[filmscanners] Re: Is Minolta's Scan dual II a good buy?

["Arthur Entlich" <artistic-1@shaw.ca>]

I suggest you might wish to read the archives on this and the
scanner@leben.com list.

The streaking problems are an unfortunate quality control defect that
has appeared in numerous of these scanners, both the Elite II line and
the Dual II line.

If you get a good one, and I have no idea what the percentages are, but
I have two so far that have the streaking problem, it is a good value.
It's main two problems beyond the ones mentioned are that it tends to
emphasize grain, dust dirt and defects, and the blue channel is noisy in
shadow areas, leading to a green speckling.  This can be eliminated by
using Vuescan (a $40 US program which his sold via the web) with its
long pass option.

The other problems I find with it are:

The slide carrier is badly designed and makes it easy to put finger
prints on them

It is somewhat slow (and slower still with the Vuescan long scan option)

It is very noisy (acoustically speaking) when it moves the carrier in
and out.

Otherwise, it is a good value scanner.  It is less noisy than the Canon
FS2710, and appears to be sharper, it is slightly higher res (in terms
of the CCD, 2820 dpi versus 2700).  It also has autofocusing and
motorized manual focus which the Canon does not, as I recall. (I don't
know offhand if the motorized manual focus is supported in Vuescan  or not).

If the Minolta Dual II was offered with Vuescan, and had better quality
control, I would call it one of the better "value" scanner on the market.

The main differences between it and the Elite II (other than price
difference, which is substantial, and I question if it is worth it
unless you have badly damaged film) are:

Elite has a IR channel and dICE (for dust and scratch defect reduction)

Elite has an increased bit A/D conversion  (12 bit on the Dual and 14 on
the Elite)

Art





ZhouRong Deng wrote:

> I am planning to buy it base on the praise on its picture quality, but have
> a bit concern about its build quality. I saw someone posting information
> about streak and banding problems about it. I would like to see whether
> anyone here sees any of these kind of problem on the Scan Dual II purchased
> after June, 2001?
>
> How does it compare to Canon's FS2710?
>
> Thanks
>
> Eric
>
>
>


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