[filmscanners] Re: Oh no! Not another "which one should I buy" question

["Preston Earle" <PEarle@triad.rr.com>]

"Ed Lusby" wrote: "I've been lurking in the group for a long time, but
now I'm actually going to buy a scanner. Most of my old slides are
Kodachrome64, so I haven't been encouraged by the postings here
regarding the difficulty of Kodachrome scans. Is there any scanner that
scans kodachrome well?  The other "requirement" I have is the potential
future need to scan lots of slides. I only know of one scanner with bulk
loader, the Nikon 5000.  Does anyone know if this scanner is any good on
Kodachrome?  Are there other scanners
with bulk loaders for mounted slides?

"The new Minolta 5400 is intriguing, but I don't think there is a bulk
loader for it.  Plus it seems to be at least 3X slower than the new
Nikon5000."
--------------------------

My experience is based on scanning a variety of slides and negatives,
from 1940-era Kodachrome through about every consumer slide film of the
'60's and '70's and consumer negative films including direct-reversal
films like 5247 and its brothers, on a Minolta Scan Dual II and III.

IR cleaning is very desirable. It will save several minutes per image in
cleaning time and a lot of aggravation. If it works, it works; if it
doesn't, you can always do the cleaning work "by hand".

I don't know if bulk loading is really all that helpful. Wouldn't you
still want to set scanning parameters for each image (end points,
mid-point, color correction, etc.), which negates the value of
"automatic" scanning?

Higher resolution is a mirage as an important specification, like the
top-speed on a car. It is helpful *only* if you need large prints or
need to crop small portions of 35mm originals. Its downside is the
temptation to scan at higher res "because you can", giving longer scan
times and larger files that will just be downsampled whenever they are
used.

There may be more automatic workflows. It takes me a couple of minutes
(2-3 min.) to preview, set parameters, and scan each image, a couple of
minutes to clean/spot, even using the Polaroid software, and a minute or
so to color-correct, so doing a roll is a several hour project. However,
since I'm doing it for fun, I'm not really concerned with how quickly it
gets done.

The usually-quoted specs for scanners aren't the important ones. There
may be an advantage to higher resolution than 2800ppi because of
"grain-aliasing" issues (I don't really understand that.), and if a
scanner can "see" differences at 12-14 bit-depth accuracy, it may give
better images than one that "sees" only 10-bit accuracy. The most
important specs are the scanner's ability to measure and report image
detail in very dark areas, without noise, and to handle "grain" issues
internally before writing out the files, and those specs are not
available. The "density range" or "dynamic range" spec of the scanner is
usually just the "mathematical maximum" based on scan bit depth, and has
no relation to the scanner's actual ability to discern detail at the end
of that density range. Scanners will report a "density range" of, say,
4.2 when they can't "see" any differences over a density of 3.0 in a
piece of film.

Software is also important, as scanners just produce numbers that have
no meaning without software interpretation. I use Vuescan because I
think it gives slightly better results and I just "like" it better than
the Minolta software.

You've gotten some good advice from other folks. Each scanner has
advantages and disadvantages, and there is no one model that is clearly
superior to all others at a given price-point. The challenge is to
decide which attributes are important to you and make the judgment on
that basis, and no one can tell you what is "best" for you.

Good luck, you are starting on a project that will bring back lots of
memories, the major reason many of us take pictures.

Preston Earle
PEarle@triad.rr.com


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