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

[Lenny Eiger]

I agree, it probably didn't help that the aperture was set too small, IMO.

I agree. I sent Leigh 3-4 sizes. Its a good comparison, to see the sharpness, to see 'smoothed' and to see blurred. The guy has to make a living, like everyone else... and he chose one.

Do you think the tangos D-max is really 3.0? I think that would be a claim that you would have trouble supporting.

I agree. I only quote this number as it is the one used to match the same data you quoted. Its a shame that there is no independent judge of these things. We all talk about the operator as a major function and it took me a couple of years (and a ton of scans) to figure out how to pull all the juice of of a neg - which includes the detail at the top and bottom. It presents a problem for testing.

Which board do you got? I think there were like 6 or 7 in the premier series and a few more in the DPL8000.

I got a brand new board a couple of years ago that was supposed to fix a particular issue, which it didn't fix. I'll probably get a maintenance soon. Only 4 more payments on the scanner lease!

As I said before there are many things that I like about the Aztek scanner. I could see one being used besides a tango or eversmart for when you want to do really light stuff (should be an advantage of DPL due to bypassing the log amps) or for films that have a fine enough grain for a 3 or 6 micron aperture capture. Although I would worry loosing that little bit of extra shadow detail that the Aztek cant seem to reach. I would say that the Aztek is a good drum scanner with some unique innovations, it just doesn't need to be hyped up with a bunch of marketing crap about apertures and race cars... Anyone with operational experience would see through for the reasons I already mentioned (not practical for most film types).

That's crazy. The Tango is only about half as sharp. The Aztek can easily reach as much shadow detail as any other PMT device. I just looked at my original and it has plenty of detail in the same area that is blocked up after Leigh made his changes. I've enclosed a quick crop. There's plenty of detail and no noise. If you had different results then you either didn't have a properly maintained scanner or you didn't know what you were doing.

You don't have to like what they charge for this scanner. I've looked at a lot of comparisons that people have brought to me. Some of them are pretty good, excellent even. But I've never seen anything that can make a better scan.

Lenny

[8x10 user]

Some of the scans that you have seen could be softened by the default aperture being so large. For a max resolution scan you need to use aperture -5 with your finer grained films. I recently had a late model Primescan installed in my location and I don't think there would be a sharpness difference with most films. Aztek tested it to 4000 DPI+ which is plenty for Large format. The actual resolution might be higher if "excellent" quality wasn't selected or if the aperture wasn't optimized when they did the tests. I went with the Primescan for the added productivity, versatility, and shadow performance.

[Lenny Eiger]

I went with the Primescan for the added productivity, versatility, and shadow performance.

You keep saying this over and over as if saying it again will make it true. However, it's not real. There is no added productivity, that's ludicrous. And there is less shadow performance, and less sharpness.

You may or may not have noticed that many of the the scanner operators here agree that the Tango is less than perfect. I don't like to get into these pissing contests because I don't like to tell someone that bought an expensive scanner that their machine is sub-standard.

Lenny

[8x10 user]

I don't know... I have had my own experiences and they seem to conflict with what you say. Regarding the productivity... My scanner can do 400 slides in a row so I'd say its more productive.

[Lenny Eiger]

I don't know... I have had my own experiences and they seem to conflict with what you say. Regarding the productivity... My scanner can do 400 slides in a row so I'd say its more productive.

you still have to mount them all, you still have to color correct them all, at least minimally, the scanner still has to scan them all. Keeping track of 400 slides, especially if you have to get them back to client in some order would be a harder task than doing a smaller number at a time. I'd say it would be less productive. And I don't think the quality would match, at least not from my experience...

If speed is what you are really after, you can get a Plateau, apparently a very fast flatbed (I've never used one).

Lenny

[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.

[dh003i]

They are all great scanners but to come into large format photography intending "to do the highest quality everything and everything" right off the bat will, in 99.99% of people, lead you to do mediocre stuff and give up out of frustration. You'll also waste a ton of money along the way and kick yourself in the seat of your pants a million times.

Start with a reasonable good quality, almost average camera system and get yourself an Epson 750 and a good computer system. Learn to master that, including Photoshop and inkjet printing. All of the skills you learn with the Epson will apply with more sophisticated scanners, and indeed, you will continue to use the lowly Epson even once you install the super-duper scanner. After you learn how to use the large format camera and are getting decent quality results, start by sending some film out for scans from various vendors who use these scanners and see what the subtle differences are. If you have the resources and see the value, then you can jump in with both eyes open.

Until you shoot for a while you may not be able to even "see" the differences.

And even with the "ultimate" scanner, the results will vary between vendors with the same gear. There are so many variables that operator skill, experience, luck and talent all matter more than the hardware.

In other words, there is no fast and easy turnkey solution. It's more about labor and education and time invested.

Please send me 10% of the $250,000 I just saved you!

Seriously, you do have to set a budget. Some people are buying two or three scanners and vintage computers in anticipation of needing parts and legacy operating systems. But you'll get to that point later....

Thanks

Frank is the man ;-). He helped me get started, and all of his points are great.

I'd say spend most of your money getting a good camera system. The one I have, which I selected with Frank's help, is great (4x5 Linhof Kardan "Supercolor" monorail). It is very well built, the bellows are great, and it is rock-solid. A couple quibbles are (1) sometimes movements can be a little bit difficult when using a 90mm, although I think that's going to be the case with all the new sturdy vinyl bellows; (2) The movements are manual, and the standards "snap" into place. The manual movement can make very precise tilts difficult. The rises and falls are also manual, which is a bit of a pain. The snapping into place is nice for returning the standards to being parallel, but it would be nice if it could be disengaged for when you want to do fine tilts close to the parallel position. Maybe I should attach long "handles" to various planes of the standards so that I can adjust more easily.

With that hindsight, I would suggest that if you get a monorail, you look for a LF camera with geared movements, if you can find a solid one in your price range. (that is, if movements are important to you).

[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)

[Bob McCarthy]

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)

The scanner is fixed focus and the plane of focus is not at the glass but above it, theoretically at the level of the film holders. Because of slight imprecision in the manufacturing of the scanner, the aftermarket holders with adjustable film plane height allows one to optimize each scanner.

For $500 all in, how good can the lens be?? as well as the stepper motor??

The advantage to a big negative/transparency, is the scanning standard can be lower and still get acceptable results

brute force at work.

bob