Holger Horn said:
my judgement at the moment is:
Nikon
+ Very good reputation for "predecessor" LS4000
+ Fast also with ICE
- DOF Problems (0,26 mm tested by German "Color Foto")
- No batch scannng for mounted slides
Minolta
+ Higher Resolution
+ Better DOF (0,39 regarding to "Color Foto")
+ 4 Slides Batch Mode for mounted slides
+ FireWire (I am a Mac User)
- Slow when used with ICE
- Not so good reputation in the newsgroups
- Not 100% compatible with Vuescan at the moment
Holger, be sure that you are not confusing the time loss of the Minolta
scanner to the Grain Dissolver plate with that of processing ICE. Scan
times for both systems are similar given that the Minolta has twice as
much data to process. So while it is expected that the Minolta would
also take twice as much time to ICE process a full resolution image,
most of the concerns I have read relate to the increased exposure time
brought on by the Grain Dissolver diffusion plate. This is inevitable
because the Grain Dissolver is a diffusion unit which results in less
light reaching the CCD - and thus longer exposures. The same time
increase would occur on Nikon scanners - if they offered such a well
needed facility!
The ICE software is directly licensed from Kodak by both Nikon and
Minolta, so there is unlikely to be significant differences in its
efficiency between the two parties. Having said that Nikon have been in
the ICE game longer and may have implemented a few tweaks or have access
to some undocumented ASF calls. Then again, if they did, they seem to
have forgotten them now. For example, I find that NikonScan 4 runs 25%
slower than NikonScan 3 one exactly the same hardware (Nikon LS-4000 on
2.4Ghz P4B with 1Gb Ram and 100GM free contiguous drive space).
Anyway, I digress, I am not saying that the Minolta doesn't take longer
to implement ICE, just that I have been unable to discern from the
reports if this is just ICE or the diffuser. So be sure the time loss
is really due to what you think it is before making that decision if
that is likely to be the deciding point.
BTW, DOF concerns kept me from buying the LS-4000 for over a year after
it was initially launched. My personal opinion is that this is only
relevant if you have film stock which is very curled from edge to edge.
In my experience this only occurs with film which is left to dry at room
temperature rather than in a heated drying cabinet. In any case, the
problem is only relevant to the motorised feed system of the included
SA-21 and the optional SA-30 adapters. If it does occur then the
included FH-3/MA-20 adapters overcome it by holding the film flat, as do
normal slide mounts. The FH-3 is only marginally less ergonomic than
the only means of getting film into the Minolta scanner, whilst the
SA-21 is luxury and simplicity by comparison.
In consequence, although I have encountered it, compared to the
competition the DOF issues of the LS-4000 are a complete red herring and
of no consequence to real users at all.
