What's the best deal in scanner-land with no compromises in quality?

[PaulSchneider]

Hi guys!

Since I'm relatively new to this LF-world, I have not much knowledge about the myriad scanners out there. Hence, I have a question regarding the best price-quality-ratio around:

If no significant compromises in quality are to be made - what is the highest quality, highest resolution scanner available at comparatively good price? Also taking into consideration second-hand deals on ebay for example!

Secondly, what is the highest resolution one can get out of this such a scanner out of a 4 x 5 and 8 x 10 negative, respectively?

Like 20000 x 14000 pixels for an 8 x 10?

Thirdly, I read somewhere something about a high-end ICG 370 HS scanner; how much does such one cost and is it good?

Thank you for your pointers.

Regards

Paul

[bob carnie]

After years of testing , head scratching and serious doubt about which unit to buy. I have decided to buy a Aztec Drum Scanner from Lenny.

My criteria for this decision as follows

NAmerican supplier * no offence to other locations, just more conveineint for me.
On site traning- Lenny
Current models in production.
On going advice and support - Lenny
Scans as good or better than all the devices I have tested over the last few years.
Current hardware and software.
Ability to lease through our broker.
My clients will like the fact I have current technology for drum scanning their work.
Ability to batch process and walk away to do other lab duties .

Downside is cost
Lenny being on the West Coast, as is the manufacturer


This will take me awhile to put all my pennies in place but I believe for my company it is the best choice.

[PaulSchneider]

Bob, thank you for your pointer. I saw the scanner on their page. It seems huge, and, expensive. But the specs seem very impressive.

Is there any consolidated opinion on the difference between flatbed and drum scanning? I.e. is flatbed behind drum scanning in a huge way? I'm asking, because aztec seems to have both types of scanners.

Regards

[bob carnie]

Paul
Ted Harris, came to my shop and did some amazing scans on a Creo Flatbed, a few years back.
They were as good as any scans that I have seen .
I am listening to Lennys advice on which Aztek may be the best for my needs , I am sure any top end scanner that people here are using is a viable option, I just happen to like the ability to work with a group that have a scanner operator using the equipment day to day.
FWIW the bulk of our work is scanned with an Imocan and I have put large final prints side by side and the differences are subtle.
I am sure many here would disagree with this but as I said I have been testing various models for years now , thinking that one method must surely be superior than another , but I do not see it.

Much like the argument , that a Lambda is more superior than Lightjet or Chromira , based on price. I own a lambda but have seen many Lightjet prints and Cromira prints that are dead nut equals.

In scanning, as in output printers , the skill level of the operator is vital for quality.

Bob, thank you for your pointer. I saw the scanner on their page. It seems huge, and, expensive. But the specs seem very impressive.

Is there any consolidated opinion on the difference between flatbed and drum scanning? I.e. is flatbed behind drum scanning in a huge way? I'm asking, because aztec seems to have both types of scanners.

Regards

[IanMazursky]

Bob, thank you for your pointer. I saw the scanner on their page. It seems huge, and, expensive. But the specs seem very impressive.
Is there any consolidated opinion on the difference between flatbed and drum scanning? I.e. is flatbed behind drum scanning in a huge way? I'm asking, because aztec seems to have both types of scanners.
Regards

Expensive maybe, huge no. Its a matter of perspective.
I have an Aztek Premier and 2 Howtek 7500's. The Premier is small by comparison.
Years ago i had 3 hell drum scanners, A 3300, 3010 and one i cant remember. Those were huge, almost a ton each iirc.

All fun aside, the Premier is excellent. I haven't seen a flatbed scan that can match it from any film.
Its fast, easy to use and light enough for 2 people to lift without a hernia. Cant say that about my 7500.
I can get a 14gb 8bit file from an 8x10 and almost 30gb in 16bit. Not that anyone would have a use let alone pay for a file that size.

Onto the 7500, Ive been scanning my 12x20's on the 7500 and they are amazing. I cant believe that a flatbed can even come close.
If there ever comes a time that i need to make a huge print from them, i know it will be the best possible.
You would have to pry my drum scanners from my cold dead hands before id let them go.

But my love for them aside, they are not for everyone. It is without a doubt a significant investment not only in money and space but in time.
Sourcing the fluids is not always easy, mylar is becoming scarce, especially the rate i go through it
If you can afford it, you wont be sorry. Aztek is a great company to work with. They support what they manufacture and even stuff they didn't.

