"Ed Lusby" wrote: "I've been lurking in the group for a long time, but now I'm actually going to buy a scanner. Most of my old slides are Kodachrome64, so I haven't been encouraged by the postings here regarding the difficulty of Kodachrome scans. Is there any scanner that scans kodachrome well? The other "requirement" I have is the potential future need to scan lots of slides. I only know of one scanner with bulk loader, the Nikon 5000. Does anyone know if this scanner is any good on Kodachrome? Are there other scanners with bulk loaders for mounted slides?
"The new Minolta 5400 is intriguing, but I don't think there is a bulk loader for it. Plus it seems to be at least 3X slower than the new Nikon5000." -------------------------- My experience is based on scanning a variety of slides and negatives, from 1940-era Kodachrome through about every consumer slide film of the '60's and '70's and consumer negative films including direct-reversal films like 5247 and its brothers, on a Minolta Scan Dual II and III. IR cleaning is very desirable. It will save several minutes per image in cleaning time and a lot of aggravation. If it works, it works; if it doesn't, you can always do the cleaning work "by hand". I don't know if bulk loading is really all that helpful. Wouldn't you still want to set scanning parameters for each image (end points, mid-point, color correction, etc.), which negates the value of "automatic" scanning? Higher resolution is a mirage as an important specification, like the top-speed on a car. It is helpful *only* if you need large prints or need to crop small portions of 35mm originals. Its downside is the temptation to scan at higher res "because you can", giving longer scan times and larger files that will just be downsampled whenever they are used. There may be more automatic workflows. It takes me a couple of minutes (2-3 min.) to preview, set parameters, and scan each image, a couple of minutes to clean/spot, even using the Polaroid software, and a minute or so to color-correct, so doing a roll is a several hour project. However, since I'm doing it for fun, I'm not really concerned with how quickly it gets done. The usually-quoted specs for scanners aren't the important ones. There may be an advantage to higher resolution than 2800ppi because of "grain-aliasing" issues (I don't really understand that.), and if a scanner can "see" differences at 12-14 bit-depth accuracy, it may give better images than one that "sees" only 10-bit accuracy. The most important specs are the scanner's ability to measure and report image detail in very dark areas, without noise, and to handle "grain" issues internally before writing out the files, and those specs are not available. The "density range" or "dynamic range" spec of the scanner is usually just the "mathematical maximum" based on scan bit depth, and has no relation to the scanner's actual ability to discern detail at the end of that density range. Scanners will report a "density range" of, say, 4.2 when they can't "see" any differences over a density of 3.0 in a piece of film. Software is also important, as scanners just produce numbers that have no meaning without software interpretation. I use Vuescan because I think it gives slightly better results and I just "like" it better than the Minolta software. You've gotten some good advice from other folks. Each scanner has advantages and disadvantages, and there is no one model that is clearly superior to all others at a given price-point. The challenge is to decide which attributes are important to you and make the judgment on that basis, and no one can tell you what is "best" for you. Good luck, you are starting on a project that will bring back lots of memories, the major reason many of us take pictures. Preston Earle [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
