What are the really professional level flatbed scanners currently available? Creo/KodaK?
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What are the really professional level flatbed scanners currently available? Creo/KodaK?
Ideally you should talk to Ted Harris but I can mention a few. There's the Creo/Kodak, I just bought the Creo IQsmart3 and so far find it far more of a professional tool than the Imacon it replaced. It's harder to get up and running because the software and scanner do so much more. Fuji makes a professional level flatbed, Screen has one, Azek has one.
The differences between these and Microteks,Epsons, etc is huge, there's really no comparison. My Creo IQ3 does 5500 optical over the entire 13x18" bed with great shadow detail and very low noise and I have yet to try wet mounting which will yield even better results. These really are professional, pre-press tools.
I ask because I had Ted do some scans for me and they were impressive. He is out of town till tomorrow I think.
Brian, wonderful work on your web site. I need to see your prints.
Question for everyone: Why choose a very expensive flatbed over a drum scanner? I understand the need for prepress - a flatbed is much more productive. But I'm curious about the reasons a fine art photographer chooses a flatbed.
I'm a drum scanner guy, but here's a few links to some of the current professional flat bed scanners:
Eversmart Supreme II
iqSmart 3
Screen Cezanne Elite
Fujifilm Lanovia Quattro
Aztek Plateau
Heidelberg seems to be completely out of the scanner game, I don't see their Linoscan flatbeds listed on their website any longer.
There are undoubtedly more that I've forgotten, Ted will know. And the used market has a number of good scanners that are no longer in production.
Expect to pay considerably more for a used professional flatbed then you would for a used drum scanner. Ted can give more details. Really, it depends on your application. A pro flatbed is often the correct answer, else there wouldn't be so many of them out there. ;)
Don, thanks for the kind words.
The flat bed has an advantage in that it also allows one to do very high quailty scans of mounted prints, and my prints often have a high amount of optical manipulation, that is more than just burning and dodging, so I need to scan the prints themselves.
One other reason I chose a new, still in production flatbed versus a used circa 1995 drum scanner is long term parts availability and repairs. Kodak/Creo is still making the scanner I bought and by law they have to have parts and service for it for at least 7 years from the end of production and Kodak is a rather substantial company. There is a fair chance that parts for a drum scanner built in 1995 might not be available in 2014. Also service for the Creo is in house, that is they come to your place, you're not shipping some 100 pound monster somewhere.
Also my creo uses firewire, not scsi which is barely supported on Macintosh, my preferred platform. While the drum scanner might have a very slight edge, and I mean very slight, in image quality, I don't think that difference would be visible except under the condition of having to scan a truly awful negative or one that requires extremes of density range. My negs are all within a very useable range.
So that was my rationale for the Creo IQsmart 3 over a drum scanner like a used Howtek.
I'm back but only sort of as I am working intensively with a client here, at my studio, through tomorrow afternoon.
BTW, we just did some prints with the new Harman matte paper and they are impressive.
To respond to Bruce, for our purposes the Supreme II is total overkill and very overpriced (not sure Kodak has sold any in the past months and they are reevaluating its pricing). The IQSmart 2 and 3 are the scanners I most frequently recommend to North American Photographers. I run a 3 along with a Cezanne and the differences between the 2 and the 3, while real, are rather small and inconsequential for many. The Cezanne Elite is much more expensive (but can sometimes be purchased at a hefty discount but that still keeps it well over 20K new). I don't recommend the Fuji Lanovia on this side of the ocean as finding one and getting ervice is difficult to impossible, its a different story in Europe. I don't know enough about the Plateau to say much but I have long suspected it was a rebadged machine made by someone else (possibly a Microtek 4000xy?). The Microtek 4000xy is still sold but only in Asia and a few European markets. They made an agreement with Creo when they sold them rebadged 4000's for Creo to sell as the "Jazz" several years ago. The agreement seems to be a lifetime agreement that prohibits Microtek from ever selling the 4000 in this market, even though the Jazz is long gone. Finally, Purup-Eskofot is still in business and, I think, still making scanners.
I have made direct comparisons between scans done on a Colorgetter Falcon (drum), a Howtek 8000 (drum), an older Screen drum (forget the model) and the iQSmart3 and Screen Cezanne that I am running and, in all cases I either see no difference in the final results from the scans I did myself are better .... not necessarily anything definitive in those findings though since any of the differences ere marginal and I know what I want from my own images.
