Re: filmscanners: Minolta Dual II banding

[Arthur Entlich <artistic@ampsc.com>]

Vladislav Jurčo wrote:

> Hi friends, maybe you remember my Dual II banding problem some weeks 
> ago. Yes it was replaced by a new unit and in the beginning it worked 
> nearly OK. However after 50-60 hours the banding occured even more 
> intensively than with the first unit. Nobody locally knew what was the 
> reason, Minolta abroad didn't respond to my "cry" and made no effort to 
> help me find the answer so I get rid of it.
> 

Obviously, this is disconcerting.  One thing I am wondering about, 
without trying to make excuses (I have been suggesting this model to 
people based upon the reports I have heard until recently)... what is 
the voltage your part of the world.  I'm kind of wondering if these 
units might have some problems with certain versions designed for 
specific markets.  For instance, Canada has more stringent requirements 
under the CSA than does the US with UL approval, for power supplied and 
insulation, fire resistance, etc.

Like the US, we use 115-125v lines at 60 cycles, but one reason Canadian 
product is sometimes more expensive and delayed in arriving here, is 
because CSA makes more demands in terms of the design.  We often also 
get a one year warranty where the US has only 30 or 90 days.

Did your dealer indicate the defect you experienced is a common problem? 
  Could it be your home voltage is too high relative to "normal"?  Since 
it is USB poorly regulated computer power supplies could also be at 
fault, but I''m mainly thinking of the power supply of the unit itself.

Under any circumstances, thanks for the heads up, I'll be sure to test 
mine when it arrives.

Art

>  
> 
> For those who hesitate buying this model my 2c:
> 
>  
> 
> Both mine both Dual II had serious problems with capturing/analyzing the 
> previewed picture. It could have been adjusted nearly 
> perfectly tweaking with Minolta software (btw pretty good!) but first 
> prescans and settings offered by the software were rather 
> frequently unusable. Scanners saw something that was not on the film 
> (small peaks on histogram in brightest highlights) and software was not 
> capable of handling this automatically in preview mode. I almost always 
> had to override it manually. It means that results might be color-vivid 
> and very sharp (sharper than Elite probably due to manual focus 
> feature) but asking for a hard job to get it close to the reality 
> captured on negative film. Even two different previews of the same 
> picture within 1 minute gave me two different results - small but 
> apparent... All of it resulted in very slow workflow and 
> rather unconstistent results through the film. Comparing HPS20, Elite, 
> Dual II and Coolscan 4 (with each of them except Nikon I worked more 
> than 6 months) in terms of consistency this is definitely worst model.
> 
>  
> 
> The banding is/was another problem - I don't know if general but mine 
> for sure. Sometimes it can be seen sometimes not - depends on the type 
> of the scene and temperature of the scanner.
> 
> If you already have this model you can perform a small test on banding - 
> switch the scanner on,  insert a blank frame (200 ASA or more) and make 
> a preview ASAP. Probably it won't be black as it should be but not 
> serious banding should be apparent. Let the scanner switched on for 10 - 
> 15 mins and repeat the preview again. If you see banding now it is 
> probable that you will see it sooner or later even on more ordinary 
> scenes than an empty frame (typically on monochrome areas such as sky, 
> wall etc.) . Performing this "blank-frame" test 5-6 times in one minute 
> intervals shows how much dependent on scanner temperature is the colour 
> result.
> 
>  
> 
> Don't put me wrong - I cannot make judge on Dual II generally.  I talk 
> about my two samples used on two different computers.
>