Update - microtek 1800f vs. epson 4990

[Kirk Gittings]

My last 4990 after just 8 months took a dive this week. Of course I scan around 50 images a week. Which is hard on these plastic beasts. I only use it for 120 commercial images so I replaced it with a Nikon 8000. In less than three years I have gone thru 4 Canon 9950's, 1 Epson 3200, 2 4870's, 3 4990's, two Microtek 1800f's and now a used Nikon 8000. So my current stable is the Microtek for 4x5 B&w and the Nikon for the commercial volume color. Clearly these under $1000 scanners are not made for serious volume professional use. I'm not sure what the solution is here. I would love to find a reasonably priced scanner that would do it all. A drum scanner is simply too slow for the volume we need. I can't afford an Imacon, I could almost by a car with that and I need a new SUV, my current one has 200,000 miles on it and still have one kid in college. It is starting to make some sense to shoot the commercial work digitally.

[QT Luong]

I am a bit surprised that your scanners fail so much. Obviously, it is not a LF scanner and therefore has smaller moving parts, but my Nikon 4000 has scanned more than 10,000 images in a few years, and is still going strong.

[QT Luong]

Kirk, don't bang on your scanner when the scan doesn't come out as clean as you hoped :-)

[Ed Richards]

Do I remember correctly from a previous post that you were turning it on it's side? If so, that would contribute to its short life. You did not wear out the 9950s, you did not like them.:-) (Canon offers a 3 year swap out warranty for a nominal sum for 9950.)

It is hard to imagine any commerical work done in 120 that could not be done as well with digital, esp. if a scan from a 4990 is good eough. The Canon 5 D is now an affordable way in to a full frame camera, which is critical to doing wide angle. If you are doing 50 images a week, film costs have to be adding up, plus all the scan time and post processing to get to where you would start with a digital image. The time you saved could translate into more jobs and income, or more time for LF.

[Frank Petronio]

I haven't found much commercial work that can't be done with a D2X or Canon type of camera. I'd save the hassle of scanning for your image archive and new large format work.

At the rate you are going through scanners a DSLR would save you a lot of money.

[Greg Bowl]

I decided to buy a demo I900 from Calumet and let it multisample the dmax noise away. If my project prints do what I'd like, then I can justify having the 8x10 chromes drum scanned before they do finally disintigtrate, color wise, anyway. I did find that Silverfast was pretty good, I hadn't used it before, and the extreme red cast overtaking the old E3 process chromes was easy to correct out. I hadn't bought a flatbed since my last Umax Powerlook 1200, which I had Binuscan for, and it didn't handle the old film dmax areas, and the E3 film itself seemed to give the scanner fits. The 1800 is a less noisy scanner for certain, but not sure the $1000 was smart at this point. Ultimately I don't know where the market for large format scan technology is going. I believe the 1800 is considered "discontinued" by Microtek, there isn't enough demand to continue producing machines that can handle this format. I think the newer I700 has a thinner film path than the I900, which is probably going to be the trend. I actually don't shoot film at all anymore, I'm just trying to digitize old images before they go away, to get what I consider "final" scans. It's too bad, there is nothing like an 11x14 original chrome, nothing at all...

[Paul Butzi]

re: medium format and scanner versus an EOS-5d.

For some years I've been toying with the idea of some medium format system, mostly after going out and working on the beach with a guy who uses a Pentax 6x7. Watching him work inspires great envy because it's so darn fast - and I'm not particularly slow with the 4x5. And for prints up to 16x20, the prints from carefully done 6x7 look darn good.

But some time ago, a friend sent me some images from an EOS-1d, and I printed them pretty large and was very impressed. I thought, actually, that they were competitive with 6x7.

So when the EOS-5d came out, I snapped one up, and I've been using it fairly heavily.

Working carefully (that is, off a solid tripod, mirror locked up, lens well shaded, careful selection of f-stop, etc.) the images are awesome at 16x24. Shot at ISO 100, they're essentially noise free, which has an incredible impact on the perceived quality of the image at that size. By 22x33, the prints are lacking in resolution and the lack of noise no longer compensates. On the other hand, at that size you'd be seeing degradation from a 6x7 scan, too, if it's off a scanner like the 1800f or similar.

This has totally killed my desire to buy anything medium format with the expectation that I'd run film through it.

To be honest, I've been stunned by the image quality of the 5d. It's simply way, way better than even my most optimistic dreams for full frame 35mm digital.

The question, of course, is what the cost would be to switch to a 5d and a complement of lenses from whatever MF system you're using now.

But if you're doing a LOT of MF work, and scanning costs (cost of scanners and time to scan negs) are eating you up, you might be able to recover those costs very quickly.

[Kirk Gittings]

Ed,
Yes I do do a small amount of scanning with the 4990 on its side as explained in earlier threads. Many people have taken to this practice with no apparent difficulties but that is less than about 5% of my scans done that way on the last 4990.

Don't be foolish enough to think that I am doing something wrong here. The really frightening thing is that 7 of the above mentioned scanners were bad almost OUT OF THE BOX! They didn't last a week. Now I really check these things out thoroughly when I get them. I really put them through their paces and look at the scans in depth looking for banding, bad alignment etc. But some of them simply had major failures in the first week. These things are simply not made well. Pull one apart and look at the tracks and belts. As a former industrial mechanic, the mechanical parts of these look like toy parts. Nor can they be made much better at this price point. They are simply not made for heavy critical professional use.

Paul, That has been my thinking too. Full chip Canons with PC lenese are the standard now of digital architectural photography.

[Ed Richards]

> They are simply not made for heavy critical professional use.

I agree - if nothing else, they are much slower doing high rez scans and that matters if you are doing this for money.

> As a former industrial mechanic, the mechanical parts of these look like toy parts. Nor can they be made much better at this price point.

I have learned that this part does not always follow - really good design means nothing is stronger than it needs to be, and we often do not know what real weak link is. I remember having the same feeling when I saw my first overhead cam driven by a belt instead of a chain, but it turns out belts work pretty well.

[Lee Hamiel]

Hello to this forum as this is my first time here.

Great information & I look forward to more.

I find this thread of great interest as I am in the process of getting a scanner to do 4x5 & have been trying to come to a conclusion as to what will work best for me.

A year or so ago my son & I had visited Clyde Butcher at his Venice, Florida studio & were very lucky to have a long chat with him in his office where he was doing LF printing on an Epson LF printer - at this point in time I was not shooting any LF & Clyde was very pleasant & talkative as my son explained his desire to become a professional photographer.

At the time Clyde said he was using a Microtek scanner - don't know the model but from other posts here it seems that it was the 1800f - I also don't know the model of the Epson printer but it was one of the larger one - 9600? Anyhow - the print coming out of the printer was in the range of 3'x5' & the quality was very impressive. I have done a lot of B&W darkroom printing & I was blown away by the quality. I don't believe Clyde has an expert advising him as he admitted that he has taught himself by trial & error.

Regards