Drum Scanners: Upgrade from Howtek 4500 to Heidelberg Tango?

[sanking]

Lenny,

Thanks, so the claim to 11,000 dpi is based on the maximum number of stops on the stepper motor at 11,000. You certainly will not get 11,000 of effective resolution from a 10 or 11 micron aperture, but perhaps scanning at 6000 spi - 11,000 spi, and then downsizing, might result in a better scan. Seems to be just a form of interpolation done in the scanner software.

Sandy

[sdzsdz]

Hi all!


A very interesting discussion! Perhaps I can help a bit too. I´m by far not a scanner expert but I owned a Scanmate 11000 and gave it away for a Tango. I don´t know the Howtek. But there is some way of comparison, because the SM 11000 is also an 3 micron machine. And I made a rudimentary comparisons between an Howtek 4000 and my Scanmate regarding shadow performance and tonality. The Scanmate was a probably a little bit better in this respect, it was not worse.

But the SM never made me happy in terms of colour, shadows and tonality. Scanning Velvia slides that were not perfectly even regarding the lighting and exposure was a real pita.

What I can tell you is the following:

The Scanmate is sharper than the Tango, but it is a hair, not more. You could only see this at the most extreme magnifications. There is in my opinion absolutely no difference for "real world photography".

The Tango is VASTLY superior in terms of shadow performance, tonality and colour. There are worlds between the SM and the Tango. For me this is much more important than the question of 3 or 6 micron. But I can´t tell anything about a direct comparison between the Tango and Howtek regarding this aspect.
I have also read so many things about the Tango not beeing able to scan negatives. This is not true! It scans perfect B+W. Colour negative scanning has the same issues of the "orange mask problem" like the Scanmate has, but if one has a good workflow it gives very good colour negatives.

I´m living in Germany. If you like contact me. You could send me some pictures and I scan them for you, so you can compare.

The picture below was scanned as a positive in Linocolor (8bit only) and converted via Colorperfect in PS. There were made only very minor adjustments in PS afterwards and absolutely no noise reduction. It is from Portra 800! This is an amazing scan and the Scanmate can´t do this better, thats for sure.


10-14-5-2 by sdzsdz, on Flickr

Best regards,

Sebastian

[Lenny Eiger]

Lenny,
Thanks, so the claim to 11,000 dpi is based on the maximum number of stops on the stepper motor at 11,000. You certainly will not get 11,000 of effective resolution from a 10 or 11 micron aperture, but perhaps scanning at 6000 spi - 11,000 spi, and then downsizing, might result in a better scan. Seems to be just a form of interpolation done in the scanner software.
Sandy

Sandy,
Once you articulate the grains you are there, at the maximum resolution you can get. It happens when you match the grain clumps to the width of the sample. Downsampling from a higher pixel count will actually "average" things and you will have less resolution , rather than more...

Lenny

[EOTS]

Lenny, thanks for the insightful and detailled explanations about scanner resolution!

Sebastian, thanks a lot for the offer, much appreciated! PM sent.

Best regards,
Martin

[cdavis324]

I've owned or operated many drum and high end scanners in production environments, and the problem is that they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Some are geared toward resolution, some are geared toward reducing grain, and some for extracting shadow/highlight detail. Don't worry about the minimum aperture settings - they won't be used for film scanning(I've heard the reason 11 is the smallest aperture on the Tango is because they realized there's no reason to go any lower unless scanning test targets. Apparently the rest of the machine was designed to handle 11k dpi.)

It's all about workflow now, especially with such great de-noise, and sharpening plugins, not to mention color perfect.

I think a tango with newcolor would be a great long term solution(with the build quality, having a tech to help troubleshoot, and a big drum, not to mention the overall scan quality), but don't forget about other software processing options that can make a good scan look great! You could also take a look at the Eversmart scanners - they're every bit as good as the top end drums unless you're scanning chromes... in which case stick to a tango, premier, or ICG(if there's still service).

[fishbulb]

It's all about workflow now, especially with such great de-noise, and sharpening plugins, not to mention color perfect.

This is a very good point. A lot of issues can be resolved, or at least improved, with editing. For example, the tech who trained me on my Howtek recommended scanning at 4000 dpi / 6 micron but then actually applying a very light blur effect in photoshop to smooth out the grain a bit.

Some people even will do two scans of the same negative, one for shadows and one for highlights, and then combine them in Photoshop, as Tim Parkin describes here: http://www.dpug.org/forums/f6/aztek-...perience-2314/

[SergeyT]

All pixels delivered by a scanner are as much fake(or interpolated) as much as real. Film has no pixels to begin with...

