RE: filmscanners: Polaroid 4000 vs. Nikon L4000

["Hemingway, David J" <HEMINGD@POLAROID.COM>]

Sam,
Rather get involved with the "specmanship" issues. I suggest you try each.
Polaroid offers a 30 day "good as gold" guarantee so if your are
dissatisfied for ANY reason you can return it to your dealer for a full
refund, excluding any shipping costs.
David


 -----Original Message-----
From:   Sam A. McCandless [mailto:samcc@vom.com] 
Sent:   Wednesday, June 27, 2001 10:13 AM
To:     filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
Cc:     Barbara White
Subject:        Re: filmscanners: Polaroid 4000 vs. Nikon L4000

>I'm trying to decide between these two scanners. They both claim 16-bit
>output, however the Polaroid scans in 12 bit and outputs in 16; and the
>Nikon scans in 14 bit (I think) and outputs in 16. Are both of these
>options as good as true 16 bit scanning?
>
>Any input would be so appreciated, since I'm really a newbie on this
>subject, but I do want to scan in 16 bit.
>
>Barbara -

My impression is that neither is as good as true 16-bit scanning 
would be, that each scanner's software necessarily puts its lower 
high-bit scan in a two-byte/16-bit wrapper for the computer, 
hopefully without doing any harm by supplying the missing bits. I 
don't see how that could be as good as actually having used all 16 
bits in the measurement of the colors. But I don't know of a true 
16-bit option, and I'm just getting started with the SS4000.

Sam