RE: filmscanners: Best scanner software

["Alex Z" <alexz@zoran.co.il>]

Hi guys and girls.
I'm new member (just signed in) starting to get sucked into film scanning
world.

Though having quite extensive photography experience (an long-term
membership in Minolta Mailing List) I'm quite novice in the world of film
scanners.
Just recently bringing over 800 slides from my last vacation in Europe, I
stumbled in the problem if scanning to create slide shows.
I started to investigate an offers on the market and specifications (no
problem with that -
have an engineering background in electronics) so narrowed my choices to
2800 dpi resolution or upper (up to 4000 dpi).
Currently I see several choices: Nikon CoolScan IV ED, Minolta Elite (or
Elite II being released now) for 2900 and 2820 dpi resolutions respectively
or Polaroid 4000 and Nikon CoolScan 4000ED (which is actually out of my
budget even for the future :-( ).
I realize all of them have buggy software causing troubles sometimes, but
fortunately for most of them there are separate independent software
available (like SilverFast or VueScan).

Price/performance is on the side of Polaroid of course and I read many quite
favorable tests and reviews for this unit, but I'm struggle about ICE
featuring. Have to admit my slides cannot be considered as sterile, usually
gathering some dust and sometimes scratched due to
poor handling by labs (even those claimed to be really professional, so that
priced... ),
so probably ICE would be quite useful for me, but then resolution/feature
trade-off should be made...

I would be glad to hear hands-on opinions about Polaroid 4000, do you really
satisfied with it's performance ? How much tweaking does it demand generally
after scanning to achieve quality results suitable for real enlargements and
printing (postprocessing) ?
Does it have batch scanning capability ?

BTW, do you think 2800-2900 dpi is good enough for quality A3 sized print
(about 260-270 dpi
and that size) or 4000 dpi would gain quality noticeably ?

I intend to use it on PC system.

Any opinion is welcomed.

Regards, Alex

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of
Dave@finestlight.com
Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2001 18:56
To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
Subject: RE: filmscanners: Best scanner software


John,

I have no experience with the SilverFast software but absolutely LOVE
Vuescan for trannies, at least.  I'm an experienced scanner but new to the
SS4000 myself.

I've spent $40 on far less useful things. :)  Hamrick software has a full
featured demo you can d/l from www.hamrick.com that you can try.  Paying for
& registering the software will get rid of the diagonal lines the demo puts
on the output.  Good for a test drive before you buy.

HTH --

Dave

>I just recieved the Poloraid 4000 and am trying to decide from reading the
>messages which would be best for a novice like me, the Poloraid, VueScan or
>the Silverfast. Of course the Poloraid and SilverFast came with
>the scanner,
>but $40.00 for the VueScan is a very fair price for software that works
>well.
>
>Thanks,
>
>John in OKC