[sanking]

Onto the 7500, Ive been scanning my 12x20's on the 7500 and they are amazing. I cant believe that a flatbed can even come close.
If there ever comes a time that i need to make a huge print from them, i know it will be the best possible.
You would have to pry my drum scanners from my cold dead hands before id let them go.

One can scan a 12X20" negative at optical resolution of 3175 spi with an Eversmart Pro or Pro II, and 5200 spi with an an Eversmart Supreme or IQSmart3. Not that I could imagine ever needing that kind of resolution from a 12X20" negative, but can any of the drum scanners scan a negative that big at real resolution of over 3000 spi


Sandy

[Bob McCarthy]

Paul, scanning is a place with many opinions backed up with some facts.


The bottom line is:

What you want to do as far as output sizewise?

Are you shooting color or B&W??

What is your input?


For example, if your shooting 8x10 (as I am) in B&W (as I am) and outputting to a 24" wide printer (as I am)

Then you have a lot of choices

1)Consumer scanner of decent quality - the only solution is a Epson 4990/7X0. But the larger the print the less the appeal, poor scanner lens sharpness, lack of internal focus all conspire to be limiting to 2 to 3X enlargements

2)Pro quality flatbed scanners solve all the above and extend the enlargeability to 8 to 10X

This is my choice, great lenses, wet mounting sturdy design/

I use a Screen Cezanne, but Creo also applies as do a few others.

3) Drum scanner



My "opinion", the better capability of drum scanners is not exhibited when using B&W with large negatives.

I would argue there is no difference between pro flat beds and drum scanners unless your scanning small film and dense transparencies.

Invaluable with 35mm, better with MF if the print gets really big, I don't see much use for drum scanners when shooting large format.

They are slow, ponderous, and expensive to maintain pieces of equipment that I haven't found true for high end flatbeds.

My opinion, hope this helps,

bob

[dh003i]

Paul, scanning is a place with many opinions backed up with some facts.


The bottom line is:

What you want to do as far as output sizewise?

Are you shooting color or B&W??

What is your input?


For example, if your shooting 8x10 (as I am) in B&W (as I am) and outputting to a 24" wide printer (as I am)

Then you have a lot of choices

1)Consumer scanner of decent quality - the only solution is a Epson 4990/7X0. But the larger the print the less the appeal, poor scanner lens sharpness, lack of internal focus all conspire to be limiting to 2 to 3X enlargements

I have seen a lot of people say that about the Epson V700 & V750. Here is a scan of a 4x5 taken at f/50.8 (well, as close to that as I could get). A 2-3x enlargement would produce a print only 12x15 inches -- that is really not any better than what I get out of my Olympus E-3. I took a similar picture with my E-3 just before taking that picture (it is how I meter), and I just upscaled the E3 picture to match the diagonal of the 4x5. The results are something I'd rather not subject the world to. While I am impressed with how much detail the E-3 captured, when upscaled to the same size as my 3200 dpi scan of the 4x5, it just falls apart. It is of course incredibly noisy, so I didn't bother sharpening it (I really do think that sharpening is for the most part just a trade-off between noise and sharpness. You can get more crispness, but at the expense of more apparent noise; no matter what you do, you aren't getting more information out of your picture, just a matter of preference for how you want to display it). The E3 holds up best in the "rough" texture areas, like the wooden banister, where the noise isn't as big of an issue because there is less smoothness. Even looking at the upres'ed E3 image at 50%, it still doesn't have the same appeal as the LF image at 100% (thus, I conclude that a full-frame 35mm sensor-size digital camera with 2x the diagonal and 4x the area would fare only a little better in upscaling to compare to a 4x5).

The waterfall section on the 4x5 is displaying pretty clear reflections of tree background behind me when I took the photo. In my opinion, that is just stunning.

Anyways, the point of all this rambling is that I'd still gladly print out this same picture from my 10 megapixel Olympus E-3 at 12x9 or 13x10 (I have printed out pictures from it at those sizes). So I'd definitely be willing to print the images from my 4x5 scanned with the Epson V700 at much larger than 13x10. Maybe I'm just not nearly as picky as many here, but I think my 4x5's scanned at 3200 dpi would make good prints at even 40x50! Are they going to appear as bitingly sharp as prints at that size made from Lenny Eigar's drum scans -- absolutely not. But it will blow anything any digital camera under $20,000 could produce out of the water, imo. And people are printing from digital cameras at 20x16.