Time, as QT mentioned is very important. Example, I set up a batch scan of 6 4x5 negatives this afternoon in less than 30 minutes total (included mounting the film and evaluating each prescan, making necessary corrections, naming the files and starting the scans). The six scans, each at ~ 2500 spi to produce ~ a 600mb file, took a total of well under an hour to run .... I can't tell you the exact time because I ran my client back to his hotel while the scans were running. Earlier in the day we printed a gorgeous 18x40 print from a scan from the Cezanne.
Brian and Kirk, thanks for the kind words. It was a combination of performance results, size of the bed and time that convinced me to go the high-end flatbed route over two years ago (then I searched for six months to find the right machine).
One other important point. If you are buying one of these machines used you have two options (equipment brokers such as Bob Weber and Gensis, etc.) and individual sales, often on eBay. You can get lucky on eBay and you can end up spending several times the original purchase price to get your machine operating. Your best guide to start your research is to read "Pixel Perfect" a Seybold article that was published several years ago. It is no longer available on the web and it is too large to post here so email me if you want a copy (email not pm please). I'm also happy to answer any other more specific questions.
I'd like to have something like the iQsmart for the quality -and- throughput. Being able to lay down a bunch of negatives at once and then scanning my picks without attending the machine would be great. A whole job scanned with maybe two machine loads at very high quality would be wonderful.
For me its either a great flat bed scanner or maybe one of the new Canon 1DsMkIII bodies. I know that all digital workflow is a faster better commercial solution but 4x5 film and great LF lenses make a mighty powerful tool. The ability to use all my film gear and get great scans is very appealing. More so than having all my eggs in one Canon basket. But I've not seen files from the new body and might change my mind on this. But then its the slightly sucky Canon lenses.
I'm thinking a great scanner (iQSmart2) or a great digital body cost near the same. After that its not so clear - are the more choices in film gear and great lenses that I own better than another Canon body and one way of working? A way that doesn't really cover my bases without workarounds. Where's the 14mm shift lens or the 20mm shift lens? I'm at a fork in the road, I think.
Anyway I'd love to hear what everyone thinks about their high end flatbeds.
Henry, the road still has a way to go before the available DSLR's and real time backs equal or better top flight scans from4x5 and larger film. They are getting closer and closer but aren't quite there yet.
Ted, if you don't mind it would be helpful for many of us to get some ballpark prices for these, I've often wondered, and my hunch is that a new Imacon and a slightly used high end flatbed might not be that far apart.
Frank, actually a new Imacon and a new High End flatbed are the same!
Imacon X1 and IQSmart 2 both = ~ 12,000 and you can readily get a factory refurb IQ Smart for 9-10K
Imacon X5 and IQ Smart 3 both = ~ 20,000 and similar refurbs available for the 3.
BTW, Jim at Midwest is now a Creo dealer!
You get what you pay for - to get high resolution precision motors must be used, high end optics, etc. I have a refurbed Cezanne Elite coming on Monday. Can't wait to take it through its paces. $6k. The price of a refurbed Imacon 848 or better is well beyond that. Plus I can get 4-5k dpi of quality over the entire bed. Bought an nice Apple G4 for $200.
There will be some learning curve no doubt but I have a lot of film to practice with.
Joe
Don't mean to hijack this thread but...What type of computer power is necessary for high end flat bed scanners (in terms of RAM, hard drive etc) for 4x5 scans? Are these scanners only Mac compatible or are there PC options (for around 4K)?
Ted,
How are 4x5 negatives mounted for scanning? Do they sit directly on the glass? What are the provisions for preventing Newton's rings, which make me crazy with Tmax film?
Joe, you will find that very little learning is required to start to get super scans using yoiur new scanner and the Color Genius software (make sure you upgrade to the latest version and that you have the correct SCSI card ... btw if you want to run on OSX 10.4 instead of 10.3.x you will need a different SCSI card). The learning curve to master the software is much much steeper :).
Sung, a few are PC compatible but most that I know of are Mac specific but, since many of them run just fine on older Mac's you can get the needed computer for little money. As for computing power, they don't take that much. I have actually run the IQSmart 3 on a Mac Mini (although that is way less than recommended and the hookup almost gave the ?tech rep a heart attack) but wouldn't recommend it. Right now I am running both the Cezanne and the IQSmart 3 on a Mac dual processor G5 with 5 GB Ram. The machine has two hard drives, both bootable, and the Cezanne boots off of OSX10.3.x on one drive and the IQ Smart 3 boots off of OSX 10.4 on the other drive. The Cezanne is hooked up via a SCSI connection and the IQ Smart via Firewire. Both of these machines like to know that they are the only thing running so it is imperative that only ONE is actually turned on at a time. The G5 is networked with 4 other machines in the studio. One of the other machines, the one I am sitting at now, also has the Cezanne's client software installed as the Cezanne can operate in a client/host mode as wsell as on a single machine. So, for ~ 4K you may well be able to get a machine and a 'puter to run it.
