Two more scanners have been added to the comparison page. They are:
- Creo Eversmart Supreme
- Creo iQsmart3
The scans were produced by Creo in Israel, and were oil-mounted with software sharpening turned off. These scans have impressive resolution, right up there with the very best of the drum scanners. They are all the more remarkable given that they come with the convenience of flatbed operation.
I am particularly interested in the iQsmart3 scan, since it is also representative of an iQsmart2 scan. The cheaper iQsmart2 shares the iQsmart3's optics and scanning performance, but is still just tantalisingly out of the price range of most large format photographers (including me). Creo has a major presence in the prepress sector, but has not captured the mindshare of mainstream film-based photographers. Imacon, on the other hand, has been very successful in this sector, but for 4x5 scans, the Imacons are inferior because they lose scanning resolution with the 'zoom' required to project the greater film width onto the scan sensor, a problem Creo solves using XY stitching. I can't help feeling that if Creo (Kodak) was to price the iQsmart2 competitively, they could reverse this situation.
Next in the scan-around, if all goes well, are the Sprintscan 45i and Imacon 848 followed by a Cezanne and perhaps the new Epsons, and Lino-Hell Topaz and Lino-Hell Saphir Ultra II, and then...
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