I may have been a tad impulsive, but I bought a Heidelberg Nexscan F4100 - now what..

[mcherry]

I couldn't help it. This guy was selling a large format printer that I wanted and the price was decent. I've read about these high end scanners being so much better than my Epson v750 that I thought I'd give it a shot (if I don't like it I can likely sell it for more than I paid). It came with a Mac G3 running 9.1 and Linocolor 6 software, but no real manuals. Made some coffee and doing my best to figure it all out, but right now it seems like my Epson with Silverfast isn't so bad.

Any Nexscan users here? Linocolor users? Was this set-up worth a grand or did I get hosed? LMAO! Either way, I'd love for some advice on getting the most out of it. I've been googling for the better part of an hour and very little has turned up.

Best,

Matthew

[mcherry]

Well, I finally procured a PDF version of the LinoColor manual if anyone needs it. Thinking of upgrading the computer to a refurbished G4 or G5 running an older version of OS X and getting NewColor 7000. Still lots of research to do!

[pinup tragic]

Some of the older large flatbeds were SOTA at the time but look at the operating system they need to function with - it will probably leave the 750 for dead with the Dmax and higher res but may be a whole lot slower - i jumped from v700 which i still use to coolscan 9000 then to Imacon 949 which to me is the bees knees worth every penny for film.

[mcherry]

The resolution and D-Max are insane on this. I'm not worried about keeping an older system going - especially given that, as a last resort, I can get a brand new PC to run it with windows 7 and Silverfast. I've thought about doing that but think I'm going to either keep the G3 I have going or upgrade to a G4 running OS X 10.2.8 and NewColor 7000.

But I'd love to hear from others if they prefer Silverfast to NewColor. I've never used NewColor (just got a copy of it from Karl) but have used Silverfast on the Epson and like it. I think I can even get an early generation G5 with a SCSI card, bring the operating system up to Tiger and run Silverfast on that. The only downside is Silverfast AI for the Heidelberg is $2K.