Imacon 949 vs. Epson 4990

[Kirk Gittings]

Doug,

About my experience in a nutshell. How large are you printing?

[Doug Dolde]

Kirk,

Mostly only 16x20 on my 3800; occassionally larger. It's not a resolution problem rather a color accuracy, tonality and sharpness issue. The Epson is lousy on all three counts.

I have to wonder why Epson can make such great printers then flunks scanning 101. I'd be willing to pay more for a GOOD Epson scanner.

[Kirk Gittings]

What software were you using? I really only find fault with the sharpness and go for drum or imacon scans when I want to print 16x20 or larger. With Silverfast the rest is mostly my fault. Now remember the Tango and Imacon scans come with an expert scanning technician.

[Ted Harris]

For the most part I agree with Kirk. Color accuracy should ot be a problem with any of the scanners mentioned as long as the operator is skillful and that same expert scanning technician may be able to do more with the Imacon and Tango scans in terms of out-of-the-scanner color accuracy ... even though the capabilityis there is Silverfast Ai it is certainly not as easy or intuitive to use as the clolr management tools in the Color Genius Software for my Cezanne.

As for the tonality, there is no doubt that you will get better tonal range from the higher end scanners; the question is will you be able to see it in an 8x10 print, or even an 11x14?

Finally resolution, if by that you mean accutance/contrast/sharpness that couldwell be the case and would be atrributable to the superior optics in the higher end scanners. Again, with proper sharpening I am not sure you will see the difference in smaller prints.

All that said, since I started using the Cezanne, my 1800f sits idle for other than training and workshop use.

[Baxter Bradford]

The Epson scanners have improved enormously in recent years. I had a 'Perfection 1200' which I managed to get working well with Vuescan's multipass facility to boost Dmax by minimising shadow noise. Output looked fine in isolation, but when compared with scans from my Imacon Precision II, they lack colour depth - by a significant margin. The 949 is obviously better specified than my older scanner. FWIW, both scanners had been ICC profiled.

I had a 'print sniffer' attend one of my exhibitions a couple of years ago in which there were some A3 B+W images from both scanners. He wanted to know the difference, so I politely invited him to look hard at the prints (as if he already hadn't) and identify those from the Epson and Imacon. He couldn't, and was a bit miffed that this was the case. Had the prints been bigger, or had I included colour shots from both scanners instead of just those from my Flextight, his task would have been easy.

I have long been a fan of the importance of the optics in a scanner. Pixel-packing poorly resolved data serves little purpose in my opinion other than to slow working.

Unlike some of the previous comments, I find the Flexcolor software really intuitive. Once I have film characteristics adjusted and saved as a preset, there is very little to adjust for each scan - usually just set black point from rebate and then the shadows slider.

[Charles]

This is a bit off subject but here it is FWIW...I use an older Imacon Flextight that is not natively 4x5 capable but I tried an experiment based on a hunch and I was flabbergasted with the results. I loaded a 4x5 in the 617 carrier, scanned each half of the frame (with overlaps) at 3200dpi, ran the two frames thru the panorama stitching mode in Photshop CS3 beta. I cannot tell where the stitches are made and the results are stunning. About a 1 gig file depending on exactly how Photoshop processes the two frames.

[neil poulsen]

What software were you using? I really only find fault with the sharpness and go for drum or imacon scans when I want to print 16x20 or larger. With Silverfast the rest is mostly my fault. Now remember the Tango and Imacon scans come with an expert scanning technician.

Is this from your medium format film?

Also, how does a medium format dedicated scanner like the Nikon 9000 fit into your workflow? Aren't the results from the Nikon supposed to be superior to the flatbeds? Is there a downside to the 9000?

[Kirk Gittings]

Neil I had an 8000 which I got rid of a few months back. I currently have a 750, 1800f and access to Imacons. I was referring to 4x5.

[Dan Baumbach]

There's a lab in Berkeley, CA, CanToo, that rents time on an Imacon. I love the scanner. I'm made a number of 32x40 prints from Imacon scans that are just beautiful. I wish I could afford on but at least Berkekey isn't too far from me and the rental price is very reasonable.

- Dan.

[David_Senesac]

One thing I'm curious about regarding the 4990/750 Epson flatbed scanner is the nature of their pre-scanning color and luminance setup software. Not that I have even the slightest interest in ever tossing more money down a flatbed hole as I've long been firmly entrenched with drum scans. I have an old Epson 2450 scanner that for each subsequent scanner model, Epson has changed and likely improved on their interface. When the 2450 was released, the Epson software controls were roundly condemned with a fair amount of users instead opting for installing the Silverfast controls. A friend of mine bought the next major Epson scanner released but what little I saw of that, did not impress me much. Of course their are more issues with these flatbeds than just the software, but I'll leave that alone here.

Basically the main problem at least with the old software was crummy controls. Considerable color balance problems might occur each time any setting adjustment was changed. Of course each scan depending on the nature of overall tones in order to center the sensor to medium tones requires adjustment of white/black/gamma and my experience was the resulting color non-linearities that one would end up with were so unpredictable that I'd waste a lot of effort trying to get that right within a quite compressed low Dmin/Dmax range of output data. Thus getting the color right back then had little to do with having expertise with pre adjusting the software because the software was abysmal. Now hearing about Doug's nausea in using the 4990/750 whatever is in there I'm wondering if anything has actually improved? ...David