TP: Film Scanners

I've got a Canoscan 9900F, which I want to upgrade from.

I was considering the Microtek i900, which comes in the same sort of price as the V750. But it looks like the V700 may be good enough for me...I want to save lots of old colour slides and b&w, plus some colour neg film; and I have a project to shoot b&w film again so need to be able to get that into the Mac.

Does anyone have any experience of the i900 to compare with the Epsons?

Thanks.

The Plustek models are probably fine for you. I'd highly recommend investing in Vuescan to get features like multisampling and multiexposure. I'd also recommend springing for the 7200i model because dust management can be an enormous pain.

Just remember that the specs don't really mean a whole lot - you're not actually going to get 7200dpi worth of resolution and from what I've seen, you need to do a lot of tweaking to get the colors right.

catlady wrote: I've now borrowed a Scan Dual III from a friend. It scans B&W fine, also 8-bit colour. But when I tried 16-bit colour the scan came out very dark and with a severe colour shift towards the purple. I'm using a Mac. The little handbook isn't very helpful! Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thanks.

I'll bet you scanned it in 16-bit linear mode - it has no tone curve/gamma applied to it, instead leaving that up to you in PP (using Levels or colour profile, see below). You could try the other 16-bit mode.

For the colour shift, use the supplied scanner profiles; I know KM includes one for 16-bit linear scans. After opening the scan in Photoshop (if you have it), it'll ask you what colour space you want to use - you choose 'assign to' and select the 16-bit (posi) linear profile from the drop down, and 'convert to the working RGB'. I'm afraid I don't remember how the profiles are installed, can anyone else help?

Edited by colmo - 18 May 2007 at 00:00

colmo wrote: For the colour shift, use the supplied scanner profiles; I know KM includes one for 16-bit linear scans. After opening the scan in Photoshop (if you have it), it'll ask you what colour space you want to use - you choose 'assign to' and select the 16-bit (posi) linear profile from the drop down, and 'convert to the working RGB'. I'm afraid I don't remember how the profiles are installed, can anyone else help?

Thanks Colmo, makes sense. Unfortunatey I don't seem to have profiles with the software lent to me! I'll have to see if I can find them on the Web somewhere.

Correction....I've found them! Automatically installed with the software, just not to where I expected them to be.

Edited by catlady - 18 May 2007 at 09:19

Thanks Colmo for the link, the updated driver has made all the difference, the scanner now works a treat!

Pat

re Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400 II
Originally installed on pc with winXP, a couple of years back I decided to try and use on machine with win10. My understanding was that the original Minolta software would not work, so installed Vuescan. After successfully using for some time, I began to have problems scanning B&W negatives. The scanner would stick at Focus on 99%. Contacted Ed Hamrick - he suggested trying different USB cable, port etc. None of his suggestions worked. I opened up scanner and sucked any dust out with vacuum. That seemed to do the trick. A few days on and the same problem. Each time there was never a problem scanning slides. So today googling I came across a possible work around within this thread to get the Minolta software to work with win10. As this needed an install of the original software - I restarted PC and before using the work around I went to open the now installed Dimage software and hey presto it works. The work around to provide the correct drivers is not necessary. I have deleted the proposed workaround, switched off the PC a couple of times and the software still works.

So my point - if you have the original CD and win10 - install and see what happens.

It's an old thread but my recommendation is to look out for old Slidefilm scanners with an SCSI interface. Most people arent aware on how easy it's to get them running on modern systems and sell them cheap.
I got an Nikon ls2000 for a few Euros at a fleamarket, then I got an 1996 Adaptec SCSI card from ebay as there are (custom)drivers for them on the internet for Win10 and I also already had Vuescan.
I have to admit those old Slidefilm scanners do mostly need a service- I did it myself as it was very dusty. However, the quality of the scans are just beyond believe. Thanks to integrated ICE dust and scratches are no issues and man it's quick!