[filmscanners] Re: Nikon Coolscan V vs Minolta Elite 5400

["Mike Kersenbrock" <michaelk@photo-3d.com>]

Berry Ives wrote:

> Upgrading from Minolta Scan Dual II, I was about to be name brand loyal when
> I discovered that there are many who really swear by the Nikon.  That's from
> just reading user reviews that are out there at various web sites.
>
> I remember a long time ago on this list reading posts about some issue that
> that occurs more often with the Nikon scanners due to the LED light source.
> I don't remember what that was, and it may have been resolved by now in any
> case.

That's an inherent thing, perhaps "featured" rather than fixed.  Kinda.
The Minolta 5400 goes the other way generally, and even more so with
their "grain dissolver" feature that when enabled inserts into the light
source path a "special" diffuser that even further diffuses the light source
to "dissolve" grain (although some arguments say it dissolves grain more
by being anti-aliasing so that grain isn't emphasized, but I don't
understand the dissolver's mechanism fully other than to comment that
it seems to work in reviews with 'before' and 'after' scans).


> What I have read is that the software and documentation is better with the
> Nikon, lower noise, sharper lens, etc.  The resolution by itself would favor
> the 5400, since the Nikon is 4000.

Don't know about sharper lenses when the 5400 reviews that you can find on
the web shows sharp images of grain in film, I'm not sure how much sharper
is useful.  One site shows how a tiny bit of blur added to a 5400 scan in 
photoshop
makes its scan look like a Nikon scan in terms of detail.

Noise, at least in my 5400 (still new, so experience is limited) is very low.
I replaced my ancient Polaroid film scanner primarily driven by the noise in
the blacks that my old one had (even with multi-scanning).  My 5400 has 
clean-as-a-whistle
blacks even with multi-scanning turned off (which it'll do "in place" with only
one physical scanning movement).  Quite delighted.  Would have liked the
Nikon 5000 line's adapters for handling a stack of 2x2's though.  Minolta 5400
does only 4 at a time (or six for film strips).  One big thing the Nikon's
have going for them is that they say "Nikon" on them, and I don't mean that
in a bad way.  To quote someone un-named, "It's a good thing".  They've a
long track record of high quality scanners.

> I am interested in your ideas and opinions about this.  My objective is to
> print the best 13x19 prints I can print on an Epson 2200 on W/C paper using
> PS-CS and Zeiss, shooting negative film.

Biggest complaints I've heard for the 5400 is software related.  People say
they think unkindly about the Minolta software, but don't ever seem to say
why (and with the limited experience I have using it thus far, I haven't
discovered the problem as yet, seems to work okay for me thus far).  There
also seems to be a bug in Vuescan for some scans using only some scanners
where some faint lines show up in the scan (something that doesn't happen
with current Minolta software or using Silverfast software).  I've only done
a few scans using Vuescan on the 5400 and haven't seen the problem as yet,
but I find the Minolta software adequate so far.  I've got next week off
and I'll have more time to play with it then.

Web searching (and searching the back postings here) will find a lot of
info for your subject comparison (as well as to other Nikon models). I
searched through them a month or two ago.  :-)

Mike K.

>
> Berry



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