Re: filmscanners: Supra 400 shadows

[Arthur Entlich <artistic@ampsc.com>]

I recently had my Minolta Dual II replaced by Minolta, after only owning
it a week.  The second one has lower "noise" in the shadow areas than
the first. 

The first had a lot of green noise in the dense areas (on slides) which
I noted lessened quite a bit using Vuescan.  I haven't tested the new
one with Vuescan yet.

Since I'm discussing this, I'll make a brief comment which concerns me. 
Overall, I like this scanner.  It is both sharper and has better overall
dynamic range than the HP S-20 I replaced.  However, a few things give
me pause.  One, the apparent quality control is spotty.  The machines
appear to vary in terms of the degree of noise they make mechanically
and optically, and I suspect this has to do with general wide tolerances
in the manufacturing process.

More important, however, is my first one had many "bad" elements in the
CCD.  I was unable to determine if this is a matter of physically bad
CCD elements or dirt in the unit, or defective filters over the CCD, or
bad calibration or what.  The first unit had between 3 and 5 bad sensors
per color.

The unit I received which replaced it still has some bad sensors.  This
time one or two per color, but this is not acceptable, especially "out
of box".

In my case, Minolta covered air shipping both ways on the first
exchange, but I do not know how gracious they will be if I make a second
request.  For now, due to need for the unit, I am holding onto it, but I
do not believe ANY elements should be mis-calibrated or respond
incorrectly in a CCD chip.

I am hopeful this is just a production run problem which will be
corrected, because otherwise, the scanner is good value.  The manual is
unfortunately translated from Japanese (I assume) and has numerous vague
or not fully comprehensible sentences and phrases.
 
I haven't had a good chance to put the scanner through it's paces, due
to other commitments, but I hope to shortly.

Art


Norman Unsworth wrote:
> 
> Not to add to the weight of this thread but with a Minolta Scan Dual II I
> experience the same kinds of 'noise" (just using this term generically -
> please, no corrections about whether I'm using the right term) in the dark
> areas as others describe when scanning Supra 400. Fortunately, when it's in
> most dark areas where detail is not importantly I can blur it out
> sufficiently in PS.
>