filmscanners: Mirage II ?'s

[Mark Crabtree <cirkut@adelphia.net>]

In my ongoing hunt for a scanner that suits my needs I'm considering a used
Umax Mirage II. This is the recently discontinued tabloid size dual lens
model (700x1400 and 1400x2800 dpi). The tabloid size would really be nice
for scans of my 60" long negs and prints, and the 1400dpi would be nice for
my Noblex 120 negs.

Anyone have some personal experience with this scanner? I would probably
run Umax's driver for prints and VueScan for negs.

I am a bit concerned by on item listed in the specifications in the Mirage
II manual I downloaded. They list color depth as 36 bit "hardware" and 24
bit "system". Even the cheap Umax's I've seen would output hi-bit data to
Photoshop, so I can't imagine that this one can't. I sure can't figure what
else that would mean though. Any thoughts? I nearly always archive a hi-bit
file and like to do my initial curves work there before converting down to
8 bits/channel.

This seems like a scanner that would do most of what I need, but it is an
ancient model in computer years (which are about 1/3 dog years I think).

Mark