AG Schnozz wrote:
>As this will be my very last scanner, and it must be used to
>digitize thousands of slides and negatives, I'm looking for
>recommendations.
>
>The Minolta Elite 5400E is a sweet looking scanner with the
>highest resolution but it's future is in question. The Nikon
>V-ED is another possibility. Of course, I'm not immune to
>buying used units. How about Canon? Any safe choices there?
>
>
I spent lots of time and effort ferreting out reviews, samples comments,
etc. This was before the V-ED and the E model of the Minolta, but I
doubt the basics have changed much.
The Nikons have traditionally suffered from shallow DOF and flare. As I
recall, C.H. documented the flare problem on a 4000. Some people have
also had focus/dof problems with the 5400. Maybe the E fixes that, or it
was operator error?
I ended up with a Canon FS4000 and have been very happy with it for
color. It's the one out of all the 4000+ dpi ones that has never had any
complaints about focus/dof. Sharp edge to edge, no matter what shape the
film. It's SCSI, not USB or Firewire, but that's been no problem for me
on XP. SCSI is plenty fast and the current cards are plug and play. The
film holders are well made and easy to use.
However, I haven't tried B&W in it yet. The only B&W 35mm I have is very
old stuff. I'd be happy to scan some samples if you want to send them to
me. I suspect Walt might do the same with the 5400. Sort of like a short
version of the Oly Odyssey, maybe other scanners would join in the fun. :-)
>I guess, since I'm using an ancient Coolscan II, (years since
>MD'd) it doesn't really bother me to have undersupported
>equipment--as long as Vuescan is around.
>
>
As long as the SCSI drivers work, I figure the FS 4000 will go on and on.
>The goal is to digitize the bulk of my files.
>
Not there's the rub. The sheer time involved is staggering. Neither the
5400 nor the FS4000 has batch slide capability. Both require you to load
4, scan, reload, etc., ad infinitum. The Nikons are the only game for
batch slide scanning.
For old, unmounted film, I'd guess that yours is in strips, like mine.
Pretty much all my old stuff is in strips of four, so the scanning drill
is much like for slides. Since getting a scanner, I get negs in strips
of six, but that's no help with the old stuff. The two step Vuescan work
flow that I outlined in the last couple of days cuts down the time spent
with physical scanning, but for thousands of frames, it is still very
daunting.
>I'm considering the conversion from a wet darkroom to a digital darkroom so
>the ability to get highest quality scans from B&W films is desired.
>
>
A question I'd raise here is how good is good enough? Just as you are
happy with the A1 for a great deal of work and the E-1 vs. the higher
rez competition for virtually anything, consider excellent, but not
quite the absolute best, scanning solutions. The Canon 9950F flatbed is
mighty close to the Coolscan 4000ED, but allows you to load 5 strips of
negs or 12 slides at once, set it on it's merry way, and go on to do
other things. That's 1/4-1/5 the loading events one has to attend to.
And, of course, it will do multiple MF frames at once and single 4x5s
all in one unit.
There are Epson scanners in the same class with about the same
performance, but they only hold 4 strips or 8 slides at once. Their ICE
is also much slower than Canon's FARE, but I don't know if that has any
effect when using VueScan, I don't think so. Anyway, absent some other
great advantage, I'd go with the greatest film capacity. Take a look at
the review on photo-i; it is amazingly comprehensive by contemporary
review standards
<http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Scanners/Canon_9950F/page_1.htm>.
>Suggestions?
>
>
Consider an as needed approach to the scanning project. The life you
save may be your own. You may still know your girls when they grow up.
You'll have time to play with the grandchildren.
You can scan thousands of images, using thousands of hours, but how many
of them will you actually do anything with? How many will just be passed
on to your heirs, possibly in deteriorated or technologically unreadable
form? Good heavens, I hadn't thought about the maintenance hours to
upgrade/replace medium and possibly format on thousands of gigabytes of
data every so often. There's considerable storage medium cost as well.
Gold DVDs aren't cheap.
Of course, if you are organized, unlike me, you could set up a
prioritized scanning order, with alterations as specific images may be
needed. That way you can gnaw away at it without losing a life. Then if
you happen to have some rather slow, uninteresting parts to your life,
you may finish before you die. If not, you won't care anyway!
You can see I've done some thinking about this. It's a serious business
that daunts me - and I've nowhere near the number of old frames you have.
Maybe you should wait until they have holographic, multi angle laser
scanners that will scan whole stacks of transparent archival storage
sheets at once. :-)
Moose
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