Ed, of course the answer "it all depends" is the mpost important one. It depends on how beatup the negative is and how concerned I am with reducing/eliminating grain. Brian, who posted above, for example, prints very large and needs to pay a lot of attention to grain and, thus, he always wet mounts. To answer your specific questions, the negatives sit directly on the glass but both scanners use specially formulated glass with an anti newton ring coating (the IQ Smart 2 uses a different glass than the 3 but also Anti Newton Ring formulated). I have not yet had a single newton ring problem with either scanner. When not wet mounting I:
1) tape large negatives to the glass using painter's tape that is formulated for delicate surfaces.
2) for up to 5x7 on the Cezanne just carefully position the negative and then carefully place the cover glass over it (or them if more than one). This is a glass that is supplied with the scanner that runs the width of the bed and fits in grooves on the sides, also anti newton ring treated.
3) for up to 4x5 on the IQSmart 3, i fI have more than one or two to do, I tape the negatives to the back of the supplied mask that can handle six 4x5's, etc. The scanner came with a bunch of blank masks to cut other sizes and I have cut masks for 8x10, 6x12 and 6x17. Larger than 8x10 it is back to the tape. The Masks fit precisely on registration pins on the scanner.
When wet mounting I use the lightest liquid that I think will do the job so as to minimize the cleanup process. I seldom use Kami fluid. Prazio products are my choice and they vary from the anti-newton ring spay (the lightest) through anti newton ring oil to montage gel (the heaviest). I don't use a mounting station for either scanner, don't find them necesssary in my particular workspace. The scanning surfaces are easily removable and meant to be removed (they have handles at each end). Given that, I simply take the glass off of the scanner and carry it over to a worktable where I have a large sheet of mylar spread to insure the bottom of the glass stays clean and then proceed to mount and then carry the glass back to the scanner and go to work. Brian, I believe is now using the Creo mounting station with his scanner so perhap he can chime in with more details on that.
Ted, when do you choose wet mounting vs. tape mounting?
Hi Ted,
It can't be any worse then learning CS2, in fact Color Genius appears to have a nice palette of operating control. Getting the right SCSI card will be an issue for sure. I have two right now and neither as I find out are recommended for this scanner software. What SCSI card do you use? I was under the assumption that Color Genius had to run on OS 9.2.2. I need to get an accurate monitor too. No doubt there will be some investment in understanding this scanner. I have some photographs to share in a day or two.
Joe
P.S. How do I scan 8x10 or 4x10's on the Cezanne?
Joe,
Color Genius does have a ncie palette of controls but it will take a long time to master them all ... not that you will necessarily need to do so. Best bet for the SCSI card is to call Kirsten at Screen in Chicago and she can tell you which card will work with your machine. I really don't want to crawl under the table and drag out the machine and then disconnect the scanner and take out the card to check it. My recollection is that it is an Adaptec 2309N but not sure. There are 2 different cards that she recommends, I do remember that. One will allow you to run on operating systems up to OSX 10.3.x and the other on OSX 10.4.x. The Adaptec card that works through 10.3.x is now discontinued I believe but you can probably get one on eBay. ATTO makes the card that works with 10.4.
Re 8x10 or 4x10 ... either wet mount 'em or tape 'em down.
Paul, I wet mount if I have a damaged piece of film that will not lay flat, if I need to reduce grain, if I have a badly scratched piece of film,etc. Generally, to solve problems rather than to improve resolution. Or, when scanning small film that I know is going to be printed very large (e.g. 35mm to be printed 40x50 or something like that) so as to insure that there are absolutely no variables on my end that will get in the way of the final print. BTW, not saying that I think 35mm should ever be printed that large but I was just part of a project where that was the objective and I couldn't argue with the eventual client on this one.
Here is how a refurbished Cezanne Elite makes its way to your doorstep and what it looks like under the hood. Note that the entire left wing is not yet attached. This thing is a tank at 160lbs. The shipping was $400.
