Minolta has discontinued its Medium format scanner

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winhag

I was at the photo show in New York and was surprised to find out that
Minolta has discontinued their medium format scanner. They said they
have put the money into digi-cams.
 
I was at the photo show in New York and was surprised to find out that
Minolta has discontinued their medium format scanner. They said they
have put the money into digi-cams.
Click to expand...

Not surprised. The flatbeds are as good, if not better, much cheaper,
and more versatile.
 
My impression was that this is old news, but I don't recall hearing an
official announcement.
Not surprised. The flatbeds are as good, if not better, much cheaper,
and more versatile.
Click to expand...

You mean like in this comparison between an Epson 4800 ppi scanner and a
Nikon 8000?

http://www.pbase.com/davidjl/image/40078324/original

Or in this one?

http://www.pbase.com/davidjl/image/40078325/original

The flatbeds are good enough for a lot of people, but still aren't close to
a real film scanner.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan
 
Yes, could be old news, but I hadn't been following the scanner world
so it was new news to me :)
 
David said:
You mean like in this comparison between an Epson 4800 ppi scanner and a
Nikon 8000?

http://www.pbase.com/davidjl/image/40078324/original

Or in this one?

http://www.pbase.com/davidjl/image/40078325/original

The flatbeds are good enough for a lot of people, but still aren't close to
a real film scanner.
Click to expand...

Go to http://www.photo-i.co.uk/ for another point of view. This is an
exhaustive review of the Epson 4870 flatbed. There's a later one of the
Epson 4990 flatbed, which has superceded the 4870.
 
One4All said:
Go to http://www.photo-i.co.uk/ for another point of view. This is an
exhaustive review of the Epson 4870 flatbed. There's a later one of the
Epson 4990 flatbed, which has superceded the 4870.
Click to expand...

Their reviews of the Epson flatbeds have always been fodder for the journal
of irreproducible results. No one is getting anywhere near as good images
from Epson flatbeds as they claim.

To the best I can tell, the first tests of the 4870 showed it to be slightly
worse than the 2900 ppi class dedicated film scanners, and nothing has
changed since then.

http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~longnose/scanner_test.html

For starters, the design of the Epsons (the offset CCD) precludes them from
providing photographically significant image contrast above one half the
nominal resolution. The extra resolution can help in preventing grain
aliasing and allowing noise reduction to be more effective, but the MTF goes
way down over 2400 ppi. People who like counting angels on heads of pins
will claim that it can respond to patterns near its Nyquist frequency, but
no one has seen that in real life from real images.

That doesn't mean they don't provide more than adequate scans from medium
and large format for may users. Quite the contrary; for the price, they're
wonderful. But they don't compete in either resolution or dynamic range with
real film scanners.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan
 
David J. Littleboy wrote:

For starters, the design of the Epsons (the offset CCD) precludes them from
providing photographically significant image contrast above one half the
nominal resolution.
Click to expand...

Can you explain that a bit more, David? First time I heard
the "offset CCD" and why would it be relevant? Any urls
wheer I can read about it? TIA
People who like counting angels on heads of pins
will claim that it can respond to patterns near its Nyquist frequency, but
no one has seen that in real life from real images.
Click to expand...

Ah! But what about elfs on pins?
;)
wonderful. But they don't compete in either resolution or dynamic range with
real film scanners.
Click to expand...

IMHO, the 4990 does a credible job of handling colour negatives.
For slides, I agree 100% with you. Don't ask me why it should be
so, I don't know enough of scanning theory to debate it.
Just my feelings based on my results, no elfs.
 
That doesn't mean they don't provide more than adequate scans from
medium
and large format for may users. Quite the contrary; for the price, they're
wonderful.
Click to expand...

Altho I didn't mention MF in my earlier post, that's my point &
probably why Minolta is getting out of the MF film scanner business.
 
Noons said:
Can you explain that a bit more, David? First time I heard
the "offset CCD" and why would it be relevant? Any urls
wheer I can read about it? TIA
Click to expand...

