Re: filmscanners: Minolta Scan Multi Pro REVIEW???

["Simon Lamb" <simon@sclamb.com>]

Bernhard Ess wrote:

SNIP:

> BTW, I have re- studied the sample scans of the Minolta and the Nikon 8000
> on imaging- resource, and unfortunately I have come to the conclusion that
> the Nikon ist the better scanner in almost every respect:

Bernhard

If you re-studied the article it disagrees with your statement.  I quote
(with recognition of the article copyright to Imaging-Resource):

"Both the DSMP and 8000 ED produced scans with very low noise, and in fact
were only slightly improved by using the 16x sampling option. It's a very
close call, but we felt that the 8000 ED just slightly edged the DSMP in
noise performance, but the Dimage held its own, and in fact won out in two
areas. First, the Nikon 8000 ED has a special "one line scan" mode that you
need to use on scans requiring extreme tonal adjustments, to prevent
banding. The DSMP had no such requirement, and the scans were remarkably
clean and uniform in this respect. Second, we were surprised to see that
some of what we'd interpreted as lens flare on the film itself may in fact
be flare in the scanner optics: Looking around the front truck on the
locomotive, there are areas where brightly sunlit earth is juxtaposed to the
pitch black of the underside of the locomotive. There's very visible flare
in the Super Coolscan's image in these areas, and also in the shadows to the
right of the front truck, obscuring details in the rails and ties of the
train track. Looking at the same area on the scan from the Dimage Scan Multi
Pro, we see much lower flare, and the details in the train track are much
more visible. This looks to us like a significant advantage for the DSMP."

The Nikon is definitely not the best scanner in almost every respect (better
in a few areas, equal in most and worse in a few) and, given the price
differential, the DSMP looks like a rerasonable choice.

Simon