Hi Guys,
I own a small lab in Portland Maine called Northeast Photographic. I opened up last summer and have the same basic develop to scan business model that Indie Film Lab, The FIND Lab, Richard Photo Lab etc have. Most of my clients film is scanned on a Fuji Frontier SP-3000.
Increasingly I've been getting fine-art photographers interested in exhibition quality scans of small batches of film. I've been working with Nikon Coolscan and Epson scanners for this purpose thus far, even wet mounting in some cases. I got a wet mounting kit for the Nikon from Scan Science and a Better Scanning holder for the Epson. Needless to say I'm a wet-scan convert after seeing the results.
Anyway, I want to provide the best quality for my clients that I can at a reasonable price. I was very close to buying an Imacon 848, but the fact that it can't do 8x10 and is ill suited for wet scanning (and a bad tax return hahaha) held me back. Some time later this year I believe the lab should acquire a drum scanner. I want to be able to tell my clients that I am actually providing a file that is the best file possible. Plus I don't want to have to tell people that I don't have a real drum scanner, when I know that's what they're seeking.
I have experience with the Fuji Frontier, Epson, Nikon, Imacon scanners, and wet mounting as I've mentioned above. I have NO experience with drum scanners. I've done some forum reading for a while and it's hard to get a clear picture on various models, their availability, the differences between them to the user...
I have questions like, how different is a Heidelberg Tango from a Howtek 4500? How do these compare to a IQSmart3? How long does it take to scan an image? How reliable are these units? What is the most serviceable drum scanner available? Where is the best place to actually source a working on? Can I run them on a current mac if I'm running a Windows emulator? I'd like to scan up to 11x14 if possible.
Can anybody help me out? I'm sorry but when all the answers are distributed among hundreds of forum posts it's hard to get a clear idea...
Thanks in advance!
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