I am starting this thread in response to lennys statements about the Eversmart Supreme in comparison to drum scanners and the Aztek plateau.

I want to know if lenny has actually see scans from the Plateau and Eversmart Supreme? I know that he likes to support Aztek but they aren’t even selling these things anymore. I don’t see how a 14k flatbed would beat one that originally sold for 55k. From the stats, components, and my personal experiences I would think the out of all the flatbeds that the Supreme I & II can’t be beat.

A while back Kodak purchased Creo-Scitex and they currently sell and support the Eversmart line of scanners. Most of the new machines go to colleges and governments for high-end scientific research purposes. Kodak still releases software updates (the last one was a few months ago) and they are committed to their customers, and improving their products. I am sure that they plan to support the machine for many more years to come. Of course, it helps that there have been thousand of Eversmart scanners that were sold. Where as, I would be surprised if Aztek has sold more then 150 film scanners. Creo-Scitex, and Kodak are/were multiple billion dollar company’s, to my knowledge Aztek currently has about 4 employees. When Creo-Scitex developed the Eversmart line of Scanners the market for film scanners was a great deal larger, they spent about a decade and who knows how many millions of dollars on improving and expanding the line of scanners. The Eversmart Supreme was their newest, most expensive, and technologically advanced flatbed ever. I don’t see how a small company with limited resources such as Aztek would be able produces a superior machine, especially at a fraction of the price? I am not sure that they could even afford anything but off the shelf parts.

I have seen Aztek’s statements about the Eversmart supreme and vs the Aztek plateau, and I do not believe they are accurate. I have one of these machines and I have done max resolution scans of microfilm, the apparent resolution is much higher then what is shown on Phil’s scanner comparison. My guess is that the scan was flawed (inexperienced operator, focusing error, old bulb, or dirty lens?) and not optimized for maximum quality (no max DR, or non oil mounted). It certainly would not be fair to compare a non oilmounted scan done on the fast settings with one that was oil mounted and done on the highest settings. This may be why the findings were removed from Aztek’s “scannerforoum” site. One more, possible origin for the flawed scan is the settings will default from time to time when you change resolution or start up the software. With a 5,600 PPI scans the default settings are set to produce large amount of unsharpening (the default method is optical defocusing, however the scanner can be set to digitally unsharpened) to remove film grain (this is ideal for a prepress work), for non-press work one really should turn off the unsharpening.

My opinion is based on the actual microfilm scans that I have produced on the Eversmart Supreme. From these scans anyone could see that this scanner truly achieves its stated 5,600 PPI resolution. Every pixel was sharp and contained valuable detail, no pixels were wasted and the image looked fantastic even when I set Photoshop to zoom into the “actual pixels” or beyond. Flare or pixel spill over was 100% non evident, the scan was oil mounted done at 5,600 PPI with the Max DR function turned on. It’s truly amazing that any scanner is able to sample a 4.6-micron spot of film but this scanner can do it. (See http://graphics1.kodak.com/gc/produc...ific_research). Maybe someday I will purchase my own ortho microfilm test target so that I conduct my own tests.

The 45k asking price on the supreme is due to more expensive and higher quality components. The Aztek has the cheaper 10600 lines CCD, while the Eversmart uses a thermoelectrically cooled version of the Kodak anti-bloom, 8000-line tri-linear sensor (the same that Betterlight uses except theirs is not actively cooled). The thermoelectric cooling greatly improves the quality of the scan in regards to dynamic range and CCD noise. U belive the betterlight company states that this sensor has a superior dynamic range and more sensitivity then black and white film. The 8000-line Kodak sensor is regarded as the best on the market, the 10600-line sensor has smaller diameter sensors. With CDD’s you want an array with larger sensors because they have less noise, and more dynamic range. Scanner Resolution is
a factor of the magnification ratio, CCD density, and resolving power of the lens. A company like Creo-Scitex can afford to have the best possible lens custom manufactured for them so they don’t need to relay on a higher density CCD. By using the 10600 pixel CCD Aztek is sacrificing image quality for a more economically resolution. Even with the higher density CCD the eversmart Supreme’s 5,600 optical PPI is a substantial improvement over’s the plateau’s 4000PPI.

When it comes to the lens I am sure that Scitex, Creo, and Kodak use the best possible lens. After all, the Supreme was meant to be the best flatbed scanner without regards to cost. More advanced (and costly) lens designs incorporate moving elements to change the focal length of the lens. You see this a lot with 35mm and medium format lenses. For large format the depth of field is so short that people are required to use smaller apertures which limits the maximum theatrical resolution which makes it impossible to increase resolution past a certain point regardless of lens design. That, along with cost is why you don’t see 13 element zoom lenses for large format. I suspect that the reason why the plateau uses 4 fixed focal point lenses is that there were available as an off the shelf component, and that Aztek did not have enough capital or large enough production plans to have the best possible lens custom made for them. Scitex, Creo, and Kodak have all spent millions of dollars in developing the Eversmart supreme.

Another feature of the Eversmart supreme is what they call MaxDr; basically this is multisampling where you scan the film multiple times at different exposures to create an image with exceptionally low noise and high dynamic range. Both the Aztek and Eversmart use a technology known as XY stitch where the different portions of the film are scanned individually and combined digitally to create one large film.

In terms of dynamic range the Eversmart stats a higher dynamic range then the Aztek Premier (drum scanner). I know that the dynamic range surpasses chrome films such as provia by a great degree because I have done some scans where I could see a part of the image where the mask overlapped with the black edge of the film, there was a bit of gaffers tape that was used on top of that and I could see the difference from the gaffers tape + mask + film edge and just mask and film edge.

So basically with the Eversmart Supreme your negative or chrome is scanned hundreds or even thousands of times with a betterlight back using the best lens with perfect lighting and focusing calculated to the micron (BTW their scientific software allows you to control focus to the individual micron)

One advantage of the Aztek is that it is very fast; much faster then the Eversmart supreme. I have done scans my Eversmart that took almost 24 hours to complete (I only use the scanner on its highest quality Max DR mode). To me the Plareau sounds like a good option for a return on investment minded individual. But I don’t think it’s the answer for ultimate quality in a flatbed.

Anyway that is my current opinion on the Eversmart supreme vs Aztek plateau. If anyone has one of these Plateau scanners I would like to engage in a head to head comparison, it would be interesting to see how a 45k scanner compares to a 14k one.

BTW I don’t have a problem with Aztek, in fact, I am in the process of purchasing one of their drum scanners and they seem like very good people to me. I just feel that there is a lot of misinformation out there about their plateau line of scanners in comparison to the Eversmart and about the Eversmart line of scanners in general.