Quote Originally Posted by Sasquatchian View Post
but what evidence do you have that Howtek did anything like this in firmware?
With all user level sharpening disabled, we have found shots that are sharper in the howtek scan than in the microscope inspection of the film, me... I've no doubt, but it can be checked by producing a set of CMS20 negatives portraying edges at different contrasts, and with different CoC, and cheching when edges are improved.

I fact it would be stupid not implementing a certain degree of sharpening in firmware because this allows a huge speed vs quality benefit in the machine to computer communications. This allows an oversampling_the_medium+sharpening+ downsampling_to_required_size cycle that improves quality a lot and it does not not overload the computer and the communications.


Look, "in firmware" sharpening has huge technical benefits, and this is one of the strong points of very Pro hardware.


In the same way one has to understand that the not Pro V700 scans have to be optimized in Ps before they are compared to result of a Pro scanner, because Epson does not that process with that efficiency.