Need a dedicated film Scanner - Advice please

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ron
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R

Ron

G'day from Australia. Having gone down the track of shooting many pics on a
DSLR I have returned to shooting 35mm slides - in my opinion a slide kills
DSLR pictures. I have a epson perfection 4870 photo scanner but I am not
happy with the lack of detail and the softness of 35mm slide tranparencies
after scanning. I mostly always use a tripod for shooting. Here in Australia
the konica minolta dimage 5400 II is virtually unobtainable which leaves the
Nikon Coolscan V ED scanner (which there is no stock - all dealers are
waiting for import orders to obtain more stock). How good is the Nikon
Coolscan V ED at scanning 35mm transparencies compared to a epson perfection
4870? Marginal improvement or a defininte improvement?

Many thanks for your advice/input.

Cheers
Ron
 
Marginal improvement or a defininte improvement?<<

I think you will say "definite" when it comes to 35 mm. If you have a local
professional photographer store that rents out time on a Nikon, it might be
worth your time to pay for a test scan. That would help ensure the scanner
would meet your expectations. Rafe's site might give you a good comparison.
I know he has Nikon 8000 examples there, so those are probably pretty close
the model you are considering.

Doug
 
Thanks for your advice Doug.

Cheers

Ron

- said:
I think you will say "definite" when it comes to 35 mm. If you have a
local professional photographer store that rents out time on a Nikon, it
might be worth your time to pay for a test scan. That would help ensure
the scanner would meet your expectations. Rafe's site might give you a
good comparison. I know he has Nikon 8000 examples there, so those are
probably pretty close the model you are considering.

Doug
Click to expand...
 
G'day from Australia. Having gone down the track of shooting many pics on a
DSLR I have returned to shooting 35mm slides - in my opinion a slide kills
DSLR pictures.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure. It seems to come down to grain vs. Bayer pattern.

I've gone digital a few years back but after scanning all my film
archives over the last couple of years I'm really tempted to dust off
my analog gear and have another go. But that's probably just
nostalgia.

I guess, they're just different.
I have a epson perfection 4870 photo scanner but I am not
happy with the lack of detail and the softness of 35mm slide tranparencies
after scanning. I mostly always use a tripod for shooting. Here in Australia
the konica minolta dimage 5400 II is virtually unobtainable which leaves the
Nikon Coolscan V ED scanner (which there is no stock - all dealers are
waiting for import orders to obtain more stock). How good is the Nikon
Coolscan V ED at scanning 35mm transparencies compared to a epson perfection
4870? Marginal improvement or a defininte improvement?
Click to expand...

Although 5400 II (and the *II* is important!) looks better on paper
(multiscaning, higher resolution) there have been reports of serious
reliability problems. They seem to pack it in after about a year of
usage. Apparently, they have plastic gears. Finally, considering
Minolta is out of the scanner business having it supported/repaired is
going to be a major hassle too.

Nikons on the other hand a built like a tank but have other problems.
They don't like Kodachromes at all. Depending on Kodachrome vintage
and how picky you are the results will range from "looks fine to me"
to "appalling".

Other (non-Kodachrome) transparencies are pretty good but (again
depending on how picky you are) you may notice some dynamic range
problems. This is not really a Nikon problem but just the nature of
trannies. Again, how good is "pretty good" depends on your
requirements.

I'm not familiar with 4870 but a dedicated film scanner will always
beat a flatbed, especially a Nikon with an LED light source vs. a
conventional fluorescent light source flatbed.

Nikon also has ICE which may save you tons of time when you need to
clean up all that dust and those scratches.

As Doug suggested the best is to give it a try (if you can) and
compare. Failing that, try googling for some examples on the Net.

Don.
 
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