Ted, If I may, a couple of questions:
1) The standard tray I have with this scanner appears to be somewhat fogged like it is dirty and it has some small scuff marks on it. I assume that this will affect the scan quality?
2) The lower tray with the grid on it is for reflective art?
I am in the process of scanning a 4x10 B/W negative at 2880. The whole process from installation to scan was pretty painless considering I am a complete virgin when it comes to MAC systems.
Joe
Joe ....
1) The glass is frosted ... is that what you mean? The frosting is an anti newton ring coating. Did you get the cover glass? I don't see it in your picture .. a frosted strip about 5" wide that has metal sides that fit in the grooves on the side of the scanning glass.
2) You scan reflective material on the top glass as well. Grid for alignment.
Ted,
The cover across the bed was a piece of optical mylar. There is a 5" frosted strip in the box and the 35mm batch holder. I take it that covers the piece of film? I just scanned a 4x10 at 2880 and it produced a 308M greyscale file which is substantial. When I pulled it into PS on my laptop I noticed that the image was a bit dark. I used the Sharp finish. I used PS levels (white adjust to 203) to adjust the white appropriately. Either my white reference is not installed right or I need to learn about picking black and white reference points prior to scanning.
Here are some images from my first scan. The image was taken of my HP laptop screen (1440x900) with a 210mm macro at about 1.4:1 on Bergger 200. First the original reduced and raw except for correcting levels. Note that the left side has been cropped about 3/4" or so from the original 4x10. Clip1 zooms the Portrait icon. Clip3 zooms the lips in the portrait icon. Clip3 finished is cleaned up and 35% PS sharpening at 2.2 pixels. Note that to get these images into this forum I used JPEG compression at 50-60 percent except for the full size which I compressed at 80 percent.
I'm impressed. I look forward to learning how to correct for originals in the scanner software. A couple of months from now I should have a pretty good handle on using this scanner.
Joe
Wait 'till you try to move it. The manual says use 4 people to lift it. Unfortunately the manual wasn't read until after a friend and myself lugged it down into the lower level studio. It was so big we had to tilt it at quite an angle to get it through the sliding glass door.
I can't wait to scan some color images. I've considered offering scans at reasonable rates to the public. Stay tuned. I need to really understand this scanner first before I attempt to take that task on.
My own thinking is that flatbeds are easier to use, easier to maintain, and the technology is newer. Nearly all drum scanners you see on the market are fairly old and those that are being made today very expensive. By contrast, new models of high end flatbeds continue to be introduced.
Drum scanners do have one important advantage over flatbeds, and that is in the area of dynamic range. If I were scanning professionally and had to deal with a large number of color slides the drum scanner would be my choice. However, the dynamic range of high end flatbeds is more than enough to scan B&W and color negative, which rarely have a Dmax of over about log 3.0.
Sandy King
Chrome is limited in dynamic range. How much more of the extremes can be captured? Does a greater Dmax improve color fidelity or capture shadow detail that the eye will fail to detect in a print? Is there truly a dramatic difference in quality between these different technologies at the high end? I suspect there are differences but will the average eye be able to notice this? I suspect the shadow and highlight detail is cleaner with higher Dmax. Is it like comparison like the difference between a $1k stereo system and a $20k stereo system?
I am curious as a scanner novice.
The other reason I choose this technology was for reflective scanning of art. While I don't have much of that myself I am surrounded by a lot of artists and this may help pay the way for the scanner.
Joe
Chrome captures less dynamic range of the scene than negative, however, the dynamic range of the chrome itself is higher than that of the negative.
In practice, here is a typical situation where the greater Dmax makes a difference. You have a landscape with sunlit peaks and the valley in shadows, and scan to preserve the detail in the peaks. With the high Dmax scan, you can brighten the shadows considerably so that the valley does not look too dark. With the low Dmax scan, if you attempt to do the same, the shadows will exhibit considerable noise.
This sounds contradictory.
If I understand you correctly you are speaking of dynamic range compression; i.e. transpparency contains more information in a smaller dynamic range?Quote:
In practice, here is a typical situation where the greater Dmax makes a difference. You have a landscape with sunlit peaks and the valley in shadows, and scan to preserve the detail in the peaks. With the high Dmax scan, you can brighten the shadows considerably so that the valley does not look too dark. With the low Dmax scan, if you attempt to do the same, the shadows will exhibit considerable noise.
