Heidelberg Nexscan F4200

[Kellaboy]

Hi gents,
I have possibility of purchasing Heidelberg Nexscan F4200 or Eversmart Jazz. And I have issues choosing which one to pick. I have read a lot of positive feedback about Jazz. Another plus that it is single owner of scanner and it got full set of software, masks and calibration sheets. However it is twice the price of F4200 and it is two day car trip to another city to pick it up.
On the other hand Nexscan F4200 got much higher optical resolution. Which would be better for scanning small format 24x36mm and xpan 24x65mm slides, as well as medium and large format. It looks like to be perfect scanner for my needs, but I could not find any valuable information about F4200 performance and any operation feedback from users. what i found is mainly some commercial booklet made by manufacturer of F4200 with technical data and how explanation of good it is. And it is concerning me. Also, owner never used F4200 before and got is as dept. Original owner told that it is fully operational set.

If you are happy owner of Nexscan F4200 or you know the guy who knows the guy who got Nexscan F4200, could you please write couple lines about:
- performance of scanner;
- simplicity of working with software;
- what got to be with scanner, like calibration sheets, masks and etc. and how do they look like;
- spare parts availability;
- some samples could help))))

Also I would appreciate your advice on which scanner to choose.
I mainly shoot color slide valvia or provia on small and medium format; B/W on medium to large format up to 5x7, and 18x24sm if I will find film for camera.

Regards,
Nick.

[georgl]

Look for a user named "carum" (I think he is active on this board as well, at least on the German one) - he is using a Nexscan.
It is considered one of the best flatbed-scanners ever made.
Heidelberg/Linotype-Hell also offered "Budget" (<<20k$) Versions of their Scanners and so did Creo. They shared support and Software with their "big brothers" but design and manufacturing was outsourced (to Umax and other consumer-scanner-manufacturers).
The Jazz is such a device, it has not much in common with the real Eversmarts manufactured by Creo.

I would go with the Nexscan or a real Eversmart. The Nexscan and Topaz (predecessor) were limited to 8000 pixel wide (~2000ppi @4x5) scans, because they were unable to stitch in X & Y-direction, to achieve larger files, you have to scan several times and stitch in post.

Karl Hudson still offers some Support for the Nexscan and Linotype-Hell Drum scanners.