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Thread: High-end scanners

  1. #21

    High-end scanners

    "Henry, I plan to scan for reproduction up to 50x70 fine art (ie a 10x enlargement from 5x7). All prints won't be reproduced at that size, but at least some will, and if buying a high-end scanner I want to be able to "scan once for all". "

    You've probably already done this math but here it is again: For 10X enlargements, if your output device needs 200 pixels per inch for high quality results then you'll want about 400MB files from full frame 5X7. Thats about 2000 ppi hardware res needed from your scanner. I base these numbers on my experience with a Durst Lambda. When I make small prints I usually go to 400 ppi at desired output size but for larger sizes 200 gets the job done wonderfully as viewing distance covers any loss. (I only find this loss with the occaisional hard diagonal line in architecture, I'd say it would almost never be an issue with landscapes)

    If the machine to do this is too expensive, you might try a scheme that covers 80 percent of your needs, a scanner that will give the quality needed for prints half that size, perhaps 25X35. I say "80 percent of your needs" as I suspect that most of your sales will be for prints this size and smaller, but I'm just guessing at that. I suggest this only because the cost and operation of the perfect machine may be quite high. Of course its your money so spend it as you please. I've always considered digital equipment purchases as necesary business expenses and simply buying the "absolute best" has never been an option for me, although I have dropped a bundle on expensive digital gear lots of which is now obsolete or broken and unrepairable. This stuff is NOT like buying a LF camera that might last two lifetimes.

    I'd ask some scanner owners to provide samples of your film scanned on the machines you are considering, it'll be worth the small cost to prove that a given machine will do what you want. Here in Nashville, Chromatics http://www.chromatics.com has a 8000 ppi drum as part of their digital services. I'd use scans from that machine as an ultimate reference. (or similar machines in your area)

    Jeff Moore, I'm in the Nashville area. Have we ever met?

  2. #22

    High-end scanners

    This will be a long post so I'll apologise in advance.

    If you want the finest quality scan available as defined by shadow detail, resolution,lack of flare, large dmax and color gamut with E-6 film then a drum scanner should be your choice. All flat bed/CCD scanners suffer from one or more and sometimes all of these defects but they are the scanner of choice if quantity rather than best possible quality is the issue. The wet mounting available to a drum scanner is a virtue not a fault for image quality as it hides much dust and scratches. Although some have wet mounted with flatbeds, it's a kludge at best and not possible on an Imacon. Drum scanners such as Howtek have a true dmax of 3.9 whereas flatbeds can do about 3.1 best case and most are under 2.8, definitely NOT the 4+ advertised by their liars department. I would suggest a used Howtek 4500 for your purpose, a 4000 is less expensive and has the same specs except it is older and has a somewhat smaller drum making it much more difficult to scan 8x10 should you ever want to. The Howtek will scan 35mm-4x5 at up to 4000dpi true optical res (which will resolve down to the film grain) @ 12 bits of depth internally and save as an 8-bit or a 16-bit file. A 4x5 at 4000 dpi and 16-bit depth is about a 1.8 gig file (extremely difficult to process with Photoshop), therefore most people I know scan a 4x5 at either 2000dpi x 16 bit or 4000 dpi x 8 bit. A 5x7 or a 617 can be scanned at up true optical scan of 2000dpi x 16 bit or 4000dpi x 8 bit due to file size limitations. I would not consider a Howtek to be a low end scanner as I have seen very fine scans with it. The scanner seems to be available on the used market although it's easy to get bit by someone if you can't test it (think used car sales). I certainly learned the hard way when I acquired mine from a used pre-press equipment dealer. I use Trident 4.0 software from Colorbyte (same outfit as Imageprint)on a Mac G4. It is extremely capable and fairly easy to learn even though I have always been a PC guy. I initially had the Trident PC version, it flat out would not work so Trident exchanged it with the Mac version. A PC software is available from Aztek as Digital Photolab but they wouln't let me demo it and it also costs quite a lot more, I also demoed Silverfast but I received poor scans from it, it is probably better suited to flatbeds. If you want to know why I had trouble with "a no demo policy" please reread the above about a pig in a poke the first time. The best resource for drum scanning is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ScanHi-End. I learned how to mount as well as scan and operate the Howtek from this group. They are extremely knowlegeable and will gladly share their time. Some members of the group have a list of prepress suppliers to buy from but as always be careful. I suggest you read and ask questions of the group first so as to be more knowlegeable when purchasing, obviously this advice pertains to buying a high end flatbed also. Scanner comparisons can be made at www.scannerforum.com, I believe the info is accurate but as it is compiled by a scanner provider, Aztek, you need to keep an open mind. Aztek is a source of new and used scanners as well as supplies, they will be on the high end but you will get a good scanner that has been completely overhauled before delivery. I sent my scanner to them for a refurb as it did not work right when I received it, they turned a Yugo into a Ferrari . You must also budget for a mounting station with a drum scanner as it is quite difficult, I'd say impossible without it. All this of course is only my opinion after not being satisfied with Epson 3200 flatbed scans, or Imacon scans that were lacking shadow detail, flared on high contrast images, noisy and were just terrible to try to clean up in Photoshop. Most CCD scanners also only focus well in the center of the bed, but a few very high end CCDs try to emulate a drum by shifting the scan somewhat in a horizontal direction and actively cooling the CCD to reduce noise(not an Imacon).

