The book appears to only cover lower end scanners. Is this correct?Originally Posted by GuidoH
Lenny
The book appears to only cover lower end scanners. Is this correct?
Lenny
EigerStudios
Museum Quality Drum Scanning and Printing
The Imacon is going to be better then a Nikon for sure. It uses a higher quality CCD sensor and lens. The downside is that it is optimized for 35mm and 120, with larger formats the resolution per inch goes down substantially. For 4x5's and larger you would be better off with a high end XY scanner such as the Eversmart or a drum scanner.
I've used the Nikon and use the 848 now. To me the 848 is noticeably better for 120. I also have an Epson 4970 at home and it's OK for proofing, but that's about it (and I've optimized the holder height). If I recall correctly, a couple of used 848s went for around $3k this summer on ebay. I tried to look them up but they've fallen off the completed listing search. Maybe someone remembers? Try to find out when the last calibration was done -- they do get out of alignment (and dusty). Good luck.
Yes and no, sorry.The book appears to only cover lower end scanners. Is this correct?
Yes, because some photos inside the book compare scans from
Epson's V7xx family to scans of Nikon's coolscan family (last series).
And no, because there's only one subchapter which deals with direct comparison
of alternatives to filmscanners. All the other chapters deal more with scanning
technique itself, e.g. what to think/decide about before scanning, how to
handle the slides/negatives, color management, correction methods (ICE, SRD,
GEM, GANE, ...). This is followed by instructions how to configure/handle
SilverFast, VueScan and Nikon Scan. Then a "scan workflow" chapter follows
up. The book will end with chapters about corrections in PS and with PS
plug-ins and a word about how to save and admin (image)files.
If I remember right, your opinion was scanning is like a science and
there wouldn't be a good book which deals with this subject. This brought me to
my idea to suggest Sascha Steinhoff's book.
Years ago I've had no experience about scanning. After buying my 4990 it takes
month for reading forums, writing articles, compare the answers and to come to
my on scanning workflow. Result: I spent a lot of time and work to get reasonably
useable scans. But, for a long time I had no idea what's the reason and where to
search for errors.
Then I read this book. Now I've something like a compendium of the "how to" for
scanning and I'm well satisfied. I could isolate my errors and miss-thinking.
Before I read this book it was more like poking in the fog and wondering about
the results. With this book I come more and more to an aim oriented doing.
Furthermore I personally like written books about a special thread more then
hundreds of single sheet and forum printouts. But, as said above this is my
personal fondness.
An other point I'd like to write about is "good". For my opinion "good" is
always relative and depends mostly on your personal knowledge and taste. Let's
have an example: If your are an outperformed high-level drum scan operator
you'll probably find Sascha's book less useful. On the other hand, if are a
novice and just beginning with scanning or thinking about doing it by yourself
or give your material away to a service provider this book may help you to come
to a decision and relatively complete scanning workflow. O.k., the manually
doing must be learned by you of course.
Sadly, I only know the German version of this book although myself prefer
English books much more when they deal with computer related stuff. Mostly the
are closer to the market and more up-to-date. Translation cost time and money.
And time between the new version decreases more and more especially in computer
environment (hw, sw). And for my opinion mostly the English original
expressions are much more clear and simple as their German pendants. For
example look at big blues translation of (computer) mouse to German in the
early 80s of last century: "Rollkugelsteuerung" (which freely translated back
to English means: "controlling a rolling ball". Does this sound easier?
Anyway, greetinx from Upper Bavaria
Guido
www.pix-bavaria.com
I've owned or currently own the Agfa Duoscan 2500, the Microtek 9800xl, the Imacon 646, the Nikon coolscan 9000 and now the Iqsmart3. I have also gotten hundreds of drum scans (scitex, crosfield, shima seiki, tango, etc) going back as far as the early 1990's.
From that firsthand experience I can state that while the consumer flatbeds are adequate for low magnification scans of LF films they are not in the same league as the professional scanners, and when using roll film are not in the same league as the Nikon coolscan, Imacons and especially the professional models.
I tested the Imacon 646 against the Nikon coolscan and there was a huge qualitative advantage with the Imacon. Mind you I had reliability issues with the Imacon and ended up trading up to a IQSmart3 which was vastly better than both of them. The best quality scan will be a drum scan followed closely by the better models of the pro flatbeds, Kodak Creo eversmart supreme and IQ 3.
The advantages of the drum scanner are a slightly better dynamic range, but you would need an extremely bad transparency exposure to see this benefit, and the ability to use different apertures while scanning to decrease the appearance of grain, probably the biggest advantage to me. You can also scan at higher res with a drum scanner, i.e my IQ3 only goes to 5500 ppi optical, but all that extra resolution is moot anyway because film seems to top out at 3000 to 4000 ppi resolution anyway.
But the notion that a consumer flatbed is equal to a pro flatbed or a drum scanner is just silly. Anyone with experience with both technologies knows the differences are huge. However whether the photographer can appreciate the differences is another story. Some people are just satisfied with a lower image quality level. And if you find that the quality of a consumer flatbed is fine with you, then by all means save some money and go that route.
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