Questions about Howtek & drum scanning in general

[Brent Long]

I see. Thanks for the reply.

And please understand that I'm the newbie around here, so I am as of yet unaware of you and your work, along with many others. Although, your images speak very well for you, Tyler.

[RMiksell]

so four sheets of 4x5 at 4000 dpi is about 1.5 hours scan time, plus mounting & clean-up?

The 1.5gb limit might be due to a 32 bit os. I managed to get my adaptec 2906 card working with 64 bit windows so I wonder if silverfast & the howtek will work with 64 bit windows so long as the scsi card is working?

I might take a "baby step" and acquire an older Coolscan 8000 and see what the increased dpi brings to the table compared to my V700. I've printed some crops (8x10 crops from 20x24 prints) from 4x5 scanned with my V700 then compared them to enlargements in the darkroom. The printer was more at fault than the scanner with the 4x5 so I think I'd hit that roadblock before seeing a benefit from increased scan dpi. The higher dpi would be great for smaller formats though which I do shoot, along side 4x5.

It seems as though I have to prepare for the future because I came into the analog process first; film stocks are being discontinued and the availability of chemicals have changed in only the last 10 months (I'm in Canada). Thankfully the analog process didn't cost much so I'll continue using it until I can't.

(yes, film will be around for a while but the selection of contrast/saturation for colour neg is already dwindling and the digital workflow is kind of a "way around" that problem)

The Howtek 4500 will not work with 64 bit versions of Windows, at least not with DPL (Found out from experience, now I have to dual boot Windows 7 32 bit and Windows 7 64 bit). There's also no download for Windows 7 64 bit with Silverfast. I think it's a driver issue, DPL professional communicates directly with the scanner through an ASPI layer. Good luck with your scanning.

[onnect17]

The D4000 is heavy (135 lbs, 60 Kg, more or less). I built a custom table for it but a good one should be able to handle it.