extra time on the _good_ shots. Does anyone have experience with one or both scanners? Suggestions concerning aspects I overlooked, overstressed or otherwise misinterpreted? Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks, Simon PS - For those of you who read both the filmscanners mailing list and comp.periphs.scanners , I apologize for double-posting this message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
