Rob, always beware of Dmax specs. Even Epson's 4.0 is suspect. But your
Minolta will certainly be better in that regards. The Epson V700/750 is
brilliant for medium sized negs/slides, unless of course, your Minolta does
that or you can afford a Nikon 5000 or above.
As for dmax, you can't compensate in photoshop as, if the detail is not
there photoshop will not bring it out, just noise. (bit like digital zoom,
enlarges the image but does not bring up extra detail which optical zoom
does) With good scanners you can use multi-pass, high bitrate format and
analog gain, which can force it's way through dense negs/slides. More detail
will be available with less noise. Photoshop's noise reduction is poor, I
use neat image which is good, and for sharpening, Focus magic. Post
processing in Photoshop with levels and curves etc will match the digital
ROC of scanners, though I must say Nikon's isn't bad, Vuescan is very good
most of the time. Also, the Nikon/Vuescan grain reduction is better than
Epson's.
Last word Nikon Dmax is supposedly 4.2, Minolta 4.8, so your's is better,
but overal quality also relies on lens, mirros, focus sys etc. But I do know
that Minolta's are good. Much better than the Pustek's and their suspect
specs. And as for those cheapie so-called neg scanners...they are not, just
5MP cmos thingies that basically copy, not scan a pic
Eddie