[filmscanners] Re: Minolta 5400 scan Elite Tests

["Ellis Vener" <ellis@ellisvener.com>]

On Friday, October 17, 2003, at 06:13  AM, Thys wrote:

> Hi
>
> After hunting everywhere for a proper review of the Minolta 5400, and 
> not
> really finding any, I decided to buy the thing. I have been playing 
> around
> with it for a short while only, but I thought I'll share my initial
> impressions with the group... I have made several
> scans with a Canon FS4000 which I borrowed for a while and therefore 
> can
> compare the Minolta with scans made with the Canon.
>
...
> Compared to the FS4000 on a 2.4GHz P4 with 512Mb RAM on Win2k, I found 
> the
> following:
> - Scan times: At highest resolution, it is slower than the Canon. 
> Using an
> Adaptec SCSi card on the Canon, I was doing 4 scans @ 4000dpi with 
> Fare on
> and 3x multi scan (on Vuescan) in about 1 hour. On the Minolta, 4 
> scans on
> Vuescan with Ice on Medium at 3x multi scan took about 1hour 15 minutes
> using USB1. I was rather hoping for the Minolta to be a bit faster, but
> maybe if I upgrade to USB 2 or get Firewire...

three items here:
1.) at full resolution the Minolta (@5400ppi and true 16 bit per 
channel color depth)  is going to be creating larger data files than 
the Canon FS4000.
2.) Firewire and USB 2.0 are much, much faster than regular USB, which 
I assume you were using. USB 2.0 maybe faster than firewire depending 
on the implementation.
3.) ICE will slow you down.


> - Image quality - Colour: Looking at the scans side by side, I noticed 
> that
> the Canon's colours are much richer and saturated than the Minolta. The
> Minolta looked duller by comparison, but I hope I can improve that 
> with some
> scan settings. The true colour of the slide (Fuji Velvia) was actually
> somewhere in between these two results.

What color space (workspace) are you using? Is your monitor accurately 
calibrated and profiled?

> - Image quality - sharpness: The Canon was definitely sharper and more
> snappy on the same image. This could be (and I suspect it is) the 
> effect of
> Digital Ice vs Canon Fare. I intend to do another test with Ice off
> (unfortunately I scanned all my Canon samples with Fare on) The 
> difference
> was very obvious and before sharpening, the Minolta scans looked 
> pretty bad
> compared to the Canon's.

> - Dynamic range: I was very upbeat when I saw the amount of shadow 
> detail
> and low shadow noise recorded by the Minolta as compared to the Canon, 
> until
> I looked at the highlight detail. The highlights in the Minolta was 
> much
> more blown out than on the Canon. I noted that, for example in a 
> landscape
> with clouds, I could make out a lot more subtle white variations in the
> clouds of the Canon scan than the Minolta. It is clear to me that I 
> have
> some exposure settings to tune. I suspect, in spite of the much higher
> specification of the Minolta in DRange, there won't not that much 
> difference
> between the 2 in the end. I'll do more testing there.

> - Other: File sizes are, off course huge (200Mb plus). At high 
> resolutions
> the difference in pixel size between the two scanners does become quite
> obvious (which is why I bought it in the first place). I also noted 
> that
> there were some artifacts visible in one or two places of the Minolta 
> scan
> (like a line with a few disjointed pixels running across the width of 
> the
> scan) I wonder if that has anything to do with the scan speed (it stops
> several times during the duration of a scan). I saw something similar 
> in the
> Canon scans, using USB, until I plugged it into the SCSI card and it
> disappeared. (With the SCSI, the Canon scanned continuously, without
> stopping)
>
> I don't have any definite conclusions yet, because I would be doing a 
> lot
> more scanning and testing with the new Minolta, but so far, I just 
> realized
> that that the Canon FS4000 is in fact a remarkable scanner for the 
> money,
> compared to the Minolta which is, at least on paper, the best available
> today.
>
> Regards
> Thys
>

Thys,

  Thanks for this first look. I think in general you are going to b 
helped by more RAM and switching from USB to USB 2.0 or Firewire. what 
would really like to see is a Firewire 800 implementation as it is a 2x 
faster standard than Firewire or USB 2.0


Ellis Vener
Atlanta, GA

 "I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and 
photographers." - Mahatma Gandhi

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe by mail to listserver@halftone.co.uk, with 'unsubscribe 
filmscanners'
or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or 
body