I thought Dmax was about being able to detect information in dense areas on a negative or transparency while Dmin is the ability to detect information in low density areas. Of course chrome has no nuetral transparent space that is not filled with some form of color (except B/W transparecies of course) Again I am a total newbie here. I ordered a recommended scanning book from Amazon to continue my own education.
Joe
It is not contradictory when you realize that there is not a one-to-one correspondence of scene/subject density range and transparency (or negative) density ranges.
That is where the idea of gamma or CI (contrast index) is valuable. Most people process black and white negative film to a gamma/ CI (not the same, but close enough for the purposes of this explanation) of 0.55. This basically means that for the main part of your response curve, a scene luminance change of 1 stop (doubling or halving of intensity) produces a 0.55 stop change on the negative's density.
Slide film, however, has gamma/CI in the range of 1.5-2.0. This means that a one stop change in subject luminance produces a 1.5-2.0 stop change in the slide density value. It is 'contrasty', to use the vernacular expression for this. Check out the slope of the graph for Ektachrome 100 for instance:
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/profe...002_0787ac.gif
See how steep it is? That means that a 1 stop change in subject luminance produces a 1.6-1.8 change in the density on the transparency film.
The kindly old Kodak film researcher told me that in the 50s as color film was being heavily R&D'd, they expected professional large format photographers would shoot color neg and make carefully crafted color prints for reproduction, since the would have more control, retouching, etc.
They didn't anticipate how freaking lazy professional photographers really are.
And that is why they shot tons of chrome film for fifty years....
From a production, film handling, and quality POV I think Kirk is right on in persuing a high end flatbed.
Personally I wish someone would make a $1500-2500 flatbed that had professional build quality and with slightly better specs than the current Epson 750. I think a lot of us would jump at that, I got burned on a Mircotek and the Epsons are OK but I suspect they vary a lot from unit to unit.
Yet, it's not. Don't confuse the Subject Brightness Range (SBR) of the scene in question with the density range on film. Trannies are capable of recording a restricted SBR, depending on the film of course. A range of from 4-6 stops of SBR maybe. Tranny Dmax can be as high as 3.6 or higher. The Kodak calibrated density target only goes to 3.6; it's difficult to measure accurately above that.
Consumer flat bed scanners have difficulty reading through that large Dmax to record the shadow detail. The typical complaint about trannies and consumer flatbeds are noise in the shadows or a complete lack of shadow detail. High end flatbeds have less problems with trannies, and of course drum scanners have very little problem with trannies. It's not compression. It's translation. Tranny film translates a smaller SBR into a large density range. Negative films translate a larger SBR into a smaller density range. There is no need for a one-to-one correlation between SBR and density range.
It's helpful to remember the design function of tranny film is to be the final output -- one puts it into a projector and projects light through the tranny onto a screen. The tranny therefore has to have the ability to create an image with a convincing white (lets all the light though) and a convincing black (blocks all the light).
Negative film, OTOH, is designed to be an intermediary. It's used to capture the SBR of the scene in such a way as to make it easy to translate the captured information to photographic paper so that the final output is a print. This doesn't require the high density of the tranny -- in fact, high density is harder to work with when making prints.
Frank, it's not a matter of being lazy, it's simply smart business to shoot chromes versus color neg if you are shooting work for repro. Unlike a wedding photographer where the print is the final result of the photograph, for a commercial photographer it's usually mass reproduction that is the ultimate use.
A commercial photographer gets paid to shoot. It may take a day or days to complete the shoot. Does it make commercial sense for a busy photographer to turn away assignments in order to make color prints? Do you think that most clients are willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars a day to have a photographer print color prints from color negs? (I'm talking traditional processes here, not hitting "Command P and going for coffee). It is simply more efficient for the photographer, and cheaper for the client to work with color chromes. It's business after all.
Thanks for the explanations everyone. Material sciences. The terms are familiar and now I get to learn and engage the implications. I discovered why I had to adjust my scanned neg for white. It's underexposed by a stop or so and has relatively low contrast. My guess is the scanner is already calibrated within reason and I have to tighten the control over exposure and processing. It's a fairly steep learning curve but I'm not starting from scratch. Rather then plague the forum with beginner questions I need to research and learn the craft. As far as becoming a "pro" scan house; not. I'm more interested in my art then being a service bureau. When I have some experience and feel comfortable with the tools and processes I will open the door to that possibility on a limited basis and most likely local.
