[filmscanners] Re: death of scanners

["Winsor Crosby" <wincros@earthlink.net>]

On Monday, January 27, 2003, at 05:59  PM, Wendell Rider wrote:

> I was recently at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco and I talked to
> the
> people from Nikon and Canon. They both said that since the arrival of
> the
> higher mega pixel cameras, especially the ones that use existing 35mm
> lenses, that their film scanner sales have gone way down. This is
> inevitable. There will be a market for film scanners as long as there
> is
> film to scan, but this is definitely a transitional phase that is
> leading to
> more use of digital cameras and less of film. Thus I think it would be
> safe
> to say that R&D in dedicated film scanning, especially in the 35mm
> market,
> will slow in the near future.
> I own a Nikon LD400 and I like it very much. I don't think there is
> much
> more to be gotten out of this process unless they can produce faster
> scans
> with a little more shadow detail or general latitude. Much more in the
> way
> of resolution will only pick up more grain.
> I won't be selling my scanner anytime soon because I have a lot more
> pictures to scan, but I will go digital when I can get the same or
> better
> results than my 35mm stuff. That day is not far off.
> --
> Wendell Rider
> "Real World Horn Playing" is here, see
> www.wendellworld.com
>

With comparisons being made now between 6 x 7 scanned images and images
from the Canon EOS-1Ds it appears that most film scanners will go away,
not just 35mm,  or they might get very cheap. The saving of the cost of
a very expensive medium format scanner will defray the cost of a high
end digital camera quite a bit.

Winsor Crosby
Long Beach, California, USA

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