filmscanners: Minolta Dual II and Green channel noise

[Arthur Entlich <artistic@ampsc.com>]

Norman Unsworth wrote:
> 
> I too have a Scan Dual II and never had a problem using it with Vuescan.
> It's always found the scanner, no problem. However, I need to make sure the
> scanner is on first, then fire up Vuescan.
> 
> Norman Unsworth
> 


For the last week, I have been playing with my finally acquired Minolta
Dimage Dual Scan II.

Unfortunately, it is going back to Minolta for repair or replacement,
because it has a bad CCD (streaks, weak or failed CCD elements)...

However, there is one aspect that concerns me even more than that, and I
am trying to determine if this is a result of a bad production run, or
bad software, or what.

In all the reviews I read, and test scans I seen, one of the areas this
scanner seemed to stand out in was having very low shadow noise.

However, in my brief experimentation with the one I had, it exhibited
severe noise in the green channel.   I'm speaking of noise that was
severe enough that it showed up in Epson prints as speckled green spots
throughout any dark area, and after sharpening with unsharp masking, it
was even worse.

I found this true with slides which were properly exposed (in shadow
areas) and even moreso in cases of slightly underexposed slides.  I did
not test it with color film.

However, I did test it with Vuescan rather than the supplied Minolta
software, and surprise, almost all of the green channel noise went away.

So, I am wondering if others have noticed this.  Is the only answer
around this to use Vuescan, or has there been a run of bad CCDs in these
scanners (I have been in contact with other Canadians who also
noticed this, so maybe a whole run is bad?)

I do not recall hearing of this problem being discussed previously,
which is why I am wondering if the problem is a new one.  The green
noise, BTW, is worse than what I had with my HP S-20, which was not
exactly without noise, and in fact, was traded in to get the Minolta.

I should have a "new" Minolta in a week or so (it's "flying" to them
tomorrow), and hopefully it will not exhibit the same problems.

Rather disappointedly,

Art