N
Noons
Rebecca said:I'm not Noons, but I own a 4490 and didn't get a 4990 because of the
$100 price difference. If you think you'd like to shoot large format
during the working life of the scanner (say next two to five years), get
the 4990. If your savings in Oz isn't equal to $100 or if that doesn't
matter to you, get the 4990. The main advantage of the 4990 is more
transparency scanner space. If you're shooting volume, being able to
scan twice as much film on automatic (Vuescan does a reasonably good job
with this; haven't tried the Epson software) would be nice. If you're
not shooting volume but are only scanning a couple shots out of every
roll, possibly not.
Or get the V700 now and add the wet scanning attachment later.
I'm Noons <G> and I'd say Rebecca is spot on, Eddie.
Yeah, there might be some Dmax diff between the two, but I for
one haven't found the 4990 that super in that department.
But it's darn good if you plan to go for larger formats.
Certainly better than other flatbed scanners, for sure.
The only area I'd disagree with Rebecca is in the V700:
I reckon the v750 is worth getting for the coated flatbed glass!
I've run a lot of tests on the 4990 with wedged targets in flatbed
mode to establish the best focusing point. In ALL of the tests,
the limiting factor of the 4990 was neither the resolution nor the
focusing (ideal at 4800dpi is < 1mm above glass, others
it doesn't really matter as dof is then large).
The biggest problem by far was the glare introduced by the thick
flatbed glass. That made for a soft result that then needs heaps
of USM sharpening with all its potential problems: halos, grain
"enhancing", making banding more noticeable, etcetc.
So, if I had to chose now of the V7x series, I'd go for the V750
in a jiffy: the flatbed glass here is coated and presumably that
does seriously reduce the glare factor. The wet mount would
be even better but the major factor IMHO would be to get rid
of that pesky glare.
Or get a flatbed scanner that doesn't use the flatbed for
film - isn't that what some of the Microtek scanners do?
But that will stop use of wet mounting, so there...