ICQ drum scanners

[Adam Kavalunas]

Hello all,

I'm getting ready to have some 4x5 color slides drum scanned this winter. I'm most likely going to use 1 of a couple options i have, both of which use the Howtek 4500. I was looking through the scanner comparison today and from what i saw, it looks like the ICG 350 was clearly the best, in terms of capturing the sharpest detail. Is this the general consensus? Or was a better sharpening technique used on the ICG scanner? I realize that a drum scan is a drum scan, and most of the good machines produce excellent scans, but is the ICG really that much better, and if so, who uses one?

Thanks,

Adam

[Ted Harris]

You will have as many arguments about which high end scanner is better as you wil about which developer to use or which lens is better. The ICG you mentionhas a theoretical capability that surpasses that of the Howtek 4500. However, most ICG scans I ahve seen have been overly contrasty. Bottom line is that it depends on the skill of the operator as much as the capability of the scanner.

I assume you are looking at results from the scanner comparison .... that being the case I am not sure that I even agree that the ICG is the best. You might also want to look at the comparison done by Seybold several years ago where the Cezanne came out on top of both of those you mentioned.

[Bruce Watson]

I was looking through the scanner comparison today and from what i saw, it looks like the ICG 350 was clearly the best, in terms of capturing the sharpest detail. Is this the general consensus?

Consensus? You must be joking ;) This is one topic that will never generate much in the way of consensus. Image quality and thus scan quality is way too subjective for that.

IMHO, the quality spread between drum scanners is relatively small (if you rate scan quality from 1-100, drum scans make up the range from 95-100, again, IMHO). This difference is made up about equally between hardware and software. That said, you'll probably find greater differences in scans due to the operator than you will from the hardware/software.

On the hardware front, the apparent sharpness of a drum scan is related to the aperture used in making the scan. If you are using a large degree of enlargement of a medium grained film, you'll want an aperture in the 6 micron range for maximum sharpness. If you are using an extreme degree of enlargement with a slow and small grained film (typically 35mm) you could find useful an aperture in the 3 micron range. For 5x4 film, a 3 micron aperture would seem to be overkill and seldom if ever used.

In summary, I suspect that most quality differences in drum scans come from operators and not from specific hardware or software differences.

[bdeacon]

There is much less variation in the performance of different drum scanners than with other types of scanners. In the collaborative scanner comparison the ICG certainly does look sharp, but it does seem overly contrasty as Ted mentioned. Given that all drum scanners are capable of producing sharp scans, dynamic range may be a useful means of distinguishing between them. To my eyes, the ICG fares somewhat less well other drum scanners in this regard, particularly the Optronics. I suspect that after judicious use of unsharp masking the differences in sharpness in a finished print of an image scanned with different drum scanners would be difficult to distinguish, whereas differences in dynamic range may be more readily apparent for some images. However, as Bruce said given the capabilities of these machines the operator is probably the most important factor.

[Ted Harris]

Bottom line is that if you area having chromes or negatives scanned by someone else you should know their capability/the capability of their lab. Most will give you an intro scan at an intro price so you can see if you are satisfied with the quality of their work.

[Gordon Moat]

Quite likely the skill of the operator can be a greater variable than which scanner is used. However, a properly operated ICG should be capable of yielding quite good results.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio (http://www.allgstudio.com)