Thanks again,
Joe
BTW, to the best of my understanding, all of the current high end flatbeds, including the EverSmart Supreme, Fujis, IQSmart, etc, use the same Kodak 8,000 element CCD. Therefore, any differences in performance would be due to lens quality, how the lens sees the scanned material, stitching type, etc.
Effective resolution of EverSmart scanners is on the order of 90-95% of maximum potential optical resolution. This is a very high %, and results from XY stitching technology, only present in EverSmart and IQSmart scanners. Some very experienced users on the Scan Hi-End forum claim that the
Rodenstock lens of the EverSmart gives sharper results than that of IQSmart scanners, but I don't know if that is true. I do know for a fact that the effective resolution of my EverSmart Pro scanner is about 95% of optical maximum. Optical maximum is 3175 ppi, and tested effective is well over 3000 ppi, and that is over the entire scanning area of 12X17".
The major problem with the high end flatbeds is that they are huge. EverSmarts weigh about 160 lbs and take up a space of about 32X29X13".
Sandy King
Asher, I don't think it's about the client seeing a more impressive image, afterall what really matters is how it looks in print, but the faster turn around might be a factor for them. Shooting chrome was the industry standard when I first started working in the commercial area. In 25 years in the business I can't recall ever shooting color neg film.
Sandy, the IQsmarts use a 10,200 element tri linear ccd. The top optical resolution on the IQSmart 3 is 5500 ppi.
For print media, transparencies are certainly easier to edit, and they are self-proofing, in that the press proofs can always be compared to the transparency. A negative always requires interpretation.
David a color transparency requires color calibration as does a color neg. Color transparency film always required that the emulsion be color tested and color correction added prior to exposure. With color neg a color chart or gray scale would need to be included in the photo, or in a test exposure to be used to set and calibrate the color balance for a final print. So in either case the photographer is interpreting or setting the color balance.
I'm not sure what the issue is with negatives vs. chromes. Whether I am shooting negs chromes, (or DC for that matter) I supply files to all my clients. Color Negs scan fine. As a matter of fact I oftentimes have shot chromes and color negs on the same shoot (NPS and Velvia 100f chromes for the architecture, color negs for the people shots) and could scan them to look alike with little trouble.
I was merely making a wry observation, not trying to change a workflow (that has already been obsolesed anyways).
I always laughed when producton people and art directors would slavishly try to match the chrome when it was the chrome's interpretation that was probably the weakest link in the imaging chain. Or the ad agency's $49.95 crappy 9300 degree Kelvin light box... And while it was easier for the pro photographer to deliver a chrome, the behind the scenes pre-press work was pretty intensive and expensive.
Anyway, you going to jump Kirk?
While I believe Sandy's comment is correct regarding the current high end flat beds I am not sure that it applies to older generation machines bearing the same name (e.g. the current Supreme is actually the sceond model and there is an earlier machine also called the Supreme). I believe you will find that all of the current generation deliver real world resolution over 4000 spi.
Additionally, the DMax discussions are a tempest in a teapot. All of the current and last generation high end flatbeds deliver real world DMax over 3.7 which easily exceeds the range of film.
If executed by someone who truly was a professional photographer, and I just don't mean they get paid, but someone with real professional standards, the color and exposure on the final chromes delivered to the client were dead on. Even if the art director had a crappy light box, as long as the printer had an accurate light box and reflective light illuminator ( which good printers almost always had) to use to match the printing to the original chrome, then the end result would be accurate.
Sandy the current Eversmart delivers 5600ppi optical, the current IQSmart3 is 5500ppi.
Here is the Kodak spec comparisons for the current IQSmart and Eversmart scanners:
http://graphics1.kodak.com/us/produc...ifications.htm
And, I believe far exceeds all output materials? Or is that comparing apples and oranges.Quote:
Additionally, the DMax discussions are a tempest in a teapot. All of the current and last generation high end flatbeds deliver real world DMax over 3.7 which easily exceeds the range of film.
Ted Harris
Here are a couple of more images at 5300dpi, the optical max for the Cezanne Elite. I used the same area as the other images for comparison. This testing is not empirical by any means because I am still learning how to use this tool. However the only processing I have done is levels adjust in PS and much less this time then last. I notice that the differentiation is good but the noise is higher indicating the grain of the film. I want to try a wet scan at some point to see how that affects the noise floor. No sharpening has been applied to either image in PS. All scans use a sharp finish, a scan setting. There are some new controls I am discovering but I am completely convinced that I am missing the software manual for this scanner. I am going by the Start Guide which is minimal at best.
Joe