Drum Scanners/High End Scanners: An intro

[Frank Petronio]

That'd be two Howtek 4500s.

[Bodyslam]

So should I just keep my eyes on the Howtek 4500...are there similar models that would be good?

The Howtek 4500 is a good choice for several reasons, but there are other good scanners too, and it might boil down to which one you find, with which accessories, near you and with someone who can demonstrate that it's working.

Your best bet for researching these would be to join the scan-hi-end Yahoo group. Once you've joined you can search the archives and find out what scanners other people are having success with. And get a sense of the software choices too.

Besides Aztek, which supports the Aztek and SOME models of Howtek, there are a couple of brands with good service available:

Linotype-Hedelberg-Hell: Karl Hudson, who's part time in Germany and part time in Atlanta, provides parts and exemplary service for these scanners.

Screen: the company, Dainippon Screen, is not making scanners any more, but they are very much in business, and there are service agencies all across the country servicing their current products. I'd bet that the veteran techs at any of them would be able to service a Screen scanner. But I wouldn't expect it to be cheap.

ICG: Theoretically still in business, in the UK, and with a US agent. I say theoretically just because I haven't seen much from them recently. If you find an ICG on offer, you could research it yourself.

[federico9001]

I use a Dainippon Screen 8060 Mark II, Dainippon's last flagship drum scanner:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/castors...in/photostream

[SergeyT]

A Jazz+ , like any other Eversmart, is a very good scanner. It can be driven from a powermac with anything from MAC OS 8.x to OS X (10.3).
It does a pretty good (if not great) job on positive film. With a good custom ICC profile the post processing usually requires just a dust cleanup and one (or two) light tone curves . Sometimes none.
The data path is 16-bit per RGB channel, so all the processing in the scanners software is done in 16 bit. The final results are saved in 8-bit per channel. This requires some precision with setting up scanners params at the scanning time. But the workflow is very straightforward. Negatives (mostly color) do require more tuning in the scanners software but also doable with good results.
Wet mounting is very easy as well if you ever want to do that.


SergeyT.

[federico9001]

Try a good drum scanner and you'll forget the Eversmarts soon....

[mcfactor]

Im sure I would, but will someone give me a drum scanner for free?