[filmscanners] Re: Better DOF than Nikon?

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

Paul D. DeRocco wrote:

>>From: Arthur Entlich
>>
>>Paul sent me a couple of his "cooked" slides to test with a few scanner
>>for him.  I too thought these could by flattened by all the usual
>>methods, such as those you state below, until I saw them!  Warped is a
>>kind word.  These mounts are charcoal broiled, and the base layer of the
>>film frames is literally melted.  There is no method that would truly
>>flatten these other than perhaps two well clamped down pieces of thick
>>glass.
>>
>>They are painful to look at!
>
>
> Heh, heh. I told you they were warped. Of course, I sent you some
> particularly bad ones. I have slides that cover the gamut from really bad,
> down to only slightly curved.
>
> Some of them had mounts that were so charred that I had to remount them.
> They were sitting in metal Logan boxes, and the slides in the top box were
> totally destroyed, as were the ones near the front and back of the other
> boxes.
>
> So are they hopelessly out of focus on your equipment, or can you manage to
> coax more sharpness out of them than an LS-2000?
>
> --
>
> Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
> Paul                mailto:pderocco@ix.netcom.com
>
>

No they aren't a complete loss.  In fact the Minolta Dual Dimage II did
a stellar job with them.  Also, the Minolta software allows for a click
to choose point for focus, but even without that it did well.  The
weakness with the Minolta was the noise level in dark images, like the
one underexposed slide you sent.

The Polaroid SS4000+ coped less well in terms of focus, with the
extremely warped area in one, but otherwise was not bad.  It might be
better if something like Vuescan was used with it, if it allows for
selective or manual focus.  The Polaroid did better much with the noise
issues.

The main problem is the lack of dICE in this case, because the images
have considerable dirt and some have burned emulsion, which the dICE
might be able to repair.

My recommendation would probably be a Minolta Elite II with dICE and
higher bit depth A/D converter.  You may be able to pick one of these up
reasonably as they are no longer made.  It is limited to 2820 dpi,
making for more grain aliasing, but I think it might otherwise be a good
choice, and I expect you could score one for under $500 US (several on
line dealers are selling them new for $499 US, and I bet you can do even
better used (none on Ebay right now, however).

Art

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