Recently I was mulling the possibility of getting drum scanner. I've seen a few really great working machines go for $1000 - $1500 with mounting station, drums and Mac G3/G4...
So I decided to revisit the scanner comparison page on this site. I selected my scanner, an Epson 4990, and the Howtek 4500.
The sharpened versions of the scans on the site have not been sharpened enough (or properly) for me, so I grabbed the unsharpened images and had my way with them. There's a lot of detail "hiding" in the 4990. Here's what I came up with.
I've done two passes of simple USM on each image.* To me, the Epson images arrive in the same ballpark as the Howtek scans...
Keep in mind that these images are 100% views of 2400 DPI 4x5 scans. If you were to print the entire scan at 40x30 inches (300 DPI, 8X enlargement), these detail crops would only be 1.666 inches wide. To put it in perspective, here is the fabric detail reduced to 72 DPI (life-size section of 40x30" print, if your monitor is 72 DPI):
I would have to see the actual prints in front of me, but I don't think I would be able to tell the difference between the Epson scan and the Howtek at 300 DPI at a reasonable viewing distance (say more than 12"). Then I started to think: I shoot mostly 8x10, and an 8X print yields an 80 x 60 inch image.
In other words, with a $200 discontinued scanner, I can make an 80 x 60 print from 8x10 that I can't distinguish from a drum scan, even up close. Cut, print, it's a wrap.
Any thoughts?
- ben
* On the first comparison, it's Epson: {300, 1.7, 0.0} then {200, 0.7, 0.0}, and on the Howtek: {84, 1.7, 3.0} then {112, 0.7, 0.0}.
On the second comparison, it's Epson: {200, 1.5, 0.0} then {164, 0.7, 0.0}, and on the Howtek: {67, 1.7, 3.0} then {91, 0.7, 0.0}.
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