The Epsons use two adjacent half-resolution CCD lines that are offset by 1/2
the pixel pitch; each pixel is "seeing" an area much larger than the nominal
pixel size, so the value it reads out is an average over a larger area.
Basic sampling theory tells you that you want point sampling (of a low-pass
filtered signal) for optimal performance, so Epson's "4800" ppi is a long
way from optimal. But there is still some response at higher frequencies
that can be used by aggressive sharpening.

Kennedy McEwen has explained the math that describes what happens in detail
in this newsgroup in the past, so Googling for his messages should turn up
something.
IMHO, the 4990 does a credible job of handling colour negatives.
Click to expand...

Yes, that was my experience with the 2450 as well.
For slides, I agree 100% with you. Don't ask me why it should be
so, I don't know enough of scanning theory to debate it.
Just my feelings based on my results, no elfs.
Click to expand...

The "oversampling" seems to work to reduce grain aliasing in negatives, it
seems. There really isn't much more than 2000 ppi of real information on
film anyway, so the 4800 ppi Epsons should be getting very close, even
though the apparent resolution is only a fraction of that.

IMHO, one should always buy an Epson first, and then think about a real
scanner if one isn't happy. The 4990 is the same price as I paid for my
2450, and that was money well spent since I learned about scanning first
hand, and knew what to look for when I got test scans done. I'm hesitant to
actually say that, though, because there are people who claim that they are
much worse than even I think they are. I think you ought to be able to get a
nice 6x enlargement with no complaints, but there are people who claim 3x is
the limit. So there _may_ be sample-to-sample variations in the beasts.

Anyway, a real film scanner still will look quite a bit better at, say, 9x
and over. But the number of people who need that should be a lot fewer with
the 4990 than with the 2450.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan
 
So there _may_ be sample-to-sample variations in the beasts.<<

This is definitely true! Even if you only do it in crude steps, it is
always good to do some shimming tests with your film holder to see if there
isn't a more optimal film suspension height for your particular scanner's
unique optical system. People who have done this report some relatively
broad swings in what they felt was the true optimal height for their
particular unit. Of course, there are many people who felt the standard
height was optimal, too.

Doug
 
David said:
[snip]

To the best I can tell, the first tests of the 4870 showed it to be slightly
worse than the 2900 ppi class dedicated film scanners, and nothing has
changed since then.

http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~longnose/scanner_test.html

For starters, the design of the Epsons (the offset CCD) precludes them from
providing photographically significant image contrast above one half the
nominal resolution.
Click to expand...

Wait a moment, my 2400 dpi Epson scanner definitely provides significant
resolution above 1200 dpi. The offset CCD design does make contrast go
down fast quite a bit before Nyquist, but I don't think that's the
problem with the 4800 dpi scanners from Epson, which, from tests I've
lokoed at, don't give much resolution gain compared to *Epson 2400 dpi
scanners*.
The extra resolution can help in preventing grain
aliasing and allowing noise reduction to be more effective, but the MTF goes
way down over 2400 ppi. People who like counting angels on heads of pins
will claim that it can respond to patterns near its Nyquist frequency, but
no one has seen that in real life from real images.
Click to expand...

Well, depending on how you define "near", I'm sure my scanner can't
provide any detail "near" Nyquist: it's flat zero after, dunno,
0.9*Nyquist, and very low after 0.8*Nyquist or so (I don't have the
actual measurements available right now).

Still, 0.5*Nyquist is definitely visible *without* doing any processing
on the scans. I guess up to 0.7-0.8*Nyquist should be quite easily
recovered with some post-processing.
That doesn't mean they don't provide more than adequate scans from medium
and large format for may users. Quite the contrary; for the price, they're
wonderful. But they don't compete in either resolution or dynamic range with
real film scanners.
Click to expand...

This is also a point I'd like to quote: I've heard to many times the
"flatbed scanners are useless for scanning film" statement. Flatbed
scanners can do their work quite well for the average user, even though
I wouldn't ever doubt that dedicated scanners do much better jobs.

by LjL
(e-mail address removed)
 
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