Imacon vs Drum Scans

HI all, I know this may have been done to death, and I've seen a few comparisons here and there, but I wouldn't mind a fresh thread.

I normally get my 6x17's scanned by WCI on the tango, and they have been excellent. However with the AUD dropping, they are getting expensive. Tangos are very hard to find in Australia, but a few people have imacons. I have a 343, but I find that for large format printing, it's just not good enough. I want some people's advice on 848, and 949 imacons and how they compare to the tango..... Any experience with scanning companies in australia would also be appreciated.

Regards

Three to one would be 6x18:)
I had an older imacon flextight that i wasn't happy with either and i ended up with a Screen drum scanner. The results great: better color, better dmax, better detail. Sorry, can't help with the newer imacons.

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Originally Posted by 3to1ratio

HI all, I know this may have been done to death, and I've seen a few comparisons here and there, but I wouldn't mind a fresh thread.

I normally get my 6x17's scanned by WCI on the tango, and they have been excellent. However with the AUD dropping, they are getting expensive. Tangos are very hard to find in Australia, but a few people have imacons. I have a 343, but I find that for large format printing, it's just not good enough. I want some people's advice on 848, and 949 imacons and how they compare to the tango..... Any experience with scanning companies in australia would also be appreciated.

Regards

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I do Flextight 848 scans commercially. Customers regularly bring me drums scans to compare (some of which they'd paid silly money for) and I haven't seen anything yet I haven't been able to match. Drums come into their own for difficult originals or for huge enlargements though.

I offer 6x17 tranny scans for AUD $45 each (unclipped, unsharpened, colour space of your choice, spotted) plus $10 per DVD burnt. The file size works out to be about 900MB. If you're interested, give me a call on (02) 4842-2976.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 3to1ratio

HI all, I know this may have been done to death, and I've seen a few comparisons here and there, but I wouldn't mind a fresh thread.

I normally get my 6x17's scanned by WCI on the tango, and they have been excellent. However with the AUD dropping, they are getting expensive. Tangos are very hard to find in Australia, but a few people have imacons. I have a 343, but I find that for large format printing, it's just not good enough. I want some people's advice on 848, and 949 imacons and how they compare to the tango..... Any experience with scanning companies in australia would also be appreciated.

Regards

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I'd ask Aztek if they had any customers there. I would look for someone with a Premier - twice as sharp as the Tango. I believe the ICG 380 also is a 3 micron-capable scanner. I'm with Vinny on this one... a drum scanner is going to beat a CCD scanner every time.

Lenny

thanks guys for your time.

I can not give a you a comparison of a drum scann to an Imacon, but I had a few 6x6 scans made by both Nicon Coolscan 9000 and Imacon X5 at 3000 (3200) dpi and frankly speaking could not see any difference in the sharpness (I mean detail) or Dmax. They were really close. So if you ahve an experience with Coolscan you may get an idea.

Hi, I've seen some great Imacon 848 scans from 4x5 that have held up well even when printed to reasonably large sizes - I've printed them myself up to 32x40 and have seen them printed up to 48x60 (I must admit I was initially sceptical about the first, let alone the latter, but it looked "OK" even up close). However I do think that they are more demanding of a well exposed transparency than a drum scanner is. Also despite my previous comment I don't think that they hold up to big enlargements as well as a drum scan at the same spi.

I have scanned a number of transparancies on my drum scanner (Howtek 4000 so nothing fancy!) that have also been scanned by others on an Imacon 848. Comparing the two digital files the drum scanned one (from Velvia 50) had much less noise in the shadows. The drum scanner was also better at digging out detail from dark areas, however this may have been an operator rather than a scanner issue.