Here is some data published by Heidelberg for their Tango\Primescan machines:

Transmissive / excellent and High quality

Scale Resolution(micron) Aperture# Aperture Size(micron)
3000% 4.0 4 15.9
2083% 4.0 4 15.9
1700% 4.9 5 18.5
1300% 6.4 2 11.7
1049% 8.0 3 13.6
833% 10.0 4 15.9
651% 12.8 5 18.5
555% 15.0 5 18.5
502% 16.6 7 25.1
416% 20 6 21.5
etc

An obvious conclusion is Resolution <> Apeture Size (as many believe)

Image size in Tango is a <Scale> x <Output Resolution>. One sets too much of a value for Output resolution and it results in a smaller Scale - read softer image.
That alone probably explains some reports of Tango scans being soft.

SergeyT

[georgl]

I think Tim Parkin worked hard on creating profiles to scan Portra with his Tango properly.

The weak point of the Tango is it's software:

- Linocolor: limited to PowerPC-based Macs and 8bit
- Newcolor for PC: unusable due to sharpening bug (you turn sharpening off but extreme sharpening still occurs)
- Newcolor for Mac: works only with Macs up to 10.2 (G4?), sharpening still occurs but is negligible in most cases
- Silverfast: crazy expensive for a no-longer supported software, only works with very specific hardware configurations

I tried to reactivate Silverfast to come to terms with the decision of spending additional 1500€... but failed.

Mine works perfectly with slides, dynamic range is excellent, high resolution up to the limitations of Velvia or Provia - my predecessors explained the correlation between aperture, sampling size and actual resolution quite well.

The Tango was manufactured with high investments by a groundbreaking company and it shows by it's build quality and actual scan quality.

[sdzsdz]

I think Tim Parkin worked hard on creating profiles to scan Portra with his Tango properly.

The weak point of the Tango is it's software:

- Linocolor: limited to PowerPC-based Macs and 8bit
- Newcolor for PC: unusable due to sharpening bug (you turn sharpening off but extreme sharpening still occurs)
- Newcolor for Mac: works only with Macs up to 10.2 (G4?), sharpening still occurs but is negligible in most cases
- Silverfast: crazy expensive for a no-longer supported software, only works with very specific hardware configurations

I tried to reactivate Silverfast to come to terms with the decision of spending additional 1500€... but failed.

Mine works perfectly with slides, dynamic range is excellent, high resolution up to the limitations of Velvia or Provia - my predecessors explained the correlation between aperture, sampling size and actual resolution quite well.

The Tango was manufactured with high investments by a groundbreaking company and it shows by it's build quality and actual scan quality.

Did yoh check the yahoo Tango group lately? Two members worked out a way to turn off the sharpening in Newcolor completely. Could not try this, because I still don't have Newcolor.

Best regards,

Sebastian

[timparkin]

I've owned an operated well mainted Howtek and Heidelberg scanners.. In fact I still have a Tango and a Howtek and I choose to use the Tango for all of my scanning. Why? First the shadows are cleaner - it may not get more out of the shadows than the Howtek but what it does get it gets smoother and hence more usable. It does render more than the Howtek (about 5000dpi from the Tango and 4000 from the Howtek). I use silverfast as I had a problem with Newcolor applying sharpening but a couple of colleagues have recently got around this problem.

As for all this talk of apertures, do not think that a smaller aperture equals more resolution. I tested my Howtek, an Aztek Premier and an ICG380 at various apertures for scanning Fuji Velvia and Kodak Portra. On the Howtek it was a hard call between 6 and 13.. I ended up choosing 13 for most of my work but for 35mm I'd use 6 and do more noise reduction. On the Premiere, anything smaller than 10 micron would have enough noise to start hiding detail - this made me realise that the Heidelberg people may have been on to something with their choice of 10 micron as the smallest limit.

Here's an interesting aside though - when I scan at 2000dpi on both the Howtek and the Tango, the Tango shows more detail... This came clear when I did some side by side comparisons for a client who wanted 4000dpi scans of an 8x10 and so I made samples of sections of his 8x10 at 4000 and 2000 on both the Tango and the Howtek to show how pointless it was. I was surprised to see the Tango produce more detail so I rescanned and got the same result.

There is a certain aperiodic 'dither' to Howtek files that is a little strange too - I can't describe it but it's like a small amount of signal processing in areas of low frequency detail.

At the end of the day though I'd be happy with the Howtek if I was an amateur for a couple of reasons, 1) you can get them very cheap 2) they're light enough to move around easily 3) easy to mount and don't spin stupidly fast (which can cause it's own problems if you cock up a mount - think shredded celluloid).

Then again - if I were to buy again I would get the Tango.. Bigger drum means more throughput, nicer files, Karl Hudson is a star.

p.s. size is a funny topic. The Tango has smaller footprint than the howtek but people forget that most of the space is taken up by the mounting station and the Tango station is HUGE!