This reminds me, I have read online somewhere the V700 and V750 can resolve down to the level of film grain. I even saw an example from some old B&W film. I can't find that review. But it doesn't seem to hold up here. It looks like the dedicated scanner is resolving about an order of magnitude higher (I'd say 4x?). In any event, maybe the V700 or V750 resolve grain when there is larger film grain?

PS: I haven't messed around with adjusting the height yet nor with wet-mounting (I will never do wet-mounting for use with my scanner, too messy, residue, etc; for a transparency that I really think is great, I'll just send it to Lenny). I just flipped the transparency to be emulsion up vs. emulsion down (I found down was slightly better). I scan at 6400 dpi, then have the scanning software downsample it to 3200 dpi, use aliasing, and have the scanner do 3 passes for noise reduction, as well as the option for another pass to capture more shadow detail.

[Bob McCarthy]

Note, I am using 8x10 and there are no holders so scanning on the bed is required.

My 2 to 3 X is my experience in producing scans fully equivalent to the very best scanning methods, over that there are differences rangeing from neglible to obvious.

With 4x5 I would likely have offered 3 to 4X with the (slightly) better holders.

4x5 blows away consumer digital in my opinion.

bob

I have seen a lot of people say that about the Epson V700 & V750. Here is a scan of a 4x5 taken at f/50.8 (well, as close to that as I could get). A 2-3x enlargement would produce a print only 12x15 inches -- that is really not any better than what I get out of my Olympus E-3. I took a similar picture with my E-3 just before taking that picture (it is how I meter), and I just upscaled the E3 picture to match the diagonal of the 4x5. The results are something I'd rather not subject the world to. While I am impressed with how much detail the E-3 captured, when upscaled to the same size as my 3200 dpi scan of the 4x5, it just falls apart. It is of course incredibly noisy, so I didn't bother sharpening it (I really do think that sharpening is for the most part just a trade-off between noise and sharpness. You can get more crispness, but at the expense of more apparent noise; no matter what you do, you aren't getting more information out of your picture, just a matter of preference for how you want to display it). The E3 holds up best in the "rough" texture areas, like the wooden banister, where the noise isn't as big of an issue because there is less smoothness. Even looking at the upres'ed E3 image at 50%, it still doesn't have the same appeal as the LF image at 100% (thus, I conclude that a full-frame 35mm sensor-size digital camera with 2x the diagonal and 4x the area would fare only a little better in upscaling to compare to a 4x5).

The waterfall section on the 4x5 is displaying pretty clear reflections of tree background behind me when I took the photo. In my opinion, that is just stunning.

Anyways, the point of all this rambling is that I'd still gladly print out this same picture from my 10 megapixel Olympus E-3 at 12x9 or 13x10 (I have printed out pictures from it at those sizes). So I'd definitely be willing to print the images from my 4x5 scanned with the Epson V700 at much larger than 13x10. Maybe I'm just not nearly as picky as many here, but I think my 4x5's scanned at 3200 dpi would make good prints at even 40x50! Are they going to appear as bitingly sharp as prints at that size made from Lenny Eigar's drum scans -- absolutely not. But it will blow anything any digital camera under $20,000 could produce out of the water, imo. And people are printing from digital cameras at 20x16.

This reminds me, I have read online somewhere the V700 and V750 can resolve down to the level of film grain. I even saw an example from some old B&W film. I can't find that review. But it doesn't seem to hold up here. It looks like the dedicated scanner is resolving about an order of magnitude higher (I'd say 4x?). In any event, maybe the V700 or V750 resolve grain when there is larger film grain?

PS: I haven't messed around with adjusting the height yet nor with wet-mounting (I will never do wet-mounting for use with my scanner, too messy, residue, etc; for a transparency that I really think is great, I'll just send it to Lenny). I just flipped the transparency to be emulsion up vs. emulsion down (I found down was slightly better). I scan at 6400 dpi, then have the scanning software downsample it to 3200 dpi, use aliasing, and have the scanner do 3 passes for noise reduction, as well as the option for another pass to capture more shadow detail.

[dh003i]

Note, I am using 8x10 and there are no holders so scanning on the bed is required.

My 2 to 3 X is my experience in producing scans fully equivalent to the very best scanning methods, over that there are differences rangeing from neglible to obvious.

With 4x5 I would likely have offered 3 to 4X with the (slightly) better holders.

4x5 blows away consumer digital in my opinion.

bob

Why do you say that the 2-3x is the best you can get with 8x10, but 3-4x is the best with 4x5? Is it an issue with film flatness, newton ring, etc because the 8x10 is so large? (what about using glass plates to keep it flat)