  3. #23

    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Posts
    12

    High-end scanners

    So my office happens to be in the room where the two Crosfield scanners in Denver live. Come on guys come get them! Right now I have G5's stacked up on them, and I need more room for my Xserves and RAID racks! BTW thanks for everyone that inquired about them. In the end though, nobody wanted them.

    Actually I don't blame any of you for not taking them as the parts and maint issues could be a problem. When we canceled our yearly 24/7 contract with the guys who worked on them, they went out of business about a week later. It looks like these things are headed for the company's "Indiana Jones warehouse" where nothing is ever found again.

  4. #24

    Join Date
    May 2002
    Posts
    98

    High-end scanners

    Just to pass this on for those interested: There is currently a refurbished Howtek 4500 up for auction on Ebay.

  5. #25

    Join Date
    Apr 2001
    Location
    Culver City
    Posts
    169

    High-end scanners

    My math:

    Assuming Q-T is scanning for output on a Lightjet at 304ppi (res12) for 50x70inch prints.

    The scanner must scan at 3040ppi to get an exact pixel-to-pixel match for the 50x70 print. Any less resolution requires up-scaling the data. For example, if Lightjet res8 is acceptable (ie. 200ppi), then 2000ppi scanning will work, and files will be 2/3 of the size.

    A 5x7inch film original at 3040ppi and three 8-bit channels gives a file size of 970,368,000 bytes, or approximately .9GB. This is a seriously large file! Photoshop (even CS/8.0) is currently limited to use approx 1.8GB of RAM, even if your machine supports more (like a Mac G5/8GB).

    Going for a lower resolution means that, at print time for the largest prints, the file must be up-scaled. My understanding is that the Lightjet software extrapolates res8 files to res12. This could be done instead in Photoshop, usings its builtin extrapolator (bicubic), or one of the third-party plugins, such as Genuine Fractals, if they yield better results.

    Finally: The Imacon scanners don't quite handle 5x7inch (12.7 x 17.8cm) transparencies. The Precision III is 12x17cm, and the 646/848 are 12x25cm. A small amount of image cropping is necessary to use the Imacon.

  6. #26
    Andy Eads
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    Pasco, Washington - the dry side of the state
    Posts
    246

    High-end scanners

    I owned and operated a Leaf 45 for a number of years. I could coax a very nice scan from it most of the time. However, I saw the Aztec scanner and was planning to buy one before I closed my shop. The advantages I saw from the Aztec were many. First, very fast workflow. The time required to mount three strips of 120 negs to the drum was minimal. The scanner is fast. The scanner can scan each of the negs to a separate file, at different resolutions. So one moount operation could yield many scans. Second, the Aztec drum scanner has selectable apertures. The maker has compiled a table of apertures for hundreds of films both past and present. The advantage is that artifacts due to grain sturcture are dramatically reduced with the end result being the highest possible information capture and dramatically reduced grain structure. Third, the drum scanner permits genuine optical unsharp masking as the scan is being made. No flatbed will ever be able to do that. A proper financial analysis would be in order to justify the machine in a given shop but technologically a good drum scanner and the appropriate software is still the superior means to digitize film.

  7. #27

    Join Date
    Dec 1999
    Location
    Forest Grove, Ore.
    Posts
    4,675

    High-end scanners

    Some additional info, although it may be a little dated:

    http://largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/thread.php?topic=397616

  8. #28

    High-end scanners

    I have used a drum scanner (ScanMate) for some years, then the drum motor failed and the price for the refurbishing of the scanner was way over what I could spend on such an aging device, so I found a good deal on a near new Scitex Eversmart, same as the Eversmart Pro, same software but without the multitasking possibility (scan while you edit), and slower. And after using it for 3 years, I still think that it is the best I could get for my money. The output of this model is slow and a A 200 MB scan at 2540 dpi with some edit and using calibration takes 35 minutes, on Apple G4 dual 500 (scanner speed is processor and scratch disk dependent). That's the trade off for the much lower price than the Pro version. But if you do not make your living from the number of scans you can make in a day, this is the perfect scanner. It yelds a fantastic image quality once it is calibrated (preferably with a HCT target), better than the drum scanner I had and with more shadows detail. Very sharp without software sharpening and the D-Max reaches 4.0. This is not the Jazz modell, which is I think a Microtek scanner. The good thing with this scanner is that you can fill the large A3 size, perfectly anti-newton glas with slides, and let it work while you do some other occupation or while you work in Photoshop on the completed scans (it works in the background). It is a solid scanner. Mine has never needed any servicing in the 3 years I have used it. Of course I doesn't work every day. The scanner is a bit noisy at times and is SCSI only. There are some on the used market, for service bureaus who had one quickly realized that it was too slow and changed for the faster models who cost a lot more. But they are perfect for the photographer who wants the highest possible quality without the prohibitive cost of the high production models. I have rarely needed a wet scan, but it is possible to oil mount with a special tray. It is also possible to wet scan by sandwiching the slide between the glas and a transparent sheet, using a special fluid. But I have never needed to mess up with that.

  9. #29

    High-end scanners

    For my commercial photography business I want to buy a drum scanner (I am not sure which yet) because I believe there are quite a few advantages that can be quickly summarized:

    1) the images are sharper, PMTs have better focus
    2) the images have more range (especially shadow detail)
    3) three is less noise, ccds create noise in shadows
    4) they are faster. contrary to popular belief you will save time by not having to remove dust and you can lay up many transparencies at once and leave it all night long to scan everything for you (this is huge for me and not mentioned so far) .
    5) there is generally better resolution (not always)
    6) film size; one can generally scan much larger film. great for my large panos (12" long transparencies)

    negatives:
    1) price to maintain?
    2) size
    3) electricity use?
    4) maintenance availability?

    I think the Imacons are a good choice for somebody who shoots smaller fine art projects and who has plenty of extra time. I have had 120 film scanned on both Imacon and Heidelberg Tango and I believe the Tango is superior but the Imacon is still very close. But I think the batch scanning is a BIG deal. For me the labor cost of operating our CCD film scanner is expensive and that must be taken into account. Cleanging up files and loading film one by one is so slow.

    But here is the problem: which drum scanner should I get? Here are the choices: Tango (18k), Howtek (5k), Fuji Celsis (3k) Crosfield(bought by fuji) (?), Screen(2k-20k?) Which ones can you get parts for? Which ones break a lot? Which ones are easy to maintain and which ones are expensive? I can't seem to get clear answers. I am pretty sure I want a Tango but I don't how much they cost to be maintained (I am in SF and don't even know who to call, the manufacturers support can be bad, I couldn't even find anyone at fuei who knew they made drum scanners). If anyone has input for these questions I would be very thankful.

  10. #30

    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Austria
    Posts
    110

    High-end scanners

    you should consider also scanmate scanners. they still offer service and parts. the software colorquartet is updated till today, cause they use the same for their actual flatbed scanners. and the softare is great i.m.o. the scanner also. they are very fast- in comparation to howtek 4500 or screen 1030. very little noise, very good scanquality. the scanmate 11.000 is regarded as one of the best drumscanners at all. and there is very little difference except the lower resolution to the 4000 (dpi) and 5000 (dpi) models. outfit, handling and nearly all the electronic are the same. i use this scanner sinca app. 1 year and i am more than content.

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